RCA Proceedings - Fall 2022

Awards Banquet Keynote Robert Bell, SPPI and WTA

Technical Symposium Keynote and RCA Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient Prof. Aklesh Lakhtakia, Penn State University

2022 BOARD LISTING

PRESIDENT

John Facella P.E.*

EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT

David P. Bart*

VICE PRESIDENT Open

VICE PRESIDENT/COUNSEL

Chester “Barney” Scholl, Jr.*

VICE PRESIDENT/CO-COUNSEL

Edward Ryan*

TREASURER

Ronald J. Jakubowski*

SECRETARY Margaret J. Lyons, PE, PMP*

DIRECTORS

JonPaul Beauchamp

Rich Berliner

Ernie Blair Dr. James Breakall

Verle “V.G.” Duvall Charles Kirmuss Denis Marin

PRESIDENTS EMERITI

Bruce Mcintyre

Carole Perry Don Root Paul Scutieri Dr. Julio Urbina William Waugamann Jane Winter*

Steven L. Aldinger Mal Gurian

Sandra Black Carroll Hollingsworth*

Philip Casciano Bruce McIntyre

Mercy Contreras Stan Reubenstein

Timothy Duffy Anthony Sabino, Jr.

STAFF

Amy Beckham, Administrative Director

Kathy Sheridan, Membership & Order Fulfillment

Maria Olaez, Bookkeeper

COMMITTEE CHAIRPERSONS

Awards & Fellows: Bruce McIntyre

Banquet: Margaret Lyons* / Denis Marin

Bequests & Legacy Giving: Open

Constitution & By-Laws: Chester “Barney” Scholl, Jr.*

Education: Julio Urbina

Fellows: Bruce McIntyre

Finance: Phil Casciano / Ron Jakubowski*

Fundraising: Jane Winter* / Karen Clark

Historical/Museums & Archives: Carroll Hollingsworth*

Interview & Networking Series: Tim Duffy / John Facella*

Marketing: Jon Paul Beauchamp

Onboarding: Barney Scholl

Mentoring Project: Paul Scutieri

Membership: Margaret Lyons* / Don Root

Member Services, Women in Wireless: Ellen O’Hara

Member Services, Young Professionals: Open

Member Services, Mid-Career: Keith Kazmarek

Member Service, Senior Career & Retired: Don Root

Nominations & Elections: Rich Berliner

Operations Handbook: Bruce McIntyre

Publications: David P. Bart*

RCA Radio Amateur Club License: Ed Ryan*

RCA Regional Conferences: Ernie Blair

Rocky Mountain Section: Karen Clark /Mercy Contreras

Scholarship Fund: Alan Spindel

Sponsors: Jane Winter* / Karen Clark

Strategic Planning: David Bart*

Technical Symposium: Jim Breakall

Website: Amy Beckham / John Facella*

Youth Activities: Carole Perry

*Executive Committee Member

The Radio Club of ameRiCa, inC. Honoring the Past,

Committed to the Future

HEADQUARTERS OFFICE :

7042 East Fish Lake Road, Maple Grove, MN 55311 | (612) 405-2012 amy@radioclubofamerica.org | www.radioclubofamerica.org

CONTENTS

From Your President 4

From the Publications Chairman

........................................................................................................... 5

RCA’S 2022 BANQUET AND TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM 7 Edward Ryan Emcee of RCA’s 2022 Banquet 8

Robert Bell Keynote Speaker at RCA’s 2022 Banquet 9 Chaouki T. Abdallah to Speak at RCA’s 2022 Banquet 10

Professor Aklesh Lakhtakia, 2022 Technical Symposium Keynote 10 2022 Technical Symposium Agenda 11 2022 Honors & Awards 12 2022 Fellow Class 18

Push-To-Talk Is Public Safety’s Lifeline 21

AWA Opens New Exhibit and Preserves Radio Club of America Archives 26 How The FCC Settles Radio-Spectrum Turf Wars 29 Professor Frank Drake, RCA Lifetime Achievement Recipient, Passes Away ......................................... 34

Fractal Secures Patent on Invisibility Cloak Detection 40 RCA News 44

The Radio Club of America Launches New Mentorship Program 44

RCA’s Women in Wireless in the 21st Century 45 RCA Announces Partnership with Connectivity Expo 45

Print Versions of RCA Proceedings Available! 46 RCA’s Youth Forum Returns to Dayton Hamvention—LIVE 47 Silent Keys 50 News Items 52

Arecibo Radar Pierces Venus’ Clouds 52 W2NAF Gets NSF Grant to Study Grayline and Solar Eclipses 53 HAARP Hosted Open House 54

FCC Legacy CORES System to be Retired 55 Arecibo Update 57

Internet History Resource Asks for Volunteer Support 58 MFJ Celebrates 50 Years 59

Ulrich L. Rohde, N1UL, Receives IEEE Engineering Achievement Award

............................................. 60

International Space Station Upgrades Amateur Radio Operations 61

Article Reprint: Impact of Digital Wireless: Views from Two Ends of a Dramatic Transformation 62

SPECIAL SECTION: 2022 RCA TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

.................................................. 69

Business Directory 81 RCA Calendar & Events 83

TECHNICAL EDITOR

John S. “Jack” Belrose, Ph.D., VE2CV 811-1081 Ambleside Dr. Ottawa, ON K2B 8C8, Canada (613) 721-7587; jsbelrose@gmail.com

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

David P. Bart 8512 Kedvale Ave. Skokie, IL 60076 (847) 542-9873; jbart1964@gmail.com

ADVERTISING CONTACT

Amy Beckham (612) 430-6995; Amy@radioclubofAmerica.org

PRODUCTION Sapphyre Group

PROCEEDINGS SCIENTIFIC ADVISOR Nathan “Chip” Cohen, Ph.D.

These past two years have been an exciting time for me as your president!

I want to thank you, the members, for your confidence in me. I also want to thank the RCA Board and the Sapphyre Group for their assistance in the many endeavors that we undertook.

Our focus for these two years was to amplify (pardon the pun!) RCA’s services to its members. We accomplished many things:

In education and careers, we started a Mentoring Program for new professionals in the wireless industry; we improved our scholarship program for Carole Perry’s Young Achievers who have moved on to college; and we started a Women in Wireless program. This latter networking program has caught the attention of several major entities who now want to work with us in expanding this offering! Our partners have told us that it is hard for new people to understand what the wireless industry is all about. So, we created “An Introduction to Wireless” course that is available free to anyone on the RCA website. We also established a new partnership with WIA (see below) that will provide RCA members with discounted access to WIA’s library of wireless training videos.

I encourage you to visit the RCA website, where a lot of valuable information has been added in the past two years. For example, we have been asked to provide help in finding wireless jobs, so we now have links to ten job boards. We added some educational and fun stuff under the heading ‘World of Wireless’.

Also there is a new section entitled ‘Experts and Legends’, which introduces newcomers to some of the amazing pioneers we have had in the past, and continue to have as RCA members. RCA held an online Supply Chain Panel program in the spring to exchange ideas for those challenged by that issue. It can be viewed on the RCA YouTube channel. We are continuing the RCA Interviews series on Zoom, and the next two interviews will be with the FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau Chief in December, and then with the FBI’s communications experts in March 2023

Our members really enjoy in-person networking, and as the Covid pandemic has receded, we were able to return to live activities this year. At the same time, we have increased our geographic reach to members via live meetings in Baltimore this past June and in Atlanta upcoming in November. We created four new industry awards, and two of those awards will be given in November at the annual awards banquet. We have increased our reach across more verticals in the wireless industry by signing new partnerships with the Utilities Technology Council (UTC) and the Wireless Infrastructure Association (WIA). To make that point even stronger, our November Key Note Speaker is Robert Bell from our partner in the space and satellite industry (SSPI)

Another new initiative is that we are beginning a process of partnering with key engineering universities, from whence the technical talent for the wireless industry will come in the future. Our meeting in Atlanta inaugurates this effort and allows our members to get to know Georgia Tech

via some lab tours, and through some of their faculty who will be presenting at the Technical Symposium. We have continued our partnership with IWCE in presenting awards to young professionals in wireless. To further enhance our understanding of what young professionals are looking for, we appointed a young professional to assist myself and the Board. To emphasize this, I have invited several students and young professionals to join me in Atlanta at my president’s tables – please welcome them to our wireless family!

However, as we look to the future, we also must not forget our history and the pioneers that went before us. The History Committee has worked very hard to collect and archive RCA’s materials at the Antique Wireless Association’s facilities near Rochester, New York.

Making all of these things happen took many people and a lot of dedicated volunteer work. Besides all of the work we did to improve member services, we have also been doing some internal projects. For example, we have instituted new Board training; the Board and some members developed a new RCA strategic plan; member polls and focus group research was conducted; and we secured some new sponsors for RCA. Finally, like many organizations in the 21st century, we are in the process of re-examining our branding.

Thank you for the opportunity to share in all this exciting work!! Good luck to all of us as we move forward together into 2023. Enjoy the coming holiday season, and I hope to see you in Atlanta!

JOHN FACELLA, President The Radio Club of America, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLICATIONS CHAIRMAN

This issue of the Proceedings brings you the latest information about RCA’s LIVE 2022 Awards Banquet and Technical Symposium

Hosted jointly by RCA Director Rich Berliner and RCA President John Facella, the 2022 awards program will showcase RCA’s honorees and the 2022 incoming class of RCA Fellows. We are reuniting for the first time in three years at a LIVE REUNION in Atlanta. Come out and see your friends and colleagues!!

• Our upcoming 2022 banquet and awards ceremony and the Technical Symposium will be in Atlanta (Save the Date, November 19, Atlanta Hyatt Regency). This is a Reunion, the first time we have met for our awards banquet and a technical symposium LIVE in three years! Don’t miss it!

• Our Awards Banquet Keynote Speaker this year will be Robert Bell. He is the Executive Director of Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) and World Teleport Association (WTA) and a Senior Consultant with Alan/Anthony, Inc. Mr. Bell has over 30 years of experience in IT outsourcing, telecommunications, and financial services industries. He is a cofounder of the Intelligent Community

Forum. He is also the author of market studies and reports including Benchmarking the Intelligent Community, Teleports in a Gigabit World, and How to Buy Satellite Capacity. He leads an all-star lineup of for this year’s banquet and awards.

• Our Technical Symposium Keynote Speaker is this year’s recipient of the RCA Lifetime Achievement Award, Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia. He is the Evan Pugh University Professor, the highest professor status, at Pennsylvania State University, and Chair of the Department of Electrical Engineering. Professor Lakhtakia is a world expert in radio wave propagation in all kinds of materials and complex mediums. We congratulate him and all the other award recipients and the new class of RCA Fellows.

• Our 2022 LIVE Technical Symposium provides a full day of presentations on wireless and broadcast topics, with a full schedule included on the RCA website and in this issue of the Proceedings. The participants are invited to interact with the presenters and event sponsors throughout the day.

Don’t forget that RCA offers print versions of the Proceedings. See details in this issue and on the website.

I offer my personal congratulations to John Facella, who will complete his term as RCA President in December 2022. John has dedicated untold hours

and provided incredible dedication to RCA, creating many new initiatives over the years. John leaves big shoes to fill. John will still be around to help, so we look forward to his sage advice while he gets some much-needed R&R beginning January 1. I also thank all of our departing board members and officers for their years of service, and I welcome the newly elected officers and board members who will begin their terms on January 1. I look forward to a great year ahead with all of you!

I remind our members to download prior issues of the Proceedings, which include coverage of our former award recipients and significant related content. Biographical information for our current award recipients and new RCA Fellows are included in this issue. Complete information about the Technical Symposium also is presented.

Congratulations to all of RCA’s members for their continuing successes. We invite each of you to contribute articles, news stories, and ideas for future content. We also welcome your comments, recommendations, and suggestions on ways to further improve the Proceedings

We look forward to seeing all of you LIVE this November as we reunite to visit old friends, congratulate new honorees, and to meet new colleagues.

DAVID BART, KB9YPD Editorial Director and Chairman RCA Publications Committee

RCA’S 2022 BANQUET AND TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM

A RETURN TO LIVE EVENTS IN ATLANTA

2022 marks a return to LIVE annual celebration activities for RCA. Our members have already participated in RCA’s industry events earlier in the year. Now, it is time for us to convene at our annual Banquet and Awards Program and our annual Technical Symposium. These two annual activities are the heart of RCA! This is the time when we meet, hear about new advances and ideas, learn about where the leading edge of wireless is heading, and where we share our friendships and passions for wireless. Come join us in Atlanta!

RCA’S 2022 BANQUET – A REUNION

The 2022 Banquet and Technical Symposium is our first live annual gathering in three years! We welcome all to a Reunion of old friends, trusted colleagues, and industry leaders. RCA’s value proposition is, quite simply, the opportunity to meet and work with our members, many of whom are legends in wireless. The magic of RCA is found through the intimate gathering of brilliant and talented people who share a passion for wireless communication.

For more than a century, we have celebrated invention, entrepreneurship, research, collaboration, and historical interest in wireless in all its forms: telegraphy, radio, television, telephone, satellite, radio astronomy, and radar, just to name a few areas. The common link our involvement across these seemingly disparate areas is RCA!!

Come join us and celebrate the magic of bright, talented, creative people as we share our passion for wireless. We look forward to seeing everyone in November for this rare and very exciting opportunity at the Atlanta Hyatt Regency Hotel.

GEORGIA TECH IS ON MY MIND – A SPECIAL RCA TOUR

RCA’s festivities in Atlanta offers our members a chance to participate in a special tour of Georgia Techs’ Electrical Engineering/Communications Lab Spaces on Friday morning, November 18, from 9 to 12 noon. The tours will encompass the following research areas: designing and building mmWave antennas, novel numerical time-domain techniques, electromagnetic waves between 0.5-500 kHz to explore the Earth’s natural electricity, and RF backscatter communications.

Georgia Tech’s Research Groups and Laboratories are the lifeblood of its ECE research program, where faculty, graduate students, and undergraduate students produce research results that lead to papers published in the world’s foremost technical journals and conference publications, patents, and even start-up companies.

Areas of interest are often highly interdisciplinary–including integrated circuit technology, robotics, mobile computing and telecommunications systems, and neuroengineering. Information about the labs is available on the Georgia Tech website. Please note that each lab is responsible for the maintenance of its own site.

Please see the RCA website for details and to register for this rare opportunity of seeing one of the world’s premier technical universities and research laboratories.

Join RCA For The Georgia Tech Research Groups and Laboratories Tour on Friday.

EDWARD RYAN EMCEE OF RCA’S 2022 BANQUET

Ed Ryan is a patent attorney and an amateur radio operator. Ed joined the RCA in 2016, with the twin goals of networking and staying current with developments in the wireless industry. Ed’s professional work has dealt with electronics, semiconductors, and wired and wireless network technologies, as well as trademarks and other intellectual property matters. His patent work includes patent applications for phased array antenna systems and mmWave transmission technologies. Other legal work has included prosecuting trademark applications, as well as intellectual property litigation in various forums.

Ed has a B.S. in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University (2005) and a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law (2008), and has been registered as a patent attorney since 2009. His experience with volunteer-run organizations spans two decades, including social organizations and a local civic organization.

Ed Ryan

SILENT AUCTION RETURNS IN 2022

The RCA banquet Silent Auction returns in 2022! The Silent Auction historically offered a wide range of unusual donations, the sale of which benefited RCA. Absent for some time, this favorite activity has returned. To date, we have received notice that some unusual and rare historical items will be available. Other non-wireless items will also be available. We encourage all attendees to consider bringing a donation, and we ask everyone to participate in helping to raise funds for RCA.

NEW ATLANTA MICRO-SITE

See the RCA website for information about Atlanta! This year, RCA has incorporated Discover Atlanta into our information. Interested in local tours and activities? Atlanta offers a tour for practically everything! From Civil War to Civil Rights, Film locations to Artwork, or Aquariums to Coca-Cola, there is something for everyone! Check out the Micro-Site made for us by Discover Atlanta and find the perfect activity for you!

NEW THIS YEAR! SPONSOR A TABLE OF 8!

RCA is offering the opportunity to sponsor a table at the banquet. Your $2,500 sponsorship includes:

• 8 seats at the table

• 1 extra drink ticket per person

• Branded table signage

• Recognition in event program and online

• Choice of table from selection provided RCA needs your involvement and support! See the RCA website for more information. We thank all attendees and welcome you to be recognized!

ROBERT BELL KEYNOTE SPEAKER AT RCA’S 2022 BANQUET

The Radio Club of America (RCA) is thrilled to announce that Robert Bell will be the featured keynote speaker at the 2022 banquet and awards ceremony to be held in Atlanta. Mr. Bell is Executive Director for both the Space and Satellite Professionals International (SSPI) and the World Teleport Association (WTA). He is responsible for programs, finances, and operations.

• WTA promotes the commercial interests of teleport operators and excellence in their operations, technology and business practices. WTA is the only trade association that focuses on all aspects of the business of satellite communications from the ground up. At the core of its membership are the world’s most innovative operators of teleports, from independents to multinationals, niche service providers to global hybrid carriers.

• SSPI is the largest membership organization in the industry, which connects the people of the invisible, indispensable industry called space and satellite to fuel the engine of growth and make the case for space technology as a vital contributor to the world. The companies represented in SSPI encompass nearly every sector of the space and satellite industry.

Mr. Bell has over 30 years of experience as an association manager and business consultant for both nonprofit and profit-driven and organizations operating in the IT outsourcing, telecommunications, and financial services industries. He has led business development missions and conducted workshops and Master Classes in the Americas, Europe and Asia.

A regular blogger, he has written for The Municipal Journal of Telecommunications Policy, IEDC Journal, Telecommunications, Asia-Pacific Satellite, Digital Communities, and Asian Communications. He is a

frequent speaker and moderator at industry conferences including SATELLITE, NAB, SATCON, ICF’s annual SUMMIT and the Global Forum.

A co-founder of the Intelligent Community Forum, he is also the author of market studies and reports, including Benchmarking the Intelligent Community, Teleports in a Gigabit World, and How to Buy Satellite Capacity. He is the co-author, with Louis Zacharilla, of B2B Without the BS, a guide to sales and marketing in the unique business-to-business sector; of Broadband Economies: Creating the Community of the 21st Century; and of Seizing Our Destiny.

Mr. Bell’s specialties encompass: trade association management, business-to-business marketing, public speaking, research, and nonfiction writing. As a subject matter expert, Mr. Bell writes frequently for industry journal’s including Via Satellite, SatNews and Satellite Executive Briefing. He has appeared in segments of ABC World News and The Discovery Channel, and he has led business development missions in the U.S. and Asia. He is a frequent speaker and moderator at industry conferences including SATELLITE and Satellite Innovation. At WTA, he manages research activities and edits its reports, including Service Automation and Orchestration for Teleport Operators, The Virtual Teleport, Teleports and the 5G Opportunity, Cloud Services for Teleport Operators, LEO/MEO Constellations and the Teleport and New Antennas, New Opportunities.

Mr. Bell recently spoke as part of the RCA Virtual Interview Series in February 2022. His interview can be seen online on the RCA Video Archives under the Interview Series. In July 2022, he presented a panel: “Why is Space the new frontier for data centers?” for The Edge Computing Channel that is available online.

Mr. Bell’s keynote speech highlights the importance of RCA’s relationships with industry partners. SSPI, as an RCA partner organization, recognizes the important role wireless plays in the controlling, communicating, and telemetering information from rockets, space stations, and satellites. Mr. Bell’s keynote speech will touch on this, the history of the space and satellite industry, and what the future holds.

We welcome Mr. Bell and encourage all to attend the RCA banquet. Further information is available on the RCA website.

Robert Bell

CHAOUKI T. ABDALLAH RCA 2022 BANQUET SPEAKER

Chaouki T. Abdallah is the Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR) and a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Dr. Abdallah serves as chief research officer for the Institute, providing overall leadership for the research, economic development, and related support units within Georgia Tech.

Abdallah received his M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1982 and 1988, respectively. He joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department at the University of New Mexico (UNM), where he served as professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Between 2005 and 2011, Abdallah was the ECE department chair, and he served as provost and executive vice president of academic affairs at UNM from 2011 to 2016. In 201718, he served as acting president, interim president, and finally the 22nd president of UNM.

He has published eight books and more than 300 peer-reviewed papers. His research interests include systems theory with a focus on control, communications, and computing systems. Abdallah, who is fluent in English, French, and Arabic, is a senior member of IEEE and a recipient of that organization’s Millennium Medal.

PROFESSOR AKLESH LAKHTAKIA

2022 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM KEYNOTE

The Radio Club of America (RCA) is thrilled to announce our LIVE 2022 Technical Symposium. Together, the Radio Club of America Awards Program and Technical Symposium are one of the industry’s premier events.

Every year, RCA’s banquet is preceded by the day-long Technical Symposium. Presentations are selected by committee and curated to expose attendees to cutting-edge technology available today as well as exciting glimpses into the future. Careers have been launched at the Technical Symposium. At the same time, attendees can meet and learn from wireless experts and legends. This year we have a total of 10 presenters on various wireless related subjects (see below for the agenda).

The 2022 Technical Symposium features Professor Aklesh Lakhtakia as the Keynote Presenter. Dr. Lakhtakia will be receiving RCA’s Lifetime Achievement Award at the Banquet for his very significant achievements and a major body of work accomplished over a lifetime that has advanced the art and science of wireless technology. A complete biography for Dr. Lakhtakia is available in the awards section of this issue of the Proceedings, and in the program for the Technical Symposium. We are thrilled that he will be the leadoff for a day of wonderful presentations at the Technical Symposium.

RCA expresses is gratitude to Professors Jim Breakall and Julio Urbina at Pennsylvania State University for their leadership in putting together a wonderful program for 2022, together with assistance from the committee.

Join us for an exciting 2022 slate of presentations. The complete program is available on the RCA website. The lineup, as we layout this issue of the Proceedings in September 2022 and subject to change, is shown below.

Note, RCA maintains an archive of past Technical Symposium materials. See the RCA website for more information.

Professor Aklesh Lakhtakia, Keynote Presenter for the Technical Symposium.

Chaouki T. Abdallah

VIEW

2022 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AGENDA

ALL TIMES IN EASTERN DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME (EDT)

7:30 a.m.

8:00 – 8:15 a.m.

8:15 – 8:55 a.m.

Continental Breakfast for all attendees / Zoom link opens

Welcome and Introductions

Presented by Prof. Jim Breakall

“From Maxwell to Nanotechnology” Presented by Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia

8:55 – 9:35 a.m.

“A Look at Current Lower Ionospheric Sensing Techniques and a Movement Towards a Unified Approach”

Presented by David Richardson

9:35 – 10:15 a.m.

“Antennas and Arrays for Future 5G Systems” Presented by Prof. Nima Ghalichechian

10:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Break

10:30 – 11:10 a.m.

11:10 – 11:50 a.m.

“Big Problems Solved for Small Satellites” Presented by Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen

“The Current State of Satellite Security” Presented by Rachel “RC” Jones

11:50 – 1:25 p.m. Lunch Break

1:25 – 2:05 p.m.

2:05 – 2:45 p.m.

“RCA Youth Activities” Presented by Carole Perry

“From High Schooler to Ramblin’ Wreck: Youth in Amateur Radio from the Perspective of a Young Woman in Engineering” Presented by Audrey McElroy

2:45 – 3:00 p.m. Break

3:00 – 3:40 p.m.

3:40 – 4:20 p.m.

4:20 – 5:00 p.m.

THE

“Designing A Scalable 5G-Enabled Connected Intelligent Edge”

Presented by Divyam Mishra

“The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, “HAARP”, a Brief History and Engineering Review”

Presented by Steve Floyd

“Advanced Packaging for 6G Communications”

Presented by Prof. Mahhavan Swaminathan

5:00 – 5:10 p.m. Wrap Up Presented by Prof. Jim Breakall

2022 HONORS & AWARDS

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia — For very significant achievements and a major body of work accomplished over a lifetime that has advanced the art and science of wireless technology.

Professor Akhlesh Lakhtakia has had a 40+ year career in wireless. Currently he is an Evan Pugh and Charles Godfrey Binder Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics at Pennsylvania State University. He is an expert in materials and electromagnetic wave modeling that are used in RF stealth applications, as well as in lasers, green engineering, and biologically inspired design. Elected a fellow of eight learned societies, he currently works on: electromagnetic fields in complex and nanomaterials, thin-film solar cells, biologically inspired design, and forensic science. He has received more than 40 honors and awards, is a U.S. State Dept. Jefferson Science Fellow, has authored or edited more than 25 books, and refereed over 900 journal papers.

Dr. Lakhtakia was born in Lucknow, India in 1957. He obtained a Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics Engineering from the Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India; Master of Science and Doctor of Philosophy degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City; and a Doctor of Science degree in Electronics Engineering from the Banaras Hindu University.

In 1983, he joined the faculty of the Pennsylvania State University, where he was elevated to the rank of Distinguished Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics in January 2004. In 2006, he became the Charles Godfrey Binder (Endowed) Professor of Engineering Science and Mechanics. In 2018, he received the highest rank at Penn State: Evan Pugh University Professor.

Dr. Lakhtakia has published more than 930 journal articles; has contributed 34 chapters to research books and encyclopedias; has edited, co-edited, authored or co-authored 27 books and 32 conference proceedings; has authored or co-authored 420 conference papers; has reviewed for 183 journals; serves on the editorial boards of five electromagnetics journals; and was the first Editor-inChief (2006–2013) of the SPIE Journal of Nanophotonics. He serves as an international lecturer for the International Commission for Optics, SPIE, and the Optical Society of America; was twice a Visiting Professor of Physics at Universidad de Buenos Aires, a Visiting Professor of Physics at the University of Otago, a Visiting Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, a Visiting Fellow in Mathematics at the University of Glasgow, and Honorary International Professor National Taipei University of Technology; and headed the IEEE EMC Technical Committee on Nonsinusoidal

Fields from 1992 to 1994. He also advised the ASME Press during the first decade of this century for five years.

Dr. Lakhtakia was elected a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1992), SPIE (1996), the UK Institute of Physics (1996), the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (2009), the American Physical Society (2012), the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (2016), the Royal Society of Chemistry (2016), and the Royal Society of Arts (2017). He was named to the inaugural class of Outstanding Reviewers by the Optical Society of America in 2012. He also served as the 1995 Scottish Amicable Visiting Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. He received the PSES Outstanding Research Award in 1996, the PSES Premier Research Award in 2008, and the PSES Outstanding Advising Award in 2005. For his research on sculptured thin films and complex-medium electromagnetics, he received the Faculty Scholar Medal in Engineering in 2005 from the Pennsylvania State University, and he was the sole recipient of the 2010 SPIE Technical Achievement Award. Nanotech Briefs recognized him in 2006 with a Nano 50 Award for Innovation. The University of Utah named him a Distinguished Alumnus in 2007 and the Indian Institute of Technology (BHU) in 2014. In 2019, he was one of two scientists named by IIT (BHU) as an Alumnus of the Century in Making. The U.S. National Academies named him a Jefferson Science Fellow for 2022-23. Sigma Xi, The Scientific Research Honor Society bestowed on him the Walston Chubb Award for Innovation in 2016. In 2022, he received the Smart Structures and Materials Lifetime Achievement Award, the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Distinguished Achievement Award, and the Radio Club of America bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award.

