A new web site has been launched for the IEEE WCET Certification Program by the IEEE Communications Society to give you more streamlined access to key information. Visit the new site to gain access to:
- eligibility requirements
- testing dates and locations
- application information including deadlines
- examination specifications
- links to training organizations
- FREE resources including a glossary, a list of references, and sample questions

WCET PROGRAM UPDATE: Application Window Extended Through 15 August 2008
The online application for the new IEEE Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies (WCET) Certification Program is now available. The application window will remain open until 15 August 2008. For specific details on the application process, eligibility requirements, and fees, as well as all relevant dates and deadline visit the IEEE WCET home page. Return to Headlines



Curious about how prepared you are to pass the IEEE WCET certification exam? A 75-question online practice exam is now available so you can test yourself before sitting down for it. Questions on the practice exam are similar to those used on the actual exam and can help you gauge your level of readiness. The fee for the practice exam is US$75. Learn more. Return to Headlines



You’re interested in sitting for the IEEE WCET certification exam but unsure of what to expect on the test or how to prepare. One of the first things you need to do is review the exam specifications.This gives you an overview of the different areas of expertise covered.

Free sample references and questions are available for your review along with glossary and list of training providers. In addition to the practice exam available for purchase, a book published by IEEE Press and John Wiley Publishers called The Wireless Engineering Body of Knowledge (WEBOK) will be available for purchase soon in both downloadable and hard-copy versions. The WEBOK outlines the topics that may be covered on the test and includes numerous references that may help you prepare for the exam.
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This past June members of the WCET Certification Industry Advisory Board (IAB) met in London to hear presentations and provide their suggestions for how to enhance and refine the program. Some of the feeback from the Board included:

- ensuring that other IEEE societies are aware of the program, as they may have members who are potential candidates for WCET certification and/or they may have expertise that will be helpful in the future, as the exam content is adjusted to meet the needs and address trends in the industry;
- considering future certifications that target in-depth specializations within the wireless industry, since the WCET certification is a broad overview of the field;
- publicizing the WCET program to Human Resources and Training/Learning managers at companies in the wireless industry, reaching outside the narrower technical community and focusing on the benefits to their companies and them; and
- identifying the additional, specific benefits that an individual or company can expect from certification, to enhance the value proposition and help skeptical professionals understand how certification is in their interest.

Additionally, the Board reviewed the scoring, pass/fail threshold, and reporting of scores after the exam policies and procedures. The IAB will continue to meet regularly to share their insights for continuous program improvements. Stay tuned to future issues of the IEEE Wireless Communications Professional for updates on their activities. Return to Headlines



IEEE ComSoc is making the rounds to various wireless conferences and meetings around the world to offer free IEEE WCET practice exams to several lucky winners. Stop by the IEEE ComSoc booth to enter the drawings at:

PIMRC – IEEE 19th International Symposium on Personal, Indoor & Mobile Radio Communications
15-18 September 2008
Cannes, France
IEEE PIMRC Home Page

WiMAX World Americas
30 September – 2 October 2008
Chicago, Illinois – USA
WiMAX Home Page


IEEE WCET Free Practice Exam Winners Announced
Stopping by the IEEE ComSoc booth and putting their business card in our fishbowl earned these lucky winners a free practice exam. Thanks for stopping by. All winners have been notified individually regarding their prize.

Winners from the Wireless Communications & Networking Conference (WCNC) which took place in conjunction with CTIA WIRELESS this past April in Las Vegas, Nevada include: Anatoli Levine, Radvision, Inc.; SeongHan Jin, SK Telecom; and Eric S. Hipkins, NEK Advanced Securities Group, Inc.

Rama Vuyyuru, Toyota InfoTechnology Center USA, won a free practice exam at the IEEE Sarnoff Symposium which took place this past April in Princeton, NJ. Later that same month, Lemuel Grier, New York City Transit attended the R1 GOLD Conference and walked away a winner.

