EECS Professor Erik Perrins has received the “Best Paper” award at the 2015 International Telemetering Conference

A paper co-authored by EECS Professor Erik Perrins has received the “Best Paper” award at the 2015 International Telemetering Conference (ITC’15), which was held in Las Vegas, Nevada in October, 2015. The paper is titled "Maximum Likelihood Detection From Multiple Bit Sources,” and is authored by Prof. Michael Rice, of BYU, and Prof. Erik Perrins. Their work describes an optimal methodology for combining data streams that are harvested from different antennas. The specific case they considered is where the separate data streams have been completely demodulated into binary ones and zeros (i.e., the raw radio-frequency signal is no longer available), and the probability of error for each data stream is known. This type of scenario is prevalent on aeronautical test ranges, such as Edwards Air Force Base, where multiple antennas are used to track test aircraft and the cleanest possible data stream is desired. Their simple, optimal approach replaces the ad hoc methods that have been used in the past, and their paper also demonstrates the performance gains that can be realized.

Since 2005, KU students and faculty have had consistent participation at ITC, which is sponsored by the International Foundation for Telemetering (IFT). The IFT promotes the professional and technical interests of the telemetering community by sponsoring conferences, educational activities, and technical publications. As part of its educational outreach, the IFT named KU one of its six official “partner universities” in 2010. The conference presents awards in both student and non-student categories, and this award marks the seventh won by KU researchers since 2005.