Instructor Biographies

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MScEE, IEEE WCP, Electronics Engineering Consultant

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Alan Bensky, MScEE, is an electronics engineering consultant with over 30 years of experience in analog and digital design, management, and marketing. Specializing in wireless circuits and systems, Alan has carried out projects for varied military and consumer applications and led the development of three patents on wireless distance measurement.

Alan has taught electrical engineering courses and gives lectures on radio engineering topics. He is the author of two books: Short-range Wireless Communication, Second Edition, published by Elsevier in 2004, and Wireless Positioning Technologies and Applications, Artech House, 2008. In addition, he is a contributing author to six other books dealing with wireless communication.

Alan Bensky is a senior member of IEEE and an IEEE certified Wireless Communication Professional.

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Founder, Anafor Solutions

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Brent is Co-Founder and President of AnaFor Solutions LLC, a New Hampshire registered company that provides consulting services in MATLAB scripting and algorithm development, Digital Signal Processing, Wireless Communications Systems, Systems Engineering, and Program Management.

Brent has 11 years of industry experience, a BSEE from Rochester Institute of Technology, a MSEE focused on wireless communications from Northeastern University and is an IEEE Wireless Certified Professional (WCP). He has worked for Agilent Technologies as a technical consultant where experiences included technical instruction surrounding wireless communication protocols, and commercial and military wireless communication system development, troubleshooting, and field trials. Brent currently works for BAE Systems as a Principal Systems Engineer and a Systems Engineering Manager with a strong focus in embedded receivers and beam forming technologies.

Throughout his career Brent has been focused on wireless communications systems, specifically in the cell phone industry, covering everything from modeling at system inception to embedded software defined radio design to building and testing systems for field deployment and trials.

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President, Daniel Wireless LLC

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K. Daniel Wong is President of Daniel Wireless LLC, a California-registered company that provides consulting and training in wireless, networking and software.

Daniel has 18 years experience in wireless communications, both in industry and academia. His research work has covered a wide range of areas in wireless communications and has been widely published in top journals and conferences. Daniel is also an experienced speaker and teacher, having taught many highly-rated university level courses, industry short courses and tutorials at conferences, to a wide range of students from industry, government and academia. He is a member of the Practice Analysis Task Force that helped create IEEE’s WCET certification program, and a co-author and co-editor of IEEE’s Wireless Engineering Book of Knowledge (WEBOK). Daniel is also the author of Wireless Internet Telecommunications (Artech House, 2004) and Fundamentals of Wireless Communication Engineering Technologies (Wiley, 2012).

Originally from Malaysia, he received The Outstanding Young Malaysian award in 2007 (in the Science and Technology category). Daniel graduated with a BSE (with Highest Honors) from Princeton University, and an MSc. and Ph.D from Stanford University, all in electrical engineering.

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Wireless R&D Engineer

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Erdem Ulukan has 9 years of experience in wireless communications. He received his B.Sc. (with Highest Honors) from Istanbul University (Turkey) in Electronics Engineering and M.Sc. from Sabanci University (Turkey) in Telecommunications Engineering in 2002 and 2005, respectively. During his masters study, he worked at Sabanci University ComNet Laboratory as a research assistant, where his research focused on IEEE 802.11 PHY/MAC, MIMO systems and smart antennas, Ad-Hoc networks and cross layer design. He also served as a teaching assistant for wireless and multimedia communications courses. He was awarded with a merit-based scholarship by Nortel Networks Turkey in 2002 and 2003.

He has worked in software development, systems engineering, architecture and project management of embedded wireless devices. Erdem is currently working as a researcher and systems engineer at AirTies Wireless Networks.

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Distinguished Member of Technical Staff

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Javan Erfanian has been an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer for years, an editor and author for the Wireless Engineering Book of Knowledge, and a member of IEEE WCET (Wireless Communications Engineering Technologies) Industry Advisory Board. He has about 20 years of experience in telecommunications research, lectures, and practice. He has taught many academic and industry courses and programs, particularly on Communications and Wireless Systems. In his IEEE involvement, Javan was also Chair of Communications Society in Toronto, and the Canadian correspondent for Communications Magazine in late 90s. He received the IEEE Millennium Medal in 2000. His earlier publications are cited in research journals and textbooks. Javan has extensive experience in wireless industry. His recent contributions to research forums & standards bodies have focused on future wireless technologies from service environment and user interaction to next-generations of technologies, networks and operational excellence.