In May, Chi-Ming Chen, AT&T won a free practice exam at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) held in Beijing, China.
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Putting Wireless Expertise to the IEEE Test
EE Times (06/26/08) Shandle, Jack

The Wireless Communications Engineering Technologies (WCET) certification program has been established to help address employers' problems in finding personnel with wireless expertise, but it could also prove useful to others, including students nearing graduation and engineers who wish to transition to a career in wireless technology. The examination evaluates knowledge and practical problem-solving skills in real-world scenarios, and it is neither job-specific nor product-centric. Among the areas of expertise covered in the WCET exam are wireless access technologies; basic knowledge; agreements, standards, policies, and regulations; RF engineering, propagation, and antennas; network management and security; network and service architecture; and facilities infrastructure. IEEE WCET program director Celia Desmond says the first opportunity to take the exam will be from Sept. 22 through Oct. 10. She attributes the shortage of wireless talent to several factors, including the rapid expansion of wireless products and services. "Wireless technologies also evolve very quickly and it is difficult for people working in the field to keep up with the pace of change," Desmond notes. She also says that the skill set is evolving as well as services grow increasingly content-centric.
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Technology: It's Where the Jobs Are
BusinessWeek (06/24/08) Hesseldahi, Arik

Jobs in the technology industry are growing at a steady rate, particularly in big cities, reveals a new AeA survey. The Cybercities 2008 survey found that 51 cities added high-technology jobs in 2006, the most recent year for which data is available. While slowing economic conditions have slowed the growth rate since the 2006 data was collected, AeA researcher Matthew Kazmierczak says the tech industry is still strong and has not yet shown a negative growth rate. Seattle showed the most growth with a net 7,800 new jobs added during the survey period. New York and the Washington D.C. metro areas were next, each adding more than 6,000 jobs. Riverside-San Bernardino, Calif., saw the fastest growth by percentage, with tech-employment figures jumping 12 percent. Silicon Valley had the highest concentration of technology workers, 286 technology workers for every 1,000 workers, as well as the highest paid tech workers, with the average tech worker earning $144,000 a year, nearly double the $80,000 national average for tech jobs. The survey also found that technology wages are 87 percent higher, on average, than the rest of the private sector, and tech wages are growing faster. Meanwhile, the U.S. Bureau of Labor predicts that more than 850,000 technology jobs will be added during the 10-year period ending in 2016, a 24 percent increase. After factoring in retiring tech workers, there could be a total of 1.6 million available tech jobs in the near future, meaning one in every 19 jobs created over the next decade will be in technology.
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The Data Engineering Dilemma
Wireless Week (07/01/08) Drucker, Elliott

Shannon's Law dictates that error-free data throughput greatly depends on channel quality, and unless this precept is overturned, the challenges faced by wireless network engineers amid growing throughput expectations will continue to expand, writes Drucker Associates President Elliott Drucker. The implementation and optimization of 3G data networks have been a primary focus of engineering staffs for several years, yielding the existence of significant differences between voice and data networks, and the knowledge that the design practices refined for voice may not be applicable to data optimization. Required channel quality is where the critical difference between voice and data resides, as voice service requires a specific carrier-to-noise (C/N) or carrier-to-interference (C/I) ratio to generate optimal audio quality as perceived by the listener. This property makes CDMA an exceptional voice service technology, as it constantly tweaks transmit power levels so that the received C/N or C/I is sufficient enough to deliver the optimal audio. However, voice service capacity can be significantly upgraded by supplying only the channel quality needed for "perfect" audio performance, while no similar "required" channel quality exists in packet data networks. The major wireless network engineering ramifications of the disparities between channel quality and perceived performance include extremely sluggish data speeds yielded by higher path loss values that are acceptable for voice service, and the fact that moderate RF interference will reduce data rates. Drucker says this problem will only be exacerbated by the transition to 4G technologies, although 4G developers know that they need to provide very high channel quality so that promised data throughput rates can be supported. Hope comes from physical layer handling technologies such as multiple input-multiple output antenna systems and "smart" base station antennas, whose purpose is to boost receiver sensitivity while reducing interference, augmenting C/N and C/I simultaneously.
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Powering Up Microwave Amplifiers for a Wireless World
ICT Results (07/08/08)

