Institute for Telecommunication Sciences / About ITS / 2013 /
Taking Stock at Mid-Year
Taking Stock at Mid-Year
ITS research is often a meticulous, drawn out process that takes
years to come to fruition. In the first half of 2013, several
long-running ITS research projects in support of Public Safety
Communications celebrated milestones. In February, ITS
engineer Randy
Bloomfield was honored by the
Project 25 (P25)
Steering Committee with a Plaque and Certificate of
Appreciation for his long-standing commitment and numerous
contributions over the years to the P25 Standards Process on behalf
of the public safety user community. ITS has been participating in
developing P25 standards since the project was established in
1989.
In May, ITS engineer Andy Thiessen was honored
by the National Public Safety Telecommunications Council (NPSTC). Thiessen received the DJ
Atkinson Technical Award, created in 2012 to honor the work of late
ITS engineer DJ Atkinson, for "tirelessly [working] to support
public safety communications through his work at the Public Safety
Communications Research (PSCR)
Program and as NPSTC Vice Chair of the Technology Committee." At
the same NPSTC Meeting, Kathy Mayeda, a member of
ITS's administrative staff, received a Letter of Recognition
acknowledging her dedicated assistance and support to NPSTC and the
public safety community. Much of Kathy's work supports practitioner
involvement in subjective testing and stakeholder workshops. Over
100 practitioners participated in a series of intelligibility tests
of public safety voice communication systems performed in the PSCR
labs at ITS between 2008 and 2012. Also in May, ITS
engineers Andrew Catellier and Steve Voran completed
publication of a series of three reports (TR-08-453, TR 13-493, and TR-13-495) on this work, the
design phase of which was begun by the late DJ Atkinson a decade
ago.