His current research interests lie in the electromagnetics of complex materials including chiral and bianisotropic materials, sculptured thin films, chiral nanotubes, nanoengineered metamaterials, surface multiplasmonics, engineered biomimicry, bone nano-refacing, and forensic science. His principal research contributions encompass frequency and time domain scattering, bianisotropic materials, isotropic chiral materials, sculptured thin films, composite materials, negative refraction, surface-wave propagation, surface multiplasmonics, solar cells, machine control, bioreplication, mimumes and multiconrollable materials, forensic science and bone nanoresurfacing.

He has more than 18,300 citations on the Web of Knowledge and his Hirsch index is 54. According to Google Scholar, the number of citations exceeds 30,500 and his Hirsch index is 75. His research accomplishments have been discussed on CNN and in a NOVA movie. His recent research has been covered on several scientific media outlets.

2022 HONORS & AWARDS

WIRELESS INNOVATION AWARD – NEW IN 2022

Arlene Harris — For creating a new concept or product to be used in the wireless industry.

Arlene Harris is an accomplished entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and policy advocate in the telecommunications industry. She is the president and co-founder of Dyna LLC, an incubator for start-up and early-stage wireless ventures. Between 1986 and 2013, Ms. Harris was awarded six patents and one as co-patentee. She founded three wireless companies, including one that originated the concept of the “Jitterbug” cell phone for seniors. She was also a co-founder of the Wireless History Foundation.

Ms. Harris has decades of experience as an innovator, entrepreneur, board member, and as an investor in a number of successful companies in wireless related businesses. Most recently, through her incubator Dyna, Ms. Harris has launched Wrethink, a new broadband solution for families to help families manage and preserve their cherished stories, and Wrethinking, the Foundation, to support consumer digital safety through the Internet Safety Labs, to help fund female technology founders and other solutions.

Ms. Harris entered the wireless field by helping lead her family’s Los Angeles-based wireless business, ICS (now USA Mobility). In addition to providing early mobile telephone service and becoming the world’s largest paging system, ICS was developer of LifePage, the world’s first health related application of wireless technology for consumers.

In 1983, Ms. Harris helped found billing and CRM market leader Cellular Business Systems, Inc. (now Netcracker). In 1986, she started Subscriber Computing (now Verisign) and invented the first management systems to support prepaid cellular service and the first niche cellular offering founding Cellular Pay Phone, Inc.

In 1994, Ms. Harris founded SOS Wireless Communication that became GreatCall in 2006. While at GreatCall, she launched its Jitterbug offering in 2006 in partnership with Samsung to create a simple and personalized cell phone experience. With almost a million customers, GreatCall was sold to a private equity company in 2017 and is now the foundation of retailer Best Buy’s consumer health offering.

Ms. Harris holds several issued patents. She received the PCIA Foundation’s distinguished Chairman’s award, is a Fellow in the Radio Club of America, has served on several committees of the FCC, EIA/TIA, and PCIA, and became the first female inductee into the Wireless Hall of Fame. She is one of few women in the Consumer Technology Hall of Fame and has been honored with Stevie, Athena, and Girl Scouts

awards. She is on the advisory boards of Illinois Institute of Technology’s Institute of Design and Stuart Business School and the University of California San Diego’s Engineering School and Design Lab. In 2019, she earned a UCSD Gordon Engineering Leadership Award.

Ms. Harris lives with her husband and business partner, renowned wireless pioneer Marty Cooper, in Del Mar, California.

EXCELLENCE IN SALES AND MARKETING AWARD –NEW IN 2022

Patti Ryg — In recognition of an individual who exhibits the “Esprit de Corps” of sales, marketing and promoting in the Wireless Industry.

Patti Ryg is a national dealer manager for Diga-Talk Plus, a nationwide provider of push-to-talk (PTT) over cellular (PoC) service. Her 38-year career has included sales positions at Primus, Hutton, and Tait Communications. RCA’s Excellence in Sales and Marketing Award recognizes Ms. Ryg’s leadership and excellence in sales, marketing, and promotion in the Wireless Industry.

Ms. Ryg has had an outstanding career in sales, marketing, and strategic planning and in supporting two-way radio dealers and women in wireless since 1974. She began her career working part-time for a land mobile radio dealer in Joliet, Illinois when she was in high school and college. In 1983, she joined Communications Associates (CA), one of the pioneering wholesale distributors of cellular and radio communications equipment, as an inside salesperson and later moved to field sales, covering land mobile radio dealers and self-maintained end users of radio systems in the Midwest. She was instrumental in expanding distribution’s value to the sales channel on a national level.

When CA was acquired by Hutton Communications, Ms. Ryg remained with Hutton; and also spent a year with Tait Communications in dealer sales. Patti has enjoyed helping manufacturers market and sell their products through distribution and helping her radio dealer customers become more successful. She has also encouraged other women to work in the wireless communications industry.

She next joined Primus Electronics in 2014 as the senior account manager with responsibility for dealer sales. In 2019, Patti became national dealer manager for Diga-Talk Plus, a nationwide supplier of push-to-talk over cellular service.

Ms. Ryg is involved with the Women of Wireless Communications and was named as an RCA Fellow in 2018.

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RCA SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD

Don Root, K6CDO — For dedicated service to the Radio Club of America.

Don Root, K6CDO, is a Fellow and Director of the Radio Club of America, and he is currently employed as a full time Program Manager at the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials (APCO). He is a Life Member of APCO and received the NPSTC DeMello Award in 2009. The RCA Special Recognition Award recognizes Mr. Root’s service to RCA in the Membership Committee, the Member Services Senior and Retired Committee, and his work on the RCA website.

Mr. Root has 47+ years in Emergency Management and Public Safety wireless communications. Experienced in Disaster and planned incident response and support, including expedient field communications network design and installation; communications and warning system planning at the Federal, State and Local levels; Statelevel Interoperability coordination; Regional Frequency Coordination and management; large-scale radio network upgrade management with minimal operational impact; Multi-agency collaboration for national level public safety communications policy development; led the effort to develop and maintain ANSI Standards for Public Safety Common Channel Naming. He also has nearly 4 years of experience in Aviation Electronic Systems and Flight Test Instrumentation.

BARRY GOLDWATER AMATEUR RADIO AWARD

Edward M. Gable, K2MP — In recognition of unique contributions to the field of amateur radio.

Edward Gable, K2MP, was first licensed in 1957, as WN2MPM, operating CW on his first home brew single tube, 6L6 transmitter. Mr. Gable spent most of his career with Harris Corporation, in Rochester, New York. He spent 32 years working on HF high powered transmitters, receivers, antenna couplers, and during the NASA Apollo program days, on their Unified S-Band Communications System.

While in the U.S. Army, stationed in Northern Italy, Mr. Gable signed I1DFD and obtained a W2MPM/M1 license to operate in the nearby Republic of San Marino. In 1977, he selected the callsign K2MP from a list of calls available within the FCC for Extra Class operators, and he has used that call sign for the latter part of his 66-year ham career. Mr. Gable has worked with many ham radio organizations, accepting many leadership roles with a special interest in training, lecturing,

and writing. As Director of Licensing Classes for the Rochester Amateur Radio Association, he annually taught two classes of some fifty students per class, and personally brought over 1,000 newly licensed hams into our service.

Mr. Gable’s CW DXing is a favorite activity, and he has worked all ARRL Entities and 9BDXCC. He needs just one valid QSL card (Crozet) to achieve Top of the ARRL DXCC Honor Roll status. He has earned the ARRL Satellite Achievement Award, the Mode J Club Satellite Award, The ARRL 600 Club Award, VUCC, WAZ, WAS and has held positions as ARRL Assistant Director Atlantic Division. He is a member of the A1 Operator Club, FISTS, the Amateur Radio Lighthouse Society, and for many Years was Assistant Radio Officer for Monroe County (NY) RACES. He is a Charter Life Member of the ARRL. Mr. Gable also supported the Army MARS program as AAR2FH and won the New York State Army MARS Accommodation Award for his work during Operation Desert Storm.

Mr. Gable is the only Radio Amateur to have been selected twice as the Atlantic Division Radio Amateur of the Year for years 1981 and 1999. At age 55, Mr. Gable retired from industry to focus on the history of technology. He became a Curator with the Antique Wireless Association Museum and led its curatorial activities for the next twenty years. As Curator Emeritus, he coordinated the AWA’s 100th Year OnAir celebration of the 1921 Transatlantic Tests. He continues to be involved with an AWA initiative involving STEM classes, and he will be involved with the installation of a new AWA Ham Shack addition to the AWA Museum building. Mr. Gable received the AWA’s Houck Award for Historical Preservation, J.P. Taylor Award for the Preservation of Television History, and became a Fellow in both the Radio Club of America and the Antique Wireless Association.

RCA SPECIAL SERVICES AWARD

Ellen O’Hara — In recognition of RCA members who have performed significant work to advance the goals and objectives of the Radio Club of America.

Ellen O’Hara has spent most of her career in the wireless telecommunications industry. She retired in April 2021 from her positions serving on the boards of Zetron, Inc and EFJohnson Technologies, Inc. In addition to her board positions, Ellen concurrently served as Senior Strategy Advisor to JVCKENWOOD and as Chair of the Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies (iCERT) from 2016-2021. From 2009 through March 2016, Ellen was the President and CEO of Zetron, headquartered in Redmond, Washington.

Prior to Zetron, Ms. O’Hara served as president and chief operating officer for EF Johnson in Irving, Texas (20052008) and held executive management positions at Motorola

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Solutions (1992-2005) and product management positions at GE’s Mobile Communications Division (1980-1992). Ms. O’Hara began her career in administrative and organization development roles at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1973-1980).

In addition to her role as Chair of iCERT, Ellen was JVCKENWOOD’s management representative to the Public Safety Technology Alliance. Past industry board activities include the Washington Technology Industry Association, the International Technology Association, the FCC Coordinating Committee and the American SMR Network Association. In 2021, Ellen was awarded the Vivian Carr Award by the Radio Club of America for her contributions as a woman in the wireless industry. She has also served on the board of a charity for affordable housing in the Seattle area and on the vestry of her church.

Ms. O’Hara holds an MBA with high distinction (Baker Scholar) from the Harvard Graduate School of Business and a BA in European history with distinction from Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. During her college career, she also attended the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England for one year. She is married and has twin sons.

THE RALPH BATCHER MEMORIAL AWARD

Jim and Felicia Kreuzer — For significant work in preserving the history of radio and electronic communications.

Jim and Felicia Kreuzer have worked together for decades to preserve and educate in the areas of telegraphy, wireless, radio and other electric and electronic communications.

Beginning at the age of 14, in 1967, Mr. Kruezer attended a BOCES school and obtained training in Technical Electronics. He began seriously collecting radios and related historical documents after joining forces with Ms. Kruezer in 1973. Two years later, they learned about the Antique Wireless Association (AWA) and became members. That same year, they also helped establish a club in the Niagara area, becoming charter members of the Niagara Frontier Wireless Association. Jim and Felicia became Amateur Radio Operators in 1978 (N2GHD and KA2GXL).

At the local August 1979 meeting of NFWA, Ms. Kruezer presented on Edwin H. Armstrong and his legendary achievements. Armstrong’s long-time collaborator, Harry Houck, was an unexpected attendee! He graciously accepted an invitation to visit their home and radio collection, and they have treasured those memories to this day.

In 1985, the two established New Wireless Pioneers, a rare book dealership specializing in technology and communications history. They co-authored 28 catalogs from 1986-2002. In 1986-1987, they acquired a significant number of wireless and electrical books and trade catalogues from the Franklin Institute, adding the wireless related items to their collection and eventually selling the remaining items to the Smithsonian Institution. In 1988, they purchased the Harlowe Hardinge collection. The collection details a Radio Club of America charter member’s experiences in France during World War I. Hardinge established the school for training Allied wireless operators, meeting at times with his fellow RCA members, Armstrong and Houck during the war.

In 1991, Mr. Kruezer was approached by the Canadian Marconi Company to appraise their collection for the National Museum of Science and Technology in Ottawa, Canada. The pair also joined the RCA as members that year. They co-authored an article for the May 1992 Stokes Memorial edition of the Proceedings of the Radio Club of America detailing their 1990 purchase of the library of W.E.D. Stokes, one of RCA’s founders. The purchase rekindled their interest in RCA’s history, and they began to search for other items to complement their library and research capabilities. In 1995, they co-authored an extensive article for the AWA Review to share and document their extensive Marconi radio collection and early wireless archive.

In 1996, the Kruezers created a replica of the Titanic Marconi Wireless Room for the Mariners Museum in Newport News, Virginia. This led to the creation in 2006 of a similar and more extensive display for the Titanic Museum in Branson, Missouri, which remained on continuous exhibit until 2018.

They have been extensively involved at the AWA in its museum and library operations, and they have received the 1999 AWA Houck Award for Preservation of Marconi Radio Artifacts. This year, they have been nominated to receive the AWA Houck Award for Documentation. Ms. Kruezer served as AWA Secretary from 2008-2009 and has been an AWA Board member from 2007 to the present. Mr. Kruezer has been the AWA Librarian since 2007 and a Board member from 2009 to the present. Both have been AWA Assistant Museum Curators since 2009. Mr. Kruezer received the AWA Curator Award in 2011 and was named an RCA Fellow in 2016.

The two continue to develop and enhance AWA’s museum displays and assist in adding more artifacts, including retrieval, cataloguing, and preservation of RCA’s historic archives from June Poppele in 2017. Together, they have created an RCA historical display at the AWA museum, and they will continue to work to preserve and share the incredible history of RCA, the world’s oldest wireless society.

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RCA SPECIAL RECOGNITION AWARD

Evan P. Rolek — For dedicated service to the Radio Club of America.

Mr. Rolek, K9SQG, is a long-time Amateur Radio operator and member of the Amateur Radio Relay league. This award is presented to an individual who has worked tirelessly to support the Radio Club of America. For decades, Mr. Rolek has supported the RCA Youth Activities Program. His support provides resources for the various Youth Activity programs, and consequently to the future of wireless – our young people.

Mr. Rolek is a Human Factors Engineer at InfoSciTex in Dayton, Ohio. He designs and evaluates user interfaces and system effectiveness for military weapon systems, commercial systems, and software applications. He uses operator-in-the-loop real-time simulations and field test data for developing human operator models. He assesses human operator effectiveness from operational, training, and field exercise contexts. He develops experimental designs, effectiveness and workload metrics, and test plans for laboratory and operational tests.

Mr. Rolek published previously in the Proceedings of the IEEE, Human Factors, Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, and the U.S. Naval War College Review regarding a range of topics in experimental design, cockpit technology (IMPACT) for air-to-ground fighter integration, control-display, SAM system performance, CRT performance, Soviet radio electronic combat, and other topics. He coauthored several studies for the Flight Dynamis Directorate of Wright Laboratory of the U.S. Air Force at Wright Patterson AFB in conjunction with Veda, Inc., Armstrong Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory, and Systems Research Laboratories, Inc.

RCA PRESIDENT’S AWARD

Paul Scutieri — For service and dedication to the Radio Club of America.

Paul Scutieri is a public safety communications professional with more than 25 years of experience providing public safety solutions at the federal, state, and local government levels. This award recognizes Mr. Scutieri’s leadership in bringing the RCA Mentor/Mentee Program to fruition, and for his prior work on the RCA Banquet Committee.

Mr. Scutieri started in radio during high school where, as a freshman, he founded and aired the school’s first radio station, WFDR. He has since built and managed several successful public sector and public safety technology sales teams.

Mr. Scutieri is currently the southern region sales manager at MCM Technology (Mcmtech), an industry leading public safety, asset management software solutions provider. He was previously the Public Safety Sales Director for Black & Veatch Telecommunications Division/Connected Communities Business line. He was formerly regional sales manager for M/A-COM/Tyco (Harris Corporation) during the New York State 800 MHz digital Wireless Network implementation. Prior to that, he worked for 10 years in the New York State Assembly, moving through various positions from Program Counsel Staff, Central Staff and House Operations while working on numerous legislative issues.

He is a long-standing member of APCO, serving on many committees such as the Emerging Technologies Committee and the Awards Committee. He served as Session Proctor for APCO for the past six years, ensuring their testing processes were secure. He is also an IACP (Police Chiefs) member and a North Carolina APCP/NENA member. He volunteers at a nursing home and mentors University of Westminster undergraduates/graduate degree students. He is also a member of the Albany/Tula Alliance Sister City exchange program between the U.S. and Russia.

Mr. Scutieri has a BS degree from the State University of New York at Brockport and has completed coursework at the State University of New York at Albany in their MBA program.

EMERGING PROFESSIONAL AWARD

Divyam Mishra — For professional accomplishments and continuing involvement with Radio Club of America.

Divyam Mishra was drawn into electronics and technology from a young age ever since he became involved with his local amateur radio club. He was given opportunities from a young age to present at the Radio Club of America’s Dayton Hamvention Youth Forum in 2014 and at the RCA Tech Symposium in 2015. He received RCA’s Young Achiever of the Year Award in 2014. With a background in Artificial intelligence (AI), hardware and software technologies, and signal processing, he believes in fusing together the latest technologies to solve complex problems.

Mr. Mishra has a proven track record and participated in research at premier institutes, including Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), and Qualcomm AI. Those activities made him eager to apply his experience and knowledge in different domains.

Mr. Mishra graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a minor in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in spring of 2021. He is currently an Artificial Intelligence engineer in the machine learning group for neural network hardware acceleration at Qualcomm.

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COLLEGIATE ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Audrey McElroy — For professional accomplishments and continuing involvement with Radio Club of America.

Audrey McElroy is a first-year Computer Engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also involved in amateur radio. She earned her Extra Class callsign, KM4BUN, when she was 15. She has combined her STEM Biotech, Physics, and advanced Calculus knowledge with Amateur Radio to develop many experiments; such as decoding the ISS SSTV transmission using her own automated satellite ground tracking station as well as developing high altitude balloon

experiments that have reached the edge of space, and one that orbited the globe 4.5 times, all while maintaining periodic telemetry. She is in demand as an SME on High Altitude balloons by numerous organizations. At the request of the Southeastern VHF Society, she published a white paper detailing her experimentation with buoyancy and high-altitude balloons that transmit telemetry via WSPR and APRS utilizing the HF bands. Audrey is the first recipient of the RCA Young Achievers scholarship and has had the opportunity to present her experimentation at several conferences such as the American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospace (aiaa.org/ ) as well as several Amateur Radio virtual podcast events to a global audience. She has also received a scholarship from the Amateur Radio Relay League provided by Amateur Radio Digital Communications.

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Lynn J. Bisha, W2BSN

Lynn Bisha’s parents were both involved in Amateur Radio. He grew up with a station in the kitchen in West Carthage, New York. He was originally licensed in 1962 and earned Extra Class in 2003. Lynn acquired his father’s call sign, W2BSN, in September 2003 under the FCC vanity call program.

Mr. Bisha served in the U.S. Navy as an Aviation Electronics Technician (ATN) in an A-6A Intruder squadron (VA-35) from NAS Oceana VA. 1965 - 1969. He served two 7-month cruises in the Tonkin Gulf aboard the USS Enterprise and was honorably discharged in 1969. He spent the next 36 years in the IBM system 360/370 mainframe world as a field engineer at four different companies.

In 1981, Mr. Bisha donated several items to the Antique Wireless Association from his father’s estate. AWA’s founder, Bruce Kelley, knew Lynn’s parents through Amateur Radio. Mr. Bisha eventually returned to ham radio as his children grew older, and he refurbished three separate operating stations from the 1950s, 1970s, and late 1980s.

In 2004, he toured the AWA museum and discovered that others also knew his parents. After retiring in 2005, Lynn began volunteering at AWA. One of his first assignments involved creating an early RCA receiver display, that coincidently included his parent’s donated RCA - RA and DA units. Mr. Bisha joined AWA’s Board of Directors in 2009 and became the Assistant Curator the following year, eventually becoming Curator in 2017. His work includes cataloguing, restoration, exhibit preparation, docent tours,

research, and other curatorial responsibilities. He has made significant contributions to AWA and to Amateur Radio. Mr. Bisha is a member of: Antique Wireless Association (Life Member, Board of Directors), Rochester Amateur Radio Association (RARA), Rochester DX Association (Life Member, Board of Directors), Amateur Radio Relay League (ARRL), and the Radio Club of America. He has received the following Amateur Radio awards: WAS, WAZ, 7BDXCC, ARRL 2014 Centennial WAS with all endorsements, ARRL Centennial Challenge Top Level, Royal Order of the Wouff Hong, 239 DX entities confirmed.

Prof. Jim Breakall, WA3FET

Professor Jim Breakall, WA3FET, received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio. He has over 45 years of experience in numerical electromagnetics and antennas. He was a Project Engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL-Livermore, CA), and an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPGS-Monterey, CA). He is currently a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State.

Dr. Breakall began his career as a graduate student at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, working on antenna analysis and radar probing of the ionosphere. At LLNL, he and his group worked on the development of the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC), the first sophisticated

2022 FELLOW CLASS

antenna modeling program. Other significant projects that he has worked on were the designs of the HAARP facility in Alaska, both HF facilities at Arecibo, and the Kinstar low profile AM broadcast antenna. Dr. Breakall (electrical) and Tim Duffy (mechanical) designed the very popular Ham Radio Skyhawk Yagi antenna, and Dr. Breakall is the inventor of the Optimized Wideband Antenna (OWA). Dr. Breakall is also a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, Eta Kappa Nu, International Union of Radio Science Commission B, IEEE Wave Propagation and Standards Committee. He has been an Associate Editor for the Radio Science journal and served as an Arecibo Observatory Users and Scientific Advising Committee Member. He has been a frequent speaker at the Dayton Hamvention Antenna Forum and has built two major contest superstations, K3CR and KC3R, near Penn State, and WP3R, on his farm in Puerto Rico near the big Arecibo dish.

He has graduated numerous graduate students and received many awards over the years. In 2017, Dr. Breakall was awarded the prestigious Sarnoff Citation from the Radio Club of America. He was elected as a Director to the RCA Board in 2018 and 2020 and served as the Co-Chairman of the 2020 and Chairman of the 2021 and 2022 RCA Technical Symposiums. He also serves on the RCA Scholarship Committee and Education Committee.

Jason Kern

Jason Kern began his career in public safety in 1991 and is currently serving as the Executive Director of Southeast Emergency Communications (SEECOM) in Crystal Lake, Illinois.

During nearly three decades as a tenured public safety professional, he has extensive experience in Law Enforcement, Fire/EMS, Emergency Management, and most notably 9-1-1 Communications. His notable certifications include APCO CPE, APCO RPL, NENA ENP and COM-L.

Mr. Kern became an APCO member in 1997 and has been extremely active in both chapter and national activities. As a member of the Illinois Chapter, he held numerous board positions over a 13-year tenure including two terms as Chapter President and nearly six years on the Executive Council. He also spent time as the chair of the IL Emergency Medical Dispatch Committee, a member of the IL Historical Committee and currently sits as a long-term member of the Legislative Committee. Over the last several years, the Legislative Committee has been successful in obtaining two surcharge increases, a NG9-1-1 and

consolidation cost recovery bill, and currently is working towards introducing training standards language. In 2011, Illinois APCO awarded him with the Chapter Senior and Chapter Life distinctions.

Mr. Kern has served in numerous capacities with APCO International, including a number of committees over the past 14 years, including Historical, Member & Chapter Services, Professional Development Events, Leadership Development, Finance & Budget, and Investment. He also served APCO from 2013 thru 2016 as a Group Leader and from 2016 to 2019 as a representative to the Board of Directors in the North Central Region. Mr. Kern was presented with Senior Membership in APCO in 2018. In 2019, he was elected as the 2nd Vice President for APCO International, and he continues to serve on the APCO Executive Committee, serving as the President of APCO International for the 2021-2022 term.

Southeast Emergency Communications is a regional consolidated Emergency Communications Center located approximately 50 miles northwest of Chicago in McHenry County. They provide police, fire and medical services to over a dozen agencies in the area covering more than 100 square miles with a residential population of nearly 215,000. SEECOM is a partner with NCMEC’s Missing Kids and 9-1-1 Readiness Project, an IAED Medical ACE Center and a two-time recipient of APCO’s Agency Training Program Certification (P33).

Mr. Kern is married to Miki-Kay and has a son Joseph. Away from the office Jason is an avid motorcycle rider, sports fan, and travels extensively with the family.

Neil Horden

Neil Horden has over 40 years of experience in wireless communications, starting with his career as Chief Engineer for WMPH-FM and WXDR-FM in high school and college. He has been involved in many aspects of the wireless industry, working across many technologies and markets from the deployment of traditional Land Mobile Radio (LMR) system to product management and technology strategy in the hand-held terminal and cellular market. As Principal Consultant for Horden Technologies, Mr. Horden supports the Public Safety and wireless communications markets with technical and strategic assistance. In his previously position as Chief Consultant for a nationwide consulting firm, Mr. Horden has led efforts in the design and analysis of communications systems including: statewide, regional, and local networks for the public safety, education, healthcare, utility and

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transportation markets. Previous roles with Motorola include systems engineering, technical sales, product management, and marketing support for their Land Mobile Produces (LMPS), Integrated Digital (iDEN), Cellular, and Telematics groups.

He is a member of the Radio Club of America, National Emergency Number Association (NENA), Association of Public Safety Communication Officials (APCO) serving on their Commercial Advisory Council, Next Generation 9-1-1 Institute, and was previously the Program Manager of the Project 25 Technology Interest Group (PTIG). Additionally, he is a Member of the Editorial Advisory Board for Mission Critical Communications Magazine. He holds a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from the University of Delaware, and an MBA from the University of California, and was previously an EMT and Cardiac Rescue Technician in the State of Delaware.

Pete Varounis, NL7XM

Pete Varounis, NL7XM, has been a licensed Amateur over 40 years and is a Life Member of the Radio Club of America, Amateur Radio Relay League, Antique Wireless Association, a Board

Director of the Quarter Century Wireless Association for ten years, and a member of the A1-Operators Club. He is the past Country Manager for the U.K. Six Metre Group, and he is a member of numerous other organizations in Amateur Radio.

Mr. Varounis became an Honorary Life Member of the Delaware-Lehigh Amateur Radio Club after his successful efforts recruiting and helping to reorganize the organization, serving as Treasurer, Program Chair, Charitable Giving and Donations Officer, Newsletter Circulation Manager and Life Committee Chair.

Mr. Varounis is a retired law enforcement superior officer. He is a Champion Pistol Competitor, winning 18 Gold Medals in the New York State Police Olympics.

As a U.S. Amateur Callsign Historian, he was awarded the prestigious AWA Houck Award for Preservation and consulted for the TV comedy “Last Man Standing” by designing custom callsigns.

Mr. Varounis has assembled a vast, 113+ year-old library collection of rare Callbooks, stretching 26 linear feet that he makes available for research to independent historians, universities and organizations.

PUSH-TO-TALK IS PUBLIC SAFETY’S LIFELINE

By Andrew Seybold

At the time the Public Safety Alliance (PSA) set its sights on acquiring spectrum and some funding for a nationwide broadband network, most Members of Congress and their staffers had never used Push-To-Talk (PTT). However, several had been using cell phones since they became available, or they grew up using them. As a result, most users did not understand the differences between PTT and cellular. The most significant of these is that push-to-talk is near-instantaneous and cellular is text dialogue.

That was around 2012 as work was beginning on FirstNet. Many more people have joined the public safety community since then, and many of these brought a great deal of knowledge they had accumulated by working with broadband networks and smart devices. However, a number of new professionals had no awareness of the difference between push-to-talk and other services available on FirstNet and other networks. Therefore, I think it is an appropriate time to update the technologies and discuss current differences between them.

