Muhammad Bashir Akbar was named a finalist in the Broadcom Foundation University Research Competition, held on June 5. For this competition, there were 63 proposal invitees from around the world, 33 reviewed proposals, and 12 finalists selected for on-site presentation in Irvine, California.

Akbar’s project, entitled “Hybrid Inertial Microwave Reflectometry (HIMR)”, was selected for final round presentation at the Broadcom Technical Conference. Students presented a short talk and took part in a three-hour poster session in front of Broadcom’s top engineers. At the Thursday night banquet, Akbar won runner-up, taking home a cash prize of $1,000.

Akbar is a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and is a member of the Propagation Group, which is led by ECE Associate Professor Gregory D. Durgin.

As for the research, HIMR is a technique for remote motion capture that was co-invented by Akbar, Durgin (Akbar’s advisor), and ECE Professor David G. Taylor. Where most radio localization techniques struggle to break the 1-meter accuracy floor, HIMR can track absolute position in real time with an accuracy of 1-2 mm using low-powered 5.8 GHz RFIDs equipped with accelerometer circuitry. The technology applications include sports motion capture, diagnosis of traumatic brain injury, and precise robotic way-faring, to name just a few.