The APS Student Design Contest (SDC) is an annual contest about the design of a device or system mainly involving antenna and propagation aspects. It culminates with a demonstration by the finalists at the annual IEEE AP-S Symposium. The Contest aims to engage and encourage study in the fields of electromagnetism, particularly antennas and propagation. Prizes are awarded for the first, second and third prize. Here is the list of winners and finalists from previous years.

2023 AP-S Student Design Content, Portland, Oregon

First Place:

Lund University (Sweden)
Team: RICE-BOX GROUP
Primary Mentor: Dr. Johan Lundgren
Members: Elias Björk (undergraduate), Linus von Ekensteen Löfgren (undergraduate), Oskar Watsfeldt (undergraduate), and Ben Nel (graduate).

Second Place:

American University of Beirut, Lebanon
Team: Reflective Intelligent Surface for Smart Agriculture (RISSA)
Primary Mentor: Dr. Youssef Tawk
Members: Karim Hout (undergraduate), Loulwa Rabih (undergraduate), Valerie Jaatour (undergraduate), Dima Hijazi (undergraduate), and Ahmad Jabri (graduate).

Third Place:

Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
Team: MARS
Primary Mentor: Shulabh Gupta
Members: David Song (undergraduate) and Keigan MacDonell (graduate).

2022 AP-S Student Design Contest, Denver, CO

First Place:

King Abdullah University of Science & Technology, Saudi Arabia (Saudi Arabia)
Team: SAVER
Title: Small Antenna for Vital Emergency Response
Faculty Advisor: Atif Shamim
Members: Hanguang Liao, Yiming Yang, Yuke Li, and Zhengliang Yao

Second Place:

The University of Illinois at Chicago (USA)
Team: UIC Andrew Lab.
Title: Ultralow-Profile, Electrically Small, Wearable Huygens Dipole Antennas for
Wireless Electrocardiogram Monitoring
Faculty Advisor: Pai-Yen Chen
Members: Zhilu Ye, Minye Yang, Yichong Ren, Yuzhu Ouyang

Third Place:

Lund University (Sweden)
Team: Bird Feeder Collective
Title: 2.4 GHz Internet-Connected Bird Feeder: The SMALL Device
Faculty Advisor: Mats Gustafsson, Co-advisor: Johan Lundgren
Members: Alexandros Pallaris, Oskar Bolinder, Simon Ljungbeck

Other finalists of 2022 (Alphabetical):

Chongqing University (China)
Team: Bloom of Youth
Title: Miniaturized, Highly Sensitive Epidermal RFID Sensor for Reliable Skin
Temperature Monitoring
Faculty Advisor: Ming-Chun Tang, Co-advisors: Da Yi, Richard W. Ziolkowski
Members: Yaqing Yu, Xinyuan Cao, Zhiyang Qi, Yueyang Li

Dalian University of Technology (China)
Team: DUT
Title: Magic Lamp Following You
Faculty Advisor: Hui Li
Members: Chenghui He, Changde Ding, Yifan Sun, Zihan Zhang, and Yunze Diao

University of Alberta (Canada)
Team: IoTAA
Title: Local Positioning System Using RFID
Faculty Advisor: Ashwin K. Iyer
Members: David Hulowski, Rachelle Lee, Alexander Murray, Josue Zelaya Padilla, and
Nabil Khalid

2021 AP-S Student Design Contest, Singapore

First Place:

Brigham Young University, Utah, US
Team: Dangerous Directivity
Faculty Advisor: Karl F. Warnick
Members: Elias Guanuna, Keaton Shurilla, Whitney Kinnison, Batsaikhan Ariun-Erdene,
Ben Francis

Second Place:

Pennsylvania State University, Pennsylvania, US
Team: PSU Beam
Faculty Advisor: Gregory H. Huff
Members: Rebecca E. DeSipio, Ethan D. Tabler, Michael J. Shero, Bailey Campbell, N.
Nicholas Mai

Third Place:

University of Aveiro - Instituto de Telecomunicações, Portugal
Team: Do'A Beam Team
Faculty Advisor: João Nuno Matos
Members: Manuel dos Santos Neves, Amélia da Silva Ramos, Filipa Domingues
Antunes, João André Margarido Maltez, Vasco Almeida Fernandes

Other finalists of 2021 (Alphabetical):

University of Belgrade, Serbia
Team: ETF-Belgrade Team
Faculty Advisor: Milan Ilić
Members: Olja Jakovljević, Vojislava Janković, Ana Ćupurdija, Pavle Petrović