PUSH-TO-TALK

Today, there are multiple push-to-talk Land Mobile Radio (LMR) systems and a variety of flavors of push-to-talk over broadband that are being used on the FirstNet network.

Public safety began using push-to-talk in the 1930s. After the war, more vendors became involved in land mobile radio or “wireless communications” as it was then called. In the early days of LMR, push-to-talk was easy to implement. All of the radios were analog FM, and the push-to-talk features and functions in one radio worked with all other LMR devices. However, nothing stays the same and everything changes. Over the ensuing years, there have been many advances, so working with LMR has become a bit more complicated.

LMR matured and new forms of technology such as P25 conventional, P25 trunked, satellite receivers, simulcast systems, and more were added. LMR push-to-talk devices no longer talk to all other LMR push-to-talk devices.

Further, smartphones have built-in spectrum and select the best available frequencies at any given time for the network and phone to work in concert.

On the other hand, until recently, LMR was confined to small segments of radio spectrum and a single device could not be used on multiple public safety frequencies.

The public safety community grew up with low band, VHF, UHF, the addition of the T-Band portions of 800-MHz spectrum, and lastly, the addition of 700-MHz spectrum.

Because LMR devices could not talk from one band to another, we ended up with the situation that created the need for a Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network (NPSBN). After years of effort, the public and the US Government finally began to understand that there were issues facing the public safety community that do not come into play with commercial broadband.

THE VALUE OF PUSH-TO-TALK

Push-to-talk is near-instantaneous communications between two or more radios (LMR-to-LMR). Because it is nearly instantaneous, PTT can be used over an LMR network, or unit-to-unit when needed or outside of network coverage. The most important elements of pushto-talk are “attack time” and “volley time.” Attack time is the time between depressing the radio’s push-to-talk button and when the user can talk over an established push-to-talk link. Volley time is the time from when the “talker” releases the PTT switch, and the next user can respond.

With analog LMR, there is no readily available confirmation indicator on the radio to let users know if they have connected with the network or, when in simplex, if the person on the other end can hear the conversation. In the newer LMR digital and FirstNet worlds, when the push-to-talk button is activated, there is usually a very short delay followed by an acknowledgment beat indicating that the radio has established contact with the network.

The push-to-talk applications available on FirstNet and other broadband networks offer many advantages to LMR push-to-talk. Most support location information for people on the call and, in many cases, preconfigured or instantaneously configured groups of people who need to be in the same conversation.

WHERE PTT IS TODAY

LMR push-to-talk remains a vital communications link for public safety activities. Since land mobile radio systems are local, countywide, regional, or a few statewide, pushto-talk conversations are limited to the coverage of the LMR network.

Broadband coverage is nationwide, so the applications that provide push-to-talk will work coast-to-coast. Today there is an increasing need to integrate broadband pushto-talk with LMR push-to-talk to add yet another layer of flexibility.

WHERE PTT SHOULD BE

When I ponder where we should be with public safety push-to-talk, what comes to mind is the telegraph system that ran across our nation, usually along railroad lines. This network used a system of dots and dashes developed by Samuel Morse to indicate letters and symbols. Only one language (Morse code) was used nationwide from the early days and everyone on the network could hear and understand everyone else. Unfortunately, we are a long way from having the nationwide capabilities that were available to Western Union in the early days of the telegraph.

Today, work is being done to develop push-to-talk broadband applications that will use the 3GPP push-totalk standard across networks along with tools needed to integrate this standard with land mobile radio.

Meanwhile, a number of existing push-to-talk applications are approved and running on FirstNet. We do not have a single nationwide push-to-talk system that can be used by every public safety entity that is a member of FirstNet. What we do have is the basis for a nationwide public safety network. Now we need nationwide push-to-talk capabilities.

As I see it, a single, nationwide PTT application is much further away now that some members of FirstNet have decided not to wait any longer and to move on with their preferred push-to-talk application from a specific vendor. In many cases, these agencies have integrated this system with their LMR push-to-talk service. Meanwhile, a number of companies and organizations are still working toward push-to-talk interoperability. Now there is another issue to be resolved before we can continue: how to serve a public safety community when different flavors of push-to-talk and LMR integration are in play.

One option being floated is to use a cloud-based system to provide interoperability between different vendors’ pushto-talk systems. I am not a fan of this approach because using multiple, different types of push-to-talk and a cloud-based solution would introduce many more potential points of failure into a system that is intended to provide interoperability.

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

We should all be working on answering this question before we go any further. With some pre-planning, I am confident we can develop a fully interoperable nationwide push-totalk broadband system connected to multiple LMR systems across the United States.

While serving as a panelist at several events, I have suggested one approach might be to put all the vendors in a room to come up with a solution and a timeframe for its implementation. There are ways to roll out a nationwide push-to-talk system more quickly and easily than what we have been doing.

From the beginning, the promise of FirstNet was a Nationwide Public Safety Broadband Network that provides fully interoperable communications for voice, data, text, video, and pictures. Today, FirstNet is a robust network capable of handling all the traffic public safety wants and needs. I will remain optimistic about finding a way, soon, to provide the operational interoperability that is sorely needed by our public safety community.

WINDING DOWN

First, it is great to be back writing and back to work. I look forward to returning to publishing the Advocate on a regular schedule again. As I was thinking about this article, I remembered the many times I stood in front of a group of firemen and/or law enforcement personnel and talked about the differences between LMR being on the network or in simplex mode. Several examples stand out. Most often I heard complaints from battalion chiefs or incident commanders who were on one side of an engine and were not able to communicate with someone on the other side of the engine. This problem is almost always because the radios are set to network operation. In the network setting, the originating radio would be talking to a repeater many miles away and then that repeater would be transmitting back to the person on the other side of the truck. When radios that are close to each other are trying to communicate over the network there are usually problems, which is why the users need to switch to simplex operation.

Another instance was when there was a reported missing swimmer at a beach in Santa Barbara and the county and city sent a number of engines. The crews were walking up and down the beach trying to determine if there was in fact someone in the water. As I listened to the radio traffic that day, it was obvious that while they were standing on the beach they were trying to communicate with each other via a repeater system miles away. What’s more, the beach was at the bottom of what might be considered a rather large hill that blocked the signal.

Recently, there was a serious incident where the authorities blamed not being able to communicate with

each other on their radios and/or the network. I wonder if they had thought to switch to simplex. Many departments understand the differences between how network and off-network communications work and they use off-network communications as much as possible. Fire Department New York (FDNY) is a good example and there are others. Perhaps as LMR push-to-talk and FirstNet push-to-talk become more entwined, moving to a simplex channel will become more automatic.

Reprinted from the Public Safety Advocate, Sep. 14, 2022.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andrew Seybold has been involved in Public Safety and Public Safety Communications for more than fifty years, starting as a first responder and then working with RCA Mobile Communications, General Electric Communications, Biocom (where he helped develop the first paramedic

radio for sending voice and EKG from an incident to a hospital), and Motorola. In 1981, he began his career as a consultant, educator, and author. For the past ten years, Mr. Seybold has been volunteering his time and efforts to the Public Safety community in its quest to build a nationwide, interoperable broadband communications network, and has worked closely with the Public Safety Spectrum Trust, The Public Safety Alliance, the Major City Chiefs Association, APCO, The International Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriff’s Association, and other organizations.

Mr. Seybold is a former board member and a Fellow of the Radio Club of America. He received RCA’s Sarnoff Award; APCO’s President’s Award and Special Partnership Recognition Award; National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC) Special Recognition Award; National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA) Presidents Award; and the Public Safety Spectrum Trust (PSST) Commendation.

SUPPLEMENT TO PUSH-TO-TALK IS PUBLIC SAFETY’S LIFELINE

The following illustrations are included as a supplement to Andy Seybold’s article about Push-to-Talk. They are provided for background about the history of Public Safety Communications. They are drawn from The Public Safety Communications Evolution, Jan. 2019, issued by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, CISA.

Effective emergency communications are often accomplished through many technologies, each with varying capabilities, standards, and requirements. None is expected to replace the other; instead, they supplement capabilities already in place and provide backup or a secondary means of communications if the primary means of communications fail. The public safety community recognizes this reality and reiterates that LMR remains the primary tool for emergency responders. As such, federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial public safety agencies are evaluating, planning, and implementing FirstNet and other broadband services, while also sustaining LMR systems as the primary and only means of proven and effective mission critical voice communications. Most public safety agencies see a future in which LMR systems and wireless broadband services will integrate to supplement one another. Other public safety agencies believe there may be a convergence of technology, but it will take many years. In either case, the public safety community will need to support a multi path approach to emergency communications, maintaining LMR systems' operability and interoperability while planning for deployment and incorporation of new technologies. Figure 2 from the Public Safety Communications Evolution Brochure illustrates this multi path approach and the eventual evolution of mission critical voice and data.

Figure 2: Public Safety Communications Evolution

As these technologies continue to evolve, interoperability becomes increasingly important. While the federal government has developed minimum interoperability standards for FirstNet, technical requirements and protocols that ensure the integration and interoperability between systems connected by the network are still under development. For LMR systems, there are clear and established technical standards that ensure interoperability between systems. Therefore, public safety agencies that

Public Safety Communications Evolution Timeline

This timeline provides additional milestones not included in the Timeline Graphic above. The highlighted rows represent historical events while all other rows represent specific public safety communications techologies and efforts.

1970 The use of Telemetry Applications by Emergency Medical Services from field to hospital was introduced.

1970s Establishment of Enhanced 911 (E911) services including 911 selective routing, Automatic Location Information (ALI), and Automatic Number Identification (ANI).

1980s Cellular 1G Network was developed and deployed.

Jan. 13, 1982 The Air Florida Flight 90 Crash used Washington Area Fire Mutual Air Radio Systems and Police Mutual Aid Radio Systems networks. Washington Area Warning Alert systems were used but insufficient.

1989 Project 25 (P25) suite of digital standards for conventional and trunked public safety radio systems developed, promulgating a variety of requirements which enhance operations and interoperability.

1990s Cellular 2G Network was developed and deployed. Geographic Information System (GIS) began to be incorporated to support 911, CAD, RMS, and Tactical Mapping requirements in communications centers and PSAPs.

1991 Mobile Broadband/Data was created. It allows wireless internet access through a portable modem.

1996 Nextel launches their iDEN (push-to-talk) network, a concept that would lay the foundation for mission-critical communications over cellular networks instead of the traditional LMR systems.

1996 Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued the Wireless Enhanced 911 Rules to address the new technologies that had to be created in order to provide E911 services to all wireless callers. Implemented in two phases:

Phase 1: Within six months of a valid request by PSAP, wireless carriers had to deliver the 911 caller’s voice and originating cell site location to the most appropriate PSAP.

Phase 2: All wireless carriers, as of Oct. 1, 2001, and within six months of a PSAP request for location information, are required to improve the location information used for call routing and caller location by providing the 911 system with the latitude and longitude of callers. Carriers were allowed to choose handset-based location technology using Global Positioning Systems (GPS)—or similar technology within individual wireless phones—or networked-based location technology using cell-tower triangulation.

1997 Emergency Alert System (EAS) was created. This replaced the legacy EBS as noted for the Cuban Missile Crisis, moving from analog to digital alerting capabilities and Common Alerting Protocol.

1998 Wireless Sensors and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) capabilities (i.e. border control and security/ central stations alarm systems) were implemented.

1999 Portable Fingerprint Scanners were invented, primarily for Law Enfocement. Public Safety Act of 1999 official established 911 as the nation’s emergecy calling number.

2000s Cellular G3 Network developed and deployed. Celluar Data Networks roll out vs. their traditional voice networks.

Aug. 14, 2003 The Northeast Blackout was a reminder to have backup communications systems in place and has influenced continuity measures for emergency response personnel.

2005 The transition from Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) to Internet Protocol (IP) begins.

Aug. 29, 2005 Hurricane Katrina saw the use of Public Safety Wireless Network Program audio matrix systems in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

2006 Inter RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI) Connectivity was implemented.

2009 Smart Building Systems with on scene accountability tactical applications began to be developed and integrated to interact with jurisdictional CAD systems.

2010s Cellular 4G Network developed and deployed. Video to include Mobile and Airborne uses with Video Switching (surveillance, video analytics) increasing over the decade. Augmented Intelligence Tools starting to be developed and implemented.

Apr. 20, 2010 The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill led to the development of the Gulf Coast Wireless Information Network (Gulf WIN), a 700/800 MHz interoperable radio network featuring fingertip roaming throughout the Gulf Coast region. This connected the U.S. Coast Guard with state and local responders.

Apr. 15, 2013 During the Boston Marathon Bombing, public safety personnel maintained interoperable communications by using cache radios and building a super patch from six radio networks.

Sept. 16, 2013 The Washington Navy Yard Shooting showed a use for social media during an incident. Multiple entries (the U.S. Navy, local public safety agencies, DC Mayor’s office, etc.) used platforms such as Twitter and Facebook to provide updates on the evolving situation.

AWA OPENS NEW EXHIBIT AND PRESERVES RADIO CLUB OF AMERICA ARCHIVES

By Jim and Felicia Kreuzer

The Antique Wireless Association (AWA) opened a new exhibit in August that features the Radio Club of America (RCA), the world’s oldest wireless society. Founded in 1909, RCA’s members and officers preserved their history, compiling a treasure trove of documents and mementos of their illustrious members, many of whom created wireless communications in its various forms: telegraphy, radio, television, cellular, digital, etc.

RCA’S LEGACY

AWA is a partner organization with RCA, and AWA holds RCA’s historical archive, including back issues of the Proceedings and its historical paperwork. The archive also includes medals and documents from RCA’s famous members, and other artifacts and documents that capture a wealth of historical information, providing a rare glimpse of the early founders and inventors of wireless.

Edward O’Connor from RCA has recently teamed with Jim and Felicia Kreuzer at AWA to re-organize and catalogue the archive. As files are being re-organized at AWA, a wonderful history is being unveiled that shows the progression of invention and ingenuity that is inspired

by the vision of RCA’s members. RCA’s founders were fortunate youths, nurtured by parents who created a safe space to tinker and learn. They were mentored by great minds such as Armstrong and Fessenden. Every one of the first 1909 members could very well have been recognized in a Who’s Who of early wireless communication.

Founded on “The Spirit of Good Fellowship and the Free Interchange of Ideas among all Radio Enthusiasts”, RCA’s mission inspired the original youth members and grew to encompass many more professionals, nonprofessionals, academics and other leaders and inventors of wireless through the years. Engineering and scientific papers were presented and shared at RCA’s meetings, and printed copies were made available in issues of the Proceedings.

Banquets were held to honor achievements, and special edition yearbooks were printed every 25 years. The 100th anniversary edition, in keeping with the times, was created in 2009 as a DVD. Many historical documents were scanned onto the DVD. Today, efforts are underway to fill gaps as new material is discovered and to update the archive for the years after 2009.

RCA’S ARCHIVE

AWA members carefully obtained and preserved materials from Gilbert Houck’s estate (Harry Houck’s nephew who inherited Harry’s collection) and items preserved by June Poppele. Other RCA members provided Fred Link’s medals, and many files were supplied by Jerry Minter’s estate.

AWA is extremely grateful for the efforts of RCA Fellow Edward O’Connor who is still in the process of collecting more materials that are being received from RCA that have been held by its members.

He joined the effort at the request of the current and former RCA History Committee Chairs Carroll Hollingsworth and David Bart.

Ed is organizing and cataloguing

Harry Houck’s application for membership in RCA, he was Edwin Armstrong’s long-time collaborator. It shows his introduction by Armstrong, Pacent and Hogan; lists his training as U.S. Army Signal Corps Radio; and his membership in the IRE (predecessor to the IEEE).

the archive, and many of the earliest documents have already been filed for easy access. The goal of the effort is to preserve and to make available the materials for any enthusiastic historian desiring to research the history of RCA and its members.

AWA has its own direct ties to RCA members. AWA’s collection includes original Armstrong equipment donated by Harry Houck, Jack Poppele’s scrapbooks, and the Voice of America’s Delano broadcasting control room that was dedicated by the VOA to Jack Poppele who was the VOA director from 1954-1956. Many rare documents are in the archive. The most historically significant documents will be scanned for easy public access while being preserved in the AWA’s library.

RCA EXHIBIT

The new RCA exhibit at AWA provides an opportunity for members and enthusiasts to view some of the early historical documents, awards, and yearbooks preserved by RCA’s members. Rare items include the 1909 secretary’s minute book, lists of members, and the original 1909 ledger. Original copper and zinc printing plates used to create the 25th Anniversary Yearbook are on display along with an early Armstrong medal. RCA’s banner is hanging.

This is a reproduction of the original 1915 banner presented by the U.S. Navy in appreciation for the services of RCA’s wireless operators who handled wireless traffic for the Navy in a station set up in the Hotel Ansonia while the fleet was visiting New York City. A photo of the station is included in the 25th and 50th anniversary issues of the Proceedings

By chance, the opening of AWA’s new RCA exhibit coincides with another new exhibit that opened in May about AWA’s benefactor, inventor and philanthropist Thomas Peterson. Tom was also an RCA member and Fellow. Many scientific items reflecting his diverse collecting interests are on display.

AWA and RCA intend to continue their partnership. If you have items about RCA or its members for the display or the archive, or if you have information to share about RCA, please contact AWA’s Museum curator, Lynn Bisha. AWA also welcomes RCA members and the public to do research. If you are interested in using or accessing AWA’s resources or the RCA archive, please contact Lynn Bisha.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Jim and Felicia Kreuzer have worked together for decades to preserve and educate in the areas of telegraphy, wireless and radio, and other electric and electronic communications. They have spent a lifetime collecting, researching, and collaborating with museums and libraries. They have been extensively involved at the AWA in its museum and library operations, and they have received numerous awards for their work. They are the recipients of the 2022 RCA Ralph Batcher Award for significant work in preserving the history of radio and electronic communications. Jim was named an RCA Fellow in 2016.

RCA exhibit at the AWA Museum.

Closeups of the two display cases in the RCA Exhibit at AWA Museum.

HOW THE FCC SETTLES RADIO-SPECTRUM

[EDITOR’S NOTE: IEEE is a strategic partner of RCA, and the following article is reprinted by permission courtesy of IEEE. This article by M. Lazarus dated May 27, 2022 appeared in the IEEE Spectrum print edition of July 2022 as “Radio-Spectrum Turf Wars.”]

You have no doubt seen the scary headlines: Will 5G Cause Planes to Crash? They appeared late last year, after the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration warned that new 5G services from AT&T and Verizon might interfere with the radar altimeters that airplane pilots rely on to land safely. Not true, said AT&T and Verizon, with the backing of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, which had authorized 5G. The altimeters are safe, they maintained. Air travelers didn’t know what to believe.

Another recent FCC decision had also created a controversy about public safety: okaying Wi-Fi devices in a 6-gigahertz frequency band long used by pointto-point microwave systems to carry safety-critical data. The microwave operators predicted that the Wi-Fi devices would disrupt their systems; the Wi-Fi interests insisted they would not. (As an attorney, I represented a microwave-industry group in the ensuing legal dispute.)

Whether a new radio-based service will interfere with existing services in the same slice of the spectrum seems like a straightforward physics problem. Usually, though, opposing parties’ technical analyses give different results. Disagreement among the engineers then opens the way for public safety to become just one among several competing interests. I have been in the thick of such arguments, so I wanted to share how these issues arise and how they are settled.

BATTLING FOR BANDWIDTH

Not all radio spectrum is created equal. Lower frequencies travel farther and propagate better through buildings and terrain. Higher frequencies offer the bandwidth to carry more data, and work well with smaller antennas. Every radio-based application has its own needs and its own spectral sweet spot. Suitable spectrum for mobile data—4G, 5G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, many others—runs from a few hundred megahertz to a few gigahertz. Phones, tablets, laptops, smart speakers, Wi-Fi-enabled TVs and other appliances, Internet-of-things devices, lots of commercial and industrial gear—they all need these same frequencies.

The problem is that this region of spectrum has been fully occupied for decades. So when a new service like 5G appears, or an older one like Wi-Fi needs room to expand, the FCC has two options. For a licensed service like 5G, the FCC generally clears incumbent users from a range of frequencies—either repacking them into other frequencies nearby or relocating them to a different part of the spectrum—and then auctions the freed-up spectrum to providers of the new service. To accommodate an unlicensed service like Wi-Fi, the FCC overlays the new users onto the same frequencies as the incumbents, usually at lower power.

The airline and cellular-phone industries have been at loggerheads over the possibility that 5G transmissions from antennas such as this one, located at Los Angeles International Airport, could interfere with the radar altimeters used in aircraft.

(Courtesy Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images)

The FCC tries to write technical rules for the new or expanded service that will leave the incumbents mostly unaffected. It is commonplace for newcomers to complain that any interference they cause is not their fault, attributing it to inferior incumbent receivers that fail to screen out unwanted signals. This argument usually fails. The newcomer must deal with the spectrum and its occupants as it finds them. Strategies for accomplishing that task vary.

TURF WARS: REMEMBER THE 5G-AIRPORT CONTROVERSY? HERE’S HOW SUCH DISPUTES PLAY OUT

This radio tower, located near downtown Los Angeles, is bedecked with 6-GHz fixed-microwave antennas that serve area police and fire departments. (Courtesy George Rose/Getty Images)

ALTERNATIVE REALITIES

Congress prohibits the FCC (and other federal agencies) from changing the regulatory ground rules without first soliciting and considering public input. On technical issues, that input comes mostly from the affected industries after the FCC outlines its tentative plans in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. There follows a back-andforth exchange of written submissions posted to the FCC’s website, typically lasting a year or more.

Ordinarily, parties can also make in-person presentations to the FCC staff and the five commissioners, if they post summaries of what they say. Sometimes the staff uses these meetings to test possible compromises among the parties.

All this openness and transparency has a big exception: Other federal agencies, like the FAA, can and sometimes do submit comments to the FCC’s website, but they also have a back channel to deliver private communications. The submissions in a spectrum proceeding generally make two kinds of points. First, the newcomers and the incumbents both present data to impress the FCC with their respective services’ widespread demand, importance to the economy, and utility in promoting education, safety, and other public benefits. Second, both the proponents and opponents of a new frequency usage submit engineering studies and simulations, sometimes running to hundreds of pages.

Predictably, the two parties’ studies come to opposite conclusions. The proponents show the new operations will have no harmful effect on incumbents, while the incumbents demonstrate that they will suffer devastating interference. Each party responds with point-by-point critiques of the other side’s studies and may carry out counter-studies for further proof the other side is wrong. How do such alternative realities arise? It’s not because they are based on different versions of Maxwell’s equations. The two sides’ studies usually disagree because they start with differing assumptions about the newcomer’s transmitter characteristics, the incumbent’s receiver characteristics, and the geometries and propagation that govern interaction between the two. Small changes to some of these factors can produce large changes in the results.

RATHER THAN SETTLE ANYTHING, EXPERIMENTS JUST ADD FUEL TO THE CONTROVERSY.

Sometimes the parties, the FCC, or another government agency may conduct hardware tests in the lab or in the field to assess the degree of interference and its effects. Rather than settle anything, though, these experiments just add fuel to the controversy. Parties disagree on whether the test set-up was realistic, whether the data were analyzed correctly, and what the results imply for real-world operations.

When, for example, aviation interests ran tests that found 5G transmissions caused interference to radio altimeters, wireless carriers vigorously challenged their results. In contrast, there was no testing in the 6-GHz Wi-Fi proceeding, where the disagreements turned on theoretical analyses and simulations.

Further complicating matters, the disputed studies and tests do not predict interference as a binary yes/ no but as differing probabilities for various degrees of interference. And the parties involved often disagree on whether a given level of interference is harmless or will cause the victim receiver to malfunction. Reaching a decision on interference issues requires the FCC to make its way through a multi-dimensional maze of conflicting uncertainties. Here are some concrete issues that illuminate this all-too-common dynamic.

FIXED IDEAS

Those ubiquitous sideways-facing dishes on towers and buildings are fixed microwave antennas. Equipment of this kind has operated reliably since the 1950s. The 6-GHz band, the lowest-frequency microwave band available today, is the only one capable of 100-kilometer hops, making it indispensable. Along with more pedestrian uses, the band carries safety-critical information: to coordinate trains, control pressure in oil and gas pipelines, balance

the electric grid, manage water utilities, and route emergency telephone calls.

Four years ago, when the FCC proposed adding Wi-Fi to the 6-GHz band, all sides agreed that the vast majority of Wi-Fi devices would cause no trouble. Statistically, most would be outside the microwave antennas’ highly directional main beams, or on the wrong frequency, or shielded by buildings, terrain, and ground clutter.

The dispute centered on the small proportion of devices that might transmit on a frequency in use while being in the line-of-sight of a microwave antenna. The WiFi proponents projected just under a billion devices, operating among 100,000 microwave receivers. The opponents pointed out that even a very small fraction of the many new transmitters could cause troubling numbers of interference events.

To mitigate the problem, the FCC adopted rules for an Automatic Frequency Control (AFC) system. A Wi-Fi device must either report its location to a central AFC database, which assigns it non-interfering frequencies for that location, or operate close to and under the control of an AFC-guided device. The AFC system will not be fully operational for another year or two, and disagreements persist about the details of its eventual operation.

More controversially, the FCC also authorized Wi-Fi devices without AFC, transmitting at will on any 6-GHz frequency from any geographic location—but only indoors and at no more than one-quarter of the maximum AFCcontrolled power. The Wi-Fi proponents’ technical studies showed that attenuation from building walls would prevent interference. The microwave operators’ studies showed the opposite: that interference from uncontrolled indoor devices was virtually certain.

How could engineers, using the same equations, come to such different conclusions? These are a few of the ways in which their analyses differed:

• Wi-Fi device power: A Wi-Fi device transmits in short bursts, active about 1/250th of the time, on average. The Wi-Fi proponents scaled down the power by a like amount, treating a device that transmits intermittently at, say, 250 milliwatts as though it transmitted continuously at 1 mW. The microwave operators argued that interference can occur only while the device is actually transmitting, so they calculated using the full power.

• Building attenuation: A 6-GHz signal encounters substantial attenuation from concrete building walls and thermal windows, less from wood walls, and practically none from plain-glass windows. The Wi-Fi proponents took weighted averages over several building materials to calculate typical wall attenuations. The microwave operators reasoned that interference was most likely from an atypical Wi-Fi device behind plain glass, and they calculated accordingly, assuming a minimal amount of attenuation.

• Path loss: In estimating the signal loss from a building that houses a Wi-Fi device to a microwave-receiving antenna, the Wi-Fi proponents used a standard propagation model that incorporates attenuation due to other buildings, ground clutter, and the like. The microwave operators were most concerned about a device located with open air between the building and the antenna, so they used free-space propagation in their calculations.

Using their preferred starting assumptions, the Wi-Fi proponents proved that Wi Fi devices over a wide range of typical situations present no risk of interference. Using a different set of assumptions, the microwave operators proved there is a large risk of interference from a small proportion of Wi-Fi devices in atypical locations, arguing that multiplying that small proportion by almost a billion Wi-Fi devices made interference virtually certain.

UP IN THE AIR

Americans want their smartphones and tablets to have fast Internet access everywhere. That takes a lot of spectrums. Congress passed a statute in 2018 that told the FCC to find more—and specifically to consider 3.7 to 4.2 GHz, part of the C-band, used since the 1960s to receive satellite signals. The FCC partitioned the band in 2020, allocating 3.7 to 3.98 GHz for 5G mobile data. In early 2021, it auctioned the new 5G frequencies for US $81 billion, mostly to Verizon and AT&T. The auction winners were also expected to pay the satellite providers around $13 billion to compensate them for the costs of moving to other frequencies.

