EECS Ph.D. Student Receives Best Graduate Student Paper Award at the 2017 International Telemetering Conference

A paper written by EECS Ph.D. student Sumant Pathak received the “Best Graduate Student Paper” award at the 2017 International Telemetering Conference (ITC), which was held in October in Las Vegas. In order to be considered for a student award at ITC, a paper must be authored solely by students, with minimal proofreading from faculty advisors. Pathak’s paper is titled "LDPC-coded APSK for Aeronautical Telemetry,” and presents initial results for a three-year, $2.5M research contract that began in 2016. In his paper, Pathak constructed a software simulator of a transmission system that pairs a powerful type of error control coding (LDPC) with a modulation scheme (APSK) that is friendly toward applications with high transmission power. A key contribution of his work is a performance characterization of 16 different LDPC-APSK combinations. In future years, the KU-EECS team led by Professor Erik Perrins will demonstrate an LDPC-APSK prototype system during a test flight at Edwards Air Force Base.

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 student and non-student categories. This award marks the eighth won by KU researchers since 2005.