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Sr. Radio Frequency Planning Engineer

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Jonathan Levine currently holds the position of Sr. Radio Frequency Planning Engineer for U.S. Cellular® at the company’s headquarters in Chicago, Il. In his current role, he is responsible for engineering technical trials related to the radio access network for technologies including CDMA, EVDO (Rel 0 and Rev A), GSM, and LTE; with specific focus on tools, test equipment, and performance-enhancing features. He has worked closely with numerous vendor partners when developing hardware and software test solutions that streamline engineering test requirements with primary reference to the 3GPP and 3GPP2-based standards. Jonathan has worked with numerous engineers as an escalation point for customer-effecting network issues. These issues include radio access network, wide area network, data core, and device-based escalations. From these experiences, he has generated numerous internal troubleshooting guides as well as led presentation and discussion to cross-functional teams within his company.

Early in his career, he focused heavily on network access call flows for CDMA and EVDO as well as channel configuration optimization for short-message-service (SMS). Currently, his efforts are focused more closely on generating internal guidelines for network capacity and technology evolution strategy. Jonathan holds official training certifications for CDMA, EVDO, and LTE short courses; as well as numerous industry-leading design and optimization tool workshops. He has participated in 4G World and IEEE Comsoc’s Globecom and Antenna Systems conferences.

Jonathan’s commercial wireless engineering career began in 2005 following completion of his BSEE from Northern Illinois University. As an undergraduate, he engaged in heavy research pertaining to an optical transmission communications system using modulated lasers for which his team was awarded Best Senior Design Project in the Spring of 2005. He also holds a MSEE from the Illinois Institute of Technology (2008) and is an IEEE WCP. During graduate work he wrote papers on the emergence of Femto cells, IEEE 802.16 stationary/mobile WiMax, and a detailed overview of Erbium-doped Fiber Amplifier development. His interest in wireless communications extends back to 1999 when he began a 6 year enlistment in the Illinois Air National Guard (USAF) as a member of the 264^th Combat Communication Squadron.

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PEng, IEEE WCP

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Mr. Vishloff has nearly 30 years of experience in wireless systems and product design. His designs have covered a wide range of wireless applications including satellite, cellular packet data, rural telephony, microwave radio, aeronautical, and others. Lee brings a wide range of practical experience having hands-on and management experience with wireless telecommunication systems, modem, RF, analog, digital, embedded firmware and mechanical design technologies. His experience is largely in ground-up design where user and technical requirements are translated from paper into working products.

He has spent the majority of his career working with equipment manufacturers, with stints in the semiconductor and consulting businesses. He has served on numerous joint industry-academic committees during his career, strengthening the link between academic research and practical industry needs.

Lee has a degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia and completed his management education at Simon Fraser University and the AEA/Stanford Executive Institute. He holds one patent and is a Professional Engineer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada.

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Director, Live Experimentation at the Battle Command Battle Lab

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LTC Randy Carlson graduated with dual Bachelor’s Degrees from University of South Florida, and was commissioned a second lieutenant in the US Army Signal Corps in April of 1989.

He has served various assignments in CONUS, Europe, Korea, and Afghanistan. His most recent past assignment was as the Director, Plans and Engineering, 7^th Signal Command.

His deployments include NATO ISAF (Afghanistan) (2003-2004) and CJTF-82 (Afghanistan) (2006-2007).

LTC Carlson is a graduate of the Naval Postgraduate School (MS-Joint C4I Systems), the Universitie Libre De Bruxelles (MBA, Honors), the Joint Forces Staff College, NATO Staff College and the Command and General Staff College. He is a member of AFCEA, IEEE, ISC(2), U.S. Triathlon Association and the Project Management Institute and holds Project Management Professional (PMP), Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Information Systems Security Engineering Professional (ISSEP), Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA) and IEEE Wireless Communications Professional (WCP) certifications. He is currently enrolled at the National Defense Universities iCollege pursuing the U.S. Federal Government Chief Information Officer (CIO) Certification.

He has personally led over 10 substantial (> 1M USD) commercial standard deployments of integrated VSAT, Cellular/Wireless, Air Traffic, Network Management and Complex IP Networks.

LTC Carlson currently serves as the Director, Live Experimentation at the Battle Command Battle Lab, Fort Gordon.

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Senior Scientist, Wireless Systems Resarch Department

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Vijay K. Varma is a Senior Scientist in the Wireless Systems Research Department of Applied Communication Sciences, Red Bank, NJ. He has over 25 years experience in wireless communications and has been involved in various systems issues, including speech coding, signaling and call control protocols, wireless data, mobility management protocols, and wireless network architectures.

His current research interest includes wireless system architecture evolution, IP Multimedia Subsystems (IMS), and wireless priority services. He has published several papers in the area of wireless communications, given 15 tutorials, organized many workshops, and given and chaired panel sessions at various IEEE conferences. He attends 3GPP standards meetings relating to LTE, EPC, IMS, and Priority Services. He was the Technical Program Vice Chair for the IEEE WCNC conference in 2005 and is an associate editor for IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine.

Dr. Varma received the M.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and the Ph.D. degree from Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX, both in Electrical Engineering. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE. He received the Frederick E. Terman award in 1985 and Telcordia Technologies CEO Award in 2010.