Yokohama National University, Japan
Team: Japantenna Team
Faculty Advisor: Hiroyuki Arai
Members: Jo Tamura, Yusuke Mitsui, Shouta Takato, Satoshi Sugaya

2020 AP-S Student Design Contest, Montreal, Canada

First Place:

National Taiwan Ocean University, Taiwan
Team: Troy
Title: Wearable Trojan Radar System
Faculty Advisor: Shih-Yuan Chen
Members: Yun-Ying Chan, Huan-Ting Chen, Ting-Chia Hsu, Shih-Ming Huang, Wa-Kin
Lei

Second Place:

Michigan State University, Michigan, US
Team: MSU
Title: Drone Detection and Localization System
Faculty Advisor: Jeffrey Nanzer
Members: Cory Hilton, Jason Merlo, Torre Rocco, Stavros Vakalis

Third Place:

Lund University, Sweden
Team: Eclectic Engineers
Title: In tune with radar – A radar based musical instrument
Faculty Advisor: Mats Gustafson
Members: Osama Eldawebi, Ludvig Lifting, William Marnfeldt and Shervin Sedighi

Other finalists of 2020 (Alphabetical):

University of Belgrade, Serbia
Team: ETF-Belgrade Team
Faculty Advisor: lobodan Savić, Milan Ilić
Members: Danilo Đokić, Nikola Milenić, Pavle Petrović, Nemanja Grbić

King Abdullah University of Science & Technology (KAUST), KSA
Team: Blindsee
Title: A “Light” Beam for the Blind
Faculty Advisor: Atif Shamim
Members: Haoran Zhang, Heng Wang, Yiming Yang, Jiahao Zhou

Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, Poland
Team: PWR
Title: Wireless music conductor: Radar-based audio and keyboard controller
Faculty Advisor: Adam Narbudowicz
Members: Piotr L. Grobelny, Aleksander J. Kubeczek, Alicja K. Kwaśny, Kamil S.
Mężyński

2017 AP-S Student Design Contest Winners:

1. University of Alabama
Members: Katelyn Isbell, Peyton Morris, Cristion Oliphant-Jerry, Nikolaus Luhrs, Woncheol Lee
Mentor: Yang-Ki Hong

2. GRID, KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Members: Fernando Franzen, Harald Hultin and Jonas Olsson
Mentors: Oscar Quevedo-Teruel, Mykola Nickolay Ivchenko, Fatemeh Ghasemifard

3. Polarization Bears, Colorado School of Mines
Members: Robert Jones, Joseph Diener
Project title: Ku-band Isoflux Phased Array Design
Mentor: Atef Z. Elsherbeni

2016 AP-S Student Design Contest Winners:

FIRST PLACE
Team Name: Trielectric, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Project Title: Wireless Sensor Network Utilizing RF Energy Harvesting for Smart Building Applications
Members: Oskar Björkqvist, Oskar Dahlberg, Gustaf Silver, and Christos Kolitsidas
Mentors: Oscar Quevedo-Teruel and B.L.G. Jonsson

SECOND PLACE
Team Name: TeamAaltoELEC, Aalto University, Finland
Project Title: RF Power Harvester
Members: Mikko Leino, Niko Lindvall, Henri Partanen and Rasmus Luomaniemi
Mentor: Ville Viikari

THIRD PLACE
Team Name: Waterloo, University of Waterloo, Canada
Project Title: Cellular Wireless Energy Harvesting for Smart Contact Lens Applications
Members: Luyao Chen, Luxsumi Jeevananthan, Ben Milligan, and Tony Qu
Mentor: George Shaker

Group Photo of the 2015 Design Contest Finalist Teams with the Judges.

It is exciting to see the annual IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Student Design Contest becoming more popular year by year, with the 2015 (or 6th) Edition receiving as many as 27 highly competitive entries, up from 22 entries last year. The teams are from 14 countries in Europe (Spain, UK, France, Finland, Sweden), Asia (China, Japan, Malaysia, Taiwan, India), Middle East/Africa (Egypt), North/South America (USA, Columbia) and Australasia (Australia).

Apart from the increased number of entries, we also observed an increase in the quality of the presented work. In part, this can be attributed to several enthusiastic mentors taking advantage of the Contest to motivate their students, by aligning project-based courses with the Contest. Such efforts are in line with the AP-S's desire to promote interesting student activities in the field, effectively reaching out to students who may be having their first real encounter with AP. It's a cool and fun subject!

We really appreciate the commitment shown by the team mentors to their students, giving them the opportunity to show what they can do (= a lot!), as well as adding value to their university education and future career prospect. We want to especially thank the tireless efforts of those who continue to field new student teams year after year. We hope that even more university teachers will volunteer as team mentors and encourage their students to join!