The four-year TARGET project is largely credited with Europe's significant progress in microwave amplifier research and development thanks to its coordination of fragmented European initiatives. The project achieved its first goal of harmonizing the efforts and expertise of 49 core laboratories, research centers, and businesses spread out across 16 countries partly through a combination of virtual research centers. TARGET researchers discovered that measuring devices and analytic software in different facilities generated different readings from the same component, which spurred them to make sure that the nine cooperating labs employed comparable equipment and analytic tools that would yield consistent results. The labs were also connected through a shared computer interface and the XML design language, which facilitated the management and sharing of mathematical models, research protocols, and the resulting data. The researchers ultimately developed expertise in a wide range of activities, including the manufacture and characterization of basic semiconductor devices and the design of entire broadband transmission systems. Among TARGET's many achievements were 35 joint research projects, 340 conference presentations, and 63 journal papers, while researchers believe that blending precise measurement, powerful models, and rapid turnaround times can now enable manufacturers to make better and more creative designs, and greatly reduce time-to-market. Through TARGET, European builders of gallium nitride amplifiers have doubled their devices' power, equaling or surpassing products from competitors. And three years ago, TARGET's linked labs rolled out a 6-watt amplifier that operated at nearly 60 percent efficiency.
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Women Break to Front of Tech
USA Today (07/11/08) P. 1B; Swartz, John

The glass ceiling seems to finally be shattering in the technology industry. "It's gratifying to see more women in prominent roles in tech," says Trend Micro CEO Eva Chen, one of the tech industry's top female executives. A wave of new female CEOs is changing the face of the once male-dominated tech industry, with women benefiting from more startups, better funding, and the low cost of starting a Web 2.0 company. Ruckus Wireless CEO Selina Lo says women are gaining in importance as technology companies seek employees with more "right brain" skills. Even some established tech companies such as Google are welcoming places for aspiring female executives. "Computer sciences and the Internet have made technology tangible and put a face on them as careers for everyone, women included," says Marissa Mayer, Google vice president of search and user experience. Although the number of female CEOs at well-known tech companies is difficult to determine, estimates easily place more female CEOs in the tech industry than on the Fortune 500 list, which has only 12 female CEOs and only one from the tech industry, Xerox's Anne Mulcahy. There are more opportunities today than there were 10 years ago because women are pursuing engineering degrees and careers, and they are better suited for fast-paced environments in the online world, says Teresa Phillips, founder and CEO of Graspr, which hopes to become the YouTube of how-to clips. Furthermore, marketers are deploying technology intended to reach women, which makes those companies more interested in hiring women.
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High-Tech Feast Puts Students on Fast Track to Future
Weekend Australian (06/21/08) P. 10; Cencigh-Albulario, Laura

Beginning this year, Australia's Macquarie University, based in Sydney, will offer a degree in wireless engineering, covering technologies such as mobile telephones, local-area networks, satellites, radio and television broadcasting, and emerging areas such as radio-frequency identification. Macquarie University head of electrical engineering, professor Graham Town says the program is broad enough to ensure lessons learned stay relevant in the rapidly evolving industry. "What we try to do is teach students the fundamentals and give them skills where they can learn and interpret whatever they are doing," Town says. "They need to be able to learn new things and adapt, as it's impossible to predict specifically what will be around in 10 years." Town ads that a lot of skills are learned on the job, so when students leave they need to be prepared to learn on the job and through graduate training. Hands-on learning is a major aspect of the program, and much of the program is devoted to lab work and job placements. Macquarie University has already established partnerships with major technology companies. Town says one of the barriers preventing more students from being attracted to wireless engineering is that many students do not know exactly what engineers do, particularly technology-based engineers. "Engineering can be a very challenging career," Town says. "It's a career that can take you into different places—you never get bored as you're working with lots of different people and skills."
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Military Set to Advance Bulletproof Wireless IP Network
Network World (06/24/08)

Top military advanced technology researchers recently met to discuss the possible features and requirements of its next generation wireless IP network. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) wants to strengthen its Mobile Ad hoc Interoperability Network (MAINGATE), which it says is the next generation of its Network Centric Radio System (NCRS). The NCRS program can connect different tactical ground, airborne, and satellite communications terminals. MAINGATE's goal is to advance research into a heterogeneous network tolerant to high latency and packet loss. The technologies developed for the program will enable affordable, tactical, real-time, high-fidelity video, data, and voice services to be deployed in a networked environment to support tactical operations in either maneuver or dismounted operations. Consequently, DARPA expects a clear demonstration of advanced mobile ad hoc network (MANET) gateway technology that will incorporate a wireless IP-capable network, providing interconnectivity between nodes and bridging heterogeneous mixtures of radio networks. DARPA says a unique aspect of MAINGATE is the integration of a default IP radio network as part of the gateway. The system has a variety of requirements, including the ability to support a minimum of 20 simultaneous 384 kbps video streams, voice and data applications, peer-to-peer applications, and network management for aggregate per link data rates ranging from 6.5 Mbps to up to 100 Mbps, according to DARPA.
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Government of Canada Strengthens UBC Wireless Research
eGov Monitor (07/02/08)

