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David Glasser ’06 believes the work he performed last semester as part of the electrical and computer engineering seniorcapstone course was not only one of his most challenging experiences at Lafayette, but also a very practical experience, as he is now applying the knowledge he gained to his career as a software developer at Viecore in Mahwah, N.J.
Glasser collaborated with 12 other senior electrical and computer engineering majors to design and produce a system to aid intercommunication between emergency first responders. The project was led by Jeffrey Gum, visiting instructor of computer science, and William Jemison, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering.
“The complexity of the problem, a short time frame, a small budget, and the added difficulty of organizing the efforts of 13 young engineers made this one of the hardest and most rewarding experiences I’ve had at Lafayette – something I could never get from sitting through a lecture,” Glasser says. “I learned a lot from Professor Gum and Professor Jemison, and much of what I learned I’m using in my job today.”
The capstone course is designed not only to test the knowledge that seniors have acquired throughout their four years at Lafayette, but to give them an experience on the level of what they’ll do as professional engineers.
The students designed, built, and tested a prototype system that provides communication interoperability between a minimum of eight voice communication technologies.
This idea came from the acknowledgment of the difficulty of intercommunication among first responders such as law enforcement, fire departments, and emergency medical services. Though this difficulty has most recently come under public scrutiny due to tragedies such as the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and disaster relief efforts such as those following Hurricane Katrina, emergency groups and agencies need to be able to communicate with one another in daily operations.
This intercommunication difficulty is a result of each group of first responders using different technologies and operating at different frequencies, and is now referred to as “the problem of communication interoperability.”
The students set out to find a solution to this problem. They were given a statement of work, a set of system requirements, and a fixed budget at the beginning of the spring semester. They then managed themselves, developed the system architecture, designed eight custom-printed circuit boards, wrote system software, and integrated their custom hardware and software with several purchased items into a working prototype system that met all system requirements.
The student-built system supports wireless and wire line communication technologies such as UHF and VHF radio, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), and cellular telephones. The system will have a battery backup to keep it running in case of a power outage, will be enclosed in an equipment rack, and will be upgradeable to support new voice technologies.
The system allows for user-defined talk groups and a two-level priority scheme. It will receive an audio signal from a communication device, condition the signal, and route it to the communication devices in the user-specified talk group.
Throughout the semester, formal design reviews were conducted periodically using outside reviewers from the industry.
Other electrical and computer engineering graduates who worked on the project are John Bayard, Scott Curry, Amanda Driscoll, Laura Fredley, Sherisse Hatcher, Tricia Indoe, Edward Kimotho, Hugh King, Marc London, Zachary Silverman, Danielle Wyckoff, and Yang Feng Zheng, who also graduated with a B.S. physics.