The U hosts inaugural POWDER-RENEW Mobile and Wireless Week

Sixteen months have passed since researchers at the University of Utah were selected to create and operate a “living laboratory” for mobile and wireless technologies at the U and in Salt Lake City. The Platform for Open Wireless Data-driven Experimental Research (POWDER) is one of the first research testbeds for companies and universities in the United States.

On April 2, 2019, the U's POWDER team completed phase one — the very first Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) network testbed. To get an up-close look at the innovation, industrial researchers and 44 graduate students from more than 20 universities converged on campus during the inaugural POWDER-RENEW Mobile and Wireless Week (MWW2019) from September 9-13, 2019.

The event featured a variety of lectures and hands-on learning sessions, including:

• End-to-end mobile networking
• Radio access network (RAN) softwarization
• Spectrum monitoring
• Radio frequency exploration using USRP Hardware Drivers (UHD) and GNU Radio open-source software
• Wireless communications basics
• Antenna design
• Wireless communications research

Attendees teamed up to execute a series of "mini projects" and took a field trip to view the POWDER deployment. This was the first time that non-POWDER-RENEW team members used the platform's over-the-air capabilities, including rooftop base stations, fixed endpoints, and massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) equipment.

Read more about the POWDER-RENEW project at powderwireless.net.

 

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