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.