Event
Satellite Communications Panel @ UMD
Tuesday, March 29, 2016
5:00 p.m.
2460 AV Williams
Jasmine Cooper
301 405 3114
cooperj@umd.edu
On March 29, 2016 at 5:00 PM in 2460 A.V. Williams Building, please join us for: RF & SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS: Challenges & Opportunities.
EVENT SCHEDULE
5 PM Networking & Refreshments
5:30 - 6:45 PM Panel Discussion
PANELISTS
Professor Kathwar Zaki, University of Maryland
Ali Atia, Orbital (retired)
Ken Betaharon, ABSatellite
Prakash Chitre, ViaSat
Ken Lee, Intelsat
Huiwen Yao, Orbital ATK
Paul Gaske, Hughes (Moderator)
Since the launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, countless scientific probes and commercial devices have been placed into orbit or on interplanetary trajectories to explore the deepest reaches of our solar system. Today’s surveillance, global positioning, and communications satellites are regarded as critical infrastructure, and the companies that develop and deploy them are essential to the national interest. Because of their unique operating environment and exacting performance requirements, satellites and associated earth ground stations offer fascinating research problems in signal transmission, radiowave propagation, beam coverage, link budgets, receiver noise power spectral density, modulation and error correction, frequency spectrum allocation, beam coverage, antenna characteristics, and more.
Communications satellites provide a variety of services, including network broadcast feeds, consumer radio & HD television, mobile services, and broadband. To meet the requirement for higher, more cost-effective bandwidth, new satellite systems will need to be developed which incorporate the latest advances in microwave and communications engineering. On the terrestrial side, the area of wireless communications has experienced explosive growth in the past decade, largely due to widespread adoption of cellular telephony, WiFi, and other protocols. As a consequence of this growth, industry is currently plagued by a shortage of qualified RF/microwave, antenna, and wireless engineers. In addition, only a few number of graduates are coming out of engineering school with practical, working knowledge of RF and antenna systems.
In response to a call for wireless and RF engineers, ECE @ UMD will be hosting a panel discussion featuring leading professionals from industry and academia, intended to promote research and spark interest in this important field.
