Alenka Zajić and Gordon L. Stüber received the Neal Shepherd Memorial Best Propagation Paper Award for their paper, "Wideband MIMO Mobile-to-Mobile Channels: Geometry-Based Statistical Modeling with Experimental Verification," published in the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 58, no. 2, February 2009. This award recognizes the best propagation paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology during the past three years.

Drs. Zajić and Stüber share this award with their colleagues Thomas Pratt, a research professor at the University of Notre Dame, and Son Nguyen, a researcher with the Army Research Laboratory. They will receive this honor at an awards luncheon during the 76th IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Conference, to be held September 3-6 in Quebec City, Canada.

Mobile-to-mobile communication systems have recently drawn great attention because they have the potential to improve convenience and safety of automobile transportation. For example, sensor-equipped cars that communicate via wireless links (and thus create ad-hoc networks) can be used to reduce traffic accidents and facilitate traffic flow. Mobile-to-mobile communication systems also find applications in intelligent transportation systems, relay-based cellular networks, and future combat systems. The design of highly reliable mobile-to-mobile wireless communication systems requires a detailed understanding of propagation among vehicles. The awarded paper presents the first three-dimensional wideband channel model for mobile-to-mobile communications and presents experimental validation of this model.

This paper is a result of Dr. Zajić's Ph.D. thesis work while she was a member of Wireless Systems Laboratory, which is led by Dr. Stüber, and the research was funded by the Army Research Laboratory Collaborative Technology Alliance for Communications and Networking. Dr. Zajić is a new assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, while Dr. Stüber has been on the ECE faculty since 1986, where he is the Joseph M. Pettit Chair Professor in Communications.