Educational Institutions and Other Organizations

From coast-to-coast, CRC is assisting universities and other organizations in meeting their R&D objectives. Here are just a few examples:

• CRC and five major wireless centres founded the Canada Network of Wireless Centres (CWCNet ) - a resource for small-and medium-size enterprises to demonstrate and test products and services in a real-life environment.
  
• CRC is collaborating with the University of Ottawa and Université de Sherbrooke on opto-electronics research.
  
• CRC worked with the Memorial University of Newfoundland, National Research Council,
  

University of Ottawa, various Canadian school boards and conservatories from around the world to develop and evaluate music teaching using broadband technology (MusicGrid Project).

• In collaboration with Université Laval, CRC is studying techniques such as antenna diversity that would enable digital television to deliver multimedia applications to portable devices. Using a broadcast transmission system would allow for more efficient spectrum use.
  
• CRC and Simon Fraser University provided C-Band satellite communications support to the B.C. Forest Protection Service during the 2003 fires in southern B.C., and to the 2003 Haughton Mars expedition on Devon Island.
  
• CRC and the University of Ottawa are jointly developing a User-Controlled Lightpath Provisioning (UCLP) System, under a contract awarded by CANARIE. The UCLP System will enable end-to-end lightpath services to be deployed on the national CA*net 4 research and education network. The beta version of the UCLP System software was delivered to CANARIE in February 2004 and is currently undergoing acceptance testing.
  
• CRC, the University of Ottawa and the National Research Council received a $450,000 Strategic Grant award from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council for a three-year research project studying "Virtual navigation using image-based rendering techniques".
  

Standards Bodies and Technical Committees

ITU

• CRC assumed international leadership roles within ITU-R, serving as Chair of the ITU-R Study Group 4 dealing with Fixed Satellite Services and as vice-chair of the Working Party-6Q (Quality Assessment) and of Study Group 3 (propagation and HF systems).
  
• CRC played a lead role in the Video Quality Expert Group on the evaluation of objective methods of picture quality assessment. This work resulted in the new ITU-R Recommendation "Objective perceptual video quality measurement techniques for standard definition digital broadcast television in the presence of a full reference".
  
• AS part of ITU-R's activities to develop a method to automatically measure audio loudness, CRC was selected to carry out subjective testing and generate data to evaluate 10 proposed loudness meters. CRC also conducted a comparative evaluation of the proposed meters and has proposed one that outperforms other proposed methods. The CRC's proposal will become an interim ITU-R recommendation.
  

NATO

• CRC contributed to NATO Ad Hoc Working Groups on V/UHF Communications, Beyond Line-of Sight Communications, and Multimedia Communications.
  
• CRC chaired the NATO Task Group on Power Line Communications Interference to study the effects of emissions from power line communications on the HF spectrum.
  

DRRI, DRCG and CDTV

• CRC, Digital Radio Roll-out Inc. (DRRI), Digital Radio Co-ordinating Group (DRCG) and Canadian Digital Television (CDTV) renewed their partnership to foster the development of an efficient digital broadcasting infrastructure and the introduction of innovative services.
  
• In addition to supporting U.S. and Canadian companies in the evaluation of digital television (DTV) receivers for North America, CRC shared its expertise with Shanghai Jiao University (China) and Linx Electronics (U.S.) to evaluate a DTV system that could become a standard in China.
  
• CRC held and chaired inaugural meetings for the DRCG Ad Hoc Joint Working Group on the compliance of Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB) receivers, and the Technical Group for DAB Datacasting demonstrations in Toronto.
  
• CRC represented Canada at the WorldDAB Technical Committee meetings in Europe. A global centre of expertise in subjective assessments of video quality, CRC has conducted several subjective tests for external clients and international standards bodies.
  

Radio Advisory Board of Canada (RABC)

• CRC chaired the RABC Licence-Exempt Sub-Committee (SC-B) dealing with fixed wireless communications issues.
  

ISO

• CRC and Philips are studying techniques to improve Philips' new parametric audio coding system, a pending ISO/IEC international standard.
  

IEEE

• CRC participated in working groups on the use of licence-exempt equipment in the V/UHF TV bands and on the development of a transmission standard for wireless metropolitan area networks.