Welcome to the Bits2Waves Student Design Competition for IMS 2018

You get to design, build and test a real 16 QAM Radio!

You MUST Register to receive license and info

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TC-7 (Microwave and Millimeter-wave Solid State Devices) with endorsement/support of TC-6 (Microwave and Millimeter-wave Integrated Circuits)

Title: 16 QAM Radio Design

Desc: The competitors are required to design, construct, measure, and demonstrate a 16 QAM wireless transmitter at 950 MHz. Tutorials on the design of each component can be found here. The participants will design a Wilkinson combiner, a branchline coupler, a double balanced mixer, a power amplifier and an antenna prior to arriving at IMS. Files from their designs will be sent to the contest contact prior to the conference for assistance in fabrication. During the contest at IMS, the students will fabricate their designs and test each component, and then their complete radio. A 16QAM baseband I and Q signal will be provided as well as a 10 dBm 950 MHz LO. Students will be able to adjust the LO and the amplitude of the baseband signal to optimize their radio’s performance, including any “tricks” they can conceive of onsite. The performance metric will be received power/error vector magnitude.