Student EMC Hardware Competition
The Education Committee (EdCom) of the IEEE EMC Society would like to invite students currently enrolled in a college or university at either the Ph.D., graduate, or undergraduate level to submit a method for locating an RF source in the presence of unknown reflections. Building upon last year’s theme, the student design contest will again feature a fox hunt in the exhibit hall, but with some additional EMI challenges. Three low-power radio transmitters operating on different frequencies near 146 MHz will be hidden in the exhibit hall of the EMC+SIPI 2025 Symposium. The task for the team is to locate each transmitter as quickly as possible. The top three selected teams will be required to attend the EMC+SIPI 2025 Symposium in Raleigh, NC to compete and demonstrate their design on August 19, 2025.
Radio direction finding is an important aspect of EMC engineering as it is necessary to locate an external source of interference before it can be mitigated. The interference could be noise such as that generated by a failed power line device or an intended or spurious transmission from a communications system. On complex platforms it is essential that RF energy utilized in one area does not result in a response from unrelated areas. This contest will require a means to identify different signals. Being able to discern between signals that are so close in frequency that their modulated bandwidths overlap so that each can be tracked to its location. An additional complication is that many EMI issues are intermittent in nature rather than continuous. This requires the ability to capture needed data quickly while the signal is active.
Now, for the competition: The frequency range used for this contest will be around 145MHz. 145Mhz is in the 2m amateur or VHF band. This wavelength enables a number of practical antenna options. The signals will be modulated with narrow band FM (15kHz) sending an ID call sign and short message in Morse code. The transmissions may be continuous or have a duty cycle with regular but short periods of no activity. Decoding the Morse code call sign and message is also strongly encouraged as that can uniquely identify each source. Each team will have one hour to locate and identify as many of the three hidden transmitters as possible.
To submit your team for the competition you will need to provide the following prior to the May 1, 2025 Deadline:
- Your team’s technical draft description of the direction-finding technique.
- The equipment to be used
- A description of your methods for discerning between signals. Preliminary lab results showing how this works in practice are strongly recommended.
Finalists will be required to submit a final technical description, the equipment used and final results by July 18, 2025. Also, a three-minute demonstration video following the competition will be required to enable “telling your story”. The deadline for the video submission is September 12, 2025.
One final consideration is that the exhibit hall is far from an ideal test site environment. It is reflective and dynamic. As people and equipment move around the result is a reverberation chamber with considerable loss. Site complexity will result in potential directional uncertainty when searching some distance from the targets. To facilitate a focus on the complexities of this challenge, a starting point to ham radio fox hunting techniques can be found at wb1gof.org.
GENERAL COMPETITION RULES
1. The Team should include a mentor (i.e., academic advisor, industry professional, etc.). Entries are limited to one team per mentor. Student groups are expected to complete the work on their own.
2. The student(s) should use the corresponding institutional email address rather than their personal emails for all correspondence.
3. The Top 3 finalists will do the second round of the Hardware demonstration on site at the symposium venue.
• First Place: $2,000 USD
• Second Place: $1,000 USD
• Third Place: $500 USD
4. Award recipients will need to complete the appropriate US Department of the Treasury Internal Revenue Service forms as required by the IEEE.
5. The winning team should submit a brief article OR a three-minute video to the IEEE EMC Magazine to share their design experience with the greater EMC and SIPI Community. Deadline is September 12, 2025.
COMPETITION INSTRUCTIONS
Submit your technical description files to the Online Application at the bottom of this page.
The submitter will receive a confirmation email after a successful submission.
Submissions should include the following contents:
- The submission should include the names of all team members and their institutional email addresses, along with the mentor’s name, title, and email address. The title, team members, mentor name, and institution name should be on the cover page or title slide (if using PowerPoint) with the institutional background or logo.
- A mentor letter is mandatory, stating that the project is the original work of the students.
Evaluation Criteria: All submittals will be judged by a team comprised of several EMC Society EdCom members based on technical design (35%), creativity (35%), and practical application (30%) both at the first round of submittal and at the symposium venue.
SCHEDULE
• Deadline to submit the technical description files:
May 1, 2025
• Notification of Top 3 finalists: May 18, 2025
• Top 3 finalists will be listed in the conference program.
• Top 3 finalists will compete in the EMC+SIPI 2025 Exhibit Hall on August 19, 2025
• Winning entries will be recognized at the EMC+SIPI 2025 Awards Luncheon:
August 21, 2025
COMPETITION COORDINATOR:
Colin Brench
[email protected]
Please include the subject line of “2025 EMC Student Contest.”
