Jackie Vitaz receives Top Prize at USNC/URSI

Jacquelyn (Jackie) Vitaz (PhD EE 2010) was announced as the First Prize Winner in the Student Paper Competition at the 2011 USNC/URSI ( Union of Radio Scientists) Symposium, held January 5-8, 2011 in Boulder, CO. Her paper, “Techniques for Enhanced Distinction of Planar Retro-Reflective Arrays,” co-authored by her advisor, Prof. Kamal Sarabandi, was selected from more than 120 entries from more than 10 commissions of URSI.

The paper addresses the challenges of standoff detection and tracking of metallic targets in highly cluttered environments and introduces planar retro-reflective array architectures to overcome these shortcomings. This work is an extension of her thesis topic which focuses on the development of novel planar retro-reflective arrays that, in conjunction with a low-cost, pulsed, Ku-band radar, achieve a RFID-type system for on-metal target tracking and identification. These systems address many of the shortcomings of both traditional RFID and high-RCS planar retro-reflective arrays by enhancing various salient performance parameters including operational range, field of view and environment. The applications of such architectures range from RCS enhancement to long range tracking and identification for a wide variety of both military and consumer interests.

Dr. Vitaz recently defended her PhD thesis, “Enhanced Discrimination Techniques for Radar Based On-Metal Identification Tags,” and is continuing her career at Raytheon’s Integrated Defense Systems in Tewksbury, MA.