RCA TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM Saturday, November 20, 2021 Virtual
2021 TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM AGENDA ALL TIMES IN CENTRAL TIME ZONE. 9:00 a.m. - Welcome Prof. Jim Breakall WA3FET, Professor of Engineering at Penn State University, and Tim Duffy K3LR, CEO of DX Engineering 9:15 – 10:00 a.m. - “The HF Renaissance in the US Army” Presented by Prof. Col. Stephen Hamilton KJ5HY, Chief of Staff and Technical Director of the Army Cyber Institute – United States Military Academy West Point 10:00 – 10:45 a.m. - “The 1921 Transatlantic Test” Presented by Frank Donovan W3LPL, (Retired) General Dynamics Corporation 10:45 – 11:00 a.m. - Break 11:00 – 11:45 a.m. - Progress Report on Youth Activities Presented by Carole Perry WB2MGP, RCA Youth Activities Chairperson 11:45 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. - “Around the World 4.5 Times: An empirical examination of HF propagation from an orbiting High-Altitude Balloon” Presented by Audrey McElroy KM4BUN, RCA Young Achiever 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. - Lunch Break 1:30 – 2:15 p.m. - “Current Issues in Spectrum Management” Presented by Dale Hatfield, Spectrum Policy Initiative Co-Director/Distinguished Advisor, Silicon Flatirons Centers for Law, Technology, and Entrepreneurship at the University of CO Boulder. 2:15 – 3:00 p.m. - “Modulation Dependent Carrier Modulation (MDCL) in AM Transmitters” Presented by Mike Pappas W9CN, Vice President of Business Development and Co-Owner Orban Labs Inc. 3:00 – 3:15 p.m. - Break 3:15 – 4:00 p.m. - “NIST Public Safety Communications Research (PCSR)” Presented by Dereck Orr, Division Chief for the Public Safety Communications Research Division, NIST Communication Technology Laboratory 4:00 – 4:45 p.m. - “Trusted Spectrum Testing” Presented by Melissa Midzor, Program Manager for National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASCTN) 4:45 – 5:30 p.m. - “Tutorial on Software Defined Radio (SDR) and Cognitive Radar” Presented by Prof. Julio Urbina KB3PZH, Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering Penn State University 5:30 – 5:40 p.m. - Thank You! Prof. Jim Breakall WA3FET
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ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES The HF Renaissance in the US Army
The 1921 Transatlantic Test
Prof. Col. Stephen Hamilton KJ5HY, Chief of Staff and Technical Director of the Army Cyber Institute – United States Military Academy West Point
Frank Donovan W3LPL, (Retired) General Dynamics Corporation
In the last two decades, the Army has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq and relied heavily on satellite communications for all operations. While Satellite communications provide high bandwidth beyond lineof-sight communication, it also is vulnerable to jamming, which could happen against an adversary with that capability. Due to this constraint the Army began a renaissance in High Frequency communication as a backup means of communication for when satellite communication becomes unavailable either through a cyber-attack or electromagnetic attack. This talk will discuss efforts the Army and the Army Cyber Institute have taken in the past few years to relearn our HF skills and radios in addition to a discussion about what we will be planning in the future. Speaker Biography Col. Stephen Hamilton is an Associate Professor at the United States Military Academy, a Cyber officer in the US Army and an extra class licensed ham operator, KJ5HY. He has held numerous command and staff assignments at the tactical and operation unit level. Stephen is currently the Chief of Staff and Technical Director of the Army Cyber Institute. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the United States Military Academy, a Master of Science in Software Engineering from Auburn University, and a PhD in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University.
