IEEE Hampton Roads Now Using vTools

Our meeting announcements will no longer be published to this blog. Instead you will be able to subscribe to them at RSS FEED. This new capability is part of our member engagement system. The data is pulled directly from the announcement into the our section meeting report, saving our volunteers time and effort. We hope you find it convenient. Subscribe now!

May 2009 Meeting

A Night at the Park: Norfolk Tides vs. Rochester Red Wings Saturday, May 23, 2009 at 7:15 PM

The IEEE Hampton Roads Section is having its Summer Social at Harbor Park. The Norfolk Tides will be playing against the Rochester Red Wings in AAA baseball action. Game time is 7:15 PM. Please RSVP so that the tickets can be purchased ahead of time to ensure that our group will be seated together. IEEE members are encouraged to bring their families and/or friends.

March 2009 Meeting

Key Design Considerations for a Reliable Back Up Power System
Speaker: Rob Robbins, Bay Diesel Corporation
Aberdeen Barn, Virginia Beach

6:30 PM 19 March 2009

Please send inquiries and RSVP to officers-r3-hamptonroads@ieee.org . Your reservation(s) may also be made online at www.acteva.com.

Aberdeen Barn 5805 Northampton Blvd. Virginia Beach, VA 23455 757.464.1580 Google Map

Agenda 6:00 PM Executive Committee 6:30 PM Social Period 7:00 PM Dinner 8:00 PM Technical Presentation

Meal Costs Members $20 Guests $20 Students $10 No charge to attend the technical presentation.

February Meeting

Design of UHF RFID Systems with the aid of Computational Electromagnetics
Dr. C. J. Reddy, President
EM Software & Systems (USA) Inc.
Al Fresco, Newport News
6:30 PM, Thursday, 19 February 2009

Please RSVP to officers-r3-hamptonroads@ieee.org or on line at www.acteva.com.

Al Fresco 11710 Jefferson Ave., #A Newport News, VA 23606 +1 757 873 0644 Directions

Agenda 6:00 PM Executive Committee 6:30 PM Social Period 7:00 PM Dinner 8:00 PM Technical Presentation

Meal Costs Members $20 Guests $20 Students $10 Technical presentation is FREE.

Though Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems have been in use for various applications in the past, currently they are gaining popularity due to their application to retail supply chain management systems. Compared to low-frequency (LF) and high-frequency (HF) RFID systems (which operate through near-field inductive coupling and thus have relatively short read range), ultra high frequency (UHF) RFID systems operate through farfield backscattering, have larger read range, and have been widely used in supply chain management and inventory control. However, very often the electromagnetic (EM) performance of the reader/tag systems could be significantly degraded due to the complex physical environments. With the aid of computational electromagnetic (CEM) tools, such situations can be analyzed and optimized to improve the performance of RFID systems. This talk presents options for the EM characterization of such systems with the aid of full wave or hybrid numerical methods. Analysis of RFID tags, readers, tag placement, tag/reader coupling, and tag/reader systems in complex environments will be addressed.

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Presentations Now Available

Selective Coordination of Electrical Over Current Protection

Presented by Bernie Wright, General Electric

Presentation Archive:

• Selective Coordination Presentation Part 1 (pdf)
• Selective Coordination Presentation Part 2 (pdf)
• GE InstaPlan Excel Workbook

November Meeting

Selective Coordination of Electrical Over Current Protection

Bernie Wright, General Electric

Thursday, 20 November 2008 at 6:30 PM

Clark-Nexsen
6160 Kempsville Circle, Suite 200A
Norfolk, VA 23502
+1 757.455.5800

Meal Cost (Pizza and soft drinks): Members and guests $5; Students FREE
Presentation: Free

The National Electric Code (NEC) defines selective coordination as the “localization of an over current condition to restrict outages to the circuit or equipment affected, accomplished by the choice of over current protective devices and their ratings or settings.” In a well-coordinated electrical system faults are isolated by having only the closest upstream breaker or fuse operate, leaving the rest of the electrical system in operation. Selective coordination requirements have increased with successive revisions of the NEC (NFPA-70) and as of 2008 cover 5 scenarios: health care facility essential systems, multi-elevator systems, emergency systems, legally-required standby systems and critical operation power systems. Achieving selective coordination requires the design engineer to carefully study the ratings of numerous components, as well as coordinate with the electric utility to understand the characteristics of the supply system.

