Signal Processing - January 2017 - 14

offers extensive details on the structure of
these competitions and the skill sets developed through it, enabling the adoption of
this competition-based approach by others.
A focus on communications-related
practices is given in the article, "Teaching the Principles of Massive MIMO" by
Larsson, Danev, Olofsson, and Sörman.
This contribution details the development
of a course targeting students' exposure
to cutting-edge technology and emerging
concepts. The course is designed around
building system-level understanding and
expanding the classical curriculum to integrate a project-like approach. A student
perspective is given throughout the article
along with lessons learned. It demonstrates
the students' experience and how students'
feedback has been used to further develop
the course impact.

Complementing this issue
Complementing these three feature articles are two articles published in SPM's
"SP Education" columns in the July
and November 2016 issues, which
paved the way for us to introduce the
readers to this effort of sharing best
practices on hands-on training in signal
processing. In SPM's July issue, Simoni
and Aburdene [1] shared their eightyear experience and lessons learned in
developing application-oriented activities to help students better understand
signal processing theory and connect
the theory to real-world applications.
In the November 2016 "SP Education" column, Richter and Nehorai introduced the incorporation of undergraduate
research projects as a key component in
the Electrical and Systems Engineering
program at Washington University, St.
Louis, Missouri [2]. Thanks to the active
involvement of signal processing faculty
members, many of the successful projects were related to signal processing,
and these experiences substantially
boosted the undergraduate enrollment
and retention rate and attracted students
to pursue a career in engineering.
Undergraduate engineering design
projects, commonly introduced in a students' junior and senior years, allow
them to work on real-life problems while
applying their acquired knowledge and
creativity. Some of these projects provide
14

an opportunity to work in collaboration
with others on more complex tasks, training students to learn teamwork skills and
project management. These collaborations frequently entail a multidisciplinary
effort. Signal and information processing
plays an important role in many of these
engineering projects.
While there are some channels in
which students can share and publish
their engineering projects, there is a need
for a more focused review on engineering
projects that offer great opportunities for the
implementation of signal and information
processing techniques. With the rapid
advancement in technology and platforms available for project development,
there is high value is sharing the knowledge
and results stemming from these efforts to
advance the general community. An overview of practical educational tools, application challenges, and keys to successful
implementation of these programs is of high
interest to both academia and the industry.
To address this need, as part of
this article series, SPM has opened a
SigPort-based submission and archival
platform for sharing students' projects contributions. This issue's "SP Education" column is the first to detail these highlighted
projects. Through the SigPort repository,
a number of undergraduate students and
their advisors shared information on relevant engineering projects. Overall, the
submitted projects had more than 400
downloads within a two-month period,
showcasing the keen interest in the community for such information. Contributions from around the world cover diverse
fields and projects reflecting signal and
information processing opportunities and
applications range.
It is encouraging to learn that SPM and
its monthly eNewsletter will be working
with the IEEE Signal Processing Society's
Education Committee and SigPort Committee to continue accepting student project submissions and theses in the broad
areas of signal and information processing
to archive through the SigPort platform.
Summaries of the projects selected from
these submissions will be periodically
highlighted in Inside Signal Processing
eNewsletter; and, if space allows, some of
these projects may be showcased in SPM's
"SP Education" column.
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine

January 2017

We hope that the introduction of this
series of articles dedicated to signal and
information processing in engineering
projects will promote communication and
discussion on undergraduate studies, capabilities development, and increase interest
and involvement from the engineering
community. We look forward to bringing
you the next set of informative articles in
upcoming issues of the magazine.

Guest editors
Hana Godrich (go
drich@rutgers.edu)
received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the
Technion Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa, in 1987; the
M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering
from Ben-Gurion University, BeerSheva, Israel, in 1993; and the Ph.D.
degrees in electrical engineering from
the New Jersey Institute of Technology,
Newark, in 2010. She is the undergraduate program director in the Electrical
and Computer Engineering Department
at Rutgers University, Piscataway, New
Jersey. Her research interests include
statistical signal processing with application to wireless sensor networks,
communication, smart grid, and radar
systems. She is a Senior Member of
the IEEE.
Arye Nehorai (nehorai@
ese.wustl.edu) received
the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from the Technion Israel Institute of
Technology, Haifa, and
the Ph.D. degree from Stanford University, California. He is the Eugene and Martha Lohman Professor of Electrical
Engineering in the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical and Systems Engineering at Washington University in St.
Louis. He was editor-in-chief of IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing from
2000 to 2002. From 2003 to 2005, he was
the vice president, Publications, of the
IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS),
the chair of the Publications Board, and a
member of the SPS's Executive Committee. He received the 2006 IEEE SPS Technical Achievement Award and the 2010

http://www.B.Sc http://www.M.Sc http://www.B.Sc http://www.M.Sc

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Signal Processing - January 2017