Doctor Michael Rice, Bryan Redd, and Ximena Briceno received the Best Paper Award at the International Telemetry Conference (ITC) for their paper entitled “On Carrier Frequency and Phase Synchronization for Coded 16-APSK in Aeronautical Mobile Telemetry.” The award was given on October 24, 2019.
The article, which the team has been working on since April, explores major issues in carrier phase and frequency acquisition. Carrier phase and frequency acquisition are required for optimum detection.
Redd explained that through series of simulations and mathematics, they were able to “measure and estimate the frequency and phase off-sets of received signals in an air-to-ground wireless communication link.”
Dr. Rice explained further, “When a radio wave propagates from transmitter to receiver, all sorts of bad things happen to it and it takes very sophisticated techniques to try and fix all those so you can detect what was sent. In fact, your cell phone is actually doing a lot of work that you’re not even aware of. There’s a lot going on in there and you take it for granted.”
The subject matter of the article was of interest to both Dr. Rice and Redd. Dr. Rice has been studying telemetry for many years now and has been a central figure in the ITC. Redd was initially interested in radio communications when he joined the Electrical Engineering program.
Dr. Rice explained partially why he likes wireless communications, “You’re trying to detect something invisible that was corrupted by something else invisible, and do it really fast.”