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October Meeting

Adeeb Hamzey, Dominion Power
Power Engineering

Thursday, 16 October 2008 at 6:30 PM

Presentation: Free

The IEEE Power & Energy Society (recently renamed from the Power Engineering Society) or PES is the oldest society in IEEE and consists of 21,550 members. Hampton Roads is home to 169 of those members. The fields of interest in this society are in the research, development, installation and operation of systems for the generation, transmission, distribution, measurement and control of electric energy. PES provides the world’s largest forum for sharing the latest in technological developments in the electric power industry and for creating standards for the development and construction of equipment and systems.

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September Meeting

Assessing the security of your Network - the ITU Security Framework

Speaker: Dr. Aftab Ahmad

Thursday, 25 September 2008 at 6:30 PM
Aberdeen Barn, Virginia Beach

As yet, we don't have a way of measuring security, which makes it difficult to allocate resources appropriately for secure networking. The best we have towards this end is the ITU X.805 framework that can be used to assess the security of a network. The recommendation classifies the nature of attacks and security dimensions required to thwart them. The X.805 is a slightly modified version of the Lucent Security Framework, originally designed at Bell Labs. In this presentation, we discuss this framework, how it divides a network into three layers (infrastructure, service and application) and three planes (user, control and management) and defines the attacks in terms of dimensions in each plane and on each layer. We will assess the security of a popular sensor network standard, the IEEE 802.15.4 in light of X.805. In possible future extensions of this presentation, we will analyze the Internet security architecture in view of X.805 with the help of a quality-of-service QoS) intensive application, such as compressed video transmission.

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August Executive Committee Meeting

Panera Bread, Greenbrier

Thursday, 21 August 2008 at 6:00 PM

Panera Bread
1412 Greenbrier Pkwy
Chesapeake, VA 23320
(757) 424-2600

The IEEE Hampton Roads Section Executive Committee meets twice a year to revisit strategic plans and identify new programs and opportunities. Please RSVP to officers-r3-hamptonroads@ieee.org .

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No Host Networking Opportunity

Red Star Tavern

Thursday, 17 July 2008 at 5:30 PM

City Center at Oyster Point
711 Lakefront Commons
Newport News, VA 23606
757-596-0308
The weather is too great and time too short in the summer to plan and execute full meetings. Consequently, we have summer socials to fill in the void. Take the opportunity to enjoy a local restaurant that could never host a "real" meeting. Selected members of the ExCom will be present, ready to take your comments or answer your questions. We will start about 5:30 PM and most like be out of there by 8:00. Drop by for a drink or stay for dinner. Your choice. Specifics are subject to change due to extreme weather, business closures, or repeal of the 21st amendment, so please RVSP and include your cell phone number. RSVP to officers-r3-hamptonroads@ieee.org or by calling Bill Clayton at 757-383-4707.

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No Host Networking Opportunity

Ocean View Fishing Pier

Thursday, 26 June 2008 at 5:30 PM

Ocean View Fishing Pier
400 W. Ocean View Avenue
Norfolk, VA 23503
747-583-6000

The weather is too great and time too short in the summer to plan and execute full meetings. Consequently, we have summer socials to fill in the void. Take the opportunity to enjoy a local restaurant that could never host a "real" meeting. Selected members of the ExCom will be present, ready to take your comments or answer your questions. We will start about 5:30 PM and most like be out of there by 8:00. Drop by for a drink or stay for dinner. Your choice. Specifics are subject to change due to extreme weather, business closures, or repeal of the 21st amendment, so please RVSP and include your cell phone number. RSVP to officers-r3-hamptonroads@ieee.org or by calling Bill Clayton at 757-383-4707.