The Canadian government has provided the University of British Colombia (UBC) a grant to improve leading-edge wireless technology by establishing essential wireless channel models and system guidelines, and improving collaboration between industry and academia. "Our government is proud to help equip UBC with the leading-edge equipment needed to train students and foster collaborative research between academia and industry," says Canadian Secretary of State James Moore. "This initiative will help grow British Columbia's emerging wireless sector and increase its ability to compete in the global market." The funding will allow UBC to purchase essential testing equipment to run a variety of wireless probation tests via mobile stations. Wireless propagation and channel modeling can be used to diagnose signal impairments in transmissions from signal obstruction, scattering, and fading. "This important investment by the government of Canada will help us address critical technical issues faced by industry, and will help wireless developers design, simulate, and test new types of wireless systems more effectively," says UBC Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering professor and Radio Science Lab leader Dave Michelson. "It will also play an important role in helping the wireless industry develop more reliable and robust wireless systems." UBC graduate student Kyle Sivertsen says as new industry sectors integrate wireless systems into their operations, opportunities for wireless engineers will continue to expand.
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Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless Web
Wired (07/08) Vol. 16, No. 7, P. 135; Roth, Daniel

Google's Android operating system is an open source mobile platform that any programmer can write for and any handset maker can install that is expected to hit the market sometime this fall. Nearly any new phone will be able to run Android, and several phone manufacturers have dedicated Android phones on the way. However, the Android operating system is only a start as Android-based phones will continue to evolve as users add applications from independent developers to take advantage of the seamless Web access it enables. Android is a fully customizable system that allows any application to be removed or swapped for another. Software normally accounts for about 20 percent of the cost of a phone, so by providing Android to mobile carriers for free, Google is making possible lower-priced handsets in an effort to get more consumers invested in using smart phones. Android has even been designed to account for the limits of the carriers' networks to avoid using too much data, giving the users a solid experience without wasting the wireless spectrum. Android could possibly turn the phone into a useful tool for Web surfing and cloud computing, with voice functions such as phone calls simply being another application. Wireless developers say Android jumps the barely 0.5 mobile world to Web 2.0, but caution that poorly-designed Android phones or lack of access to wireless networks could derail the technology. So far, Google's Open Handset Alliance has attracted only Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile, but the company is working to lure other carriers by providing mobile advertising. "We've learned from computers that it's really nice to have complete connectivity, to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way," says Google's Larry Page. "For a lot of people and a lot of the time during your life, the phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and say, wow, we could do a whole lot more."
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KU Researcher Calls for Approval of Wireless Gadgets That Use 'White Space'
University of Kansas News (07/02/08)

A new generation of personal electronic devices could make use of unoccupied "white space" in the television spectrum, according to research at the University of Kansas. KU professor Joseph Evans, director of the university's Information and Telecommunication Technology Center, says the TV bands are located right in the middle of the spectrum below 1 GHz, which is described as "beachfront property." Evans and colleagues recently performed research focused on unlicensed devices using white space and found that the operation of unlicensed devices in the television band could be carried out with no significant effect on DTV receivers in the area. Evans says devices using the TV band could lead to more interoperable public safety communication, reduced broadband costs, and simplified implementation of wireless technology in rural areas. "I've become a believer that white space technology is feasible," he says. "I do believe it is fair and prudent that the engineering details be carefully worked through--we're still some distance from being able to field those types of devices." This fall the FCC will decide whether to allow the use of devices that scan TV frequencies for white space and use these unused bands for transmission, and in February 2009 a new swath of white space will be opened as TV stations transition from analog to digital broadcasting. The KU research has informed a public debate over whether the FCC should approve such technology, with Evans presenting evidence in 2007 that white space devices do not generate interference for TV viewers when operated under suitable rules.
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Opportunities Abound in 'Opening' of Wireless
Investor's Business Daily (06/09/08) P. A4; Deagon, Brian

