Chip-Scale Wireless Sensor Systems
Dr. David Burnett
November 4th, 2022
Abstract: This talk provides an overview of why narrowband RF communication systems don't need crystal references, even if they are intended to communicate using established standards like IEEE 802.15.4 and Bluetooth Low Energy. Crystal and CMOS oscillator performance is compared to requirements of these established standards. By eliminating the crystal, we have the potential to design wireless sensor systems using a single CMOS integrated circuit and nothing else besides a power source. Early work in pairing a crystal-free wireless chip with suitable sensors is also presented.
5G: Signals and Spectrum
Dr. Fu Li
November 4th, 2022
Abstract: TBA
Guest Faculty Seminar on Computer Engineering
Dr. Marilyn Wolf
October 21st, 2022
Abstract: Computer engineering emerged as a discipline with relatively little self-reflection as to the goals and techniques of computer engineering. The field has considerably broadened its scope over the past several decades: toward a wider array of devices and circuits on the one hand; toward real-time, low-power embedded software on the other. This discussion will consider where computer engineering has been, where it is, and where it needs to go over the next decade.
OpenWSN: Standards-based Open-Source Implementation for Industrial IoT
Dr. Tengfei Chang
October 17th, 2022
Abstract: The Internet of Things enables great applications, such as energy-aware homes or real-time asset tracking. With these networks gaining maturity, standardization bodies have started to work on standardizing how these networks of tiny devices communicate. The OpenWSN project's aim is to provide open-source implementations of a complete protocol stack based on Industrial Internet of Things standards implemented on a variety of software and hardware platforms. This implementation can then help academia and industry verify the applicability of these standards to the Internet of Things, for those networks to become truly ubiquitous.
Advanced synchronization techniques for spectral- and energy-efficient UnderWater Acoustic communications
Dr. Tarak Arbi
June 15th, 2022
Abstract: The UnderWater Acoustic (UWA) channel is a time-varying frequency-selective channel with a particularly limited bandwidth. This makes reliable communications difficult to achieve and limits the information rate. Therefore, high spectral efficiency communications techniques, such as high-order modulation and Signal Space Diversity (SSD) are very attractive for UWA communication systems.
In particular, rotated and cyclic Q-delayed (RCQD) constellations achieve theoretically higher performance than conventional constellations over fading channels thanks to their increased SSD. In practice, when classical phase estimation techniques are used for RCQD signals, a poor synchronization performance is obtained leading to a considerable loss in the overall system performance. This talk will present a phase estimation technique that inherently considers the characteristics of rotated constellations.
In addition, the choice of step-sizes for adaptive synchronization algorithms has a considerable impact on the UWA communication system performance; however this choice is difficult in practice and often leads to severe performance degradation. This talk will examine an adaptive step-size algorithm for joint equalization and phase estimation for which the soft information exchanged between the equalizer and the channel decoder can also be used for adjusting the adaptive step-size, as it is an appealing indicator of the symbol reliability.
A Primer on Underwater Acoustics for Students of Electrical Engineering
Dr. Daniel Rouseff
April 15th, 2022
Abstract: The interesting and challenging problems in technology are often multidisciplinary in nature, requiring knowledge and skills beyond those normally associated with electrical engineering. An electrical engineering education, however, should ideally prepare a graduate to operate outside of their comfort zone. The fundamentals of a new field can often be gleaned quickly through analogy with concepts familiar to all electrical engineers. In the present lecture, this process of self learning through analogy is demonstrated by considering underwater acoustics, a topic with seemingly little connection to electrical engineering. It is shown, though, how the equations governing acoustic propagation in the ocean are familiar to any engineering undergraduate. The rules for sampling and processing an acoustic wavefront in space are the same as those for sampling and processing an electrical signal in time. Acoustic propagation in the deep ocean is directly analogous to how signals are transmitted in a graded index optical fiber. The specific problem of developing a wireless network that can operate underwater using sound rather than radio waves is considered. Career opportunities are discussed.
Equity Option Strategy Discovery and Optimization
Using Evolutionary Algorithms
Dr. Richard Tymerski
March 4th, 2022
Abstract: The power of evolutionary algorithms (EAs) is applied to the task of discovering and optimizing option trading strategies. The EA algorithms used were a memetic algorithm and an evolution strategy, (μ, λ)-ES. Optimum multi-leg option strategies applied to the S&P500 index (SPY Exchange Traded Fund) were discovered, including some previously unknown. Strategies comprising up to six option legs were examined. The fitness function targeted maximizing profitability
while seeking a certain trade success percentage and constraining equity drawdown. Practical effective three and four leg strategies are highlighted.
