Crcd: Wireless Multimedia Communications For Virtual Environments

This project combines research from the areas of wireless communications, very-large-scale integrated (VLSI) circuit design, virtual environments, and human factors in a coordinated interdisciplinary program. This paper gives a brief description of the overall project. Education in the hardware and software of virtual reality (VR) systems will serve as a testbed for training engineers in this co-design philosophy. Part of this project is the creation of three new classes that cover software engineering for real-time software, design of virtual environments, and design of practical wireless devices. The research part of the project will utilize the C6, a threedimensional, full-immersion, synthetic environment in the Virtual Reality Applications Center (VRAC) at Iowa State to create a new generation of wireless communications devices. This is the first academic program that trains computer engineers and scientists to understand and evaluate the effects of particular hardware and software implementations on human operators.