Mobile phone service providers have traditionally controlled how customers can access services and use their networks in general, but that is starting to change as the market shifts from a proprietary setup to a more open market. Earlier this year, Google pushed the open trend by unveiling Android, a wireless platform backed by more than 30 companies and based on Linux, the most-used open source software. Last year, Apple gave AT&T exclusive U.S. rights to the iPhone. These actions are part of a shift that will allow software developers to create applications for cell phone users without the traditional restrictions. Analyst Bill Whyman says wireless mobile applications is showing tremendous growth, even with the economic slowdown, and wireless networks are becoming faster and more ubiquitous. Increased openness is creating more opportunities for more applications, which are attracting new customers, higher usage, and growth. An open market means software application developers will not have to redesign their applications for every individual phone. Opening the market will also give carriers access to a larger market, though they will get a smaller share of that market. Whyman says there is already a tremendous growth in users, and by the end of the year there will be over 1.2 billion handsets sold over the course of the year, and probably close to 2 billion mobile users, twice as many mobile wireless users as there are Internet users. The next growth phase will be mobile search and providing mobile users with features such as providing information based on the users location, like nearby restaurants, traffic, and stores.
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Group Suggests an Exchange to Trade Internet Capacity
New York Times (06/30/08) P. C5; Pfanner, Eric

International Telecommunication Union secretary general Hamadoun Toure wants to create a digital exchange in which telephone networks, mobile operators, satellite providers, and other telecommunications companies would trade capacity on their systems. Network operators struggling with bottlenecks could buy extra capacity to ensure the phone networks, wireless networks, the Internet, and other communications run smoothly. Companies with excess capacity could sell bandwidth, limiting unprofitable downtime. Toure says applying a marketplace solution to the allocation of bandwidth could improve efficiency and reduce prices, and could even help expand telecommunication networks to less connected areas such as Africa. Such a telecommunications marketplace was previously proposed by Enron, which may be why Toure and his aides quickly cautioned that the idea is nothing more than a dream for now and may never be realized. Instead, Toure says he is focusing on a more modest plan, which still may be a step toward the marketplace, that would create a real-time database detailing the flow of traffic on the world's major communication networks. Toure says the database could play an essential role in helping networks manage capacity and plan new investments, and help experts prepare for the possibility of "brownouts," which some experts predict could start occurring in the next three to five years unless telecommunications operators significantly improve their infrastructure investments.
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Inside Lockheed Martin's Wireless Security Lab
Network World (05/19/08) Reed, Brad

Lockheed Martin's Wireless Cyber Security Lab is engaged in a race with hackers to catch flaws and vulnerabilities in wireless security in the hopes of correcting them before they are exploited. "We're trying to ensure that something similar [to 9/11] doesn't happen in the realm of wireless communications," says lab director John Morrison. Lockheed Martin's Perri Nijeb says the biggest nascent wireless security threat is the blurring of the boundary between home and the office, as employees increasingly access company data via corporate VPNs from their residences. To address this problem, the company has been testing numerous types of consumer technology, including cell phones, which have been moving to enterprise networks, and the spread of Wi-Fi hot spots has been of particular concern because of the technology's growing ubiquity in urban areas. Nijeb cites "connection hijacking, deliberate or inadvertent denial of service, the creation of security holes in corporate or government networks, and difficulty in attributing network actions to specific IP addresses, due to the ease of hijacking" as major issues with Wi-Fi, which Morrison says can add up to immense burdens for corporate IT departments that fail to educate their users about security matters. Lockheed Martin R&D investigator Jason Crawford says the proliferation of Bluetooth technology is also a worrying trend, as products capable of picking up Bluetooth signals outside their transmission range could theoretically be used to track people. The problems that Lockheed Martin's wireless security lab is focusing on are also challenges for the U.S. military, particularly as they relate to the security of its battlefield communications networks. Morrison says soldiers' vulnerability is highest when they use wireless communications in crowded urban settings, which parallels the risk corporate users run when they link to enterprise networks using home-based Wi-Fi connections.
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