IEEE Bombay Section
Team from IIT Bombay with Prof. U.B. Desai as
Mentor won the Microsoft Innovation Award of the IEEE Computer Society's
International Design Competition 2001
IIT Bombay receives Microsoft Innovation Award at IEEE CSIDC 2001 The finals for Second Annual Computer Society's International Design
Competion 2001 (CSIDC 2001) were held at Washington DC on the 24th and
25th of June. The goal of CSIDC is to advance excellence in education by
having student teams design and implement computer-based solutions to
real-world problems. This year's CSIDC was focused on Bluetooth wireless
technology.
The competition was conducted in two stages. In the first
stage, seventy five teams from over the world were selected for
participation and project kits were provided to design any useful and
innovative products they could think of. In the second stage, ten of these
teams were selected for the finals.
Further, an Innovation award was
started this year to promote new and original ideas, through support from
Microsoft. The IIT Bombay team won the Innovation award.
The detailed
reports for this years projects and the call for participation for CSIDC
2002 is available on www.computer.org/csidc
An abstract of IIT Bombay's project:
"Air passengers are required by law to switch off their mobile phones on
board any flight. This requirement has been imposed due to two reasons.
First,
signals emitted by the mobile
phone interfere with Air Traffic Control (ATC) signals, undermining the
safety
of the flight.
Second, a mobile at such an altitude connects to multiple base stations
simultaneously, clogging
the resources of the ground network. We have developed a novel solution
based
on the
integration of diverse communication links: Bluetooth, Cellular Network
(GSM/IS-95) ,
PSTN and Air-to-ground connection. Our solution enables the user to remain
connected in-flight,
while solving the above two critical issues. The switch over from the
cellular
network to
our in-flight Bluetooth network does not require any user initiation or
change
of the mobile
handset. Bluetooth, due to its low power, short range and fast frequency
hopping presents
negligible interference to ATC signals. We have implemented a Bluetooth
enabled
GSM phone, (on a laptop
using a GSM modem and a Bluetooth kit), a Bluetooth Airplane Gateway and a
Ground
Switching Center (using a phone modem for connecting to the PSTN) required
to
demonstrate the prototype.
The automatic setup up of various communication hops, call routing and
transmission of voice over these links has been
demonstrated. The system provides a unique and useful service and is
perceived
to be highly benefical to the society.
The IIT-Bombay team consisted of:
Aditya Dua
Aman Kansal
Arjunan R
Sumitra Ganesh
Vivek Raghunathan
Mentor: Prof. U.B Desai
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