The Bridge - Issue 2, 2019 - 17

Feature

Electrical and Computer Engineering and Amateur Radio

FCC license and become the station trustee. This is
better than relying upon interested ECE students for
the promotion since a licensed faculty advisor would
be around a lot longer.
As an example of that development process,
TUARC K3TU has been recognized as laboratory of
the undergraduate ECE curriculum. The HF, VHF,
UHF and SHF amateur radio station equipment and
antennas were provided by the ECE Department
of Temple University as a modest part of the
undergraduate communication laboratory. The station
and an antenna are shown in Figures 8 and 9.
However, even the best amateur radio station
equipment would be poor indeed without adequate
antennas. Fortunately, the Engineering Building is
10 stories tall and TUARC has two 30-foot towers
supporting the HF and VHF and UHF Yagi antennas
on the roof. A third 30-foot tower there supports
the VHF and UHF LEO omni-directional amateur
radio satellite antennas that do not have to be
az-el positioned.

Nonetheless, TUARC is also a university organization
open to all amateur radio licensed students, faculty,
staff and even alumni. TUARC operates VHF and
UHF linked repeaters and an APRS digipeater that
proclaims that amateur radio is a vibrant part of
Temple University and its ECE education.
REFERENCES
1. Dennis Silage, "Reintroducing Amateur Radio into ECE
Capstone Design Projects", Proceedings of the 2004 ASEE
National Conference, 2004, pp 1481-1490, Salt Lake City,
UT. (Available: https://peer.asee.org)
2. Dennis Silage, "Vocoder Redux: the AMBE-2020", 22nd
ARRL and TAPR Digital Communication Conference, 2003,
pp 208-214, Hartford, CT. (Available: https://www.tapr.
org/pub_dcc22.html)
Dennis Silage (silage@temple.edu) is
a Professor at Temple University where
he teaches FPGA and system-on-chip
embedded design, digital data communication, and digital signal processing.
Dr. Silage holds an Amateur Extra class
license (K3DS) and is the trustee of the
Temple University Amateur Radio Club (K3TU, www.temple.
edu/k3tu) which has been integrated into the undergraduate ECE capstone design. He was presented with the ARRL
Atlantic Division Technical Achievement Award in 2001. He
is the Faculty Advisor for the Iota Sigma Chapter of HKN and
received the ASEE National Outstanding Teaching Award in
2007. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and was acknowledged with the IEEE Philadelphia Section Benjamin Franklin
Key Award in 2014. His PhD is in Electrical Engineering from
the University of Pennsylvania.

Fig. 9: TURAC K3TU VHF and UHF LEO satellite and
UHF FM repeater antennas.

HKN.ORG

https://peer.asee.org https://www.tapr.ORG/pub_dcc22.html https://www.tapr.ORG/pub_dcc22.html http://www.temple.edu/k3tu http://www.temple.edu/k3tu http://www.wb8nut.com/digital/ https://hkn.ieee.org/ https://hkn.ieee.org/

The Bridge - Issue 2, 2019

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Bridge - Issue 2, 2019