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IEEE Hampton Roads May Family Social

Tuesday 27 May 2008 Dinner at 5:30 PM Presentation at 7:00 PM

Dinner: Olive Garden Italian Restaurant 683 Lynnhaven Pkwy Virginia Beach, VA 23452 Meal Cost: Attendees are responsible for their own restaurant bill. Directions to Dinner

Presentation: Virginia Beach Planetarium Plaza Middle School 3080 Lynnhaven Road Virginia Beach, VA 23452 Cost: Free Directions to Planetarium

Join us for a trip to outer space (or at least to the Virginia Beach City Public Schools Planetarium at the Plaza Middle School, 3080 South Lynnhaven Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23452). For those who can come early, we will meet at the Olive Garden Italian Restaurant, 683 Lynnhaven Pkwy, Virginia Beach, VA 23452, at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the 27th of May for dinner (1.4 miles from Planetarium, on Lynnhaven Pkwy. near the Lynnhaven Mall). The one-hour planetarium show starts promptly at 7:00 p.m. at the Plaza Middle School, so do not be late or you will be locked out!

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IEEE-USA Legislative Update

Russ Harrison
Legislative Representative for Grassroots Activities, IEEE-USA

Thursday, 17 April 2008 at 6:30 PM
Steak and Ale, Hampton

Every year Congresses debates and votes on dozens of bills that could affect engineers and engineering. Join one of IEEE-USA’s Washington lobbyists in discussing what Congress has planed for us this year – and what we can do about it. Topics will include:

• The most sweeping change to US intellectual property law in 50 years.
• $158 Billion in federal spending on project we care about.
• High-skill immigration and H-1B visas.
• Alternative energy.
• Whatever else you care about.

Engineers could play a unique role in public policy debates, but we usually miss our chances to influence our political leaders. Our meeting will cover simple techniques for influencing politicians and the political system. Our speaker, Russell Harrison, has discussed public policy with over 90 IEEE sections and other local groups over the past five years. Join the IEEE Hampton Roads Section on April 17th for an entertaining discussion of public policy and its impact on you, your profession and your career.

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Video Pattern Recognition

Dr. Nazrul Islam of ODU, Video Pattern Recognition

Thursday, 20 March 2008 at 6:30 PM
Aberdeen Barn, Virginia Beach

Automatic identification of a specific object or pattern in an arbitrary input scene is an important part of any authorization, monitoring and security system. Pattern recognition is always a challenging issue because the targets are often non-cooperative, the scene may contain noise and distortions due to variable environmental conditions during recording the image. Additional requirements for an efficient pattern recognition system are that the architecture should be simple so that it can easily be implemented and be user friendly, and it should perform fast enough to make instantaneous decision on the presence of a target in the input scene. Optical joint transform correlation (JTC) technique has been found to be a versatile tool for real-time pattern recognition applications, which employs optical devices, like lens, spatial light modulator, for parallel processing of the given images. The JTC scheme provides a number of advantages over other correlation techniques, like Vanderlugt filter, in that it allows real-time updating of the reference image, permits parallel Fourier transformation of the reference image and input scene, operates at video frame rates and eliminates the precise positioning requirement of a complex matched filter in the Fourier plane. Several modifications have been proposed to improve the correlation performance of the JTC technique, namely binary JTC, phase-only JTC, fringe-adjusted JTC and shifted phase-encoded fringe-adjusted JTC. This presentation will review the features, problems and prospects of optical pattern recognition techniques.

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High-performance Wireless Communications in Space Systems

Speaker: Min Song, Ph.D.
Associate Professor Director, Wireless Communication and Networking Lab
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Old Dominion University
www.odu.edu/networking

Thursday, 21 February 2008 at 6:30 PM
Aberdeen Barn, Virginia Beach

Future space systems, such as spacecrafts and unmanned aircrafts, will require large-scale wireless communications for data collection, fusing and integration. This can be achieved by employing various wireless networking technologies, including wireless personal area networks (WPAN), wireless local area network (WLAN), wireless mesh networks (WMN), and wireless sensor networks (WSN), to form a self-organization and self-healing communication network. The heterogeneousness of nodes and large- scale of communications, however, bring nontrivial challenges to the research community. Among them, for example, are interference, security, and quality of service. The Wireless Communications and Networking research team at Old Dominion University has conducted significant research in space wireless communications. This talk will present several on-going research projects related to high-performance wireless communications in space systems.

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January Meeting - Student Papers Contest

Thursday, 24 January 2008 at 6:30 PM in the ODU Web Center

Students from each of our local student chapters compete for prize money and the honor of representing the IEEE Hampton Roads at SouthEastCon. The winners will move on to SouthEastCon where we have had an excellent track record in winning or placing.

Link