Jonsson School Industrial Advisory Board IAB Committee on Telecom Engineering

1. Jonsson School Industrial Advisory BoardIAB Committee on Telecom Engineering Bill Krenik, Lorne Hinz, Andrea Fumagalli May 2, 2008

2. Curriculum Development and Training • Not enough telecom engineers to hire • One company alone evaluates tens of students each year • Present course content not adequate • UG students not aware of technology • Old image of the TE program • TE name alone not appealing • Public unaware of job opportunities

3. Action Items • Present an accurate and appealing image of the TE program • Create awareness about solid job opportunities in telecom • PPT charts for presentation to high school/transfer students • Posters for schools and recruiting events • Revise course content and consider seminar series with speakers from industry (mandatory attendance of students to access internship programs)

4. Research and Industrial Collaboration • Lack of research focus across TE faculty

5. Action Items • Improve communications and strengthen collaboration across Labs • IAB sub-committee to suggest TE focus • Lorne Hinz • Marion Lineberry • Ron Jennings

6. TE Focus: Motivation • UTD TE needs a research focus to attract attention, students, faculty, researchers, funding, and build large telecom test-bed facility • TE IAB needs research results to justify member participation (IAP) • Projects that impact business direction • Projects that UTD researchers do can more effectively than companies can do themselves • Key to attracting industry funding • Students that become top employees

7. TE Focus: Objective • Conduct research to enable • high-quality voice calls • no static, no echo, no background noise, no dropouts, no dropped calls, no latency, ... • high-quality data/video delivery • no jitter, no blur, no audio dropout, no compression artifacts, ... • Affordably, anywhere and under any conditions • In a hyperconnected world

8. TE Focus: Obstacles and Constraints

9. TE Focus: How It All Might Fit Together TE “Research Center” Directorship TE IAB • Funding: • IAB members • Grants • Contracts Voice program Data/Video program Data/Video program • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 • Research Group • Project1 • Project2 Facilities (Labs) Support Staff • “Hard” IP: software, boards, boxes, silicon, silicon design IP, documentation, ... • "Soft" IP: trade-off analyses/reports, white papers, conference papers, patent filings • Industry good will: student familiarity with IAB products, student employment

10. TE Focus: Summary of Benefits • IAB members can introduce new customer care-abouts as desired outcomes (or remove old ones) • IAB members can introduce new problems/obstacles they have encountered or expect to encounter • Both UTD researchers and IAB members can introduce promising new research areas to pursue • All of the outcomes (papers, demos, educated students, etc.) can be tied to a common theme (the high level scope of the TE center), thus building momentum project on top of project • UTD TE facilities become more attractive for investment as a test-bed for trying new ideas under real-world (or future world) stress conditions