Davis, Tretter Awarded MIPS Contracts

ECE faculty are associated with two new Maryland Industrial Partnerships (MIPS) contract awards. The MIPS program provides matching funding for university-based research projects that help companies develop new products. MIPS projects must deal with innovative technological or scientific concepts and have direct commercial applications.

Professor Christopher Davis is working with Techno-Sciences, Inc., of Lanham, Md., to develop a sensor package for weapons performance monitoring, target location, and automatic counter-fire. The system could be able to identify the characteristic signature of a munition, and with multiple acoustic sensors and time interval management, triangulation of the origin of the munition could be carried out in real-time.

Professor Steven Tretter is working with TeleContinuity, Inc., of Rockville, Md., to create a capability for seamlessly providing interoperable wireless communications for first responders in and around disaster areas. A proof-of-concept demonstration of the solution will be developed using a common physical backbone to interconnect off-the-shelf, air-interface, access-point hardware, including cellular base stations and 802.11b transceivers. The end goal is to enable police, fire department, and FEMA workers to communicate using cell phones, UHF radios, PDAs, and other devices even when normal communication lines are destroyed.

Published February 24, 2005