Although the early 1921 Transatlantic Test was a failure, radio history was made during the second Transatlantic Tests on December 11, 1921.when the Radio Club of America’s powerful one kilowatt CW amateur station 1BCG in Greenwich, Connecticut, was heard by ARRL’s operator Paul Godley, 2ZE, in Ardrossan, Scotland. To assure the success of the second Transatlantic Test, ARRL dispatched to England one of the America’s best operators, renowned receiver designer Paul Godley, with two of his best receivers. With advice and assistance from Guglielmo Marconi’s staff, Godley altered his plans and instead located his receiving station in a very quiet seafront location on the shore of the Firth of Clyde southwest of Glasgow, Scotland. To assure Godley’s success, fellow members of the Radio Club of America worked feverously to construct the 1BCG station using the latest high power CW technology available to amateurs at the time. Godley built two receivers specifically optimized for the Transatlantic Test, both designed by famous receiver designer Edwin Armstrong: a regenerative receiver and a receiver using his latest superheterodyne technology. During his voyage to England, Godley met Radio Corporation of America’s leading radio receiver and antenna engineer Harold Beverage, who convinced him to use a highly directional 1,300-foot receiving antenna that we now know as the Beverage Antenna. Godley copied more than two dozen American amateur stations at about 1300 kHz, then known as short wave and now part of the AM broadcast band. Twenty stations copied by Armstrong used CW transmitters and only six used spark transmitters. The station heard most consistently was 1BCG. Speaker Biography Frank Donovan’s ham radio career began as twelve year old at the Providence Radio Assn. 1959 ARRL Field Day, W1OP/1, on Neutaconkanut Hill two miles from his home in Providence, Rhode Island. Soon afterwards he began to slowly build his own small station on 1/10th acre in a densely populated urban neighborhood. W3LPL DX contest teams have completed more than one million DX QSOs and achieved more than 50 first place USA finishes out of more than 150 entries in the CQWW and ARRL DX contests. Frank was inducted into the prestigious CQ Contest Hall of Fame in 1999 and is a regular presenter at Contest University. He retired ten years ago as a Chief Engineer at General Dynamics Corporation after a 45-year career in electronics and systems engineering.
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ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Progress Report on Youth Activities Carole Perry WB2MGP, RCA Youth Activities Chairperson A review of 2021 Youth Activities includes many virtual events. In February at the Orlando Hamcation, I moderated the Youth Forum and featured Audrey McElroy who spoke about motivating girls in STEM via ham radio. I will give the background on my history with Austin Schaller, having showcased him since 2009 as a presenter at my Dayton Hamvention Youth Forum and then as an RCA Tech Symposium Young Achiever presenter at our Dallas, Texas Awards Banquet in November 2011. I will share Austin’s educational and professional accomplishments and status, and then introduce him. Speaker Biography Carole Perry is the recipient of many national and international awards and honors. Among them is the prestigious 1987 Dayton Hamvention Ham of the Year award. She is also the first recipient of the Hamcation Carole Perry Educator of the Year award which honors teachers and educators who are instructing youth in radio. Carole is an RCA Director and is chairperson of the RCA Youth Activities program. She created the RCA Young Achiever award which rewards and honors talented and technically creative young people in radio communications.
Around the World 4.5 times: An empirical examination of HF propagation from an orbiting High Altitude Balloon Audrey McElroy, KM4BUN An analysis of the procedures and results produced from the launch of a high-altitude balloon designed for indefinite orbit around the globe. Specifically, the aspect of HF propagation and the methods of telemetry transmission will be discussed, along with details about important aspects of high altitude balloon launches. Speaker Biography Audrey McElroy is a senior in high school, having been accepted into the STEM academy as a freshman by way of an Amateur Radio video-essay. Her Extra Class callsign is KM4BUN, earned when she was 15. She has combined her STEM Bio-tech, 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 a SME on High Altitude balloons by numerous organizations. At the request of the Southeastern VHF Society, she published
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a white paper detailing her experimentation with buoyancy and high-altitude balloons that transmit telemetry via WSPR and APRS utilizing the HF bands. She plans on attending university and pursuing a degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) while continuing to work with Amateur Radio to provide hands-on practice of her academics. 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.
Current Issues in Spectrum Management Dale Hatfield, Adjunct Professor, Technology, Cybersecurity and Policy Program and Co-Director of the Spectrum Management Initiative at Silicon Flatirons Center University of Colorado at Boulder In these remarks, I will briefly reminisce about my early radio communications experience, which started about 70 years ago when I became an amateur radio operator using the station call sign of WN8NGG. After an introduction that includes acknowledgments, I will provide a short, somewhat formal, level-setting tutorial on spectrum management and then make the observation that interference management is the sine qua non of the spectrum management field. Next, I will offer two obvious, but not always fully appreciated, facts that (a) receiver performance is a critical component in determining how efficiently we use the spectrum resource and (b) unlike wired systems, wireless networks are inherently open at the RF physical layer and, hence, subject to many forms of interference, including malicious and non-malicious attacks. After delving into the implications of these two facts for public policy and regulation, I will, as time allows, describe specific other, highlevel issues in spectrum management, including the lack of quantitative definitions of harmful interference, the challenges associated with the increasing complexity of wireless systems, the threat related to over-reliance on common standards, and the difficulties of meeting very high levels of availability. After offering some observations about these challenges, I will provide some concluding thoughts about the future role of the amateur radio service and then take comments and questions on my presentation. Speaker Biography Dale N. Hatfield is currently a Distinguished Advisor at the Silicon Flatirons Center and an Adjunct Professor in the Technology, Cybersecurity, and Policy program – both at the University of Colorado at Boulder (UCB). Before joining UCB, Hatfield was the Chief of the Office of Engineering and Technology at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). Prior to that, he was Chief Technologist at the Agency.
ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Hatfield retired from the FCC and government service in December 2000. Before joining the FCC in December 1997, he was Chief Executive Officer of Hatfield Associates, Inc., a Boulder, Colorado-based multidisciplinary telecommunications consulting firm. Before founding the consulting firm in 1982, Hatfield was Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information and Acting Administrator of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). Before moving to NTIA, Hatfield was Chief of the Office of Plans and Policy at the FCC. In total, Hatfield has nearly 60 years of experience in telecommunications policy and regulation, spectrum management, and related areas.
Modulation Dependent Carrier Modulation (MDCL) in AM Transmitters
roles in broadcast engineering, government communications, and railway communications. Mike joined DaySequerra in 2015 as VP of Business Development and has assisted this forwardthinking and progressive company in the development of new products, new markets and new business opportunities. In 2016, DaySequerra acquired Orban Labs, Inc., one of the broadcast industry’s best-known names in audio processing. Mike has been heavily involved in Orban Labs since the acquisition, helping to steer the development and market opportunities for a dozen new products. He has installed all of Orban’s beta sites for the new XPN-AM audio processor and has developed specialized field-testing methodology for MDCL operations at different AMC levels. Mike is proud to be part of this revitalization of Orban as it again leads the way in audio processing for radio, TV and Internet streaming.
NIST Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR)
Mike Pappas, V.P. & Co-Owner, Orban Labs Inc. The carrier in AM provides no usable information and uses a significant amount of power. MDCL modulates the carrier based upon the audio modulation. Typical MDCL systems use 3 dB of carrier suppression. I tested MDCL at upwards of 6 dB of carrier suppression at multiple AM sites. The result of the testing showed minor degradation in fringe coverage at 6 dB of carrier suppression. The savings in power consumption averaged 25% over 3 dB of carrier suppression which was 30% savings from conventional AM. FCC STA was obtained to do field testing at upwards of 150% positive modulation. Stations included KSLAM, KIRO, KTHK, WSB & WCTS. 2. Expanding a state wide linked UHF DMR system for Amateur Radio. Eastern Plains of Colorado has a dearth of amateur repeaters and the Edge of Space Science group (EOSS) typically ends up in Eastern Colorado while recovering balloon payloads for STEM schools. We have steadily adopted DMR for our track and recovery efforts after the 2017 Eclipse project. RM HAM has 30 linked repeaters in three states that we use for EOSS. The problem has been to get coverage on the Eastern Plains. Working with the RM HAM team we identified 4 potential areas for DMR repeaters. These were Ft Morgan, Sterling, Cedar Point and Burlington Colorado. We found tower sites, ran coverage studies, worked on height vs coverage vs costs and negotiated with the owners for tower aperture. One of the towers is a 1 kW AM with a 50 kW FM on it (using an isocoupler). Lots of technical design was needed to get that to all work. Speaker Biography Mike Pappas is currently the VP of Business Development and a co-owner of Orban Labs, Inc. Division of DaySequerra, one of the broadcast industry’s best-known names in audio processing. Mike’s technical experience spans several decades, including
Dereck Orr, Division Chief for the Public Safety Communications Research Division at NIST’s Communication Technology Laboratory The NIST Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division Chief, Dereck Orr, will share important program updates, research advancements, and impacts from the past 5 years, as well as the future focus of PSCR and opportunities for attendee involvement. Speaker Biography Dereck Orr is the Division Chief for the Public Safety Communications Research Division at NIST’s Communication Technology Laboratory, and has held that position since December 2002. In that role, he leads the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program that serves as an objective technical advisor and laboratory to FirstNet, the Department of Homeland Security, and public safety to accelerate the adoption and implementation of the most critical public safety communication standards and technologies. From October 2003 until October 2004, Mr. Orr was detailed to the Department of Homeland Security to serve as the Chief of Staff of the SAFECOM Office within the Science and Technology Directorate, to help establish the new program. Prior to working at NIST, Mr. Orr served as a professional staff member of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee for the Departments of Commerce, Justice, and State, and Related Agencies under Senator Fritz Hollings. In that position, Mr. Orr was responsible for the appropriations accounts relating to state and local law enforcement issues. Prior to that, Mr. Orr served four years at the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) at the Department of Justice. Mr. Orr received a Master’s in Public Policy from the College of William and Mary and a Bachelor of Arts in American History from the University of Texas at Austin.