The red lines on this map of the 48 contiguous U.S. states show the location of existing 6-gigahertz fixed-microwave links, as recorded by Comsearch, which helps companies to avoid issues with radio interference. These links connect people in almost all areas, including far offshore in the Gulf of Mexico, where drilling platforms are common. (Courtesy Comsearch)

A nearby band at 4.2 to 4.4 GHz serves radar altimeters (also called radio altimeters), instruments that tell a pilot or an automatic landing system how high the aircraft is above the ground. The altimeter works by emitting downward radio waves that reflect off the ground and back up to a receiver in the device. The time for the round

www.radioclubofamerica.org

trip gives the altitude. Large planes operate two or three altimeters simultaneously, for redundancy.

Even though the altimeters use frequencies separated from the 5G band, they can still receive interference from 5G. That’s because every transmitter, including ones used for 5G, emits unwanted signals outside its assigned frequencies. Every receiver is likewise sensitive to signals outside its intended range, some more than others.

Interference can occur if energy from a 5G transmitter falls within the sensitivity range of the receiver in an altimeter.

The FCC regulates transmitter out-of-band emissions. In contrast, it has few rules on receiver out-of-band reception (although it recently opened a discussion on whether to expand them). Manufacturers generally design receivers to function reliably in their expected environments, which can leave them vulnerable if a new service appears in formerly quiet spectrum near the frequencies they receive on.

Aviation interests feared this outcome with the launch of C-band 5G, one citing the possibility of “catastrophic impact with the ground, leading to multiple fatalities.” The FCC’s 5G order tersely dismissed concerns about altimeter interference, although it invited the aviation industry to study the matter further. The industry did so, renewing its concerns and requesting that the wireless carriers refrain from using 5G near airports. But this came after the wireless carriers had committed almost $100 billion and begun building out facilities.

Much as in the case of 6-GHz Wi-Fi, the 5G providers and aviation interests reached different predictions about interference by starting with different assumptions. Some key areas of disagreement were:

5G out-of-band emissions: The aviation interests assumed higher levels than the wireless carriers, which said the numbers in the aviation study levels exceeded FCC limits.

To make way for new 5G cellular services, the Federal Communications Commission reallocated part of the radio spectrum. That reallocation resulted in 5G transmissions that are close in frequency to a band used by aircraft radar altimeters.

the received signal strength at the altimeter and hence increase its susceptibility to 5G interference.

The carriers temporarily paused 5G rollout near some airports, and the airlines canceled and rescheduled some flights. At this writing, the FAA is evaluating potentially affected aircraft, altimeters, and airport systems. Most likely, 5G will prevail. In the extremely improbable event that the FAA and the FCC were to agree that C-band 5G cannot operate safely near airports, the wireless carriers presumably would be entitled to a partial refund of their $81 billion auction payments.

HARD DECISIONS

Making complicated trade-offs has long been the job of the five FCC commissioners. They are political appointees, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. The four now in office (there is a vacancy) are all lawyers. It has been decades since a commissioner had a technical background. The FCC has highly capable engineers on staff, but only in advisory roles. The commissioners have no obligation to take their advice.

Congress requires the FCC to regulate “in the public interest,” but the commissioners must determine what that

Off-channel sensitivity in altimeter receivers—There are several makes and models of altimeters in use, having varying receiver characteristics, leading to disagreements on which to include in the studies.

Altimeters in the same or other aircraft nearby. A busy airport has a lot of altimeters operating. Wireless carriers said these would overpower 5G interference. Aviation interests countered that multiple altimeters in the area would consume one another’s interference margin and leave them all more vulnerable to 5G.

Aircraft pitch and roll—Aviation interests argued that the changing angles of the aircraft as it approaches the runway can expose the altimeter receivers to more 5G signal.

Reflectivity of the ground—Aviation interests favored modeling with lower values of reflectivity, which reduce

These radio towers, which sit atop Black Mountain in Carmel Valley, Calif., include many drum-like antennas used for 6-gigahertz fixedmicrowave links. (Courtesy Shutterstock)

THE FCC MUST REGULATE “IN THE PUBLIC INTEREST,” BUT THE COMMISSIONERS HAVE TO DETERMINE WHAT THAT MEANS IN EACH CASE.

means in each case. Legally, they can reach any result that has at least some support in the submissions, even if other submissions more strongly support an opposite result. Submissions to the FCC in both the 6-GHz and 5G matters conveyed sharp disagreement as to how much safety protection the public interest requires.

To fully protect 6-GHz microwave operations against interference from the small fraction of Wi-Fi devices in the line-of-sight of the microwave receivers would require degrading Wi-Fi service for large numbers of people. Similarly, eliminating any chance whatsoever of a catastrophic altimeter malfunction due to 5G interference might require turning off C-band 5G in some heavily populated areas.

The orders that authorized 6-GHz Wi-Fi and C-band 5G did not go that far and did not claim they had achieved zero risk. The order on 5G stated that altimeters had “all due protection.” In the 6-GHz case, with a federal appeals court deferring to its technical expertise, the FCC said it had “reduce[d] the possibility of harmful interference to the minimum that the public interest requires.”

These formulations make clear that safety is just one of several elements in the mix of public interests considered. Commissioners have to balance the goals of minimizing the risk of plane crashes and pipeline explosions against the demand for ubiquitous Internet access and Congress’s mandate to repurpose more spectrum.

In the end, the commissioners agreed with proponents’ claims that the risk of harmful interference from 6-GHz Wi-Fi is “insignificant,” although not zero, and similarly

from 5G, not “likely…under…reasonably foreseeable scenarios”—conclusions that made it possible to offer the new services.

People like to think that the government puts the absolute safety of its citizens above all else. Regulation, though, like engineering, is an ever-shifting sequence of trade-offs. The officials who set highway speed limits know that lower numbers will save lives, but they also take into account motorists’ wishes to get to their destinations in a timely way. So, it should not come as a great surprise that the FCC performs a similar balancing act.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mitchell Lazarus has earned his living as an electrical engineer, psychology professor, education reformer, educational TV developer, free-lance writer, and telecommunications attorney. Along with prior features in IEEE Spectrum, his many previous publications include the “Government Warning” on U.S. alcohol beverage labeling and a recent historical novel, The Implosion Method.

Past television work includes the PBS series “Infinity Factory” and “Square One TV.” His many previous publications include the founding papers of the field now called “math anxiety,” along with the “Government Warning” on U.S. alcohol beverage labeling. He lives with his wife, Judith Shapiro, in Takoma Park, Maryland.

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PROFESSOR FRANK DRAKE, RCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT RECIPIENT, PASSES AWAY

By David Bart, Jim Breakall, and Chip Cohen

In 2015, the Radio Club of America was honored to share time with Professor Frank Drake at its annual award banquet and technical symposium. That year, Dr. Drake received RCA’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in radio astronomy and its applications. He was also the featured speaker at RCA’s annual Technical Symposium. Dr. Drake passed away in September 2022 at age 92.

FRANK DRAKE

A contemporary of Dr. Carl Sagan, Dr. Frank Drake was known by the public for his work in the Search For Extraterrestrial Life (SETI). He was the first scientist to actively and formally set up a program to use radio astronomy in a serious search for signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. His life also reflected wide ranging interests and a deep intellect that left an important legacy in the scientific world. We regret his loss and extend our condolences to his family and friends. Dr. Drake passed away on September 2, 2022 at his home in Aptos, California of natural causes.

SETI AND ASTRONOMICAL RESEARCH

Dr. Drake was a professor emeritus of astronomy and astrophysics and former dean of natural sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He also served for 19 years as chair of the board of trustees of the SETI Institute, a nonprofit organization focused on research and education related to the search for life beyond Earth.

Dr. Drake studied astronomy in school and became excited about the possibility of extraterrestrial life as a child. He nurtured that spark with occasional visits to Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, just blocks from his childhood home. He began his work with radio astronomy in the late 1950s.

In 1961, Dr. Drake was head of telescope operations at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) in Green Bank, West Virginia. There, he conducted the first organized search for radio signals from intelligent extraterrestrial sources in 1960 (Project Ozma). The effort, Project Ozma, is considered the first modern example of the search for extraterrestrial intelligenceSETI.

Drake next became involved in efforts to transform Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory into a major resource for SETI. There, he started using the new observatory to search for radio signals from nearby star systems. His

first attempts at NRAO and at Arecibo focused on the stars Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani, each approximately twelve lights years from earth. The telescope sought to pick up shortwave signals at frequencies adjacent to the radio emission line (1420 MHz) of neutral hydrogen, reasoning that this naturally produced line would be known to any technically proficient civilization, and therefore would serve as a marker for the guidance of societies who might wish to make contact. The telescope swept the sky to search for signals, and SETI was underway. Dr. Drake was not aware of a paper published in 1959 by two Cornell University physicists who also argued for a similar scientific approach, pointing out that anyone with technology that was at least as advanced as our own could send detectable radio signals. Although Project Ozma did not detect any extraterrestrial transmissions, it nonetheless attracted world-wide attention and effectively launched SETI.

Throughout his career, Dr. Drake worked to refine the methods for the detection of signals of extraterrestrial intelligence. He also shared in the discovery of Jupiter’s radiation belts (analogous to Earth’s Van Allen belts) and played an important role in the observational studies that led to the early understanding of pulsars (rapidly spinning neutron stars that emit beams of radiation). He also made the first radio map of the Milky Way’s center. Dr. Drake was among the first to measure the temperature and density of Venus’s broiling atmosphere.

DRAKE EQUATION

In 1961, he created and developed the “Drake Equation” to estimate the number of possible intelligent civilizations present in the Milky Way galaxy. The equation served as an effective framework for rigorous consideration and planning of efforts to detect extraterrestrial intelligence. The equation contemplates the main concepts underlying the question of whether other radio-communicative life exists. It sets an

Dr. Frank Drake.

approximation rather than a precise number. Dr. Drake also worked to transmit information about our civilization to the stars, including transmitting the Arecibo Message to the stars and co-designing the Voyager golden record and the Pioneer plaque alongside fellow astronomer Carl Sagan (1934–1996). The Arecibo Message is still the farthestreaching attempt at interstellar signaling from earth. There is considerable disagreement on the values of the parameters, but the ‘educated guesses’ used by Drake and his colleagues in 1961 concluded that there were probably between 1,000 and 100,000,000 planets with civilizations in the Milky Way Galaxy. In essence, a reasonable lifetime of civilizations may be 10,000 years, much more than we can justify with our own experience. So, the estimate indicates approximately one civilization in every 10 million stars will have a detectable signal.

FIRST INTERSTELLAR MESSAGE

Dr. Drake played an integral role in creating the first interstellar message ever transmitted deliberately into space from Earth. Known as the “Arecibo Message,” it was broadcast via radio waves from the Arecibo Observatory in 1974. Dr. Drake was also involved with Carl Sagan and others in designing the plaques carried on the Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecraft and the “Golden Record” carried on the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft. These messages were intended for any intelligent life that the spacecraft might encounter on their journeys beyond the solar system.

BIOGRAPHY

Frank Drake was born in 1930 in Chicago. He earned a B.A. in engineering physics at Cornell University and the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in astronomy at Harvard University. He served as an electronics officer in the U.S. Navy from 1952 to 1955. He studied radio astronomy at Harvard under the tutelage of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, a trailblazing astrophysicist renowned for correctly proposing that stars were mostly made of hydrogen and helium. After working at NRAO, Dr. Drake served briefly as chief of the Lunar and Planetary Sciences Section at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before joining the astronomy faculty at Cornell University in 1964. There, he was appointed the Goldwin Smith Professor of Astronomy in 1976. He served as associate director of Cornell’s Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, and he was director of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico from 1966 to 1968. He also served as director of the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center (which includes Arecibo Observatory) from its establishment in 1971 until 1981.

Dr. Drake moved to UC Santa Cruz in 1984 to serve as dean of the Division of Natural Sciences, leading the division during a period of rapid growth in the campus’s science and engineering programs. He taught innovative courses in astronomy for non-science majors and mentored many undergraduate and graduate astronomy students. His wide-ranging leadership in public outreach and

Cover of the Voyager Golden Records: two phonograph records that were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977. The records contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form who may find them. (Courtesy NASA/JPL)

Dr. Drake and the Drake Equation. (Courtesy SETI, Dr. Seth Shostak/ Science Source)

The Drake Equation to estimate the number of potential civilizations in the Milky Way. (Courtesy astronomy.com)

education in astronomy were recognized by the American Astronomical Society in 2001 with its first Education Prize.

After retiring from teaching in 1996, Drake continued to pursue his interest in SETI, investigating radio telescope designs that optimize the chances of success for SETI and participating in projects at UC’s Lick Observatory to search for optical signals of extraterrestrial intelligence.

Dr. Drake was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as president of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, vice president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, chair of the National Research Council’s Board on Physics and Astronomy, and director of the Carl Sagan Center for the Study of Life in the Universe at the SETI Institute.

RCA LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

In 2015, RCA issued its Lifetime Achievement Award to Dr. Drake, recognizing very significant achievements and a major body of work accomplished over a lifetime that has advanced the art and science of wireless technology. Dr. Drake’s accomplishments included his work in SETI and radio astronomy and his contributions to education.

Dr. Drake was also the featured speaker at the 2015 RCA Technical Symposium, where he presented a historical perspective on radio astronomy, current developments, and future research focus, as well as his assessment of the current state of SETI. He presented to a standing room only audience and met with RCA members for additional conversation throughout the day long symposium and at the awards banquet.

Frank Drake speaking to a standing room only crowd about the use of radio telescopes and Arecibo Observatory in the search for extraterrestrial life at the 2015 RCA Technical Symposium.

Frank Drake speaking with RCA members at the 2015 RCA Technical Symposium.

2015 RCA award recipients (L-R): David Bart (Ralph Batcher Award), Dr. Frank Drake (Lifetime Achievement Award), and Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen (Alfred Grebe Award). Note, Dr. Cohen was Dr. Drake’s graduate student at Cornell University.

SOME THOUGHTS ON DR. DRAKE

RCA members Dr. Jim Breakall and Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen were long-time associates and friends of Frank Drake. The following interview offers them a chance to share their experiences and perspectives about Dr. Drake. David Bart — Jim and Chip, both of you worked with and knew Dr. Drake and Dr. Sagan. What similarities did they possess, and what aspects of Dr. Drake, in particular, inspired you?

Jim Breakall — I was invited by Dr. Drake and others to Cornell in the Summer of 1975 as a new graduate student from Penn State to work on the feasibility and design of an ionospheric modification “heating” facility to be built somewhere within about 10 miles from the main Arecibo Observatory. I had just received my B.S. degree in May 1975, and this was quite a nice experience to go to Cornell. I went to Arecibo the previous summer in 1974 as a Summer Student (1 of 12). Carl Sagan was quite famous from his appearances on the Tonight Show With Johnny Carson, and he had dinner with The Summer Students at the Observatory. Frank was the Director of the National Astronomy and Ionospheric Center (NAIC) based in Cornell, and I also knew of his Project Ozma fame. He was a fantastic host when I got there, and even got me a special faculty type of ID card, so I could eat in the Faculty Club at the Hotel School. Frank just had a way of making you feel so comfortable in his presence, as if you and he had

been friends for a long time. I used to stay late and so did Carl Sagan. We were always leaving together as the last ones out of the building past normal time. I really did not get to know Carl like I did Frank, but we both would just say goodnight and see you tomorrow as we exited the building. Carl parked his small Porsche convertible right by the building with the license plate Phobos (a moon of Mars), and that was something I never forgot. The blog Flatsixes,com has a photo of Carl and his Phobos car, which was listed for sale in 2016.

In summary, being around both of these people and others that summer, especially Dr. Merle LaLonde, the Chief Engineer of Arecibo in Puerto Rico, and Dr. Bill Gordon, the Father of Arecibo at Rice University, inspired me to know that I had to be in research as a career for my future.

Chip Cohen — Carl Sagan and Frank Drake were pals; in fact, Drake brought Sagan to Cornell. Drake was a scientific manager and Sagan was a popularizer of science by the time I arrived. They were not active observers doing firsthand astronomical work. We all bought into the dream of conquering space and doing new leading-edge research. Unusually, I did not need to be taught how to do science; I was already there. Drake encouraged me and stayed out of my way, mostly. I wanted to detect ETs and dreamed of capturing the longest QSO (“contact” for hams), a dream I had since I was first licensed as a ham as a child. In the 1970s, I was the only graduate student who was actually doing SETI. In a sense, I was carrying the torch as an inspired and willing pawn.

David Bart — Dr. Drake asked millions of earthlings to seriously consider the question ‘Is Anybody Out There?’ His question was scientific, but also spurred public debate about mankind’s place in the universe. What aspects of his work motivated your personal and/or professional interests?

Jim Breakall — I always believed that we cannot be alone in a universe so immense with so many “billions and billions of stars” as Carl would say, but would we ever be able to find extraterrestrial life of any form during my lifetime? Then, I came to Drake’s equation, and contemplated the probability of ever even communicating or finding life is so small that I figured it would never happen in my lifetime. That does not mean that we should never try, and the motivation of never giving up gives me hope that we might just someday beat the odds. There was a period at Arecibo that the search for ETs was frowned upon, and Senator Proxmire gave such research his Golden Fleece award. It is really satisfying that people like Frank and Jill Tarter did not give up, and that actual funding for SETI helped to keep the Arecibo Observatory going in lean times.

Chip Cohen — It is fatuous to think we are unique in the universe as sentient beings. Frank challenged others to accept that, based on the science, we are not alone, and to keep the eye on the prize—how can we break the silence across cosmic distances? He showed that was possible, and he added credibility which offset the ‘giggle factor’ notion of ETs that could be subject to ridicule.

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Carl Sagan and his Phobos Porsche, which is now a collector’s car..

David Bart — Dr. Drake met with RCA in 2015. I was thrilled to talk with him about the importance of obtaining a background in science, for both scientists and nonscientists alike, because that training in the scientific method establishes critical thinking skills focused on the use of data-driven logic and hypothesis testing. His commitment to being a broad-based educator (not just a technical specialist) and his friendly, good-humored, personable style really inspired me. What was he like with you, and which aspects of your work did he motivate?

Jim Breakall — As mentioned above, I also fondly remember his soft—spoken voice, his good humor, and his wit, especially at conversations while seated at the outdoor tables in the cafeteria at Arecibo. He really had a presence with his silver—colored hair shining in the Puerto Rico sun. He oversaw all the things that were happening at the Observatory mainly from Cornell. He also took many trips to Arecibo to be onsite. He really knew what everyone was doing there, and everyone knew him. He also knew what everyone was doing back at Cornell, and he really understood things that were far outside of his scientific field of astronomy. The issue facing the heating facility design at that time was mainly how to come up with an antenna array and the theory to go along with that physical design. There was no science involved, much but more engineering. Bill Gordon would give me tasks to do in coming up with equations for the design, and I computed characteristics of radiation patterns and impedances. When I got into trouble, I would go to Frank who was there locally at Cornell, and he would help me understand what Bill was asking for; since Bill was at Rice University, and we only talked over the phone. I am sure that Frank was a great teacher of a wide range of students. He inspired me to go and work on the Heating Facility design for my M.S. degree and then became a National Science Foundation Resident for my Ph.D. research.

Chip Cohen — The book and movie CONTACT contain a highly fictionalized account of the dynamics between me as a graduate student and Drake with the ‘Ellie’ and ‘Drumlin’ characters. Sagan (as author) saw it firsthand. I was no wallflower, and Sagan captured that in the character of ‘Ellie’. Nice! In fact, I am not a woman (a device used in my opinion to keep the character fictionalized). Also, Drake was not a ‘steal-others-work’ kind of guy, like the Drumlin character. But, if you look at the Ellie character, you do get a good idea of what I was like back then. Disagreements happened between graduate student and advisor, not necessarily just involving the science itself. The fact that we were good friends during the last decades of his life is a testament to what a patient and great person Frank was. It is one thing to be a great scientist, but quite another to nurture others in that role. That is true mentoring.

Still, we have not detected ETs to date. I attribute this to a failure in executing observing strategies at a level that is commensurate with the importance of the outcome. We stretch things out in the name of funding and careers.

SETI was, and is, not treated as a moonshot. This is a mistake. I do not have the patience to pursue a lifetime of slow research. Frank did, but he did not take the prize, because he entrusted to others who did not, and still do not, have a sense of urgency as motivation. Searching by dribs and drabs means there is no accountability and leaves an absence of success. Big payoffs need big risks. There are no Ellies in SETI now. Ellies in science have been effectively roadblocked and seem to want these pushy and pesky types to just go away.

David Bart — What is your fondest memory of Dr. Drake?

Jim Breakall — There are many memories of course with my time at Cornell and at Arecibo for extended periods. Some that come to mind are the times that Merle LaLonde, Frank, and I went driving all over the island trying to locate land for the Heating Facility. We stopped at the many colmados for some Puerto Rican snacks and cervezas. As I said before, he really was a presence at the lunch tables outside the cafeteria, and you knew you were with someone of greatness. He also holds some interesting records there, like the fastest time of driving from downtown Arecibo up to the Observatory on the “old” single lane road in a sports car. I think it was like 12 minutes or so. Normally, it would take us about 30 minutes. I remember the 40th anniversary of Arecibo, where all of the Directors lined up for a photo too. Frank was for sure a Director of all Directors.

Chip Cohen — I have many fond memories of Frank. I was not the first ‘eccentric’ Frank knew in radio astronomy. I have a vivid recollection of him telling Grote Reber stories over a beer at a conference in Hungary. This was mind poison for me—Reber was another ham inventor who made it big. Ah! There was hope! I did not need to be a cog in a wheel. There were lessons to be learned on navigating a purposeful life that was not excluded from the usual pursuits of happiness. I learned that navigation from Frank.

[Editor’s Note: Grote Reber (1911–2002) was an American pioneer of radio astronomy who combined his interests in amateur radio and amateur astronomy. He was instrumental in investigating and extending Karl Jansky’s pioneering work and conducted the first sky survey in the radio frequencies. His 1937 radio antenna was the second ever to be used for astronomical purposes and the first parabolic reflecting antenna to be used as a radio telescope. For nearly a decade he was the world’s only radio astronomer. Source: Wikipedia.]

CONDOLENCES

Dr. Drake is survived by his wife of 44 years, Amahl Shakhashiri Drake; daughters Nadia Drake (Scott Ransom), and Leila Drake Fossek (Chris Fossek); from a previous marriage, sons Steve Drake, Richard Drake (Alice Moore) and Paul Drake (Ellen Sullivan); daughters-in-law Mary and Kim; and four grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his sister Alma Quigley.

SOURCES

L. Billings. SETI Pioneer Frank Drake Leaves a Legacy of Searching for Voices in the Void, Scientific American, Sep. 6, 2022, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/setipioneer-frank-drake-leaves-a-legacy-of-searching-for-voicesin-the-void1/

F. Drake, D. Sobel. Is Anyone Out There? The Scientific Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. (Delacorte Press Sep. 1, 1992).

Frank Drake. Obituary, Chicago Tribune, Legacy.com, Sep. 6, 2022.

Frank Drake. Obituary, SETI Institute, Sep. 2, 2022. Frank Drake. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Frank_Drake.

D. Overbye, Frank Drake, Who Led Search for Life on Other Planets, Dies at 92, New York Times, Sep. 5, 2022.

T. Stephens, Pioneering radio astronomer Frank Drake dies at 92, UC Santa Cruz Newscenter, Sep. 02, 2022.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

David P. Bart, KB9YPD, is the National Director of Restructuring and Complex Litigation at Baker Tilly US, LLP. He is Executive Vice President of the Radio Club of America, Chair of RCA’s Publications Committee, a Life Member, and Fellow. He is also a Life Member and Director of the Antique Wireless Association. He is treasurer of the IEEE History Committee and former vice president of the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago. David has written extensively on radio and electrical communications history and received numerous awards for his work in historical preservation and publications.

Dr. Jim Breakall is a professor of electrical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. His area of specialty is antenna modelling and design. As a student he worked with the Arecibo Radio Observatory in Puerto Rico. During his career he has worked with the U.S. Army and Navy, and with the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories measuring electromagnetic pulse (EMP). Dr. Breakall’s team designed and built the HAARP ionosphere modification facility in Alaska. He used the Uniform Theory of Diffraction (UTD) to model HF antennas in irregular terrain. Dr. Breakall developed and patented the 3D frequency independent phased array antenna (3D-FIPA). He is a current board member of the Radio Club of America and chair of RCA’s Technical Symposium.

Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen received his Ph.D. from Cornell under Frank Drake. He is widely recognized as the “father of fractal antenna technology” and the invisibility cloak, He has over 88 US patents, has published over 100 technical papers, and 3 books. He is currently CEO and Master Inventor at Fractal Antenna Systems. Dr. Cohen is also a Fellow of the Radio Club of America and received RCA’s Alfred Grebe and Lee de Forest Awards significant contributions to the advancement of radio communications and to excellence in manufacturing. He is a former Executive Vice President of RCA and former board member.

RCA extends our sincere condolences to Dr. Drakes family and friends.

FRACTAL SECURES PATENT ON INVISIBILITY CLOAK DETECTION

[EDITOR’S NOTE: The following article appeared in the Microwave Journal, Aug. 18, 2022, and is reprinted herein. Additional photos and comments are courtesy of Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. as provided in an interview of Dr. Cohen by the Proceedings Editor, David Bart.]

Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. announced it has secured patent on a method to detect invisibility cloaks and related stealth metamaterials, thus preventing hostile military assets from being hidden from radar and decreasing the potential for sparking conflicts.

Detailed in U.S. patent 11,408,976 and patent pending, the cloak detection technique—dubbed LPASS™—is a new radar method that looks for tell-tale signatures of cloaked objects. that are made invisible by ‘metasurfaces’ (skins made of metamaterials), including satellites, planes, vessels or UAVs. At the frequencies where the cloak works, called its ‘passband,’ radar tries to bounce signals back from the target but the cloak stops that reflection, and the target remains hidden. Beyond the cloak’s passband, radar transmitters are hampered by lower power limits, and thus poor at pinging cloaked targets both in and out of a cloak’s passband.

Inventor and firm CEO Dr. Nathan Cohen showed radar transmitters do not need to transmit outside of the passband, since metasurfaces have a failure mode that produces nonlinear, heterodyned RF ‘hash.’ Highpowered radar systems may be thwarted to detect targets that are cloaked in the passband, but their transmissions hit the target and excite this hash of heterodynes at much higher and lower frequencies where the cloak does not function, and the target is not hidden. On receive, a

radar antenna picks up these frequencies, correlated with the transmitted signals, filters out most of the noise, and leads to a unique reflected signature of the target.

In the past, radar was considered the trump card that succeeded at target detection, a task made difficult by stealth techniques. Because they are less expensive to implement than other radar stealth methods, metasurfaces are used extensively outside of the USA, highlighting the urgent need of LPASS™ as the remedy of Pandora’s burden. Those countries that may seek a tactical advantage by retrofitting war machines with metasurfaces to hide from radar now have to face a revision to their prior assumption of hidden assets. Dr. Cohen invented the invisibility cloak (patent 8,253,639) in 2003 and clearly saw the need to stop their destructive use, by creating LPASS™ shortly after. New patent 11,408,976 is a public message that invisibility cloaks were not invented solely to be toys of war. Metasurfaces can do more than hide objects and have many useful applications. Cohen stated the firm’s recent patents on ‘fractal license plates’ for satellites (patent 11,249,178), enhanced radar road reflectors for autonomous vehicles (patents 10,901,082, 11,175,400), and smaller, wideband directional antennas (patents 10381738,11128052) are a few of many positive spinoffs of his invisibility cloak/ metasurface inventions. “Metamaterials overall have a terrific future, if we encourage their use in applications which improve the human condition and that promise of tomorrow.”

