Student: Erin Tade
Classification: Senior
Hometown: Nederland
Major: Electrical engineering
Research topic: Investigation of the performance of a core file delivery protocol for communications from the Earth to the moon with intermittent connectivity
Synopsis of Work: An honors student, Tade asked for the opportunity to earn upper-level honors credit by assisting her mentor, Dr. Ruhai Wang, with his research. The goal is to take the technology that made the Internet successful on Earth and try to apply it to communications between the Earth and the moon and in deep space. Wang, Tade and graduate students involved in the project simulated expected conditions for Earth to moon communications such as intermittent connectivity, long delays and high error rates in testing a specific file delivery protocol grouped with another protocol intended to enhance the communication link. They found that this particular grouping performed poorly for Earth to moon communications.
Dates of Research: Fall 2007
Publications/Presentations: A paper will be presented in Beijing in May at the International Conference on Communications of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers and published in conference proceedings. This is the flagship conference of the IEEE Communications Society. The acceptance rate for papers submitted is about 30 percent. A second paper has been submitted to an IEEE journal, “Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems,” and is under review.
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Ruhai Wang
Erin Tade: “I love everything about space. This was really kind of cool to see how they were trying to improve space communications. This isn’t something you learn in a classroom or a lecture.”
