A student team supervised by WNCG professor Robert Heath won the first runner-up prize at the Signal Processing Society Five-Minute Video Clip Contest (5-MICC).
Though the contest welcomes entries on any topic, this year’s theme, "Let There Be a Beam!", especially encouraged submissions on beamforming. Based on a spatially distributed array of sensors, a beam can be formed in space for enhanced signal reception or transmission. Research in this area can affect a number of practical applications, from radar, sonar, and wireless communications to radio astronomy, seismology, and medical processes.
Prof. Heath’s group included undergraduates Juliet Leger (ME), Kayla N. Tran (ECE), and Frida K. Maldonado (ECE), as well as WNCG graduate research assistant Nitin Jonathan Myers, who served as the team’s mentor. Their video entry covered “Fast beam alignment in millimeter wave radios.”
Video submissions for the contest—which included a report in the form of a conference paper—went through three selection rounds. In the first round, 10 invited teams were selected from all the submissions. In the second round, the judging panel further culled the list down to three finalists. Lastly, the panel ranked the finalists, taking a popular vote into account.
Winners were announced during the IEEE ICASSP conference, which took place virtually this year. Though the 5-MICC contest usually recognizes an overall winner, first runner-up, and second runner up, this year’s contest saw one overall winner and a tie for first runner-up.
Find out more on the contest website and watch the winning video here.