RADIO CLUB OF AMERICA AND DR. COHEN

Dr. Cohen is a long-time member of the Radio Club of America, a former board member and executive vice president, and a Fellow. He is a recipient of the RCA Lee DeForest Award for his invention of the invisibility cloak and creation of a new field of technology in that process. He holds 88 U.S. patents. In November 2012, he demonstrated the invisibility cloak at RCA’s Technical Symposium. The following interview with RCA Proceedings Editor David Bart reveals some of Dr. Cohen’s current perspectives on the invisibility cloak, its uses, and the state of innovation in the post-pandemic environment.

Fractal Antenna Systems demonstration of invisibility cloak detection.

David Bart — Dr. Cohen, when you first demonstrated the invisibility cloak at the RCA Technical Symposium, what responses did you get, besides the oohs and aahs, from the other industry leaders in the room; did the presentation lead to further discussion, exploration, inquiry, etc. for you and your team at Fractal Antenna?

Dr. Cohen — Well, stealth was on everyone’s mind, although cloaking isn’t only for stealth. To that end, I am an independent inventor and not working under classified restrictions. That makes me a resource as well as a truly dumb false target. I cannot tell you where the technology is used for stealth because I am ignorant of good-guy defense applications. A good analogy is the B2 bomber and the earlier flying wing. The flying wing (bomber) inventor—Jack Northrop—knew nothing about the B2. You could try to pull his fingernails and he still could tell you nothing about B2 technology until we all knew. Obviously, I didn’t invent the invisibility cloak to be Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos, so riches were not a driver. I did it for the science. There really is amazing physics in the invisibility cloak, invoking evanescent waves and surface waves and phase cancellation. Fractal metamaterials make that possible, extending to a whole new level the capabilities of metamaterials, first invented by Marconi and Franklin in 1919 by the way. Unfortunately, evanescent waves typically show up in physics texts as two lines and are not explored. Surfaces waves were considered a nuisance, not a phenomenon. This is usually the end of the story. No! In nature you do not get ‘front’ scatter, except as trivial diffraction contributions. I enabled front scatter. I am proud of that—it is a basic piece of applied science, slowly being acknowledged in its importance.

David Bart — What were the greatest challenges you had to overcome when inventing the invisibility cloak?

Dr. Cohen — Deciding (in 2003) whether I wanted to do it at all, knowing that stealth was literally a ‘killer app’.

Making things disappear gives a false sense of superiority in any conflict. Thus, conflicts are invited. It is like inventing the nuclear bomb and then puzzling whether to proceed. It bothered the hell out of me to invent cloaking, knowing the bad scenarios it could enable; just as Leo Szilard, who invented the chain reaction, was troubled after the nuclear bomb was dropped (Szilard very much wanted to put the genie back in the bottle). I actually sat on the cloak technology for several years without filing a patent application, and then went ahead when scientific papers started getting published, getting slowly closer to an understanding of how it works. If work had not been driven by outside researchers, then my pioneering work on cloaking would never have been made public, nor patented.

I am tickled that I put the genie back in the bottle on metasurfaces/cloaking for stealth. In fact, I had the whole scenario worked out for 15 years as a sort of countermeasure. Obviously, I understood what you can do with cloaks as well as their limitations. I knew this almost 20 years ago. The world is still playing catch-up.

I saw evidence for the abuse of cloaking by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2018. They ran a TV show boasting about how they were ‘inventing’ and ‘manufacturing’ fractal metamaterials for stealth use on their planes (see below for a still image of that video). Obviously, I had nothing to do with this. It was like the inventor had been made the invisible man! I not only did not exist, but the users were creating scenarios that were being implemented for my (our) potential destruction. So, I moved ahead with the new U.S. patent—which was not published as an application. By the way, in my opinion, retrofitted foreign jet fighters is not effective and still leaves them as sitting ducks.

In my opinion, inventors have an obligation to try to understand, at some level, how their inventions may be abused. The ‘ethical inventor’ is not an oxymoron, and

Invisibility cloak demonstration at the Radio Club of America Technical Symposium, Nov. 2012. The left image shows the control (blocked signal), and the right image shows the test results from the fractal metamaterials coating the control (intensity returning as if no blockage).

heads of state seldom demonstrate the wisdom of caution. As an inventor, you cannot simply pass the responsibility to someone else.

David Bart — You have two patents on this specific invention; why override or supplement the original patent?

Dr. Cohen — Before I forget, let me remind others that LPASS™ is ‘Elpis’, the goddess of hope, who emerged from Pandora’s box after misery and calamity escaped. As an astrophysicist, I know my mythology since celestial bodies get myth-based names. In the end, we all have to let Elpis win the day. Any potential calamity made possible by cloaking has to be mitigated by the hope available to us from other options.

So, let me comment on the patents. I have 16 patents issued on cloaking technology. This particular patent does not override the others. What it is saying is that if you use cloaking/metasurfaces for stealth, as is clearly the case with PRC, there is a way to get around that. For example, a missile or drone using metasurface stealth—a cheap way to ‘disappear’—will be detected by nonlinear radar systems. The U.S. has other ways of accomplishing stealth that do not rely on metasurfaces; they are more expensive and not as easily detected. So, by publicly obtaining a patent, I have removed the secrecy of this type of cloaking as an asymmetric warfare option, so the balance of terror is not an imbalance by error. Crazy people and countries should not have cheap and easy options. I will do my part to prevent cloaking from being used as a tool for mass destruction.

David Bart — Invisibility cloaks are hot items in military applications today, are those other approaches similar or very different than your device?

Dr. Cohen — Stealth refers specifically to reducing backscatter, which is not quite the same as cloaking, where you additionally ‘see’ what is behind an object.

It is the difference, in analogy, between appearing black, and being transparent. Cloaking may include stealth-like ability, but that is not the objective. There are plenty of stealth options. My new patent basically removed the easiest one, which any hostile force could try to use. In essence, I raised the entry barrier. If it is more expensive, people will need to THINK more about whether to do it, and how to do it.

David Bart — RCA conducted ‘a roundtable with you and Dr. Ted Rappaport about the state of innovation (see RCA Proceedings, Fall 2018). By chance, that discussion occurred just prior to the pandemic. What has changed in the post-pandemic environment; has the state of innovation improved, worsened, or simply evolved?

Dr. Cohen — The state of innovation today is much worse than the pre-pandemic situation. In the U.S., there are far fewer opportunities for outside innovators, who are not part of a major university, or large commercial enterprise. Venture capital funding has dried up in recent months, and manufacturing has become more problematic because of foreign supply chain issues. Seasoned innovators (although rare as hen’s teeth) understand that they are in it for the long term, and I have seen such cycles many times in 40 years. On the other hand, many of my innovations from years ago have substantial traction in the marketplace. Fractal antennas are an obvious one. But as another example, most medical ultrasounds use imaging methods that I patented almost a third of a century ago. For many inventions, I am only seeing the rewards now. Others did not gain traction and become mainstream until after the patents had expired. It is very trying to be an inventor. You need to wait it out and play the probabilities. As Rodney Dangerfield said: “I can’t get no respect.” And you cannot be a one-trick pony. Inventors invent because that is who they are, and that need to invent is all the reason they need to exist; if not, they should be doing something else.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zqa1eCXMVU)

Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen at FRACTAL with a radar phantom ‘Spudnik’ in 2018.

Snapshot from PRC owned CCTV. The TV show described how fractal metamaterial is being fabricated in China for use as metasurfaces on jets.

Radio Club of America Launches New Mentorship Program RCA NEWS

The Radio Club of America has successfully launched a brand-new mentorship initiative. The new RCA Mentorship Program is designed to pair RCA members together, providing opportunities for young professionals to learn and emulate the experience of more seasoned RCA members. Several mentoring pairs have already been formed and more are being formed. Complete information on this new program can be found at www.radioclubofamerica.org/ mentor-program

RCA is committed to the wireless industry and is fortunate to have many members with exceptional knowledge and experience in many aspects of wireless. RCA takes pride in the long view and has formed a Mentorship Program with an eye towards professional growth and providing opportunities to those industry up-and-comers to meet with more experienced members to learn and grow their careers.

RCA hopes that this program will grow and allow for many opportunities for the participants to be involved in it.

RCA’s website page for the Mentor Program contains the:

• Application

• Mentor Guidelines

• Mentee Guidelines

• Mentor Waiver

• Mentee Waiver

If you are interested in participating, please complete the application. You will then be contacted by a Mentor Committee member, who will match you up with an appropriate Mentor or Mentee.

RCA President John Facella said “RCA recognized that an important new value for our membership was to have our more experienced members provide help to members who were relatively new to the wireless industry. Paul Scutieri and David Witkowski took on the challenge of creating this mentoring program.”

RCA Director and Fellow Paul Scutieri said, “We looked at what other organizations were doing, and also sought the advice of RCA Director Carole Perry, who has decades of experience successfully encouraging school youth toward wireless or STEM related careers.”

RCA Member and Fellow David Witkowski added “Use of wireless networks is increasing exponentially, and the industry is already experiencing a lack of qualified candidates to build networks in the future. By creating a mentor program, RCA is taking an active role in developing the next generation of wireless engineers and leaders.”

RCA’s Mentor Program is available to any adult RCA member who might benefit from the advice of an experienced wireless person.

Explore the ‘World of Wireless’

There are many different interesting facets of the wireless communications world. RCA’s ‘World of Wireless’ web page has links to multiple places, ideas, articles, and videos that may be of interest to you. Links include: Hot Topics, Fascinating Information, Interesting Articles, Short Wave Listening, Wireless Museums and more! If you know of anything that could be included here, please contact us. Learn more at www.bit.ly/RCAWorldofWireless

Beginning in March 2022, the Radio Club of America commenced a virtual networking program called Women in Wireless in the 21st Century, designed to facilitate conversations among women who are leading the way and breaking glass ceilings in the wireless industry. The goal of these meeting is to provide opportunities for discussion, networking, and mentoring among the women participants. Initially, the forum is open to all women involved in wireless and technology—not just RCA members.

Ellen O’Hara, former chair, CEO and president of Zetron Inc., hosts the meetings that focused on getting to know each other and sharing ideas about how to make the forum an interesting and useful program for all participants. Participants share some of their experiences in developing networking skills and finding mentors in their careers in wireless. They discuss moving up in the corporate structure and the most satisfying aspects of their careers.

The women attending are from widely varying wireless backgrounds, and they discuss their ideas for the new RCA series. Everyone has opportunities to introduce themselves and to contribute to the discussion. The program has received positive reviews and the outlook for the program is excellent. Plans are moving forward for more sessions. Please see the Radio Club of America website for details and information about upcoming sessions.

The Radio Club of America Announces Partnership With Connectivity Expo

The Radio Club of America (RCA) is pleased to announce a new partnership forged with the Wireless Infrastructure Association’s (WIA) Connectivity Expo (Connect (X)). The partnership is designed to further the goals of both organizations! RCA and WIA’s Connect (X) are well matched to benefit members of both organizations.

Connect (X) is the only business technology event in North America that brings together industry stakeholders who deliver infrastructure solutions for ubiquitous connectivity. Connect (X) showcases the leaders in 5G infrastructure: innovative technology, supporting professional services, and a partner ecosystem that enables ubiquitous communications between people, devices, machines, and tools that support 21st century communications. WIA, who operates Connect (X), represents companies that build, design, own, and operate communications infrastructure.

RCA is the oldest wireless organization in the world, with members across North America and around the world. RCA promotes cooperation among those interested in wireless, bringing together under one umbrella professionals from every segment of the wireless industry, including: antennas,

broadband, broadcasting, cellular, consumer, distribution, education, legal/regulatory, manufacturing, marketing/ sales, microwave, military, patents, public safety, satellites, semiconductors, transportation, and towers.

As the connectivity industry continues to develop and devices evolve with more computing power, the focus shifts to the infrastructure necessary to support 5G. The next wave of deployment will require an expanded community of network infrastructure – public and private – to usher in a new era of universal broadband applications and services to anyone, anywhere, in real-time. RCA and WIA welcomeand promote that community, and they provide ongoing engagement opportunities for those in the wireless world.

Watch for future collaborations at Connect (X) and RCA events through the year.

Ellen O’Hara

Print Versions of RCA Proceedings Available! RCA NEWS

Several years ago, the Radio Club of America moved to an online, email delivery format to distribute the of the Radio Club of America, our premier publication for more than a century. This was intended to achieve two goals: flexibility and cost savings.

Our approach permitted RCA to considerably expand the publication from approximately 30-40 pages to 70-80 pages, and even more than 100 pages on special occasions. It also permitted more flexibility in managing our production and publication deadlines by eliminating the time associated with printing and mailing. This provided us with more time for content development and preparation, which typically have long lead times. Finally, RCA saves considerable expenses that benefit our members by not subjecting everyone to the significant, industry-wide cost

increases that have, and are continuing, to be incurred for printing and mailing.

We have received many compliments about the electronic version of the Proceedings, including the ability to zoom-in and enlarge the pages and the interactive search capabilities. Nevertheless, in the past few years, RCA has received requests to provide print copies of the Proceedings

Thanks to the Sapphyre Group, RCA has now introduced a print option that is available for those who desire it. Beginning January 2022, RCA is offering print copies of the new issues of Proceedings for $48/ year. Those interested can sign up on the RCA website to pay separately for this option. It is as simple as 1, 2, 3 — see the RCA website and either (1) scroll down on the home page, or (2) click to the News Menu and Publications Tab, and then (3) simply click the button to place your order today.

RCA’s Youth Forum Returns to Dayton Hamvention—LIVE RCA NEWS

EDITOR’S NOTE: The Radio Club of America maintains a strong presence at the annual Dayton Hamvention. This year brought even more participation by RCA, and we registered a record number of new members. RCA’s Carole Perry continues to provide one of the key programs at Dayton: the annual, and legendary, educational event of the year, the Dayton Youth Forum.]

This year’s Dayton Hamvention Youth Forum returned as a LIVE event with the RCA Youth Forum as a featured program. The Youth Forum had all the ingredients for a highly informative, successful showcasing of our young hams. It was a wonderful experience for our young presenters and for our many Radio Club of America volunteers.

SUPPORT FOR YOUTH

Several important visitors attended: Dr. Jim Breakall from Pennsylvania State University and Angel Ramirez from Arecibo Observatory spoke with the audience and visited the young presenters. Ray Novak from ICOM, a long-time major sponsor, handed out awards and also spoke to the young presenters. RCA’s volunteers and many RCA members attended and supported the event. Frank Bauer, AMSAT-NA Vice President for Human Spaceflight Programs also attended and presented information about Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS).

Each year, some of the best of the youth presenters are selected to attend and present at the Radio Club of America’s annual technical symposium. These presenters receive an RCA Young Achiever’s Award. The experience of first presenting to youth, and then presenting at a leading-edge educational program for professionals leaves indelible marks on the youth. They meet wireless leaders and legends and hone their presentation skills, learning about where their interests

in science and technology can take them. This year, former RCA Young Achiever Tom Jose, VU3TMO, attended the Youth Forum and visited with the volunteer team and the young presenters, offering encouragement and a fine example of where the youth can go as they grow. He is presently studying at Colorado State University in Boulder. Former Young Achievers Frankie Bonte and Christopher Brault also attended, receiving notification that they are the 2022 the Young Ham Lent a Hand Contest Winners.

Attending the Dayton Hamvention live, after a long hiatus due to the pandemic, is like coming home. The Youth Forum is a cherished event, filled with warmth and encouragement. It was delightful to see a full room from the podium filled with an audience who was eager to share in supporting tomorrow’s leaders as they made their first presentations.

The Youth Forum is grateful to our many sponsors. Thank you to: Radio Club of America, ICOM, MFJ, DX Engineering, L’Anse Creuse Amateur Radio Club, Quarter Century Wireless Association, Heil Sound, NL7XM, Dayton Hamvention, Portage County Amateur Radio Service, and ARRL.

2022 PRESENTERS

This year’s Youth Forum presentations included:

• Jack McElroy - “Experiences with Launching Hot Air Balloons”

• Cody Quarles - “Functioning of APRS”

• Ben and Agnes Wagner - “Unexpected Opportunities in Ham Radio During the Lockdown”

• Ryan and Blake Pearson - “Competition and Opportunities for Siblings in Ham Radio”

The entire Youth Forum can be seen on Youtube.

Carole Perry thanking the Dayton Youth Forum’s many long-running sponsors: Radio Club of America, ICOM, MFJ, DX Engineering, L’Anse Creuse Amateur Radio Club, Quarter Century Wireless Association, Heil Sound, NL7XM, Dayton Hamvention, Portage County Amateur Radio Service, and ARRL.

2022 RCA Youth Forum Presenters -- (front l-r): Jack McElroy, Cody Quarles, Ryan and Blake Pearson; (back l-r): Ben and Agnes Wagner.

RCA YOUTH COMMITTEE, DONATIONS AND SCHOLARSHIPS

RCA’s Youth Activities program is chaired by RCA Director Carole Perry, WB2MGP, and has Richard Somers, Stan Rubenstein, Gordon West, Ernie Blair, and Charles Kirmuss as committee members.

RCA’s Richard G. Somers Youth Scholarship Fund was established in 2009, through a generous donation from the fund’s namesake, to encourage and support educational, technical, ham radio and related activities of young people through high school.

Your tax-deductible donation to RCA Youth Activities will enhance what the Somers fund started and will be greatly appreciated. We can accept your donations via Check, Money Order, PayPal or Credit Card.

Scholarships are also available for deserving youth. Radio Club of America Young Achiever Scholarships are awarded each

year to qualified students in vocational, secondary, college, or graduate school for educational purposes. To qualify, applicants must submit a completed and signed application form and at least two letters of reference from a teacher, employer, or RCA member. Applicants cannot be a relative of an RCA member, and they must demonstrate that they are intending to pursue or are pursuing a career in the wireless industry. Applicants should complete the RCA Scholarship Application on RCA’s website and submit an accompanying referral

PLANNING FOR NEXT YEAR

Please send any creative ideas or suggestions you may have for our 2023 HamVention Youth Forum to wb2mgp@gmail. com. Be sure to come and help us celebrate the future with the youth of today, who will be the leaders of tomorrow!

2022 RCA Youth Forum volunteers (l-r): Robert Balais, Stan Rubenstein, Carole Perry, Ernie Blair, David Bart.

RCA Youth Forum prize table the presenters.

RCA Youth presenter Jack McElroy (l) and Dr. Jim Breakall (r).

Returning visitor and former RCA Young Achiever Tom Jose (c), with David Bart (l) and Carole Perry (r).

Ray Novak from Youth Forum sponsor ICOM (l) and Carole Perry (R) at the RCA Youth Forum.

Youth Forum Presenter Cody Quarles.

Carole Perry (l) informing Frankie Bonte (c) and Christopher Brault (r) that they were receiving the 2022 Young Ham Lent a Hand Award.

RCA youth Forum presenter Agnes and Ben Wagner.

Ray Novak from ICOM, a RCA Youth Forum Sponsor. RCA Youth Forum presenter Jack McElroy.

SILENT KEYS

Silent key is a term of respect for a deceased amateur radio operator. The key in the term refers to a telegraph key, the instrument that all early amateur radio operators, as well as many contemporary amateur radio operators, used to send Morse code. The term SK is used in telegraphy to indicate an end of transmission. Today, the term is commonly used within the radio community as a sign of respect and condolence, regardless of whether the deceased was an amateur radio operator.

MICHAEL

FITCH.

Michael T.N. Fitch’s parents owned and operated the only radio station in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, a daytime AM station. His began while working at KGLN part-time. He earned a B.S.E.E. at Purdue University, Indiana and a J.D. from Columbia University in New York City.

He advanced from staff attorney to bureau chief and senior legal and international advisor to the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. He also served as a presidential exchange executive from the FCC at the Westinghouse Electric Corporation in Pittsburgh. Subsequently, he moved to the U.S. Department of State as an office director and deputy assistant secretary of state in the Communications and Information Policy Bureau. He represented the U.S. government and commercial interests in global negotiations at International Telecommunication Union World Radio Conferences. He led U.S. delegations to ITU, Intelsat, and Inmarsat conferences.

RAY SOIFER, W2RS

Satellite pioneer Raphael “Ray” Soifer, W2RS, of Green Valley, Arizona, died on March 1. An RCA Fellow and past board member, he was 79.

Licensed in 1955, Soifer was among those involved in founding the AMSAT organization. A native of New York City, he studied engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and then obtained an MBA at Harvard Business School. His career was in finance, serving as a news media banking commentator and banking analyst.

As a 16-year-old at MIT, Soifer served as lead engineer in the AMSAT organization’s satellite radio projects, including early

In 1996, Mr. Fitch became vice president of regulatory affairs and spectrum management for Hughes Communications, a part of Hughes Electronics, in Los Angeles. He served as a member of the board of directors and served as chairman of the board of the Satellite Industry Association. When Hughes Space and Communications was acquired by Boeing, he continued his telecommunications responsibilities as well as some new programs involving Homeland Security. At Boeing, he was vice president of the U.S. ITU Association.

From 2005-2012, Mr. Fitch was president and CEO of WIA–The Wireless Infrastructure Association, succeeding Jay Kitchen. He led a successful legislative effort that resulted in collocation by right at many wireless towers and sites in the U.S.

He was senior counsel at the law firm Keller and Heckman LLP, working on wireless communications issues. He is an officer and member of the board of directors of the California Wireless Association and a Fellow in the Radio Club of America, where he was also an early recipient of the Jay Kitchen Leadership Award.

Read more here.

ham satellite OSCAR-1. He was featured in Time magazine in 1960 for this work.

Soifer has written many articles for QST, RadCom, The AMSAT Journal, and other ham publications, mostly about satellites and moonbounce. He holds Satellite DXCC No. 13 and Satellite Worked All Continents (WAC) No. 6, both earned entirely via low-Earth-orbit spacecraft.

Soifer participated in the first two-way contact in any radio service via satellite-to-satellite relay, with W2BXA (SK) via AMSAT-OSCAR 7 and AMSAT-OSCAR 6 in 1975, as well as the first known contact via satellite ionization trail reflection, a propagation mode first reported by W8JK (SK) in 1958. He was active on 2-meter moonbounce from 1985 until 1995. Other call signs held over the years include K1WXC, K2QBW, WA4IJR, and G3DDU.

A full obituary can be found here.

SILENT KEYS

JUNE P. POPPELE

June P. Poppele, 95, of Morristown, passed away peacefully on July 7, 2022. She previously lived in South Orange with her parents Jack and Pauline. Her father Jack was a radio pioneer, founder of WOR, and cofounder of Tele-Measurements, Inc., in Clifton where she was the office manager for over 30 years.

She was a longtime active member and Fellow of the Radio Club of America, where she was also a recipient of the Special Services Award (1999) and the President’s Award (1992). She was also the Secretary of the Republican Club of Morristown, member emeritus and co-founder of Mardog, the Morris Area Responsible Dog Ownership Group. June was an avid gardener and enjoyed boating at the shore, and her home on Lake Mohawk.

She is predeceased by her sister, Lorraine Flower, and her beloved dog, Katie. She is survived by her sister, Virginia Endres, nephew Chris Endres and his wife Christien of Montville, David Endres and his wife Lisa of New Providence, and niece Laura Erickson and her husband Kris of Rhode Island. She is also survived by her dear great-nieces and nephew Alyssa, Kelley, Heather, and Jenna Endres, and Jack and Aubrey Erickson. A full obituary can be found here.

RCA

INTERVIEW SERIES

RCA president emeritus Tim Duffy, K3LR, hosts, and each interview runs approximately 1 hour. The interviews are alternated with online RCA networking sessions. Past guests have included a range of notables:

Discussions center on careers in wireless, life-long passion for radio, views on industry trends and outlooks for technology, and on the current work the guests are undertaking as well as their history with RCA. If you missed any of these interviews, they are available on the RCA Youtube page at https://bit. ly/3tjFooc

RCA plans many more of these exciting virtual activities. Please see https://bit.ly/3tmrJgb for further announcements.

DONOR GIFT: COMMEMORATIVE CODE PRACTICE OSCILLATOR

We all know that students today are often more interested in computers than wireless. As a result, the future of wireless depends on getting more youth interestesd in wireless.

Here is a great opportunity to support our RCA Youth Program under Director Carole Perry and obtain a free gift as a result. Carole has been driving our Youth Program for 30 years this year! As a surprise to her, Director Charles Kirmuss commissioned a CW Morse code practice oscillator that was the same design Carole used years before with her early amateur radio classes with middle school and high school.

If you donate at least $30 to Carole's RCA Youth Program, you will receive a commemorative code practice oscillator. Your donation will be used to assist with costs like awards to the children, donation materials for school radio clubs, travel expenses for youth presenters to the Technical Symposium, and more.

In addition, if you renew your RCA membership for three years, you will also receive a code practice oscillator.

If you have interest in donating to the Youth Program, please email Director Carole Perry directly (wb2mgp@gmail.com) and she will provide instructions as to how to send a check.

If you wish to renew your membership for three years, contact Amy Beckham (Amy@radioclubofAmerica.org) for details on getting the code practice oscillator.

NEWS ITEM

Arecibo Radar Pierces Venus’ Clouds

Although Venus is our nearest celestial neighbor, the last U.S. mission to explore the planet - NASA’s Magellan spacecraft - burned up in the Venusian atmosphere nearly 30 years ago. That is about to change as three new space missions will target the clouded world: NASA’s VERITAS and DAVINCI and ESA’s EnVision missions.

Until these missions arrive, however, scientists interested in studying the surface of Venus must parse the older mission data or use observations acquired by telescopes like the Arecibo Observatory that can pierce through the thick clouds that enshroud the planet.

In a recent study, scientists did both. Dr. Bruce Campbell of the Smithsonian Institution and Dr. Jennifer Whitten of Tulane University were interested in exploring the depths of craters located in the mountainous highlands on Venus, where evidence for ancient Venusian lakes might be preserved in the surface rocks.

Dr. Campbell stated, “No other Earth-based radar could give us these high-resolution, dualpolarization maps.”

“What our work showed is that some parts of the tallest mountain range, Maxwell Montes, are covered by finegrained deposits that were ejected from the large impact crater Cleopatra,” says Dr. Campbell. To detect these grains, the team used the much higher-resolution radar data from the Magellan spacecraft in combination with observation from the Arecibo Observatory, which measured radar echoes in two polarizations. “The Magellan mission radar measured just one of these polarizations, so the Arecibo maps provide a unique extra dimension that separates out the signature of material, like crater ejecta, that covers the surface,” says Dr. Campbell. “No other Earth-based radar could give us these highresolution, dual-polarization maps”.

The results from this work assist future spacecraft exploration of Venus. The Arecibo and Magellan maps of crater ejecta may help pinpoint the best examples of original, ancient rocks for the VERITAS and EnVision orbiters to look at in more detail. The Arecibo data also provide a unique look at the mountainous “Alpha” region on Venus that will be targeted by the DAVINCI descent probe.

Additional information can be obtained from: Arecibo Media Contact, Ricardo Correa, Universidad Ana G. Méndez (UAGM), 787-878-2612 ext. 615, rcorrea@naic.edu.

