RET Site in Engineering and Computer Science: Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy

West Virginia University Research Corporation, Morgantown WV

Investigators

Abstract

This Research Experiences for Teachers (RET) in Engineering and Computer Science Site, entitled Digital Signal Processing in Radio Astronomy (DSPIRA) at West Virginia University (WVU) Lane Department of Computer Sciences and Electrical Engineering, the WVU Center for Gravitational Waves and Cosmology, and the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, (NRAO) in Green Bank, WV, will expose high school STEM teachers from West Virginia school districts, to hands-on research experiences in the engineering method, via involvement in the research, design, development, and prototyping of digital signal processing (DSP) techniques and applications targeted for the next generation of radio telescopes. Radio Astronomy is undergoing a revolution as major new telescopes come on line. This next generation of telescopes requires exceptionally sophisticated signal processing algorithms running in high throughput, heterogeneous computing environments. Implementation of these algorithms and hardware is pushing the state of the art of current DSP techniques. Advanced DSP algorithms running in commodity devices are a fundamental part of modern life. The signal processing techniques being developed here are also becoming vital across a wide range of areas, including vision-based navigation, remote sensing, robotics, mechatronics, computerized tomography, biomedical engineering, radar and sonar, and signal processing for security. The experiences gained by the teachers will give them, and through them their own students, insight into the design, development, and implementation of such devices. DSPIRA addresses a confluence of three needs: an industry need for greater public understanding of a widely used technology; science and industry's need to have cross-curricular problem solvers; and the K-12 world's need to integrate engineering principles into their new science standards. Over a three-year period this RET Site will offer an intensive six week summer research program and academic year follow-up to a total of 30 STEM high school teachers who will join research teams led by engineers at WVU and NRAO who will provide the RET teachers the opportunity to make meaningful contributions, with authentic involvement, in these engineering research areas. With the recent advances in open source Software Defined Radio (SDR) tools, teachers will be able to learn core concepts and explore implementation strategies in an extremely accessible software/hardware environment (a laptop and RTL-SDR device running GNU Radio software) and take these back to their institutions. The research experience will also include RET teachers working with project staff to develop classroom projects that involve an entire classroom of students in DSP activities. in addition to dissemination of the results of RET participants' research projects, through poster sessions and national conferences such as NSTA and ASEE, the PIs will share all educational and research material developed over the period of this project both in state and nationally through the Teach Engineering Digital Library.