Our conversation with the head of the Student Design Bureau of the Educational and Research Institute of Telecommunication Systems Kostiantyn Lisovskyi and the project manager of the same Student Design Bureau Andrii Buglak took place immediately after the meeting of the Academic Council of the Educational and Research Institute of Telecommunication Systems with the lead of Mykhailo Ilchenko, the Chairman of the Academic Council of the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute. Scientists and lecturers were delivered a report on the operating results of the Student Design Bureau and determined plans for the future together with the students.
Thus, on January 20, 2022, the ITS Student Design Bureau (SDB) was registered at the Scientific and Educational Institute of Telecommunication Systems. Currently, 32 students work in several of its groups.
One of the defining stages of the Design Bureau activity was the implementation of uninterrupted Internet connection using Starlink in the university academic building 1, as well as in bomb shelters of dormitories 4, 12, 16, 18, 21. Uninterrupted power supply is required to ensure reliable connection. For this, employees of the Student Design Bureau used batteries from electronic cigarettes. These are devices that usually have a lithium-polymer structure and resemble an ordinary cell phone battery. Valuable qualities of such batteries are high current, considerable electrical capacity, and small dimensions. In addition, they can work at low temperatures and are designed for a large number of charging cycles. If such batteries are connected according to the appropriate scheme, you can get powerful charging units that can be used anywhere. A decision was made to send these power banks to the military units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and to the settlements according to the requests of humanitarian centres deployed there. The issue of waste-free production has also been resolved: processing of superfluous parts of electronic cigarettes made of aluminum and plastics, because these are recyclable materials that can be used in the processing industry.
What else has the skills and experience of the young men and women working at the Bureau been useful for the last year?
Last December, our newspaper reported about the well-known record for making trench candles, which was organized by the Student Trade Union Committee headed by Ihor Stepaniuk. But there was no mention of technical support for this promotion. However, students from the SDB helped with that. After the graduates of the Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute provided the Student Trade Union Committee with a gasoline generator for use in order to create a phone charging point in the campus, it was decided to provide it with the Internet as well. For this purpose, the Science and Technology Association "KPI-TELECOM" headed by Pavlo Kucherniuk provided the Starlink terminal. So, Kostiantyn Lisovskyi and Andriy Buglak’s colleagues ensured the technical maintenance of this equipment, and it served the students a lot during the hours of emergency shutdowns and during the production of a record number of trench candles in one day. By the way, a seamless online broadcast of the record setting was created thanks to Starlink.
According to the presentation booklet of the Student Design Bureau posted on social networks, the students modernized the Wi-Fi network operating at the Scientific and Educational Institute of Telecommunication Systems, implemented an additional Internet branch in the academic building 30, conducted test launches of the voice announcement system in the "Attention all!" signal mode before a full-scale invasion by the russian federation. And updating the software of Internet access points in the ITS network made it possible to stabilize the operation of the existing network, to make it impossible for "emissions" from the World Wide Web to occur during long-term use of the corresponding equipment. In this way, the level of stable bandwidth of the Internet system was increased.
"Science cannot be boring" is the creative credo of the employees of the Student Design Bureau. They do a lot of research and tell the general public about their results. Among the most popular research articles are reviews and reverse engineering of Starlink routers and terminal devices. The development of research in our country and the increase in the number of publications on this topic fell in the first months of the war, which symbolically coincided in time with the active phase of the deployment of this project by the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine.
The article "UAVs Communications architecture and protocols UAV network" is also interesting. This is an overview of communication protocols for the operation of unmanned aerial vehicles. The peculiarity of the publication is that the students made it in cooperation with a colleague from the University College of Bahrain, Hlib-Davyd Roshenovych. Judging by the current line of publications of our researchers, they continue to cooperate even now.
The achievements of the Student Design Bureau in the field of information security research are quite significant. Students considered the principles of information search and analysis based on open data. Absolutely all pages on the Internet go through the process of indexing. However, some of them are not immediately loaded into the search engines, because web crawlers (special search engines that go through all the available pages of the Internet) need some time.
"You should always remember that even a single "selfie" is already a huge source of information about the user. Including about their lifestyle, preferences, places where they often visit. Needless to say, what can be learned about, having only a name or some minimal data about a person. Using social networks, the user in any case leaves their "digital footprint", which is 100% impossible to get rid of. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the rules of information hygiene both in the desire to share data and receiving information from other users. Information is a great power, and therefore a great responsibility," Kostiantyn Lisovskyi says, who researched information security together with Andrii Buglak and Pavlo Venher, a student of the 11th grade of the Kyiv Lyceum No. 142, and now a freshman of the Educational and Research Institute of Physics and Technology.
What are the plans of young researchers of the Student Design Bureau? Design activities improvement, delineating new directions and forms of students' research work, diversifying interesting topics, confirming the status and improving the image of the bureau. And, by all means, further scientific and engineering research in the development of technical means.
Right now, as a response to practical needs, the main areas of work of the SKB are being formed, design and technological documentation is being developed, and design supervision over the prototypes and stands manufacturing is provided. Preparation of visual information, materials for participation in conferences and exhibitions, preparation of multimedia products will be carried out. I am not writing about this for the sake of a witty remark about talented students. Having familiarized myself with the media presentation of the Student Design Bureau activity, which was presented to the Academic Council of the Scientific and Educational Institute of Telecommunication Systems, I was convinced: the Internet pages of the Student Design Bureau will put their best foot forward more than once.
Kostiantyn Lisovskyi and Andrii Buglak consider the acquisition of professional knowledge and practical experience at the Student Design Bureau to be a necessary condition for a successful engineering career building. But the guys do not limit their student life only to this. Kostiantyn is interested in the history of our country, including the history through the prism of his own genealogy. Andrii is attracted by the dance floor with its brightly festive, but at the same time, competitive atmosphere of dance tournaments.
Therefore, we wish students designers further achievements in their activities and the realization of cherished dreams!