SOURCE

T. Becker, Piercing through the Clouds of Venus with Arecibo Radar, Aug. 17, 2022, https://www.naic.edu/ao/ blog/piercing-through-clouds-venus-arecibo-radar.

Figure from Campbell & Whitten 2022; Radar images for Maxwell Montes. (a) Magellan horizon tal-transmit, horizontal receive echo; (b) Arecibo opposite-sense circular echo; (c) Arecibo samesense circular echo, with region of lower return encompassed by yellow outline; (d) Arecibo circular polarization ratio as color overlay on Magellan image.

W2NAF Gets NSF Grant to Study Grayline and Solar Eclipses

Radio Club of America member and HamSCI founder and University of Scranton professor Nathaniel Frissell, W2NAF, has been awarded a nearly $400,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study changes in the ionosphere at dawn and dusk (a period we hams know as “grayline”) and during solar eclipses. According to the university, Frissell will work with students there and at Case Western Reserve University, as well as amateurs around the country, to gather data using so-called “Grape” receivers designed using another NSF grant for the HamSCI Personal Space Weather Station project.

Frissell says there will be an annular solar eclipse visible in the continental U.S. next year, as well as a total eclipse in 2024, noting that these will be the last solar eclipses to traverse the country until 2044. The grant will fund an additional 30 Grape receivers that will be provided to HamSCI volunteers across North America. The stations will run continuously at least through 2025, the end of the project period, monitoring WWV and CHU to collect data daily at sunrise and sunset as well as during the two solar eclipses.

In a post to the HamSCI e-mail group, Frissell says the project will have five main areas of study:

• How do dawn and dusk ionospheric variability as observed by HF Doppler shift measurements vary with local time, season, latitude, longitude, frequency, distance, and direction from the transmitter?

• Is eclipse ionospheric response symmetric with regard to onset and recovery timing?

• How similar is the eclipse to daily dawn and dusk terminator passage?

• Do we observe multipath HF mode-splitting in the posteclipse interval that is similar to dawn events?

• How is the response different for the southward annular eclipse in 2023 compared to the northward total eclipse of 2024?

According to Frissell, the grant will also provide support for a Ph.D. student at Case Western and a masters candidate at Scranton.

SOURCE

W2NAF Gets NSF Grant to Study Grayline and Solar Eclipses, CQ Amateur Radio, Aug. 17, 2022.

Grape receiver circuit board (from HamSCI.org website

NEWS ITEM

HAARP Hosted Open House

On August 27, HAARP hosted an Open House at its Alaska facility. The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, (HAARP) is located in Gakona, Alaska. Several Radio Club of America members are involved in leading HAARP and its scientific projects. The event offered an opportunity to learn how scientists study the Earth’s ionosphere and will provide a tour of the research facility. Amateur radio operators who attend can learn about how the ionosphere affects both long- and short-range communications.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) acquired HAARP’s research equipment from the United States Air Force in August 2015, and their Geophysical Institute operates HAARP under a cooperative research and development agreement.

In 2021, the National Science Foundation awarded the UAF Geophysical Institute a 5-year $9.3 million grant for a new research observatory at HAARP. The Subauroral Geophysical Observatory for Space Physics and Radio Science will explore Earth’s upper atmosphere and geospace environment. The facility attracts scientists from universities, government, and the private sector.

UAF describes HAARP as “the world’s most capable high-power, high-frequency transmitter for study of the ionosphere.” Built in three phases, starting in the early 1990s and continuing through 2007, at a cost of some $300 million, the 30-acre facility has 360 transmitters, 180 antennas, and five powerful generators.

The tour featured a 90-minute self-guided tour that highlighted:

• HAARP’s control room

• Science and history displays

• Power plant, with the five generators used during research

• Transmitters and the 33-acre antenna array

• Aircraft surveillance radar

• Ionosonde, a radar that checks the status of the ionosphere

• Riometer, which measures cosmic radio noise

• Optical equipment domes

SOURCES

HAARP to Host Open House at Alaska Facility, ARRL Letter, Aug. 18, 2022.

HAARP website, https://haarp.gi.alaska.edu

The High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program facility is a 33-acre ionospheric research instrument that helps researchers study the ionosphere. [JR Ancheta, photo]

NEWS ITEM FCC Legacy CORES System to

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will retire the Legacy version of its COmmission REgistration System (CORES) on July 15, 2022. CORES is the FCC’s public-facing database that enables and tracks certain types of FCC and FCC applicant actions, including amateur radio applications and licenses. Its implementation has enabled routine amateur applications and licenses to be issued overnight instead of over weeks, as was the case with earlier methods. ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio® advises the amateur radio community to transition to the updated version of CORES as soon as possible.

CORES

In essence, CORES is designed to identify those who hold certain types of FCC licenses and FCC authorizations, including amateur licenses, and organize them in an easily accessible manner under a common FCC Registration Number (FRN) regardless of whether one holds a single such authority or thousands. The new CORES, in addition to assigning individual FRNs, allows holders of multiple FRNs to aggregate them under a single account where the licenses and authorization, fees and payments, and related actions can be administered from within the same account.

In effect, new CORES can be conceptualized as an electronic interactive file folder. The updated version of CORES has been available since 2016, and now its use will be mandatory for all amateur licensees when submitting amateur-related applications.

Starting on July 15, 2022, the Legacy CORES website will re-direct users to the Commission’s updated CORES site. Although some functionalities in the old system will continue to work for a short time, the FCC has urged all users to transition to the updated CORES system to take advantage of its enhanced security and functionality.

REGISTER WITH THE FCC

be Retired

Licensees that do not already have an FCC CORES Username Account must create one with a unique username (a valid email address) and password. After creating the account, when logged in, users should associate their existing FRN or FRNs with this account. Instructions for doing so are on the FCC Registration Help page. One’s FRN is printed on all current amateur applications and licenses and will not change. FRNs can also be found by looking up one’s call sign in the Commission’s ULS or by using the FCC’s advanced search page.

TUTORIALS

The FCC has posted Tutorial Videos to assist with the transition. ARRL VEC Manager Maria Somma, AB1FM, recommends viewing the videos “Getting Started With the New CORES,” which explains how to register for a CORES Username Account, and “Associating an FRN to a Username,” which instructs Legacy CORES users on how to link one or more existing FRNs to a username. FCC CORES Registration Instructions can also be found on the ARRL website.

Additional information is available on the FCC website or by calling the FCC Licensing Support Center at (877) 4803201, Option 4, and on the FCC’s e-support page

SOURCES

FCC Legacy CORES System to be Retired, ARRL Letter, Jul. 7, 2022.

NEWS ITEM Arecibo Update

Several members of the Radio Club of America are involved in leadership positions or have research affiliations and historical ties to Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The observatory suffered an equipment and tower collapse in 2021. This update keeps our membership informed of current developments. Arecibo Observatory is maintaining its legacy of strong educational programs and continues to both collect new, exciting science with active telescopes and other facilities and continues to produce new scientific results using the archival data from the 305-meter telescope. Arecibo’s science staff has been able to once again attend conferences in-person to share their research with the larger community and collaborate on new ideas.

SCIENCE

Science production at Arecibo is full steam ahead: The 12-m telescope and the Callisto Solar Radio Spectrometer regularly pick up space weather events, including a large “independence day” solar flare. See how our data folds into the rest of the e-callisto network here: e-callisto. The 12-m telescope is also actively observing pulsars, spectral lines, and continuum imaging of the Sun. The telescope is about to enter Phase II of the cryogenic frontend upgrade. We also continue to inform the community on the topic of planetary defense by analyzing the archive of radar observations made using the 305-m telescope.

INSTRUMENTS

New science instruments are being installed and commissioned: the Puerto Rico Initiative for Studies using Meteor Radar (PRISMA) is undergoing testing and the Culebra Aerosol Research LIDAR (CARLA) is finishing its commissioning stage at Arecibo and will soon be installed at the Remote Optical Facility (ROF) in Culebra. The observatory will soon break ground on the AO-UCF collaboration, the Photonic Arecibo Observatory LIDAR Array (PAOLA), that will install an array of seven 20-inch telescopes at Arecibo. See the #AOScienceNow page to stay up-to-date for new and on-going science at the observatory!

EDUCATION

Educational and outreach activities are thriving. The NSF recently selected the newest educational program: Enhancing and Nurturing Careers in Astronomy with New Training Opportunities (ENCANTO). Stay tuned for future updates and descriptions of the program! The observatory will host its seventh year of the STAR program this Fall, which gives Puerto Rican high school students and educators the opportunity to do hands-on science and

engineering projects, inspiring a significant number of them to pursue STEM careers in college. In June the observatory welcomed the newest NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) group. Out of the 189 applicants, seven were selected to work with scientists and engineers in-person at the Arecibo Observatory.

ALLIANCES

Observatory staff have established strong alliances with science museums and local communities across Puerto Rico, including the EcoExploratorio: Museo de Ciencias de Puerto Rico and the Centro Criollo de Ciencia y Tecnología del Caribe (C3Tec). Looking into the future, the grand reopening of the Ángel Ramos Foundation Science & Visitor Center will take place within the next few months.

STAFFING AND SITE MANAGEMENT

The observatory’s operations staff, partnered with the NSF, D. H. Griffin and Thornton Tomasetti, have continued to make excellent progress towards the safe and environmentally conscious clean-up of the site. The cleanup also includes the exceptional work done by the Arecibo Salvage Survey Committee to preserve historic components of the telescope. All damaged panels from on the primary reflector dish have been removed. The top of Tower 8 was “sawed- off”, and the same task will be performed on Tower 12, followed by Tower 4 later in the Fall. Staff are also finalizing the engineering effort to repair the roof of the Learning Center.

Debris from the Arecibo Observatory collapse was largely cleaned up and removed toward the end of 2021. (Courtesy of Arecibo Observatory/NAIC)

The University of Central Florida has entered into the final year of its five-year contract with NSF for the management of the Arecibo Observatory. Throughout the many difficulties faced by the staff following the collapse of the telescope, incredible progress has been made by the staff to recover science operations on site. The observatory maintains its quest for achieving excellence in scientific research and publications, as well as in outstanding public education.

LATEST UPDATE

On October 13, the NSF issued a solicitation for a new multidisciplinary, world-class educational center at Arecibo to serve as a hub for STEM education and outreach. The center would expand upon existing education and outreach opportunities currently in place at the observatory, while also implementing new STEM programs and initiatives. The new center is expected to open in 2023.

NEWS ITEM

SOURCES

J. Brissett, Letter from the Director, Arecibo Observatory, Aug. 22, 2022, https://www.naic.edu/ao/blog/letter-director.

P. Brinkmann, Arecibo Observatory Reopens Visitor Center After Telescope Collapse, Science News, https://www.upi. com/Science_News/2022/03/11/Arecibo-ObservatoryPuerto-Rico-visitor-center-reopening/6241647015783/.

R. Lugo, The Arecibo Observatory: Current and Future Operations of the Facility, Jul. 21, 2022, https://www. naic.edu/ao/blog/arecibo-observatory-current-and-futureoperations-facility

Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research (ACSER), Program Solicitation, NSF 23-505, Oct. 13, 2022, https:// www.nsf.gov/pubs/2023/nsf23505/nsf23505.pdf

Internet History Resource Asks for Volunteer Support

Attention radio history lovers…If you like text, or even circuit diagrams, you may have visited David Gleason’s very comprehensive worldradiohistory.com. It is an amazing resource. This is a non-profit and noncommercial website created for educational and historical purposes. The operator of this website does not claim copyright or ownership of any documentary or photographic images, and they appear on the website under the “fair use” doctrine of United States copyright law, which permits the use of copyrighted material for scholarship, archiving and research purposes. (Any persons wishing to duplicate or otherwise make use of the images on this web site do so at their own risk.)

The site contains one of the greatest, international library, online of publications about radio, television, recorded music, electronics, and even computers. More than 20 years in the making, it is continuing to grow. In that time, Gleason steadily upgraded the website’s capabilities for researchers as well as his scanning, processing, and storage operation.

Gleason has four computers doing processing, book scanning, sheet-fed scanning and wide document scanning, plus four independent NAS storage devices.

Additional hard drive backups are maintained offline in separate secure locations. Incredibly, Gleason has provided all of this at his own expense. Now, he would like some help from a volunteer or two for a new resource. In addition to serials, Gleason has also scanned books...a lot of books. Many of them have titles that explain themselves, like Evolution of a Public Radio Station: WVXU at Xavier University. Others are more opaque like Reed and Grant’s Voice Under Every Palm. Gleason is adding a pop-up balloon for these mysterious volumes with a onesentence summary, so when someone scrolls over the cover image the balloon will open, to help researchers.

Gleason is asking for volunteer help. Pick a section, distill each book to 25 words or less in a readable blurb, and send them to david@americanradiohistory.com, along with the URL to each book.

This is a great opportunity to help increase the access to and diffusion of broadcast history knowledge.

HAS YOUR CONTACT INFORMATION CHANGED?

If you have recently changed your address, email, or phone number, please login to your membership page on our website to update your information, email amy@radioclubofamerica.org or call (612) 405-2012.

www.radioclubofamerica.org

FJ Enterprises, an amateur radio electronics manufacturer and retailer, will celebrate 50 years in business this October. Martin Jue, K5FLU, founded the company in 1972 after building a CW filter kit that sold for less than $10. Since 1990 the company has made five acquisitions, including Hy-Gain and Cushcraft antennas.

MFJ Customer Services and Public Relations Manager Richard Stubbs says the company continues to grow with the popularity of amateur radio and currently manufactures over 2,000 products. ““I’ve been with the company for 28 years and the numbers are good,” said Stubbs. “Amateur radio continues to grow worldwide.”

Quite a few of MFJ’s employees have worked there for years, such as MFJ Product Representative Phyllis Randle, who will be retiring in September after 45 years with the company. She started working there when she was a teenager in 1977, and she is now the Product Representative for all MFJ dealers.

Jue graduated from Mississippi State University with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, and he earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). He served as a professor of electrical engineering at Mississippi State University from 1972 until 1979 but abandoned his doctorate in 1977 because of MFJ’s growth.

Currently, because of COVID-19 concerns, the company does not have any plans for a special event to celebrate the

Manniversary, although Stubbs said that may change in the months ahead.

MFJ’s founder Martin Jue received the Radio Club of America’s 2019 Barry Goldwater Award for unique contributions to the field of amateur radio.

Mr. Jue is an entrepreneur and inventor and founder/owner of several companies in the radio communications sector, including MFJ Enterprises, Hy-Gain, Cushcraft, Ameritron, Vectronics among others, all of which manufacture products for the amateur radio industry. He holds numerous patents on specialized technology especially in the area of T network field tuners. The American Radio Relay League (ARRL) awarded him the ARRL Special Achievement Award in 2012 for innovation in the field of amateur radio. Mr. Jue is a graduate of Mississippi State University’s Bagley College of Engineering and is recognized as a Distinguished Fellow. He is member of several nonprofit organizations. He was inducted into the CQ Hall of Fame in 2001 and the QRP Hall of Fame in 2009.

SOURCES

MFJ to Celebrate 50th Anniversary, ARRL Letter, Aug 18, 2022.

Awards Banquet, Proceedings of the Radio Club of America, Fall, 2019.

The Story of MFJ Enterprises Inc. Linking the World to Your Back Yard, MFJ website, https://mfjenterprises.com/pages/ the-story-of-mfj-enterprises-inc.

MFJ Enterprises Founder Martin Jue, K5FLU

NEWS ITEM

Ulrich L. Rohde, N1UL, Receives IEEE Engineering Achievement Award

The Radio Club of America is proud to announce that Dr. Ulrich L. Rohde, N1UL, is the 2022 recipient of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Engineering Achievement Award. The award is for outstanding engineering achievement in the field of optoelectronic signal generation and optical measurement equipment for next-generation intelligent optical networks.

Dr. Rhode received the Radio Club of America’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017 for significant achievements and a major body of work accomplished over a lifetime that has advanced the art and science of radio and wireless technology. Dr. Rohde is an ARRL Maxim Society and Life Member and has received numerous awards.

Dr. Rohde is currently a partner of Rohde & Schwarz, in Munich, Germany, and Chairman of Synergy Microwave Corporation in Paterson, New Jersey. He is also President of the Communications Consulting Corporation, serving as an honorary member of the Senate of the University of the Armed Forces in Munich, honorary member of the Senate of the Brandenburg University of Technology CottbusSenftenberg, and past member of the Board of Directors of Ansoft Corporation in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Rhode has published 350+ scientific papers, coauthored over a dozen books, and holds dozens of patents. Dr. Rohde received the 2021 Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. The Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, also known as the Federal Cross of Merit, is the highest tribute the Federal Republic of Germany can pay to individuals for services to the nation. Throughout his career he has been active in microwave technology and has been honored for his work developing software-defined radio (SDR).

Dr. Rohde has been an avid amateur radio operator holding several licenses in the United States and Germany. He was licensed in 1956 and has been involved primarily in technology and systems. In 2015, he won first place in the ARRL DX Contest in the Northern New Jersey Section. He also operates N1UL/ MM on his yacht, the Dragonfly, and is Trustee of the Marco Island Radio Club, K5MI.

“We congratulate Dr. Rohde on this prestigious award,” said ARRL Laboratory Manager Ed Hare, W1RFI. “We in the amateur radio community have long benefited from Dr. Rohde’s expertise. His advice and guidance on technical procedures and his generosity have been invaluable to ARRL members and our Lab.” In 2021, Rohde donated a Rohde & Schwarz SMBV100A vector signal generator to the ARRL Lab.

Dr. Rohde will receive the 2022 Engineering Achievement Award at the IEEE Photonics Conference in November in Vancouver, British Colombia, Canada.

SOURCES

Ulrich L. Rohde, N1UL, to Receive Engineering Achievement Award, ARRL Letter, Jul. 14, 2022.

Annual Banquet and Awards, Proceedings of the Radio Club of America, Fall 2017.

2022 IEEE Photonics Society Award Recipients, https://ieee-ipc.org/2022-award-honorees/

Dr. Ulrich Rhode

NEWS ITEM

International Space Station Upgrades Amateur Radio Operations

ARISS, Amateur Radio on the International mentor, announced that simultaneous operations of the ARISS voice repeater and digital APRS (Automatic Packet Reporting System) communications on the Space Station are now a reality.

CURRENT OPERATIONS

Current ARISS operations include voice repeater transmissions with the JVC Kenwood TM-D710GA in the Columbus module and APRS operation from an identical radio in the Zvezda module. Packet operations are on 145.825 MHz.

The Columbus module radio uses the call sign NA1SS and the new radio in Zvezda uses RS0ISS. Aside from the call signs, the radios are identical, and packet operations are the same as before. You can use RS0ISS, ARISS, or APRSAT as the packet path. Both radios are expected to be running full time, except during educational contacts, extra vehicular activities (EVAs), and docking maneuvers. Final checkouts and equipment activation occurred on August 11.

POSITIVE RESPONSES

ARISS International Chair Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, said, “Simultaneous operation of APRS and the voice repeater on ISS is transformative for ARISS. It represents a key element of our ARISS 2.0 initiative, providing interactive capabilities 24/7 that inspire, engage, and educate youth

and lifelong learners -- especially lifelong learning in ham radio operations. Our heartfelt thanks to Sergey Samburov, RV3DR, for making this crucial ARISS 2.0 initiative become a reality.”

Rosalie White, K1STO, one of two US delegates to ARISS, said the ham radio community will be very happy with the new radio operations from the ISS. “Hams really love doing ARISS packet, cross-band repeater, and Slow-Scan Television (SSTV) operations. Besides the thousands who download ARISS SSTV images downlinked from the ISS, we discovered that in a year’s time, hams did 80,000 ARISS packet messages,” she said. “We are not sure how many have been enjoying the ARISS cross band repeater, but we know it is a lot. This simultaneous operation capability is going to make many hams happy -- and we know that keeping hams on the air is good for ARRL and good for amateur radio,” White added.

ARISS

ARISS is a cooperative venture of international amateur radio societies and space agencies that support the ISS. In the US, sponsors are the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT), ARRL The National Association for Amateur Radio®, and NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program. The primary goal of ARISS is to promote exploration of science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics topics. ARISS does this by organizing scheduled contacts via amateur radio between crew members aboard the ISS and students. Before and during these radio contacts, students, educators, parents, and communities take part in hands-on learning activities tied to space, space technologies, and amateur radio. For more information, see www.ariss.org and www.arrl.org/ amateur-radio-on-the-international-space-station.

Operational status and expected downtimes of the ISS radios can be found at www.ariss.org/current-status-of-issstations.

SOURCES

International Space Station Upgrades Amateur Radio Operations, ARRL Letter, Aug. 18, 2022.

NASA Astronaut Kjell Lindgren, KO5MOS, tweeted this photo of the ham radio station in the Columbus module, just before ARRL Field Day in June. (https://tinyurl.com/2p9cr53f)

Impact of DIgItal WIreless:

Andrew J. Viterbi

The last decade of the twentieth century and the first two decades of the twenty-first have witnessed a dramatic trans formation of our society in lifestyle and human connectivity. In perusing my writings spanning this quarter century, I encoun tered both a lecture presented at the 1995 Marconi Society Symposium as well as my most recent, the 2019 Armstrong Lecture delivered at Columbia University. The two previously unpublished texts are provided in Appendices A and B.

The first was composed at the beginning of the period, when speech was first digitized to render its transmission more efficient and reliable, bearing the nomenclature “2G,” and it also argued for a superior transmission technology, ultimately becoming “3G,” which was currently being developed and tested. Its goal was to make reliable uninterrupted voice telephony mobile and available throughout the world. By the end of the century, it was clear that the goal was achievable, and indeed two decades later, more than half the earth’s population became covered. Only service for large areas with sparse populations remain uncovered because the only technological means by which this could be achieved turned out

to not be economically feasible. Yet, the initial goals turned out to be modest in comparison to what has become commonplace today, at the end of the first two decades of the new century.

The second lecture (Appendix B), delivered just prior to the shutdown due to the Covid pandemic recognizes the effect of the global Internet, something that was not predictable in 1995. For prior to that year the Internet was a tool available only for governmental and not-for-profit institutions. Opening up the well-established network to public use was a game-changing event. The lecture defines three “Eras” of Digital Wireless: Inno vation, beginning in the 19th century and continuing uninter rupted; Implementation, beginning slowly in the 20th century and accelerating throughout; and Exploitation , covering the current century. The first era was driven by scientists, technol ogists, governments, and monopolies. The second was led by engineers and managers in commercial corporations, large and small. The third, empowered by the Internet, is owned by the public, wise or foolish, knowledgeable or ignorant, and by the media, professional and truthful or biased and corrupt.

appenDIx a

Scientific progress in the twentieth century has most dra matically impacted society in four fields of application: medicine, energy, transportation and information. Human existence is forever changed by these developments, usually for the better, but not without some detrimental side effects. While all four are still progressing rapidly from a scientific perspective, it is information processing, retrieval and transmission which has captured the spotlight of the current turn-of-the-century. The reasons are many. There seems to be a convergence of societal needs, regulatory policy relaxation, and financial investment, each reinforcing the others and all driven even further by the fanfare of the media. Social scientists, futurists and politicians have woven a magnificent tapestry of the uses and impact of the new tools of this information age. Reality may turn out to be less colorful, but not necessarily less valuable.

What is often neglected, or worse still misunderstood by the social experts, is the role of technology in the creation of the infor mation society. Two of the most common technical terms, used and abused to establish a basis for technosocial discourse, are “digital” and “wireless.” Though presumably self-defining, both terms possess a myriad of meanings deeply embedded in their technological foundations which this talk will attempt to address.

Digital impact on WireD communication

The digital era began fifty years ago with the construction of the first electronic computing machines at the end of the Second World War. Very shortly thereafter the implementation technolo gy shifted from vacuum tubes to solid state devices, which began a progression of developments that reduced the size and power requirements of electronic computer equipment by many orders of magnitude, while simultaneously increasing by similar remark

able multipliers their computation speed and capabilities. Strictly as a computing machine, uses and users multiplied correspond ingly, from a few hundred in the fifties to hundreds of millions today. The numbers and types of computer applications have proliferated as well, ranging from traditional uses as powerful scientific tools and massive business data banks, to the mundane but far more widespread recent roles as improved versions of the traditional typewriter and the historical telegraph.

With this evolution, the term “digital computing” has been largely replaced by “digital processing,” which refers more generally to the handling of numerical and symbolic quantities and includes their storage, retrieval, functional combining and transformation. In telecommunication applications, this includes processing for transmission, reception and switching as well. Switching was the first widespread application of digital technol ogy to telecommunications. The reason is twofold. First, digital processing technology provides flexibility in switch design as well as reduced size, cost and improved means for ensuring reliability. Secondly, it is driven by the ever increasing percentage of data transmission in wireline networks, which encourages integra tion in the switch of data with digital voice and possibly digital video as well. The same requirement for increased data and messaging over the telephone network has spawned the second widespread application, the transmission of low speed data from Fax modems and personal computers. As commonplace as this may appear to the lay public, the technology evolution here has been far more challenging. The same telephone channels which carried 1,200 or 2,400 bits/second two decades ago, now carry over 20,000 bits/second. This accomplishment required major advances in a more sophisticated form of digital processing, that of digital signal processing. Briefly, this is the technology for

VIeWs from tWo enDs of a DramatIc transformatIon

Andrew J. Viterbi October, 1995

[EDITOR’S NOTE: IEEE COMSOC is a strategic partner of RCA. The following article is reprinted by permission courtesy of IEEE COMSOC. This article appeared in the July 2022 edition of IEEE Communications Magazine in the column “Communications History.”]

COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY

converting the conventional analog signal into digital form and processing it with techniques and algorithms which are much more efficient and effective than the analog techniques formerly employed. Two of its main purposes are to reduce the required bandwidth and the required power for accurate transmission.

Digital Satellite communication

Which leads us next to wireless applications where signal pro cessing technology provides even greater benefits. The earliest digital wireless applications were to communication satellites. Initially, these were severely power limited. Signal processing techniques involving improved modulation waveforms, error correcting coding, and the corresponding demodulation and decoding algorithms, provided means for quadrupling data rates or reducing received power requirements by a factor of four or more. More recently satellite communication has become more bandwidth-limited than power-limited as traffic requirements have increased, while space-borne transmitter power and antennas have improved. Yet frequency spectrum has remained limited.

As an example of the ever increasing impact of digital signal processing, consider the geosynchronous communication satel lite acting as a transponder or repeater for video broadcasting. With analog transmission, these relay a single program per satellite transponder (of approximately 30MHz bandwidth) and, in North America, require a receiving antenna over 2 meters in diameter. Today, with digital technology, which includes both source and channel coding, each transponder can support up to ten video programs with receiving antennas less than 50 cm in diameter. Not all this progress has been achieved by digital signal process ing, but a good part of it has. The leading digital satellite broad caster in the USA transmits hundreds of simultaneous programs, using a limited number of transponders. The aggregate downlink data rate is on the order of 1 Gigabit/second, although each small dish can receive and process only about 30 Mbits/second at one time. Theoretically, even without a return uplink, such a prodigious downlink could provide to almost every household in the Western Hemisphere the contents of a million volume library within, at most, a one hour delay. A very low rate, low power request uplink from the receiver could expand offerings almost without limit while reducing delay to seconds. Human priorities and economic reali ties are such that what is offered instead is the usual cable TV pro gramming and a few dozen motion pictures within an hour’s delay. Perhaps greater economic benefit has been derived from similar technological advances which have made possible the hundreds of thousands of very small satellite terminals (VSAT’s) used by a multitude of businesses for messaging and data trans fer among branches and affiliates, or from a similar number of long-distance transportation vehicles equipped with tiny mobile satellite terminals for both position location and messaging through an automated central hub.

the WireleSS univerSe

Though satellites, whether used for broadcasting or for two-way voice and data, constitute a major wireless application, the term “wireless” which was synonymous in earlier times with radio, has become the accepted popular terminology for personal mobile telephones and data terminals. Yet on this centennial of Marconi’s early experiments, we should note that his first com mercial employment of the brand-new art of electromagnetic wave propagation was on board ships, primarily for emergency notification--clearly the precursor of the mobile wireless era, greeted with so much fanfare in modern times. What then dis tinguishes the current frenzied interest in wireless from what has existed for nearly a century? The lay answer might be contained in the word “personal” or the “anytime, anywhere” advertising slogan of a major telecommunication service provider. But to the communication technologist, the basis of such universal ser

vice and what differentiates it from historical precedents is the marriage of wireless and network technologies.

