= UC Irvine: Agile, Multi-Antenna-Capable SDR Platform for Advanced Public Safety Communications = [[Image(Projects/UCI_NIJ-SDR/Files:UCI_Team_big.jpg, right, width=400)]] The technological needs of first responders are as diverse as the nature of emergencies they serve. To date, this diversity in needs has led to diverse, fragmented communication equipment that hinders rather than aids interagency co-operation. However, this reality is about to change due to a massive effort, led by federal agencies and supported by both academia and industry, to create & promote advanced technological solutions that address the goals of agility, adaptability, and interoperability in the context of public safety communications. Leading the quest towards achieving these goals is the application of software defined radios and cognitive concepts to a low cost, low power public safety portable communication device. At the [http://newport.eecs.uci.edu/~aeltawil Wireless Systems and Circuits Laboratory] (WSCL) at the [http://uci.edu/ University of California, Irvine], we are utilizing the [// Rice University Wireless Open-Access Research Platform] (WARP) to demonstrate a prototype that enables public safety communication via a software defined (SDR), multi-antenna radio system. SDR addresses all three issues of agility, adaptability, and interoperability by optimally changing the operational parameters of the radio (frequency bands, throughput, etc.) to best match the communication scenario requirements, while multi-antenna techniques allow for spectrally efficient, broadband and adaptive communications. The goal is to create a system that is capable of sensing the environment and transparently "morphing" to support a multitude of modalities on a single platform by intelligently adapting to changing requirements such as user specifications and environment variations, while enabling robust and reliable communication of time-critical information. ''Pictured (left to right): [http://www.ece.uci.edu/~aeltawil/ Prof. Ahmed Eltawil], Chitaranjan Pelur Sukumar, Hamid Eslami, Gaurav Patel and Amr M. A. Hussien