Friedman Set To Focus On UA Satellite Program

Professor Bob Friedman stepped down in August from his position as the director of the University of Arkansas’ Genesis Technology Incubator and became co-director of the Satellite Communications Laboratory. He joined co-director and professor, Neil Schmitt.

The SCL is a new program within the university’s electrical engineering department and is part of a concentrated effort by the department to further develop a communications program.

Friedman is developing curriculum and will be ready to teach an introductory course on satellite communications by August, he said.

The curriculum will take advantage of technology he has developed over the past four years, and will ultimately allow the university’s 25 statewide campuses the ability to offer greater “distance learning,” he said.

A private satellite company has agreed to allow Friedman’s company, Virtual Satellite Corp., to use bandwidth on one obiter for testing his patents and also for “educational purposes.” It’s a donation of sorts that will allow the UA to build on its communications program.

Since the agreement is with Friedman’s company and not the UA, he declined to divulge the satellite provider’s name. He did say it is a nationally known firm.

Aicha Elshabini, a professor and the electrical engineering department head, previously taught at Virginia Tech University. She said she’s attempting to follow in that school’s communications footsteps.

Elshabini said the department wants to start with a couple of 4000- and 5000-level satellite courses and beef up the program over time.

Some Genesis customers will also be able to use the satellite lab, Elshabini said.

Friedman said the 25 VSAT transceivers, the 4.6 meter antenna, the hub station, amplifiers and all other miscellaneous equipment used to make the SCL possible has a “new, retail value” of between $800,000 and $1 million.

Most of the equipment is not new, he said, so he couldn’t put a dollar figure on its purchased value.

Some of the money came from the university, he said, but a great deal came from a prominent Fayetteville businessperson, who wishes to remain anonymous.

The Technology

Virtual Satellite Corp, which incorporated in February 2001, uses proprietary technology to combine unused transponders on geostationary satellites and thereby create higher power “virtual” satellites.

To describe the virtual satellite Friedman used an example of a row of 10 water bottles, each 80 percent full. Each bottle represents a channel, only partially used. His technology allows usage of the remaining 20 percent in each of the bottles with, say, sweet tea rather than water. This creates efficiency for the satellite owner and allows other companies the ability to use satellites already in service with out having to launch a $300 million orbiter.

The 20 percent fragment is broadcast back to earth and combined with other fragmented signals to produce one complete signal, or an 80-percent full bottle of sweet tea.

Of course the percentages and the example is over simplified, but the principle is essentially true.

Friedman holds four patents on the technology that combines the signals, a process he calls “signal path diversity.”

He said his “Eureka!” moment came after a friend told him the recombination of signals was impossible. He slept on it and at about 5 a.m. he woke up and thought, “Yes it is possible.”

He met with a lawyer at 9 a.m. that morning to expedite a patent.