This year's topic is "Antenna for Body Area Network (BAN)". The goal is to design and build an antenna that is optimized for on-body placement in a BAN application. The antenna should be used to transfer data to an Android smartphone via a low-power Bluetooth link. In such a BAN scenario, the ability of the antenna to properly interact with the on-body propagation environment is critical for the link performance.

From the 27 preliminary design proposals, six semifinalist teams were chosen in mid-November last year. The proposals were evaluated according to the criteria of creativity, likelihood of achieving the design goal and specifications and quality of written materials. Each semifinalist had just over four months to build their proposed antenna systems with a budget of US$1500, as well as to write a detailed technical paper and make a youtube video demonstration.

The semifinalists (in random order) are:

1) Team Name: Fractal Freaks, German University in Cairo, Egypt
Project Title: Power Efficient Wearable BAN System Using Inkjet-Printed Fractal Antenna
Members: Mustafa Mahmoud, Dina Khaled, Mohamed Atef, and Hassan Nassar
Mentor: Hany Fathy Hammad

2) Team Name: OU-BAN, Ohio University, USA
Project Title: Ohio University Body Area Network
Members: Morgan Haggerty, Gordon Fleming, Pat Hanlon, Levi Moore, and Trevor Vogelhuber
Mentor: Chris G. Bartone

3) Team Name: Team Lakers, Grand Valley State University, USA
Project Title: W-BAN Motion Capture System
Members: Christopher Jones, Scott Wilson, Deepak Dileepkumar
Mentor: Jeffrey Ward

4) Team Name: Sportable, National Taiwan University, Taiwan
Project Title: Modified Planar Inverted-F Antenna for Portable Sports Training System
Members: Jen-Kuei Tsai, Cheng-Hsun Lu, Yao-Pin Wang, Tzu-Heng Cheng, Chien-Hao Chiu
Mentor: Shih-Yuan Chen

5) Team Name: Gerhards Grabbar, Lund University, Sweden
Project Title: Wireless Body Area Network for Heart Attack Detection Project Members: Alexander Israelsson, Edvard Johansson, Hampus Månefjord, Georg Wolgast, and Casimir Ehrenborg
Mentor: Anders Sunesson

6) Team Name: Aalto 2015, Aalto University, Finland
Project Title: System for Monitoring Respiration During Yoga Exercise
Members: Minja Axelsson, Juho Kortekangas, Joona Rahkonen, Sampo Salo, and Gaurav Khairkar
Mentor: Ville Viikari

The submitted reports and youtube videos were evaluated based on the criteria of creativity, justification of achieved link performance, completeness of the description in the report, functionality of the system as determined by the video, and quality of written materials. A decision was then made on the three finalist teams, and they were: Aalto 2015 (Finland), Gerhards Grabbar (Sweden) and OU-BAN (USA).

Each finalist team received stipends of US$2500 for team members to attend this year's Symposium and demonstrate their working designs. Based on the on-site link measurement/demo and the semi-finalist evaluation results, the first-, second-, and third-prize winners were selected to receive cash prizes of US$1500, $750 and $250, respectively. The first-, second- and third-prize winners were Gerhards Grabbar, OU-BAN and Aalto 2015, respectively. The winners were announced at the Symposium’s Awards’ Banquet. In addition, all three finalist teams may revise their final reports for possible publication in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine, under the Education Column.

Many thanks are due to those who have worked hard to provide careful evaluation of the entries. In particular, the Judges for the semifinalist and finalist evaluations were: Koichi Ito (Chiba University, Japan), Kathleen Melde (University of Arizona, USA), Yang Hao (Queen Mary University of London, UK), and Gianluca Lazzi (University of Utah, USA). The members of the AP-S Education Committee who evaluated the preliminary designs were: Giuseppe Vecchi, Ludger Klinkenbusch, Marta Martínez-Vázquez, Levent Sevgi, Jacob Adams, Sai Ananthanarayanan P. R., David Jackson, Jorge Rodrigues de Costa, Reyhan Baktur, Eng Leong Tan, Shahid Ahmed, Richard W. Ziolkowski, Rafael Rodriguez-Solis, Nevin Altunyurt, Grace S. Y. Lim, Milica Popovic, Marco Antoniades, Deborah Walter, Dimitris Anagnostou, Anthony Martin, Naoki Honma, Sembiam Rengarajan, Charles Bunting, Karl Warnick, Mike Potter.

Coordinator: Buon Kiong Lau
Lund University, Sweden
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27 July 2015