The finalists are two teams from Virginia Tech and one each from Clemson, Pennsylvania State, University of Utah, France's Ecole Superieur d'Electricite (Supelec), Universiti Putri Malaysia, and Sweden's Royal Institute of Technology.

The SDR Forum announced the nine finalists this week at its annual Technical Conference last week in Orlando, FL.

Virginia Tech's MPRG (Mobile & Portable Radio Research Group) and CWT (Center for Wireless Telecommunications), the University of Utah, and Clemson teams will each develop a cognitive transceiver system that can detect available 250-kHz channels in the 5-MHz Family Radio Service (FRS) frequency band (462 to 467 MHz).

The Supelec and Penn State teams will develop wireless transceivers that can load waveforms based on available services, including a commercial AM receiver, FRS (FM 462 to 465 MHz), a garage door opener (455 MHz), a 900-MHz digital cordless phone, and a GPS receiver. The Royal Institute of Technology and Universiti Putri Malaysia teams will each design a vehicle locater transmitter system that can track and report the location of radio=controlled vehicles while in motion.

Forty three student teams from 12 different countries registered for the contest the qualifying teams have 10 months to complete and submit their projects.

More information about software defined radio is available at All you need to know about designing a software-defined radio.

After the development phase, the SDR Forum will award several prizes and teams already qualified may compete in successive years for the annual prizes, which include monetary grants to the student teams as well as their university departments.

The Smart Challenge is sponsored by Altera, Lyrtech, The MathWorks, Objective Interface, PrismTech, Synplicity, Texas Instruments, Xilinx, and Zeligsoft.

The Forum is accepting additional sponsorships from companies and government agencies worldwide. More details can be found on the competition website, www.radiochallenge.org.