The predominant uses of radio for at least three quarters of its existence have been for broadcasting (one-to-many) and for pointto-point two-way radio (one-to-one) interconnection. Over twenty years ago, the concept of cellular telephony was proposed by the Bell Telephone Laboratories. It represented an almost ideal match ing of the strengths of radio with those of long-distance wireline net works. Inhabited areas are replete with switching centers. Locating a wireless base station at each of the many switching centers limits the needed propagation distance from any mobile to the network, thus reducing transmitted power to levels which are feasible and safe for personal usage. Hence, the cellular concept replaces point-to-point radio by multipoint-to-point (many-to-one) and point-to-multipoint (one-to-many), the “one” being the base station which is assisted and augmented by the existing and reliable wired network. An equally important benefit is the ability to reuse frequencies. In larger metropolitan areas which will soon exceed a million wireless sub scribers, it is inconceivable that the few tens of megahertz allocated to personal telephony could support such a population if each were given his or her own frequency allocation. Even with demand assign ment, the spectrum would be saturated at peak usage periods. But with the cellular approach, base stations, sufficiently separated in dis tance such that propagation losses provide reasonable isolation, can reuse the same frequency band. Thus, with a typical reuse factor of one in every seven cells, one hundred base stations can “reuse” the spectrum on the order of fourteen times and thus expand the number of users supported proportionally. This approach, hereto fore primarily analog, has been remarkably successful in the sheer number of wireless subscribers served, about 10% of the popula tion in the United States and in a few other developed nations. But it is not without flaws. All frequent users of cellular phones have experienced numerous disturbances and even dropouts during calls, not to mention occasional unavailability of service. The most serious degradations are caused by interference of various kinds. The frequency reuse among base stations which greatly increases the numbers simultaneously served, also introduces interference, usually weak and inaudible but occasionally causing intolerable deg radations to the desired signal in a given cell by other base stations which occupy the same frequency as that cell. This happens most often in areas where the electromagnetic waves bearing the signal for the intended receiver encounter serious impediments or reflec tions and refractions off intervening objects such as hills or buildings. This is called shadowing and multipath, respectively, and both cause severe fading of the desired signal. The interfering signals from other base stations with shared frequencies, arriving simultaneously from different directions may not suffer such fading, thus interfering and causing static and even dropouts to occur. More frequently, howev er, dropouts occur as a vehicle or individual moves physically from one cell to another. To provide continuous communication the indi vidual user’s base station, and corresponding frequency assignment, must be switched from one to another cell. Since this must occur at the edge of both the initial cell and that toward which the user is moving, this rather delicate operation, known as handover or hand off, can sometimes go awry, causing the call to be dropped.

So far we have described the more serious drawbacks of the predominantly analog cellular implementation. Can digital tech nology make a significant difference? This depends on how it is applied. Not by simply transferring to this challenging terrestrial wireless environment the digital techniques employed in wire line networks, or even in satellite communications, which enjoy mostly unperturbed line-of-sight propagation free of the terrestrial impediments. But there is a digital communication technology, known generally as “spread spectrum,” which is particularly suit ed to remedying the deficiencies of the cellular terrestrial envi ronment. It has been developed through over a half century of military applications, where interference is often intentional and

COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY

pernicious. Seemingly paradoxically, it combats interference by making the desired signal appear as wideband noise itself, with characteristics which are counter-intuitive in a number of ways. First, in an application with a limited bandwidth allocation for such widespread usage, why would we spread the signal bandwidth well beyond what is actually required to represent the information? This makes sense only because the resulting wideband noise-like signal constitutes sufficiently benign interference that many users and all base stations can share this common spread bandwidth, resulting in effectively universal frequency reuse. By digital signal processing techniques, the desired signal can be extracted, nearly error-free, from all the interference of other users and cells. Ulti mately, an excessive number of users will saturate the spectrum, but not until this number is many times greater than the saturation point of analog technology. The fading effects due to multipath, common in narrowband analog transmission, can also be over come by applying other digital signal processing procedures to the wideband noise-like waveforms. For shadowing, as well as at cell edge, rapid power control of each user’s transmission is nec essary to equalize all users’ received signal powers at the base sta tion. By controlling power according to the minimum necessity of the transmission links, excessive power margins are avoided, thus reducing interference to other users. Minimizing power require ments also increases the usage time of battery-powered personal handsets and minimizes their electromagnetic interference (EMI) to unrelated electronic devices. The uncertainty of handoff can be virtually eliminated by communicating with the user at edge-of-cell simultaneously through two base stations. Time prevents elabora tion and even enumeration of the various digital signal processing techniques employed in this spread spectrum, cellular, personal communication technology. Suffice it to say that the overriding concept is that of universal frequency reuse rendered feasible only through the remarkable advances in solid state device integration and performance. Finally, I observe that with this approach spec trum employment becomes largely self regulatory and its use far more efficient and economical compared to the classical carving of spectrum into small segments to be allocated separately.

leo Satellite netWorkS for ubiquitouS perSonal communication

A tentative first step in this direction has been taken by the United States regulatory body, the Federal Communication Commission, which has allocated about ten megahertz in

common to all approved applicants for low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite networks which employ this spread spectrum digital technology; so far two have been licensed. Why LEO satellites? Because this is the most effective means toward ubiquitous or “anywhere, anytime” communication. For here the base sta tions are effectively floating overhead at a sufficient altitude that far fewer are required, avoiding the blanketing of the earth with base stations which would be vastly under-utilized in sparsely inhabited regions. Inter-satellite interference can be just as seri ous as inter-cellular, and handoffs become much more frequent and complex, making the universal frequency reuse feature of spread spectrum all the more useful.

univerSal WireleSS Service

But can wireless communication become truly universal? Can it make an impact on that half of the world’s population which never placed or received a telephone call? Or on the popula tion of most of mainland Asia which is served by less than 2% of the telephone lines per capita of those serving the inhabi tants of North America and Western Europe?

The answer is decisively in the affirmative if we consider what is required and what might be the alternative. The great est need is for “Plain Old Telephone Service” (POTS), without any pressing requirement for mobility, for data, for call waiting or for the myriad of other features we take for granted. The severe lack of lines just noted is due in part to the vast capital requirements for wireline networks and for their connectivi ty to domiciles. Replacement of copper by optical fiber will not lessen this burden. On the other hand, replacement of all but the backbone wireline connectivity by wireless technology dramatically reduces the required capital investment. Without the mobility requirement, this so-called “Wireless Local Loop,” enhanced greatly by digital signal processing technology, will far sooner and at lower cost interconnect much of the underserved population of the world. The governments of China and of India have recognized this opportunity and are already investing significant resources toward digital wireless network implementation.

Early in the second wireless century, the fundamental need of all humanity for ubiquitous and universal interconnectivity should be realized, thus completing the last task of the monu mental series of achievements which Guglielmo Marconi began.

appenDIx b

three eras of DIgItal WIreless: InnoVatIon, ImplementatIon, exploItatIon

introDuction: eraS anD generationS

The terms “Digital” and “Wireless” came into usage in the 19th Century but were scarcely seen or heard before the beginning of the 20th and they were almost never heard together until the 1950’s. Only then was the combination considered seriously by communication engineers, but it wasn’t until the 1990’s that it had meaning for all but a tiny fraction of the world’s population. Finally, in the two decades of this century the use, indeed the absolute necessity, of the fruits of the combined technology has become recognized almost universally. But the exposure has been in the form of publicity to promote the five decade-long “Generations” of cellular telephony, of which the last four are digital. In con

trast, the evolution of Digital Wireless took place over two centuries and is destined to continue well into the present century and possibly beyond. To describe this evolution, the appropriate terminology is “Eras,” of which only three are discernible. Each has a vaguely defined start time but no end ing. Let us call them: Innovation (I), Implementation (II) and Exploitation (III).

The First Era, Innovation, progressed independently for the two technologies until the middle of the twentieth century, so they should be considered separately. In Eras II and III, the fields are so intertwined as to be inseparable. We shall show that this fusion occurred as a consequence of three dramatic events occurring in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

Armstrong Memorial and Electrical Engineering Distinguished Lecture, Columbia University Andrew J. Viterbi October 15, 2019

COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY

WireleSS innovation era

Of the two technologies, Wireless origins are better defined and the leading contributors are more easily recognized. Elec tromagnetic wave propagation was predicted by the Cam bridge professor, James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. Maxwell, who is regarded as the greatest physicist of the 19th Century, syn thesized the groundbreaking experiments of Michael Faraday into what became four equations linking electric and magnet ic fields, from which the feasibility of electromagnetic wave propagation is readily deduced. It took a quarter century to validate this theoretical prediction by laboratory experimenta tion and measurement. This was accomplished in 1889 by the German academic, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, who declared his success interesting but lacking any practical application. It did not take long to prove Dr. Hertz dramatically incorrect, surpris ingly not by a scientist but by a curious and dedicated tinkerer. The young Italian, Guglielmo Marconi, from his home laborato ry in 1896 demonstrated the feasibility of successful transmis sion over distances of several miles. Unable to convince either investors or government authorities in Italy of the value of his achievement, he turned with the help of his British relatives to funding sources in the UK, including its Postmaster General. Thereby he was able at the beginning of the 20th Century to propagate wireless telegraphy across the Atlantic. One of the first applications was the broadcasting of maritime emergen cies. This was followed by the first commercial service, overseas wireless telegraphy. While this is inherently digital, achieved by the transmission of pulses of energy, this was not the only nor even the principal goal of the early wireless communicators. What interested them most was the broadcasting of speech and music which at the time required continuous wave rather than pulsed signals. This became possible when the primitive cohrer, the receiving device of Marconi’s early experiments, was replaced by vacuum tube “electronic” devices, the diode and triode invented by John Fleming and Lee DeForest. With continuous transmission, speech and sounds can be directly injected onto the transmitted wave by modulating its amplitude (AM). Radio broadcasting made the fortune of Marconi and many others, including David Sarnoff who began as his errand boy at the fledgling wireless telegraph company. It also brought into existence the powerful broadcasting networks which would dominate the industry for the better part the 20th Century, particularly after television mostly replaced radio. An important prior achievement of that period was due to Edwin Howard Armstrong, a military communicator and Columbia University professor whose name honors the current lecture. Unfortunate ly, his discovery and implementation of Frequency Modulation (FM) was hampered and delayed through bitter patent disputes with the commercial interests invested in AM.

Entirely new prospects were opened by the 1947 invention of the Transistor at Bell Labs by Bardeen, Brattain and Shockley. Not only did the solid-state transistor’s size and sturdiness rap idly displace the vacuum tube receiver, but it opened the door to amazing capabilities which came along two decades later through solid-state circuit integration. For the moment though the first significant beneficiary was the portable transistor radio sold by Sony. Many more improvements in technology fol lowed and it was only a few decades until Digital displaced Analog in virtually all communication systems.

Digital innovation era

The origins of digital technology are more vague than those of wireless technology. The millennia-fold use of the (manually oper ated) Abacus still continues in the shops of elderly Asian mer chants. Until fifty years ago, electromechanical adding machines, which could also multiply and divide, were on the desks of many engineers along with the analog slide rule. Both were rendered

obsolete shortly afterward by the early electronic calculators. The modern Digital Era began when Cambridge mathematician Charles Babbage in 1837 created the concept of programmable automatic computing in the form of a machine which he called the “Analytical Engine.” Implemented using only mechanical devic es, he was unable to make it to work. Undeterred, Babbage’s assistant, Lady Ada Lovelace by 1843 had written the first known computer program for the hypothetical machine, for the purpose of computing the terms of the Bernoulli sequence. In 1936, nearly a century later Alan Turing published the general principles of automatic computing in a paper defining the “Universal Machine.”

In the 1930’s a number of digital processing machines were built, some implemented using relays; among these were IBM machines for tabulating census results and other data. The first electronic programmable digital computer was the Eniac at the University of Pennsylvania, which was implemented with vacuum tubes during the last years of WWII. Shortly thereafter tubes were replaced by transistors, of which IBM sold several models, each enormous in size prior to the arrival of solid-state integrated circuits.

A major milestone in the history of digital development was the 1948 publication in the Bell Systems Technical Journal of a pair of papers by a Bell Lab’s mathematician and engineer, Claude E. Shannon, establishing two fundamental limits of digi tal communication and storage. The first, known as the “Source Coding” limit, was the minimum bit rate of a code to repre sent text source material, from which the original text can be recovered precisely. The second, known as “Channel Capaci ty,” established the maximum rate at which digital information can be transmitted over a channel limited in bandwidth and disturbed by interference. These principles which, along with further extensions, form the basis of what has become known as “Information Theory.” This has defined a road map for com munication engineers over the subsequent half century and beyond, which has greatly impacted wireless communication starting over a decade later.

implementation era (ii): unifying forceS

As just demonstrated, the developments of the fields of wireless communication and digital technology progressed independent ly at least until after the middle of the 20th Century. Shannon’s theoretical predictions gave a hint of a possible relationship, but neither the tools nor the incentive to find a common purpose. Both arrived in the late 1950’s and 1960’s propelled by three independent events and their consequences: integrated Cir cuits; Satellites; and the Internet.

integrateD circuitS, the eSSential infraStructure of Digital WireleSS

After the replacement of vacuum tubes by solid-state devices but prior to the 1980’s, most electronic equipment consisted of circuit boards with active and passive devices connected by wires embedded in the boards. With the reduction in size and power consumption of the transistor switches and amplifiers, it became possible to replace the boards by inserting several active and passive devices on a single silicon chip along with the wiring to connect them. This not only reduced size but it simulta neously increased speeds and reduced overall power consump tion. While numerous researchers were involved in this effort in the nineteen sixties, it is generally acknowledged that the first successful integrated circuit (IC) was produced by Jack Kilby, an engineer at Texas Instruments. The degree of integration mea sured by the number of transistors on a single IC was referred to as the “scale of integration.” Hence for IC’s incorporating thou sands, the adopted nomenclature became large-scale Integration (LSI) and going beyond, very large-scale (VLSI). Another team on the forefront of these efforts was led by a trio with unmatched pedigree in solid-state electronics. Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove were among the first employees of

COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY

Shockley Semiconductors when the transistor inventor left Bell Labs to form his independent research laboratory in what was to become Silicon Valley. They did not remain there long because of personality and management issues. They left to form a Divi sion of Fairchild Corporation which was eventually spun off to found Intel Corporation in 1968. Intel became the pioneering leader in IC design and production. Though not by any means its most significant contribution, its early and lasting fame stems from an article by co-founder Gordon Moore published in 1965 in the trade journal Electronics. In it Moore made a prediction that the scale of integration would increase exponentially well into the future. This prediction, colloquially known as “Moore’s Law,” was surprisingly accurate in the numerical rate of growth, at least in the early years. Overall, Intel’s most impactful early breakthrough was the creation of a miniaturized version of the very large and costly computers of the time.

A step back in digital computer development will explain the importance of this achievement. After the early digital comput er industry transitioned from vacuum tubes to solid state, IBM dominated the market for large million-dollar machines. As inte gration began to greatly reduce size and power consumption and consequently cost, a startup company, Digital Equipment Corporation, founded in 1957 by engineers at MIT’s renowned Lincoln Laboratories, produced the first of a new class of com puters known as Minicomputers, reducing cost by an order of magnitude or more. It was predictable that with escalating scale of integration, the entire digital processing capability (minus memory) would eventually fit on a single chip; this became known as the Microprocessor . Though initially a far cry from the capabilities of its larger predecessors, it opened new oppor tunities and markets well beyond the expectations of the Intel technologists involved. One of the first of these was the Per sonal Computer (PC), the precursor of countless applications of inexpensive computing power. Ironically, for a time it also revived the leadership of IBM which had lagged during the Minicomputer period. Early success was accelerated by IBM’s subcontracting of the software Operating System to the recent ly founded Microsoft Corporation. The other successful early PC manufacturer benefitting from VLSI and the microprocessor was also a startup named Apple Corporation.

Though the solid-state revolution was to change the world over the following half century, initially it was a boon mainly for engi neers and scientists and for markets serving the financial, indus trial, governmental and defense communities, a far cry from the massive consumer market of today. Surprisingly, it took the even smaller markets of space and satellites and of data networks to spur progress, particularly toward digital wireless communication.

Space age aS catalySt of the implementation era

Two momentous events took place about ten years apart, in the 1950’s and 1960’s: one with a bang, the other with a whim per. The first, which had an immediate impact, was the Soviet launch of Sputnik, the first artificial earth satellite, in October 1957. The other, developing gradually over decades, were the first timid steps which led to the worldwide network known as the Internet. The surprising Soviet achievement had the imme diate effect of frightening the United States into making the largest scientific R&D expenditures since WWII and inspiring a generation of budding scientists and engineers. Within three months, the U.S. Missile Command had successfully launched a satellite, and shortly thereafter NASA had been established to continue the task; a decade after that American astronauts landed on the moon. In the next few decades numerous com munication satellites were put into geosynchronous orbits by the military to provide connectivity and command and control of forces worldwide. This, along with space exploration, rapidly advanced the technology of wireless digital communication. At

first, traditionalists disputed the rationale for the digital conver sion. While some information, such as text and telemetry data from the spacecraft are inherently digital, the much more prev alent content such as speech and television is continuous and hence analog in nature. So, why then introduce the complexity and cost to convert to digital only to convert back to analog for consumption by the senses of hearing and viewing? Until the 1970’s this skepticism was justifiable based on the weight, power and cost of the two conversions as well as of any digital processing in between. But solid-state integration, which began to seriously accelerate in the 1980’s, rapidly reduced cost to near insignificance. At the same time, particularly for satellite communication, the advantages of digital modem processing far outweighed the costs. These advantages can be measured in terms of decibels of signal-to-noise ratios, which are most critical for satellite and space communication. Since given the extreme propagation distances, the received signal power is attenuated by many orders of magnitude compared to terres trial transmissions. Making up for this attenuation by increasing transmitted power levels would lead to weight increases unsup portable by launch vehicles. On the other hand, digital’s ability to operate at reduced signal-to-noise levels will proportionally mitigate the added attenuation. For example, NASA recognized as early as the 1970’s that with the 6 dB reduction in required signal-to-noise ratios obtained by employing channel coding, spacecraft ranges could be doubled, or transmitter power could be reduced fourfold with proportional launch weight reduction. Similarly, additional efficiencies would result from source cod ing to minimize the number of bits required to faithfully con vert analog speech and video into a digital stream. These gains through digital signal processing are attributable to technology developed in this period by implementing Claude Shannon’s Information Theory principles of the previous decade.

In the 1980’s the progress of digital satellite communica tion was advanced by the launch and operation of a series of geosynchronous satellites known as the “Defense Satellite Communications System” (DSCS). A few commercial ventures also were started in this period, but only digital broadcasting was able to reach a large consumer market of tens of millions of homes after the launch of DirecTV in 1994.

internet, the enDuring enabler of the era

Coincidentally, this was also the period when the Internet began offering to consumers the ability to connect their PC’s to the World Wide Web, with unexpected consequences beyond the imagination of those involved. Its origins lie in the transition from circuit switched networks, the traditional technology of telephone networks, to packet switching with vast improve ment in the efficiency and reliability of data networks. In the late 1960’s ARPANET, an early experiment supported by the Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA), connected a few research institutes situated at universities and Government Laboratories. Contemporarily a small number of other pack et-switched networks in the US, UK and France were formed, spurring the initiative for interconnection. DARPA in the 1980’s facilitated the move by contracting the consulting firm, BBN, to devise a protocol suite known by its initials TCP/IP to intercon nect the disparate networks, which was thereafter called the Internet. Development and management was then turned over to the National Science Foundation (NSF), which expanded the membership to a larger number of government sanctioned non-commercial institutions. When its role terminated in 1995, the Internet was opened to all comers through Internet Service Providers (ISP’s). Among the very early usage of the Internet, both in the restricted period and after it became broadly avail able, was for electronic mail (email), drastically reducing reli ance on the postal system for first-class mail.

COMMUNICATIONS HISTORY

In the meantime, a researcher at the European Nuclear Research Center (CERN) produced a system, known as the World Wide Web (WWW), for identifying and accessing docu ments, and eventually “Applications” anywhere on the Internet. This also enabled the creation of search engines by a number of commercial ventures, the most successful of which was that of Google, which employed linear algebra to rank the poten tial locations of the target of the search. Numerous special ized search engines were created for specific products and services, for purposes from retailing to finding one’s mate. Most impactful, for both good purposes and evil, were the chatrooms serving groups of like-minded individuals. The Twitter microblogging portal gave all Internet users the ability to address an indiscriminate number of potential followers with their latest thoughts. Data hosting services (the “Cloud”) were established to provide users the opportunity to alleviate their data storage requirements and to securely retrieve them from any terminal. Until the 21st Century, the vast majority of all these capabilities required at least a PC accessing the wired Internet. Now digital services could go wireless.

riSe of the mobile WireleSS internet

Starting in the 1980’s, mobile telephony became an expensive offering for a relatively small number of subscribers in the U.S. The wireless network design was based on R&D at the AT&T Bell Laboratories. It was implemented as a collection of contiguous cells each having a base station antenna at its center, with each base station connected by cable or point-to-point microwave to its neighboring cells and ultimately to the worldwide wired tele phone grid. As a user travelled from a cell to its neighbor, the call would be handed off between base stations. The early wireless user connections to and from the base stations employed the analog two-way FM radios which had been employed by the mil itary since WWII. Besides being heavy and bulky, it was subject to a number of impediments including multipath and other-user interference, as well as dropped calls in transition between cells. Digital service began in the 1990’s in Europe and North Amer ica with competing systems based on experience with digital satellite communication systems. This was labelled 2G for 2nd generation. Besides attempting to mitigate the disadvantages of analog transmission they also sought to expand the user capac ity per cell. The European system, known as GSM, shared spec trum among users according to time division multiple access (TDMA) and achieved a tripling of capacity compared to analog (1G); the competitive 2G North American system, using code division multiple access (CDMA), exceeded 1G capacity more than tenfold. For the 3G cellphones of the decade beginning in 2000, worldwide standards were adopted based on CDMA, with further increases in capacity. During that first decade of the new century, it became clear that digital source material had exceeded conventional speech and analog video. In fact, with digitized speech and video, as well as all streaming data sourc es, the Internet was becoming the transmission medium for all forms of communication. Consequently, 4G was developed for the present decade with the goal of efficiently accommodating a wide variety of digital sources. The resulting standard became known as “Long Term Evolution” (LTE). All the progress in the three-decade digital evolution (2G to 4G) resulted from new sys tem concepts whose implementation was made possible by the solid-state integration curve predicted by “Moore’s Law.”

Even more impressive is how in this period the modest mobile phone was transformed into the mobile gateway to information, knowledge and most forms of human activity. The

so-called “smartphone” is in fact a mobile wireless terminal for information and communication of every kind. Not only is its nature completely transformed, but market penetration num bers are staggering. In 2018, just under 100 million Desktop PC’s were sold, while terminals with wireless mobility vastly outnumbered these. It is estimated that worldwide over 3 billion wireless mobile terminals are presently in use, fast approach ing half of the planet’s population. Digital Wireless has indeed arrived, transforming all our lives!

the exploitation era (iii)

The Merriam Webster dictionary, among others, gives a dual definition for the transitive verb “exploit”: 1. To make productive use of 2. To make use of—unfairly for one’s own advantage Both definitions apply here, each for a different goal and action.

The Exploitation Era, which began approximately at the turn of the 21st Century is still too young to be fully evaluated. Yet, it has already impacted people and society to such a degree that it begs analysis. From a strictly technical viewpoint, the efforts and achievements of the first and second Eras were far greater than those of the third, where the contribution involves conceiving of a need, solving the means to meet the need, usu ally through software, and building an organization to market, distribute and service the solution. Comparison with the protag onists of the previous eras is revealing. Scientists and inventors until the middle of the last century worked alone or in small teams and so could be easily identified. Many of the protago nists of the Innovation Era were in their time revered. In con trast, success in the Implementation Era required large teams, usually but not always led by technologists, who with a few notable exceptions were not widely known. Yet the Exploitation Era’s founders and leaders, for the most part non-technologists, rapidly rose to “rock star” status exalted by the financial and even the popular media.

The undisputed success stories of this Third Era have been retailing (Amazon), search (Google), and social media (Face book, Twitter et al.), all bolstered by advertising revenue and by on-line data storage (the “Cloud”). Usually added to these are the mass application enablers (Microsoft and Apple). Notewor thy is the fact that most of the corporate players of this era did not exist prior to this century and none existed before the last quarter of the previous century. The picture is not complete, however, without recognition of the damage to individuals and to society which accompany the services and benefits on which we have grown dependent in this post-millennial Exploitation Era. Generally, the risks fall into three categories:

(a) Loss of Privacy;

(b) Individual victimization by fraud, theft, blackmail and shaming;

(c) Collective victimization by governments, foreign and domestic, or by extremists through dissemination of false hoods and biases, which influence elections, thereby exploiting and damaging democracies.

Countermeasures can be provided by governments through regulation and by service providers through encryption and surveillance, but ultimately individuals need to learn to exercise care and common sense to avoid becoming a victim. Every new advance in technology brings new risks and dangers. In the last century it was the automobile and air travel. Yet humans pre dominantly accepted the risk in order to reap the reward. And ultimately, as with nuclear energy, “once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t put it back in.”

RCA TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM

Saturday, November 19, 2022 Atlanta, GA

7:30 a.m.

2022 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AGENDA

ALL TIMES IN EASTERN DAYLIGHT SAVINGS TIME (EDT)

Continental Breakfast for all attendees / Zoom link opens

Welcome and Introductions

8:00 – 8:15 a.m.

8:15 – 8:55 a.m.

Presented by Prof. Jim Breakall

“From Maxwell to Nanotechnology”

Presented by Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia

8:55 – 9:35 a.m.

“A Look at Current Lower Ionospheric Sensing Techniques and a Movement Towards a Unified Approach” Presented by David Richardson

9:35 – 10:15 a.m.

“Antennas and Arrays for Future 5G Systems” Presented by Prof. Nima Ghalichechian

10:15 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Break

10:30 – 11:10 a.m.

11:10 – 11:50 a.m.

“Big Problems Solved for Small Satellites” Presented by Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen

“The Current State of Satellite Security” Presented by Rachel “RC” Jones

11:50 – 1:25 p.m. Lunch Break

1:25 – 2:05 p.m.

2:05 – 2:45 p.m.

“RCA Youth Activities” Presented by Carole Perry

“From High Schooler to Ramblin’ Wreck: Youth in Amateur Radio from the Perspective of a Young Woman in Engineering” Presented by Audrey McElroy

2:45 – 3:00 p.m. Break

3:00 – 3:40 p.m.

