Rohde & Schwarz and VDE select the winners of the 2010 Case Study Competition

This year’s case study competition was won by the Team “Gauß Krach” from the Technical University of Aachen. The jury was made up of engineers and HR managers from Rohde & Schwarz. Each of the five students, Stefan Liebich, Vitaly Volevach, Moritz Schrey, Daniel Rüschen and Marius Cordts, received an Apple iPad and their university was awarded € 2000. As a high-tech company, Rohde & Schwarz lives from its innovations and therefore wants to attract the best minds in the world. Because Rohde & Schwarz, with its technological developments, is always at the forefront – whether we are developing new features for television or for wireless communications test and measurement equipment. Events such as the case study competition are an opportunity to attract young engineers to our company. By solving real cases, they realize how their studies apply to real life and are motivated to keep going, explains Michael Vohrer, President and CEO.

175 participants from 12 universities located in Germany and Singapore took part in the competition and battled in the preliminary rounds, held May 10 to June 10, for a place in the final round. The motto of this year’s case study competition was “Move up to the next level! The future of digital broadcasting is in your hands! The participants had a go at solving complex exercises related to the DVB-T standard and its successor, DVB-T2. Since 2002, the DVB-T standard, which brings digital TV to the screen via a rooftop antenna, has been gaining ground. And DVB-T2, the next generation of digital broadcasting, with a significantly higher transmission capacity, is ready to go.

In the preliminary rounds, the students had to determine the technical capabilities of DVB-T2 and its advantages over DVB-T. Their mission was to convince network and service providers to use DVB-T2 to broadcast their services in the near future. To do so, the young engineers had to solve several independent exercises that required solid technical knowledge. For example, one exercise was: Calculate the minimum DVB-T receiver input level based on the DVB-T transmitter network planning predominantly used in Germany, on one Gaussian channel and a tuner noise figure of 7 dB. The objective was to develop a chain of arguments as the individual exercises were solved and then present it to the committee.

On June 17 and 18, the 12 winning teams met at Rohde & Schwarz company headquarters in Munich to compete in a more in-depth case study. As in the preliminary rounds, the students’ presentations not only had to be technically convincing, they also had to be economically feasible. Soft skills such as solution-oriented thinking, teamwork and presentation technique were also evaluated.
But the two-day final round wasn’t just hard work; the young engineers were also able to enjoy a comprehensive supporting program. For instance, they were given an initial impression of what it is like to work at Rohde & Schwarz and could take part in a city rally through Munich.