Dr. C. Glenn Shirley
January 21st, 2022
Abstract: The GasP family of asynchronous circuits provides controls for simple data pipelines. Data flow through a chain of latches is controlled by propagation of "tokens" along a parallel chain of the simplest member of the GasP family of circuits, called a "GasP". The mechanism of a well-known "drafting" phenomenon, in which a following token catches up to a leading token on a chain of GasPs, was elucidated in a recent study by Chris Cowan. This piqued my interest in the dynamics of swarms of tokens on circular and linear chains of GasPs (FIFOs). The drafting phenomenon has potential for a kind of delay-based physically unclonable function (PUF). PUFs are the basis of hardware-based "root of trust" methodologies. Simulation of PUF applications requires accurate statistical modeling of the process and environmental (temperature, voltage) variation of delays. For this, Spice-level circuit simulation is computationally infeasible, so extraction of statistical delay models by the "parametric bootstrap" method was done. Extraction of the delay model of the NOR gate in the GasP element was a particular challenge which gave insights into how to do better parametric bootstrapping more generally, such as building models of semiconductor manufacturing tests.
Formal Modeling and Analysis: Experience and Applications
Dr. Xiaoyu Song
November 19th, 2021
Abstract: Reliable software and hardware systems play a key role in applications where failure is unacceptable. Formal methods have become an important technique towards establishing the correctness of safety-critical system designs. Formal methods are a collection of mathematically rigorous techniques for the specification, development, and verification of software and hardware systems. The talk gives a glimpse of some fundamentals of automatic formal techniques. The research experience on formal modeling and verification is addressed. Some potential research problems are discussed.
Dr. Renjeng Su
October 29th, 2021
Abstract: Electromagnetics has proven to be a difficult course for both instructors and students. There are continued research efforts aimed to improve learning outcomes. Typically, educational research is conducted by adopting new teaching methods or materials and measuring the results by recording the overall learners’ test scores. In this talk, I will discuss a different angle for pedagogy research focused on the internal process of the students. When a student is engaged in learning a concept, a series of mental images are developed internally. Taking this concept into consideration, the basic research questions are: 1) What are the specific mental images for each student? 2) How can the images be observed? Answers to these questions will shape teaching methods and materials. A course on electromagnetic fields, with a body of intricate and challenging concepts, makes an especially suitable topic in which to investigate the answers to these questions.
Dr. Charles W. Holland and Cody Henderson
May 14th, 2021
Abstract: Electromagnetic waves propagate only short distances in seawater. Acoustic waves by contrast can travel around the globe, hence they are a powerful means for probing the ocean environment. The physical properties of the seabed are of considerable interest to science, industry, and numerous government agencies responsible for stewardship of the ocean environment and for defense. While inferring seabed properties using acoustic waves is not new, vast knowledge gaps remain and the field remains an important basic science research area. This talk will provide an overview of one of our current projects which attempts to advance our understanding of the seabed using a commercial multibeam sonar. [Research funded by the Office of Naval Research]
Dr. Robert Bass
April 23rd, 2021
Abstract: Sudden and drastic changes in electric power system frequency occur several times per month within the Western Interconnect. These events can damage electrical equipment and lead to cascading outages if they are not arrested quickly. As more renewable resources have been added to the Interconnect's generation portfolio, the rotational inertia of the system has decreased, thereby reducing the first mode of reaction to frequency events. Rotational inertia may be replaced with "electrical inertia," specifically from battery energy storage systems, though only if the onset of frequency events can be identified quickly. In this seminar, I will introduce and describe power system frequency events, present the NERC characterization of such event, and describe the PSU real-time and post-event identification systems. My objective is to initiate a discussion among the EE faculty members, particularly those in signal processing and machine learning, about some potential ideas for frequency event detection algorithms.
What makes graduate and undergraduate students successful in research?
Dr. Christof Teuscher
February 26th, 2021
In this presentation I will share the outcomes of a multi-year data collection and analysis project of my lab's undergraduate and graduate research students, the MCECS Undergraduate Research and Mentoring Program (URMP), my NSF-funded Research Experience for Undergraduates site, and last summer's altREU program. The project was motivated by several questions, e.g., What are good metrics to predict student success? Are regular meetings and other interventions effective? How does feedback affect student productivity and success? Are there early warning signs that a student may quit the project? Does perceived effort correlate with actual productivity? How much guidance and mentoring leads to success? Do grades predict success in research? How do the size and the difficulty of a research project affect motivation and morale?
Dr. Mahima Gupta
November 20th, 2020
Power electronic converters comprise of solid-state switching devices and energy storage elements. The power density of converters have drastically increased since the 1970s. This can be attributed to the continuous advancement of power semiconductor device technology that allowed the increase in the switching frequencies of power converters. However, the pace of this advancement has slowed down in the recent past. This talk will present the principles of smart-switching pulse width modulation (PWM) approaches which can enable dramatic reductions in the energy storage requirements for high-density power conversion (0.1-10µF vs. 100-1000µF). Smart switching approaches feature an intelligent switching sequence, accurate duty ratio calculation and robust fast bandwidth controls. Along with a discussion on the main features of smart-switching, several applications of smart-switching PWM approaches will be presented with simulation and experimental results.