3:40 – 4:20 p.m.

4:20 – 5:00 p.m.

5:00 – 5:10 p.m.

“Designing A Scalable 5G-Enabled Connected Intelligent Edge” Presented by Divyam Mishra

“The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, “HAARP”, a Brief History and Engineering Review” Presented by Steve Floyd

“Advanced Packaging for 6G Communications”

Presented by Prof. Mahhavan Swaminathan

Wrap Up Presented by Prof. Jim Breakall

SCHEDULE FOR THE WEEKEND

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 18

Morning: Tour of Georgia Tech Electrical Engineering/ Communications Lab Spaces

Afternoon: Free time. We encourage you to visit local sites such as the Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historical Park, the Georgia Aquarium, Coke World, and Antebellum Trail.

Evening: Informal happy hour in Twenty-Two Storys (lobby bar at Hyatt Regency) 7-9 p.m.

Women in Wireless networking 7-8 p.m. in the Roswell Room at the Hyatt Regency

SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19

All Day: Technical Symposium 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

Cocktail Hour: 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.

Awards Banquet: 7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 20

Free Time / Departures

HOST

Prof. Jim Breakall, WA3FET, received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Penn State University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Applied Physics from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, and has over 45 years of experience in numerical electromagnetics and antennas. He was a Project Engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA, and an Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPGS), Monterey, CA. Presently he is a Full Professor of Electrical Engineering at Penn State.

Dr. Breakall began his career as a graduate student at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico working on antenna analysis and radar probing of the ionosphere. At LLNL, he and his group worked on the development of the Numerical Electromagnetics Code (NEC), the first sophisticated antenna modeling program. Other significant projects that he has worked on were the designs of the HAARP facility in Alaska, both HF facilities at Arecibo, and the Kinstar low profile AM broadcast antenna. He (electrical) and Tim Duffy

(mechanical) designed the very popular Ham Radio Skyhawk Yagi antenna, and he is the inventor of the Optimized Wideband Antenna (OWA).

Dr. Breakall is also a life senior member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, IEEE Broadcast Technology Society, Eta Kappa Nu, International Union of Radio Science Commission B, IEEE Wave Propagation and Standards Committee, has been an Associate Editor for the Radio Science journal, and served as an Arecibo Observatory Users and Scientific Advising Committee Member.

He has been a frequent speaker at the Dayton Hamvention Antenna Forum and has built two major contest superstations, K3CR and KC3R, near Penn State, and WP3R, on his farm in Puerto Rico near the big Arecibo dish. He has graduated numerous graduate students and received many awards over the years.

In 2017, Dr. Breakall was awarded the prestigious Sarnoff Citation from the RCA. He was elected as a Director to the Board in 2018 and 2020 and is the Co-Chairman of the 2020 and Chairman of the 2021 Technical Symposium. He also serves on the RCA Scholarship Committee.

ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

From Maxwell to Nanotechnology

Prof. Akhlesh Lakhtakia, Evan Pugh University professor and Charles Godfrey Binder professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at The Pennsylvania State University.

James Clerk Maxwell was the first great unifier in physics: electricity and magnetism were unified with optics through his eponymous equations. Though those equations were supposed hold for bulk matter (in addition to free space), he also had a vision of the microscopic scale. Just two decades after him, electromagnetism was provided first with a microscopic basis and then a quantum-mechanical interpretation. Eleven decades later, electromagnetic phenomenon at the nanometer scale constitutes a vigorous area of research, increasingly so with multifunctional materials with nanoscale architecture.

Speaker Biography

Akhlesh Lakhtakia is Evan Pugh University professor and Charles Godfrey Binder professor in the Department of Engineering Science and Mechanics at The Pennsylvania State University. Elected a fellow of eight learned societies, he currently works on: electromagnetic fields in complex and nanomaterials, thin-film solar cells, biologically inspired design, and forensic science.

A Look at Current Lower Ionospheric Sensing Techniques and a Movement Towards a Unified Approach

David Richardson, Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the LF Radio Lab at Georgia Tech.

The lower ionosphere, in particular the D region (60 - 90 km), plays a crucial role in over-the-horizon communications and radar systems. Additionally, the ionosphere as a whole is heavily influenced by solar activity, so understanding the ionosphere’s electrical properties can provide useful insights into phenomenon occurring within the sun. Unfortunately, direct measurements of the lower ionosphere are difficult. High altitude balloons pop at roughly 40 km, while satellites cannot reach below approximately 160 km due to increased atmospheric drag. However, very low (VLF, 3 - 30 kHz) and low (LF, 30 - 300 kHz) frequency radio waves reflect efficiently from the D region, allowing researchers to use these waves as a diagnostic tool through remote sensing techniques. The two dominant sources of VLF and LF waves, VLF transmitters and lightning, have vastly different properties and propagation characteristics. VLF transmitters are high power, narrowband, and temporally consistent sources that are located in a few key points around the globe. In contrast, lightning is broadband, and both spatially and temporally random. A network of VLF sources and receivers can in principle provide high time and space resolution of the D region. However, models exist that

leverage one of these models, but not both together. My work explores recent advances in both transmitter-only and lightning-only models to work towards a unified model. In particular, I leverage modern signal processing techniques, such as tomography, to combine transmitter and lightning signals into a single model of electron density.

Speaker Biography

David Richardson is a Ph.D. candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the LF Radio Lab at Georgia Tech. He has published in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics and has presented at numerous conferences and workshops. He was recently awarded the Outstanding Student Presentation Award at AGU’s 2021 Fall Meeting. His work focuses on modelling the lower ionosphere, with a particular focus on modelling D-region electron density. David uses a combination of more traditional signal processing techniques, such as tomography, as well as more data driven techniques in the form of machine learning. In his free time, David is an avid mountain biker and cyclist.

Antennas and Arrays for Future 5G Systems

Dr. Ghalichechian is an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology

Today’s wireless communications systems operate mostly in the microwave bands, which have become a crowded and limited resource. Yet significantly larger bandwidth is available in the mmWave band of 30 to 300 GHz, offering the potential of huge increases in data rates for next generation devices. This talk will review the state-of-the-art in antenna and array research for future mmWave systems. Furthermore, recent research and progress made at Prof. Ghalichechian’s mmWave Antennas and Arrays Laboratory at Georgia Tech is presented.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Ghalichechian is an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was an Assistant Professor at The Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus, from 2017 to 2021. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland-College Park in 2007. Prof. Ghalichechian is currently an Associate Editor of the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters. He is a recipient of the 2018 College of Engineering Lumley Research Award at OSU, 2019 NSF CAREER Award, 2019 US Air Force Faculty Summer Fellowship Award, and 2020 ECE Excellence in Teaching Award at OSU. His research interests include mm-Wave (30-300 GHz) antennas and arrays, 5G and beyond antenna systems, reconfigurable antennas and components, and on-chip arrays.

ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Big Problems Solved for Small Satellites

Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen, founder and CEO of Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc., physicist, radio astronomer, and innovator/inventor

In the coming years, a true ‘artificial ionosphere’ will be achieved globally with the advent of thousands of low earth orbit telecommunications satellites (LEO smallsats). This revolution is not without peril, as these tiny satellites will be difficult to track by radar; pose issues with solar panel powering; and will fill the sky with dim visual tracks that corrupt astronomical observations.

All of these have solutions that invoke novel wireless RF and components and optimization. Here I describe these solutions, which include aperture engine dual use surfaces for solar panels/ antennas; metasurface patches (smallsat ‘license plates’) for increased radar cross section detectability; astronomical tracking optimization to avoid smallsat image contamination to celestial research data. In addition, a novel radar-based detection method is described to detect satellites which are deliberately cloaked as to avoid or thwart detection.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Nathan “Chip” Cohen is the founder and CEO of Fractal Antenna Systems, Inc. - is a physicist, radio astronomer, and innovator/inventor. Dr Cohen possesses a broad scope of knowledge across many fields, which has led him down many roads throughout his career. He is a PhD; he is a former professor of Science and Engineering; he spent time as a Quant trader on Wall Street; he studied astrophysics under Frank Drake; he is a songwriter in the music business; and is a published author. Dr Cohen is perhaps most notable for his contributions to field of electromagnetics being responsible for over one hundred technical papers and eighty-eight patents. He is the inventor of fractal antennas and fractal metamaterials, and the invisibility cloak, holding the source patents in these fields. Fractal Antenna Systems was founded on this breakthrough innovation, and Dr. Cohen has successfully directed the company for over 20 years.

The Current State of Satellite Security

Rachel “RC” Jones, Ph.D. student at University of North Dakota’s Aerospace Sciences program focus ing on the cybersecurity of space assets, analyst for the Advanced Technologies & Analysis Division at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL).

How have concerns for satellite security changed in the past decade? In an attempt to capture some of the changes in space professionals’ opinions on the cybersecurity of space assets, results from a decadal survey will be compared. In addition, the presentation will discuss the history of some of the most publicized space satellite security indents and review the current regulatory bodies addressing concerns for commercial satellites (New NIST draft publication).

Speaker Biography

Rachel “RC” Jones is a Ph.D. student at the University of North Dakota’s Aerospace Sciences program focusing on the cybersecurity of space assets. She is currently an analyst for the Advanced Technologies and Analysis Division at Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). RC has a strong background in space science and cybersecurity. Her current endeavors are founded on an extensive academic background with a BA in Political Science from LaGrange College, BS in Computer Networks and Cybersecurity from the University of Maryland Global Campus, an MSc in Space Management from the International Space University in Strasbourg, France, and a MA in Intelligence with a cyber focus from the American Military University. Previously she supported the US Air Force for six years as a civil servant. Her current research focus areas are cybersecurity of operational technologies, space studies, and emerging technologies. Andy Maxymillian,

ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

RCA Youth Activities

Carole Perry WB2MGP, RCA Youth Activities Chairperson

The review of events for our RCA Youth Activities included both ZOOM presentations and in person events. Several candidates were interviewed for the “Young Ham Lends a Hand” contest; and two young hams were chosen as winners for their volunteerism efforts. In February, an RCA Young Achiever was showcased for his presentation at my Youth Forum in Orlando, Florida at Hamcation.

At Hamcation the winner of the 2022 Carole Perry Educator of the Year contest was streamed in from the Netherlands as he was unable to accept the award from us in person. At the Dayton Hamvention in May, I moderated the 33rd annual Youth Forum and Instructors’ Forum. I featured 7 RCA Young Achievers who gave outstanding presentations. We continued to donate support and supplies to start up radio youth groups and to classroom teachers teaching technology via the fun of amateur radio.

Speaker Biography

Carole Perry, WB2MGP, worked as an executive secretary in an electronics manufacturing company, Rapid Circuit Inc. for 16 years. In 1980, when the company relocated, she returned to Intermediate School 72 in Staten Island, NY where she worked until her retirement in 2004, teaching “Introduction to Amateur Radio” to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders for almost 30 years. Carole wrote the curriculum for “Introduction to Amateur Radio” a very successful program which had 950 students a year coming through it.

Carole Perry is the recipient of the prestigious 1987 Dayton Ham of The Year Award, the 1987 ARRL Instructor of The Year Award, the 1991 Marconi Wireless Memorial Award, the 1993 QCWA President’s Award, the 1996 Radio Club of America (RCA) Barry Goldwater Amateur Radio Award, the 2009 RCA President’s Award, the 2012 RCA President’s Award, and the 2015 Vivian Carr Award for Women in Radio. She is the winner of the 2016 SOAR (Sisterhood of Amateur Radio) Legacy award for Pioneering Women in Amateur Radio, and the 2016 recipient of the YASME Foundation Award for Excellence. In 2017 she was the winner of the Brooklyn College Milton Fisher Second Harvest Award for her volunteer work with young people and technology, around the world. In May 2018 Carole was inducted into the “CQ Amateur Radio Hall of Fame.” In July 2018 “QST” magazine, Carole was the featured member in “Member Spotlight.”

From High Schooler to Ramblin’ Wreck: Youth in Amateur Radio From the Perspective of a Young Woman in Engineering

Audrey McElroy, KM4BUN, first-year Computer Engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Amateur Radio is a practice that is wonderful and unmatched in its ability to allow self-sufficient communication around the globe and for emergency communications when all else fails, but if we want this art to continue into the foreseeable future, we must encourage the younger generations to become involved. We need to encourage more youth into the wonderful world of Amateur Radio to not only carry on the traditions and principles learned from generations past but also to forge new paths for amateur radio in our fast-paced digital world. This presentation explores activities and events made for youth that not only encourage them into the world of amateur radio but also the world of STEM. From hosting ARISS events to just inviting youth to participate in radio contests, there are many ways for schools and local amateur radio clubs to involve youth of all ages in Amateur Radio. An overview of various youth-led projects involving high-altitude balloon launches will be discussed, such as “The Study of the Effects of High Altitude Conditions on the Life Cycle, Size, and myo-3 Transcription of C.elegans“as well as projects hosted by the prominent youth-oriented organization “Youth on the Air” during their summer camps over the past two years.

Speaker Biography

Audrey McElroy is a first-year Computer Engineering student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also involved in amateur radio and her Extra Class callsign is KM4BUN, earned when she was fifteen. She has combined her STEM Biotech, Physics, and advanced Calculus knowledge with Amateur Radio to develop many experiments such as decoding the ISS SSTV transmission using her own automated satellite ground tracking station as well as developing high altitude balloon experiments that have reached the edge of space, and one that orbited the globe 4.5 times, all while maintaining periodic telemetry. She is in demand as an SME on High Altitude balloons by numerous organizations. At the request of the Southeastern VHF Society, she published a white paper detailing her experimentation with buoyancy and high-altitude balloons that transmit telemetry via WSPR and APRS utilizing the HF bands. Audrey is the first recipient of the RCA Young Achievers scholarship and has had the opportunity to present her experimentation at several conferences such as the American Institute of Aeronautics and Aerospace (aiaa.org/ ) as well as several Amateur Radio virtual podcast events to a global audience. She has also received a scholarship from the Amateur Radio Relay League provided by Amateur Radio Digital Communications.

ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

Designing A Scalable 5G-Enabled Connected Intelligent Edge

Divyam Mishra, Artificial Intelligence engineer in the machine learning group for neural network hardware acceleration at Qualcomm

Two integral components that are fueling future technological innovations are Artificial Intelligence and 5G. While both technologies are being used in their own respective spaces, the proliferation of 5G capable agents such as smart phones, Internet of Things (IoT) Devices, Smart City grids, and Autonomous Vehicles will need to be burgeoned by AI-defined 5G Base Stations. This talk will go over the scalability challenges that come with distributed intelligence in the context of 5G. In the process, the talk will discuss potential solutions for designing a scalable, low-latency 5G system with a focus on augmented spectrum utilization and a new state-of-the-art method of partitioning online training of end-user facing neural networks across three tiers of compute: End-User Compute, Base Station Compute, and Cloud-centric Compute. How do we efficiently scale intelligence across different tiers of compute in the 5G ecosystem? How do we build a 5G enabled connected intelligent edge system that scales intelligence across many critical application scenarios?

Speaker Biography

Divyam Mishra has been drawn to electronics and technology from a young age ever since he became involved with his local amateur radio club. He was given opportunities from a young age to present at the Dayton Hamvention Youth Forum in 2014 and the RCA Tech Symposium in 2015. With a background in Artificial intelligence (AI), hardware & software technologies, and signal processing, he believes in fusing together the latest technologies to solve complex problems. A proven track record at premier research institutes like Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL), and Qualcomm AI has made him eager to apply his experience and knowledge in different domains. Divyam is currently an Artificial Intelligence engineer in the machine learning group for neural network hardware acceleration at Qualcomm. He strives to continue expanding his breadth of knowledge. Divyam graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical & Computer Engineering and a minor in Computer Science from Georgia Tech in spring of 2021.

The High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, “HAARP”, A Brief History and Engineering Review

Floyd, Chief RF Systems Design Engineer for HAARP working at APTI/BAE Systems

The HAARP Research Station is a state-of-the-art ionospheric research project located in Alaska and was jointly funded by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Designed and built by a Washington, DC based APTI/BAE Systems team, its purpose is to analyze the Earth’s ionosphere and investigate the potential for developing ionospheric enhancement technology for radio communications and surveillance. The HAARP facility was built in three stages starting in 1993, research operations began in 1996, and was completed in 2007. In 2015, the HAARP program and all assets were officially transferred to the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), and it continues to operate today.

The most prominent instrument at the HAARP Research Station is the Ionospheric Research Instrument (IRI), a 180-antenna tower phased array, and 180 individual radio transmitter systems, operating in the high frequency (HF) band with an effective radiated power of 5 Gigawatts. The HAARP IRI is recognized as one of the highest-powered HF transmitting systems in the world and is used to temporarily excite a limited area of the ionosphere for scientific study. Other instruments at the facility include VHF and UHF radars, a fluxgate magnetometer, a Digi-sonde (an ionosphere sounding device), an induction magnetometer, and low light CCD camera optics systems which are all used to study the physical processes that occur in the excited ionosphere region. The HAARP facility also has its own 15-megawatt diesel engine-based power generation plant, and a modern operations center.

The HAARP program is recognized as a highly successful research project overcoming many unique and unusual radio engineering design challenges. This presentation will provide an inside view describing how the HAARP systems were designed, constructed, installed, and operated with emphasis on the unique engineering aspects of constructing this modern research facility. Examples of scientific research conducted at the facility will also be presented.

Speaker Biography

Steve Floyd is a BSEE graduate of Virginia Tech, a former student DJ and Chief Engineer at WUVT-FM in Blacksburg, VA, and obtained his MSEE (with emphasis on RF and Microwave Engineering and Radar Systems Engineering) from The Johns Hopkins University in 1991. He became a licensed Amateur Radio operator at 12 years old and is active as W4YHD. Steve began his professional career designing high power RF communications and Radar systems at E-Systems Inc., then became Chief RF Systems Design Engineer for HAARP working at APTI/BAE Systems. As Chief Engineer for the HAARP facility he was responsible for all hardware systems designs, equipment

Steve

ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES

installation, and site operations until 2014 when he became a part time consultant to the program. His current responsibilities are primarily involved in the design of high power SDR based Radar systems, including EW and Communications systems, at Ultra Electronics. Steve is also active in the broadcast industry, he is an SBE member of DC Chapter 37, and has a lifelong love of radio broadcasting and amateur radio.

Advanced Packaging for 6G Communications

Madhavan Swaminathan, Professor, Director, 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC); John Pippin Chair in Microsystems Packaging & Electromagnetics, School of Electrical and Com puter Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology School of Materials Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology

The current buzz in the semiconductor industry is heterogeneous integration. As the industry moves forward with several applications being data driven, there is a clear trend towards the convergence of computing, communications, sensing, and control technologies. Packaging can play a significant role in enabling the convergence of these technologies.

On the communication side emerging 5G mmWave frequencies are projected to support enormous bandwidth with 1-10Gps data speeds. Active research is ongoing to increase the data speeds even more by moving to higher frequencies in the sub-THz frequency range namely, 6G. With a broad range of frequencies to support, advanced packaging solutions are required. This presentation addresses the needs for 6G communication along with a review of the start of the art for package level integration. The progress made on glass interposer-based solutions at Georgia Tech’s Packaging Research Center will be discussed along with future needs as we progress towards subTHz frequencies.

Speaker Biography

Madhavan Swaminathan is the John Pippin Chair in Microsystems Packaging & Electromagnetics in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Professor in ECE with a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), and Director of the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC), Georgia Tech (GT) (http://www.prc.gatech.edu). He also serves as the Site Director for the NSF Center for Advanced Electronics through Machine Learning (CAEML) and Theme Leader for Heterogeneous Integration, at the SRC/DARPA JU MP ASCENT Center. Prior to joining GT, he was with IBM working on packaging for supercomputers.

He is the author of 550+ refereed technical publications and holds 31 patents. He is the primary author and co-editor of three books and five book chapters, founder, and co-founder of two start-up companies, and founder of the IEEE Conference on Electrical Design of Advanced Packaging and Systems (EDAPS),

a premier conference sponsored by the IEEE Electronics Packaging Society (EPS).

Prof. Swaminathan is an IEEE Fellow and has served as the Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) society.

He received his MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Syracuse University in 1989 and 1991, respectively.

RCA Mentorship Program

The new RCA Mentorship Program is designed to pair RCA members together, providing opportunities for young professionals to learn and emulate the experience of more seasoned RCA members. Several mentoring pairs have already been formed and more are being formed. Learn more on the RCA website.

radioclubofamerica.org/mentor-program

A way to share your knowledge and experience, or learn from the best!

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY

ADVANCED WIRELESS MARKETING

Jack Armstrong, President

200 Warren Road Cockeysville, MD, 21030

PHONE: (443) 823-5100 jack@advancedwirelessmarketing.com www.advancedwirelessmarketing.com

Manufacturer’s Representative

ANDERSON-INTELLI-SMART BATTERY DIVISION

KIRMUSS & ASSOCIATES, LLC

Charles Kirmuss, Founder, Principal 51 West 84th Ave., Suite 301 Denver, CO 80260

PHONE: (303) 263-6353 ckirmuss@frontier.net www.anderson-intellismartbattery.com

Manufacturer of OE and replacement batteries for the two way radio industry. iNTELLi Smart Battery™ technology at lower cost than traditional OE standard batteries.

Would you like to be listed in the next issue of the Proceedings?

Contact RCA at (612) 405-2012 or Amy@radioclubofamerica.org to reserve space.

ANTIQUE WIRELESS ASSOCIATION

Robert Hobday, Director David Bart, Board of Directors PO Box 421 Bloomfield, NY 14469

PHONE: (847) 542-9873 jbart1964@gmail.com www.antiquewireless.org

Preserving the Past for Posterity

BLUE WING

Andy Maxymillian, PMP, Principal Consultant

235 Summer Hill Drive Gilbertsville, PA 19525

PHONE: (610) 473-2171 CELL: (610) 316-2660 FAX: (610) 473-2536 andrew.maxymillian@bluewing.com www.bluewing.com

Consultant Services

KIRMUSSAUDIO DIV OF KIRMUSS & ASSOCIATES, LLC

Charles Kirmuss, Founder, Principal 51 West 84th Ave., Suite 301 Denver, Co. 80260

PHONE: (303) 263-6353 FAX: (303) 862-7170 ckirmuss@frontier.net www.kirmussaudio.com

CAPITAL AREA COMMUNICATIONS

Stephen J. Shaver, Project Manager 4120 Swatara Drive Harrisburg, PA, 17113

PHONE: (717) 561-0800 CELL: (717) 645-0086 FAX: (717) 561-9805 steves@cacradio.com www.cacradio.com

Wireless Communication Systems Solutions Provider

INFINITY ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES/WORLDWIDE TECHNOLOGIES DIRECT

A DIV. OF KIRMUSS & ASSOCIATES, LLC, SINCE 1979

Charles Kirmuss, Founder, Principal 51 West 84th Ave., Suite 301 Denver, Co. 80260

PHONE: (303) 263-6353 ckirmuss@frontier.net www.wwtechnologiesdirect.com Radio pioneer, Director of RCA and Rampart Search & Rescue: Custom solutions & products for the Public Safety, Search & Rescue and Military markets. Proud supporter & sponsor of RCA’s Youth Program.

LEONARDO

William P. Fredrickson 11300 W. 89th Street Overland Park, KS 66214

PHONE: (913) 495-2614 CELL: (913) 909-4492 Bill.fredrickson@ leonardocompany-us.com www.leonardocc.com

Land Mobile Radio Manufacturer: DMR, P25, Tetra

PANTHER PINES CONSULTING

John Facella, P.E., BSEE, MBA, Principal

PHONE: (978) 799-8900 pantherpinesconsulting@gmail.com www.pantherpinesconsulting.com

Communications & Management Consulting

BUSINESS & PROFESSIONAL DIRECTORY

RADIORESOURCE MEDIA GROUP

Paula A. Nelson-Shira, Owner 7108 S. Alton Way, Building H Centennial, CO, 80112

PHONE: (330) 792-2390 x112 FAX: (330) 792-2391 pnelson-shira@RRMediaGroup.com RRMediaGroup.com

Information leader on wireless communications since 1984.

RFI AMERICAS

Sean Johnson, President 2023 Case Pkwy Twinsburg, OH, 44087

PHONE: (330) 486-0706 x302 CELL: (330) 541-6585 FAX: (330) 486-0705 sean.johnson@rfi.com.au www.rfiamericas.com

Manufacturer of antennas and RF conditioning equipment for LMR

RLA COMMUNICATIONS ENGINEERING, LLC

Robert A. Lopez, P.E., President 8305 Bergenline Avenue #9 North Bergen, NJ 07047

PHONE: (973) 449-5249 rlopez@rlacommunications.com www.rlacommunications.com

A communications engineering consulting company serving public safety and commercial wireless industries.

ROYAL COMMUNICATIONS

INTERNATIONAL, INC.

Maggie Lynch, President 3135 Coachman Ct. Oceanside, CA 92056

PHONE: (760) 529-9518 sales@royal-communications.com royalcominc.com

Specializing in the sales and service of Barrett High Frequency, Single Sideband transceivers that are dependable and easy to use.

TOWER INNOVATIONS, INC.

Bruce R. McIntyre, President 107 Dunbar Ave., Suite E Oldsmar, FL 34677

PHONE: (813) 818-8766 CELL: (727) 439-3683 FAX: (813) 925-0999 bruce@towerinnovationsinc.com www.towerinnovactionsinc.com Wireless consulting, Communications structures

TSR CONSULTING ®

Dr. Theodore S. Rappaport, P.E., Ph.D PO BOX 888 Riner, VA 24149

Technical consulting, engineering and design services in the field of wired and wireless communications systems, equipment and devices.

MASSIVELY BROADBAND ®

TWR

Lauren Libby, International President

300 Greyson Drive Cary NC 27511

PHONE: (719) 331-7051 llibby@twr.org www.twr.org

RF and Digital Content to 190 Countries in 230 languages every day

UTILITY TELECOM CONSULTING GROUP

George R. Stoll, President 9850 S. Maryland Pkwy Las Vegas, NV, 89183

PHONE: (303) 840-2878 CELL: (303) 475-0414 FAX: (303) 840-1129 george.stoll@utcg.com www.utcg.com Consulting Engineers

WIRELESS TOWERS, INC.

Larry Shaefer, President 115 N. Walker St. Angleton, TX 77515

PHONE: (713) 522-7000 CELL: (713) 526-8000 Lshaefer@sbcglobal.net www.wireless-towers.com Texas Tower Site Leasing

RCA CALENDAR EVENTS

CALENDAR

Visit the event calendar on the RCA website for the most up-to-date event information.

RCA EVENTS

INDUSTRY EVENTS

AGL VIRTUAL SUMMIT

November 10, 2022

2022 RCA BANQUET AND TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM November 19, 2022 Atlanta

IWCE 2023 March 27–30, 2023 Las Vegas, NV

CONNECTIVITY EXPO

May 8–10, 2023 New Orleans, LA MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS: CONNECTED IMPACT

Feb 27 – Mar 2, 2023 Barcelona, Spain

With our new online membership application it’s easier than ever to get involved!

RCA members include inventors, scientists, industry professionals, members of the press, the FCC, government agencies, and world class amateur operators. We were there at the dawn of radio history and are committed to keeping our members up to date on the latest in wireless technology. RCA believes in the future of the industry and your membership will help us with the important work of encouraging the next generation of wireless pioneers and entrepreneurs.

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