The ABSOLUT Team from KTH wins one of the awards at the Smart Radio Challenge 2007
On Monday November 5, the winners of the international competition The Smart Radio Challenge’07 were announced at the SDR Technical Conference and Product Exposition 2007 in Denver, Colorado, USA. The ABSOLUT Team from the Royal Institute of Technology won one of the prestigious awards. The ABSOLUT Team obtained the first position for Problem 3 on Traffic Management and was awarded a grant of $ 2,000, a trophy and certificates of excellence for all its members. The ABSOLUT Team was the only team from outside the USA to win an award in the 2007 challenge.
The ABSOLUT Team was one of the eight teams qualified for the final phase (development phase) in the Smart Radio Challenge’07. Apart from the Swedish team, the finalists were two teams from Virginia Tech and one each from Clemson, Pennsylvania State, University of Utah, France's Ecole Superieur d'Electricite (Supelec) and Universiti Putri Malaysia.
The ABSOLUT Team consists of Delia Rodríguez de Llera González (team leader), Chithrupa Ramesh, Georgios Panagiotou, Xin Liu, Abdullah Mansoor and Docent Ana Rusu (faculty advisor) and is connected to the RaMSiS research group
The Smart Radio Challenge ’07
The challenge is open to student teams world wide. It is a prestigious international competition that carries both funding and industrial partnerships to pursue research in Software Defined Radios (SDR). The qualified teams may continue to compete in successive years for the yearly development prize.
Four research problems were specified by the SDR Forum in 2006 and solutions were solicited from competing student teams around the world. Problem 3: “Traffic Management” – the problem for which the ABSOLUT Team obtained an award – consisted of developing a traffic management system that leads to finding the optimum way for a driver to reach his/her destination while minimizing fuel consumption.
Traffic Management System Solution proposed by the ABSOLUT Team
The ABSOLUT traffic management system is able to provide on-demand real-time information to subscribers. The system has been designed to make it open to future advances in sensing technology and communication protocols. A demonstration providing proof-of-concept has been developed by the ABSOLUT team and was presented for the Smart Radio Challenge´07 on November 4.
The goal of this traffic management system is to provide en-route traffic guidance to subscribed vehicles, minimizing travel time or fuel consumption. The system attempts to make smart use of available radio resources to deliver the information limiting itself to the use of unlicensed communication bands. Such a traffic management system is not only environmentally friendly; it also gets us a step closer to the Cognitive Radio paradigm, where efficient use of the radio resources meets user demands.
Traffic information is dynamic information, capable of changing drastically within moments. The challenge is to provide real-time relevant information to the user, anticipating his needs accurately. To accomplish this, the system deploys a wireless sensor network across the area of coverage in order to sense traffic. By processing the sensed information, average velocity estimates for the vehicles on the area of deployment are computed. These velocity estimates can be communicated to a central management unit using WiFi/WiMAX/ZigBee and other wireless protocols operating in the ISM band of frequencies.
The central management unit maintains a traffic information database. This database receives regular updates through the network and maintains a register of average velocities on the roads. Subscribers are provided with on-board units, which query the database on traffic information along routes of interest. The on-board unit contains source and destination information and plans its route based on this traffic information. The best route can be chosen to optimize travel time or fuel consumption.
The ABSOLUT Team
RaMSiS Group, Electronic, Computer, and Software Systems Department (ECS) School of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden.
Delia Rodríguez de Llera González (team leader)
Delia pursues her Ph.D. degree at the Royal Institute of Technology within the RaMSiS Group since 2004 working in the field of automatic design space exploration for multi-standard wireless receivers and programmable data converters. Her research interests include analog and mixed signal design, analog to digital conversion, low-voltage and low-power circuit design, and CAD tool development.
Dr. Ana Rusu (faculty advisor)
Ana joined the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden in 2001, where she is Docent within the RaMSiS Group. Her research interests include data conversion techniques and CAD tools for wireless communications; Software Defined Radio technology; digitally-enhanced analog/RF front-ends; wireless sensor networks.
Chithrupa Ramesh
Chithrupa is a Telecommunications graduate (B.E.) from RV College of Engineering, VTU, India (2003) and is currently pursuing her master's degree in Wireless Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Sweden. Her interests include communication and information theories.
Georgios Panagiotou
Georgios received his degree (honors) from the Telecommunications Science and Technology department, of the University of Peloponnese, Tripolis, Greece in January 2007. At the moment he is enrolled in the Wireless Systems M.Sc offered by the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden.
Xin Liu
Xin is a master student in the program of System-on-Chip Design, school of ICT, KTH and has obtained his Bachelor of engineering degree in Automation from Zhejiang University, China. His current interests include embedded system design, sensor application and automatic control.
Abdullah Mansoor
Abdullah is a master student in Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden in System-on-Chip Design with specialization in Circuit and Radio. He graduated from National University of Sciences and Technology, Pakistan in Electronics Engineering. His interests include in RF circuits and Embedded Systems Design.
