Dear students,
Welcome to the Rohde & Schwarz Engineering Competition 2021! We are excited to see you participate. This year we challenge you to bring signal analysis to the next level. The successful demodulation of a signal requires us to know many signal parameters. The telecommunication standard of the fifth generation (5G), for example, has hundreds of parameter combinations! We could set all of them manually when demodulating a signal, but wouldn’t it be much better if this could be automated? An automated signal parameter estimator would save the engineer valuable setup time and prevent misconfiguration.
During this year’s competition qualifiers, you will learn how to estimate unknown signal parameters and show us how you would automate this task. And if you succeed, you will be invited to participate in the finals and you and your team will have the chance of winning up to 10 000 USD!
Throughout the competition, you have the opportunity to use the R&S® Vector Signal Explorer (VSE) software. The R&S®VSE is a powerful and sophisticated software tool used by RF engineers around the world. We prepared a warm-up phase during the qualifiers to make you familiar with the R&S®VSE – and it may help you to succeed with the competition.
We are excited to start the competition journey with you and wish you lots of fun and good luck!
Your R&S Engineering Competition Team
The qualifiers start on Monday, April 26th at 10:00 a.m. CEST (UTC+2).
The qualifiers end on May 14th at 5:00 p.m. CEST (UTC+2).
Announcement of the finalists on May 14th at 6:00 p.m. CEST (UTC+2).
Code submission through CodaLab are possible according to the dates and times above.
Teams that succeed during the qualifiers are invited to the finals
The finals start on Thursday, May 20th at 9:00 a.m. CEST (UTC+2).
The finals end on Friday, May 21st at 6:00 p.m. CEST (UTC+2).
You can find the Challenge Description for the Qualifiers here:
R&S Engineering Competition Qualifiers Challenge Description
Click on the 'Participate' tab on the top and then on 'Files' to download the Starter Kit and the Public Data.
🗣 We want to be respectful in the way we communicate and act.
🦹🏻♂ We tolerate each other as individuals and their opinions.
🤪 We want to have fun.
🔮 Honest and trustworthy feedback over misleading answers.
🇬🇧 In order to be transparent, the entire communication on all platforms will be done in English only.
We set out to providing a comfortable environment on every platform utilized during the Rohde & Schwarz engineering competition . This should lead to a harassment-free experience for everyone regardless of the following:
We absolutely do not accept any form of harassment of other participants. Any violent, sexual or abusive language and imagery is not appropriate and not accepted. This includes:
If such a violation is noticed during or after the Competition, participants may be sanctioned or expelled from the hackathon without a refund (if applicable) at the discretion of the hackathon organizers.
The Less Quick Version
Harassment includes offensive verbal comments related to gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion or political views, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, photography or audio/video recording against reasonable consent, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.
Photography is encouraged, but other participants must be given a reasonable chance to opt out from being photographed. If they object to the taking of their photograph, comply with their request. It is inappropriate to take photographs in contexts where people have a reasonable expectation of privacy (in bathrooms or where participants are sleeping).
Participants asked to stop any harassing behaviour are expected to comply immediately.
If a participant engages in harassing behavior, the competition organisers may take any action they deem appropriate. This includes warning the offender, expulsion from the hackathon with no refund (if applicable), or reporting their behaviour to local law enforcement.
We expect participants to follow these rules at competition, venues and competition-related social events.
1. General conditions
The Agreement is concluded in connection with the following event:
Title: Rohde & Schwarz Engineering Competition 2021 (hereinafter "Event")
Date: April 1st to May 21st 2021
Venue: Online / codalab.org
In the course of the Event, R&S will make internal company data available to help solve a specific task. The Participant will attempt to solve this task during the Event. The work results are to be made available to R&S to use as it sees fit.
When working in teams, the Participant shall ensure that they only collaborate with team members who have also concluded an agreement with R&S corresponding to this Agreement.
The participants shall use their own hardware and software. Both commercial and open source software can be used. When using commercial software, the participants must have the necessary licenses. R&S explicitly does not provide any software beyond the online available demo version of the R&S®VSE
2. Task
The task involves the estimation of several signal parameters using the R&S®VSE. Based on that the participants have to develop a python algorithm, which estimates the signal parameters automatically. The algorithm has to be uploaded to a platform (codalab.org) where it is tested against an unknown new signal. Rating criteria for the algorithm are number of correctly estimated parameters and error vector magnitude. The algorithm can be edited and re-uploaded during the competition (hereinafter "Task"). An advanced task and differentiating criteria will come up during the finals of the competition.
3. Confidentiality
The Participant undertakes to treat the data made available by R&S in the course of the Event as confidential, to only process the data for the purpose of solving the Task in the course of the Event, to not disseminate the data to unauthorized individuals, and to delete the data once the Event has ended.
4. Disclaimer of liability and warranty
The Participant warrants that they shall only contribute their own ideas and rights to the Event. The Participant is obliged to disclose the use of any third-party rights to R&S – at the latest when the event ends.
The Participant confirms that they are aware and agree that, to the extent permitted by law, R&S shall not assume any warranty or liability whatsoever for the correctness, accuracy, freedom from third-party property rights, completeness or technical or commercial exploitability of the data made available to help solve the Task.
Likewise, the Participant declares that they also assume no warranty or liability whatsoever for the correctness, accuracy, freedom from third-party property rights, completeness or technical or commercial exploitability of the work results produced when solving the Task.
5. Rights of use
When working on the Task during the Event, the Participant will develop solutions that are, or could be, subject to rights, property rights, rights of use, especially copyrights or rights to register industrial property rights.
The Participant grants R&S free of charge a non-exclusive, transferable, sublicensable and irrevocable right of use to the work results subject to no restrictions in terms of content or geographical location, covering all known and unknown types of use. This also includes any copyrights (in particular relating to software) arising from the work results and any intellectual property (such as patentable inventions) that are registered for property rights after the Event and arose from the work results produced in solving the Task during the Event.
The Participant waives their right to be named as the author of ideas that originated or were contributed during the Event.
The right of use includes the right to revise, modify, reproduce and have reproduced copyrighted works and other papers and documents produced in the course of the Event. The Participant explicitly agrees that R&S may use their work results for the purposes of developing and enhancing software and hardware. Only R&S is entitled to any patentable solutions arising from these measures. R&S has the right to apply for and be granted patents and other industrial property rights on these solutions.
6. Miscellaneous
This Agreement shall be governed by German law.
Should individual provisions of this Agreement be or become ineffective in whole or in part, the validity of the remaining provisions shall not be affected. The Parties undertake to find an alternative provision that comes as close as possible to the original economic intent.
The online provision of this Agreement constitutes an offer from R&S. The offer is deemed to be legally accepted by the Participant when the Participant clicks the corresponding "ACCEPT AGREEMENT" button by the registration via www.engineering-competition and/or is enrolled in the Rohde & Schwarz Engineering Competition 2021 on www.codalab.org.
For all additional questions simply e-mail us: engineeringcompetition@rohde-schwarz.com
Start: April 26, 2021, 8 a.m.
Description: Use the Starter Kit to explore data and understand the submission system. Develop an algorithm able to predict following signal parameters: Symbol Rate, Modulation order and type based on IQ data. Your submission will be evaluated with unknown signals. You can see your score in the Result section. Submissions are due on May 14th at 05:00 p.m. CEST and finalists will be announced one hour later. The challenge of the Finals will be announced on May 20th. Do your best to pass the Qualifiers!
May 14, 2021, 3 p.m.
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