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ABSTRACTS & SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES Trusted Spectrum Testing Melissa Midzor, Program Manager for National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASCTN) The National Advanced Spectrum and Communications Test Network (NASCTN) is a chartered multi-agency organization that provides trusted, independent spectrum testing, modeling, and analysis. Current members include DoD, NASA, NIST, NOAA, NTIA, and NSF, and is hosted at NIST Boulder, CO. By leveraging the resources and expertise across our members, NASCTN develops the robust test processes and validated measurement data necessary to support the development, evaluation and deployment of spectrum sharing technologies that can improve access to the spectrum by both Federal agencies and non-federal spectrum users. Since NASCTN was stood up in 2016, its members have successfully worked together on 7 key spectrum sharing projects that developed new methodologies and measurements to characterize the impact of emissions from expanding commercial deployments due to recent FCC auctions. This talk will discuss key findings from completed projects, and a preview of the upcoming effort to assess the effectiveness of the CBRS Spectrum Sharing Ecosystem. Speaker Biography Melissa Midzor is the Program Manager for NASCTN, focused on innovative measurement methods and tools to promote novel and efficient use of spectrum. Prior to NIST, Dr. Midzor supported the DoD for 15 years in Electronic Warfare (EW) and spectrum compatibility across the joint services. She served as Director for EW Integrated Laboratories at NAWCWD, including a rotation at the OSD Electronic Warfare and Countermeasures Office, developing EW Threat environments and tools to evaluate current and future RF technologies. She was also appointed the first Senior Scientific Technology Manager (SSTM) of S&T EW at NAVAIR. Melissa earned her PhD in Physics from Caltech in nanotechnology, and a BA in Physics and Sociology from the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Tutorial on Software-Defined Radar (SDR) and Cognitive Radios Dr. Julio Urbina: Associate Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, Penn State University Software-defined radio technology has enabled the development of radio remote sensing instruments with modest budgets. Processing capabilities once restricted to institutions with ample resources are now accessible to the larger population who want to pursue Crowd Science. This new era of budget-friendly hardware has, at an ever-increasing rate, furthered the radio and remote-sensing community as a whole. In the first part of this talk, I will provide
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a complete SDR design, from antenna to disk (storage), with an emphasis on receiver requirements and signal processing necessary for resource-limited hardware. Some examples of a stable, replicable receiver, assembled for a few hundred dollars will be presented. In the second part of this presentation, I will discuss how in today’s society the number of mobile and connected devices continues to grow exponentially, creating higher demand for frequency spectrum, and how the complexity of radio frequency equipment is transforming to meet the demand of civilian and military applications. I will provide a historical background of cognitive radar along with motivations as to why cognitive radar is an important development. I will also present some applications of cognitive radar such as spectrum sensing, moving target radars, and joint radar communications systems. Speaker Biography Dr. Julio Urbina received his B.S degree in Electronic Engineering from Universidad Nacional de Ingenieria, Lima, Peru, in 1990. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1996 and 2002, respectively. He has worked at the Jicamarca Radio Observatory, the Arecibo Radio Observatory, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. Currently, he is an associate professor at Pennsylvania State University in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is also a research professor at the Huck Institutes of Life Sciences, the Institutes of Energy and Environment, the Center for Planetary Systems Science, the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Systems Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. His research covers electromagnetism, ionosphere, meteors, space and satellite communications, digital systems and space instrumentation, classical radars, cognitive radars, artificial intelligence, communication systems of the future, softwaredefined radio, drones, harmonic radars, microwave circuits, microwave communication, reconfigurable instrumentation, and radio wave propagation. He also investigates new pedagogies and technologies, to improve university learning, diversity and social inclusion. Dr. Urbina is the Chair of IEEE Central Pennsylvania Section. He is also a member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society, IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society Membership, IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Membership, IEEE Education Society Membership, IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society Membership, IEEE Signal Processing Society Membership, International Union of Radio Science Commission G, the National Science Foundation CEDAR Science Steering Committee, and served as an Arecibo Observatory Users and Scientific Advising Committee Member. He has graduated numerous graduate students and received many awards over the years, including the CAREER Award from the US National Science Foundation and the Fulbright Award for University Professors from the US Department of State. Dr. Urbina became a member of the RCA in 2018 and has served as a Director to the Board in 2018 and 2020 and is the Chair of the Education Committee. He also serves on the Scholarship Committee and 2021 Technical Symposium Committee.
TECHNICAL SYMPOSIUM 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.
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