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The important area of software-defined radio is relevant to more and more aspects of microwave communications. All cellular systems, many satellite communications, space exploration, and military and public safety radio systems are now either partially or fully comprised of software-defined radios. These radios and systems require combinations of analog design, analog to digital conversion, digital signal processing running within programmable devices, software, and digital to analog conversion.

Undergraduate student teams may submit their entries as simulations in Matlab Simulink plus Xilinx System Generator or in Agilent System Vue or may submit their project working on a breadboard or a development board containing a programmable device that implements some or all of the signal processing that they have created. This may be a co-simulation.

Graduate student team entries must submit a more extensive implementation on a breadboard or a development board that not only contains one or more programmable devices, it must also have front-end analog RF circuitry, an analog to digital converter, and have some form of analog output which can be either on the board or within an accompanying computer that includes SDR software producing an analog output from that computer.

The students may learn from and use all available sources including existing reference designs, examples, and public domain materials. These available sources may be utilized in the submitted project, however none of these existing materials will be considered in the judging of the students' work in the submission.

The student team competition projects may be submitted as a multi-year work-in- progress and therefore submitted in successive years as it evolves. We wish to make the project goals completely up to each student team so that teams can submit quite different projects from each other. The main criteria for judging will be innovation and also success of reaching the goals that the student team sets in any of the above areas. Complexity is not required to win.

To facilitate the students, both Xilinx and Agilent will make their software tools available free to their university department.

Additional requirements are listed on the main Student Design Competition page.