The UAB to host the first edition fo the National Telecommunications Olympics

The competing projects will exhibit the importance of telecommunications today and their relation with the Sustainable Development Goals for sustainable cities.

The aim of the event, entitled “I Olimpiada Nacional de Telecomunicacions: resolviendo retos de la sociedad”, is to promote telecommunications studies, scientific culture, technology and innovation among students of secondary schools and vocational training centres, as well as to awaken scientific-technological vocations among pre-university students.

The nationwide event is organised by the Official Association of Technical Telecommunications Engineers (COITT) and the Spanish Association of Graduates & Technical Telecommunications Engineers (AEGITT), together with the Conference of Directors of Schools with Engineering Degrees in the Telecommunications Fields (CODIGAT), which bring together twenty university schools as sponsors and collaborators.

Through a competitive process, the Telecommunications Olympics will serve to enhance abilities such as creativity and problem solving, to work on skills from an interdisciplinary approach, and to put into practice skills such as teamwork, leadership, adaptability, handling multiple tasks, the desire to learn and to be at the forefront.

The competition, which will take place on 20 May at the School of Engineering, is a qualifier for the final. Thirty-five students from secondary and upper secondary schools in Catalonia (Barberá del Vallés, Girona, Palafrugell/La Bisbal del Empordà, Barcelona, Castellar del Vallés, Begues) and the only school in Aragon, from Zaragoza, will take part. The teams are mostly mixed in terms of gender, with almost parity.

Two types of competitions are proposed: a practical team competition for students in 3rd and 4th year of secondary school and Intermediate and Higher Level Training Cycles, and an individual competition for upper secondary school students.

Steps in the competition

For the practical development of the team competition, and as a unifying element of the work, the SDGs of the 2030 Agenda will be used. Specifically, participants will provide solutions to some of the targets set out in SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) 11: sustainable cities and communities.

The challenge must show how telecommunications are integrated or help to achieve these goals/targets, and a prototype based on any programmable platform with the Arduino IDE must be developed to demonstrate this relationship, for example, through a 5G communications system, LoRaWAN, wifi, Bluetooth, etc. The teams will have to present and defend the chosen and developed system in front of a university tribunal, explaining not only the design of the prototype but also how they have integrated telecommunications to achieve the proposed objective.

For the individual test, a set of problems directly or indirectly related to telecommunications engineering will be proposed to be solved. To do so, the participants will have to demonstrate a clever use of fundamental physical-mathematical tools, acquired throughout secondary school in their Science itinerary.

For more information please visit: https://olimpiadasteleco.com/ (in Spanish)