Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 23, 1995 TAG: 9502230056
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GREG EDWARDS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Giving a boost to the kind of research that some hope could lead to new jobs in the region, the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology has received $2.5 million in new federal contracts for wireless communications research at Virginia Tech.
Robert Templin, president of the center, announced the contracts for Tech's Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group at a breakfast Wednesday observing National Engineers' Week at Tech.
Both Templin and the breakfast's other speaker, Beverly Fitzpatrick Jr., director of the Roanoke-based New Century Council, stressed the need for the region's colleges and their surrounding communities to work together to turn research into new jobs.
One of the contracts, a three-year, $1.7 million agreement with the federal government's Advanced Research Projects Agency, is aimed at producing wireless communications that combine new technologies in computer chips, antennas and digital signal processing.
The system that Virginia Tech engineers are proposing would result in smaller wireless radio units capable of cutting through static and sharing a radio frequency with many more devices than is possible now. Each portable phone would contain the technology now located in a base station or mobile telephone switching office.
The researchers also have been awarded an $800,000 grant from the Office of National Drug Control Policy to develop new surveillance and tracking computer software for use by the military and police as they install wireless communications systems.
The software could help police locate the best places for listening posts to make sure the tracking of criminals is reliable. It could help eliminate more costly tracking now conducted from aircraft.
As a top research university, Virginia Tech is a "powerhouse of ideas" and a leader in the development of new technology, but also an exporter of that technology out of Virginia for commercial development elsewhere, Templin said. Sometimes, he said, all the region sees from the research at Virginia Tech are the hotel receipts of people who have come to mine the university's ideas.
Ted Rappaport, a professor of electrical engineering at Tech and a founder of the wireless research group, has proposed the concept of a "wireless valley" from Lynchburg to Wytheville, where telecommunications research and manufacture would be carried out on a scale similar to what has been done with computers in California's "Silicon Valley."
It's an idea that's "not all that farfetched," Templin said.
The Roanoke region already ranks 14th nationally in telecommunications businesses, Templin said, adding that one estimate has put the market potential for wireless communications at $50 billion by 2000.
Fitzpatrick decried the lack of state and federal support for higher education, which he called "our lifeline to the future." The New Century Council he heads is a group of New River and Roanoke valley citizens and government officials who are developing a plan for the region's future.
Radford University's proposed New College of Global Studies, which the school eliminated after Gov. George Allen cut funding for it from the state budget, would have provided international marketing expertise that would have enabled the region to more easily exploit the research being conducted at Virginia Tech, Fitzpatrick said. Higher education, the region's biggest industry, has been crippled by a lack of funding, he said.
Fitzpatrick warned that some from outside Western Virginia don't have the region's best interests at heart.
"There are sharks out there every day," he said.
by CNB