The summer after ninth grade, the air conditioner in Ethan Ge’s house in Riverside, California, gave out. He opened it up, traced the issue to a failed capacitor and replaced it. The unit hummed back to life. It was the first time Ge understood how his technical knowledge could solve a real problem.
Now a third-year electrical engineering student at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering, Ge has continued to put his skills to work, building a tool to improve the student experience and expand access to hands-on learning.
Ge developed RemoteRF, a Python-based platform that lets students remotely interface with software-defined radios (SDRs) over UCLA’s network. SDRs are systems whose behavior is controlled largely through software rather than fixed hardware, making them flexible tools for applications ranging from secure communication to monitoring satellites and wireless prototyping.
Until recently, working with SDRs required purchasing expensive personal devices, checking out limited inventory or scheduling time in a physical lab. RemoteRF removes those barriers by allowing students to write and run code on their own laptops while connecting to shared SDR hardware housed in a lab environment. The platform is now used in three UCLA courses: ECE 132A, ECE 239AS and ECE 230B.
