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Tutorials

SPW 2015 will offer three tutorials that require a registration fee, and one free tutorial.  For on-site registration to one of the fee tutorials, add $50 to the pre-conference registration price.

Tutorial 1:

Signal processing using Python: Sunday August 9

Pre-conference registration: $125.00.

Python provides a great environment for doing signal processing development.  It offers vectorised processing, strong numerical capability, excellent plotting, even symbolic capability.  It is widely used by industry, in part because it is Free!  This tutorial will introduce Python as an environment for signal processing.  It is presented by Dr. Travis Oliphant, who developed the NumPy package for Python Numerics.

 

Tutorial 2:

Signal Processing using Arduinos: Sunday August 9

Pre-conference registration: $180.00

Presenter: Dr. Clark G. Hochgraf, Associate Professor, Rochester Institute of Technology

In this four hour, hands-on tutorial, you will see examples of how the open-source Arduino hardware/software platform is being used to help students find connections between the signal processing theory they are learning in lecture and the “inexplicable” behavior they are seeing in lab.

During the tutorial, you will build three projects using Arduino: 1) a system to detect pneumonia in pediatric patients 2) an acoustic tape measure, and 3) a voice synthesizer. You’ll take home all the software tools and hardware used in class so you can keep exploring at home.

Sign up for this tutorial if you would like answers to any of the following questions:

  1. Why there is so much buzz about the Arduino platform?
  2. How can Arduino reduce the time you spend dealing with license server issues, missing toolboxes, incompatible software versions, and expensive or out-of-date development boards?
  3. How can project based learning activities on the Arduino platform help students gain insight into why filters and algorithms are designed a certain way (e.g. to minimize round-off error effects) and become motivated to learn more about algorithm design?
  4. How can using Arduino across the curriculum help students to see their classes as an interconnected whole rather than as isolated bits of unrelated information?

 

Tutorial 3:

Using GPU processor with CUDA for Signal processing: Tuesday August 11

Pre-conference registration: $125.00.

GPUs (graphical processing units) offer low-cost massive parallelism, ideal for many signal processing applications.  This tutorial will provide a hands-on introduction to GPU programming using the CUDA programming framework, with access to GPUs in the cloud.  The course is offered by Justin Luitjens of Nvidia Corporation.

 

Tutorial 4:

Real World Desktop Software Defined Radio using the RTL-SDR and MATLAB/Simulink

FREE!

Presented by Prof Bob Stewart, MathWorks Professor of Signal Processing, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK

In this four hour workshop we will present the fundamentals behind the design of a generic PHY layer software defined radio (SDR) and demonstrate the first principles implementation, design and real time operation of an SDR using off-the-air signals live in the workshop. We will use the $20 RTL-SDR USB device which can produce 8 bit I/Q samples at up to 2.8MHz sampling rate and receive over the range 50MHz to almost 1.7GHz. As part of the session we will build a first SDR implemented AM and then FM radio receiver, followed by implementations and demonstrations of 433MHz and 868MHz digital QAM receivers. We will also viewing some other signals around us (from IoT temperature sensors, mobile/wireless and so on). We will view all signals and show how to build all components and designs from first principles DSP theory using MATLAB/Simulink and run real time on a standard computing platform hosting MATLAB and drivers for the RTL-SDR.

Attendees will receive a free USB RTL-SDR stick and a digital copy of the new 650 page textbook, “Software Defined Radio using MATLAB, Simulink, and the RTL-SDR” along with more than 200 pre-prepared examples using MATLAB/Simulink desktop and the RTL-SDR device

Because the tutorial was recently added to the program, there is no registration box on the registration web page.  Although it is free, Mathworks would like a count of participants in advance.  Please email Todd Moon and state that you wish to attend.