[embed]https://youtu.be/va-Ge2ByGbg[/embed] After years of effort, DARPA took the stage at Mobile World Congress Los Angeles to host the final match of its Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2) - a competition run on a massive RF channel emulator called the Colosseum with 128 two-antenna software-defined radios and 64 field programmable gate arrays. Ten teams competed in the championship …

How do we know when a city is smart? This is one of the most common questions we get and the answer is simple.  It's when a city understands enough about the people living in it to react in their best interests. But to understand its citizens means cities are watching us like never before; and what a city thinks it knows about us, and who else can use that information, is emerging as one of the m…

The Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program – co-led by US Ignite and Northeastern University – is supported by funding from both the National Science Foundation and our many Industry Consortium partners. These industry partners contribute equipment, software, money, and expertise, and as their numbers balloon, we are shining a spotlight on how and why they’ve decided to part…

Top Honors Awarded To: How’s My Driving (Washington, D.C.) – This locally-made app helps users report dangerous drivers and works to improve traffic congestion Enpira (Durham, NC) – Energy management solutions for municipal utilities and local government Helix Health LLC (Kansas City, MO) – Solution to incorporate real-time analytics into healthcare workflows.   …

We announced last week as part of the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program that the FCC has designated the PAWR testbed sites in Salt Lake City and the West Harlem neighborhood of New York as the first-ever spectrum Innovation Zones for experimental research. We, along with our partners at Northeastern University, will act as frequency coordinators for these Innovation Zones, wh…

We are making several important announcements for the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program today. In addition to the launch of AERPAW – the third PAWR testbed, which is located in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina (read more here) – we are also releasing a new Request for Proposals for a fourth and final PAWR platform. This latest RFP has a new focus on rural b…

Post authored by Glenn Ricart US Ignite wants to congratulate the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI) at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill on the announcement today that it will lead a team selected by the National Science Foundation to create and deploy a new national $20 million advanced networking and edge computing infrastructure called FABRIC. We also have small role to play in…

What happens when you bring new data to bear on a civic problem like reducing the number of critical restaurant health violations in a city? In Chicago, the answer is a new process that helps identify these violations eight days faster than the previous average. In our latest US Ignite Forum playbook published this week, we gathered insights from communities that are successfully applying n…

We have some exciting news to share on behalf of the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program. DARPA has announced that it will transition the Colosseum, a massive RF channel emulator used to run the agency's Spectrum Collaboration Challenge (SC2), to the PAWR program on October 23. The entire Colosseum - with hardware consisting of 128 two-antenna software-defined radios and 64 f…

US Ignite is pleased to announce the finalists for the Spring/Summer 2019 US Ignite/AWS Startup Accelerator pitch competition! These winners will participate in a final competition and Accelerator Showcase on September 19th at Amazon’s offices on New Jersey Avenue, NW in Washington, D.C. To attend the final showcase event, register for a free ticket while space is available! Finalists inc…

The more we talk to communities about how they use data, the more we’re discovering not only interesting use cases, but also new ways cities are visualizing civic data. We’ve collected five examples below. The first three are featured in our newest Forum Smart City Big Data playbook, which will go live in early September. (See library of playbooks here) The last two are culled from city open d…

After kicking off its second public innovation challenge in June with industry and non-profit partners, the Washington D.C. Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) has now announced that three teams have been selected to advance to the next round of competition. The following teams will have 60 days to work with engineering mentors from Verizon, and subject matter experts from the DC …

US Ignite and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) are now in the software design phase of building a new economic development tool for smart communities. This is part of our joint Smart City Data Exchange initiative, and our aim is to provide communities with the ability to see development potential in their neighborhoods on a property-by-property basis for the purpose o…

The smallest US Ignite Smart Gigabit Community has done it again. After Red Wing Ignite attracted region-wide support, it adopted the name Minnesota Ignite and created its own Ag Tech Challenge in 2018. Now, a winner of that challenge – Poultry Patrol – is one of 21 teams globally competing for a half-million dollar prize from the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research and the McDonald…

[embed]https://youtu.be/4OL-l_i7Pqc[/embed] Maps are an essential tool for community planning, and used effectively, they can both improve delivery of civic services and contribute to local economic growth. In this video, we highlight two mapping applications created for smart city planners: LocaleIQ, which feeds GIS data into an interactive, visual interface and enables community planners t…

[embed]https://youtu.be/JT1yX0aMklM[/embed] There are many ways to describe a smart city, but it helps to cite practical use cases; examples of how smart city technologies and applications can improve lives. In this video, we highlight two examples in the public safety sector: Triangle UAS, which is working with the city of Wilson, North Carolina to deploy a secure, real-time streaming app f…