Dr. David Burnett
October 16th, 2020
Millimeter-scale wireless sensor nodes are within reach thanks to recent advances in crystal-free RF communication. Complete wireless systems, usually referred to as "modules," have been limited to sizes of approximately 1cm x 1cm in both industry and academia because they require off-chip components assembled via PCB in addition to the wireless IC. Recent breakthroughs show these components can be eliminated to yield a chip-scale system with incredible applications in implantable medical devices, high-density sensor networks, and animal instrumentation. This talk will describe relevant background pertaining to crystal-free communication and explore the future possibilities these developments enable.
Dr. Marek Perkowski
May 29th, 2020
Abstract: It is well-known that the “Unsorted Database” quantum algorithm by Grover gives quadratic speedup to several important combinatorial and enumerative problems, such as: SAT, Graph Coloring, Maximum Cliques, Travelling Salesman and many others. Recently, quantum programming languages such as Quipper start to be used to design, verify and simulate practical quantum algorithms for important problems in Quantum Machine Learning. So far, however, no methodologies have been created to program Grover Oracles for particular classes of problems. In contrast, such methodologies have been already created for classical Constraint Satisfaction Problems. The goal of this invited talk is to show results of some initial research towards creating systematic methodologies to program quantum computers that solve search problems in Artificial Intelligence, Logic Design and Machine Learning. Our methods are based on unified oracle blocks for such problem representations as set partition algebra, cube calculus and optimal mappings. For instance, several important problems in CAD and Machine Learning can be solved using only two basic operations on set partitions; 1 ≤ 2 and 1 . 2 . Moreover, building oracles is the fundamental concept in the new approach to solve CSP proposed here and based on Invertible Logic introduced recently by Supriyo Datta and his team.
Dr. Branimir Pejčinović
April 17th, 2020
In this presentation I will address three different research topics, mainly to pique people’s interest and curiosity. Two deal with the material characterization of a) microwave absorbers, and b) ferroelectrics. For the third one, I will argue that there are many areas of engineering education that are worthy of exploration for which I am seeking collaborators.
A. The shielding of electronic devices is important for reasons ranging from regulatory to proper device functioning, and in applications from defense to consumer electronics. I will discuss the development and characterization of a novel microwave absorber material (MF-RAM) based on micron-sized ferrite beads and mm-length carbon fibers which are deposited electrostatically using the flocking process. The material is thin, lightweight, broadband and customizable with respect to frequency and amount of absorption. It was developed by Tangitek and at PSU we have characterized it in free space and in waveguides. We have demonstrated that MF-RAM exhibits losses associated with both electric and magnetic fields and could be more than competitive with commercially available solutions. I will also explain the basics of material characterization techniques used.
B. Despite their name, ferroelectrics have nothing to do with the magnetic field. Instead, they exhibit a behavior that is reminiscent of magnetic field hysteresis, i.e., they can maintain two different polarization states inside the material, depending on the signal trajectory (or history). Because they can have two different states when the electric field is zero they can be utilized as simple memory elements. However, their scaling to very thin layers is difficult and not well understood. I will present some recent measurement results on structures developed by a local startup.
C. Potential research topics engineering education will be illustrated with a couple of examples: 1. Investigating the time and effort that students spend studying, 2. Investigating how well students are prepared for life-long-learning. These are complex problems and I will discuss some tools and recent observations that could be turned into research projects.
Dr. Jonathan Bird
February 28th, 2020
In this presentation I will discuss three exciting research topics that are being investigated in the PSU’s laboratory for magnetomechanical energy conversion and control: (1) magnetic gears for improved power conversion, (2) negative stiffness resonant ocean power generators and (3) maglev vehicle transportation using electrodynamic wheels.
Dr. John Lipor
January 24th, 2020
Abstract: Many major contributions to signal processing theory have centered around recognizing structure in signals of interest, with prominent examples being the Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem for bandlimited signals and compressed sensing for signals that are sparse in some domain. In both examples, a key theme is that the structure in these signals can be leveraged to make the most efficient use of the available sampling resources. In this talk, I discuss how this general approach can be extended to the problems of data clustering and level set estimation. In the former case, high-dimensional signals can be effectively sorted (clustered) by recognizing the low-dimensional structure inherent in data from different clusters. In the latter, smoothness in the level set boundary or correlations between points can be harnessed to estimate level sets while minimizing the number of measurements taken, the distance between sampled points, or other costs associated with sampling. In all cases, the underlying structure allows for efficient signal reconstruction with a variety of theoretical guarantees.
Machine Learning for Anomaly Detection in Multi-Dimensional Data - Part 1; Part 2
Dr. Stanley R. Rotman, Harold Schnitzer Visiting Scholar from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
November 22nd, 2019
Abstract: Multi-dimensional signals, such as Hyperspectral or Temporal Synthetic Aperture Radar, have very complicated distributions; machine learning promises to be a reasonable approach to determining structure in the data without any prior assumptions. In this talk, we will consider Non-Negative Matrix Factorization (NNMF) as a method to both determine trends in the data and to significantly reduce the number of redundant dimensions. We will use this transformed data for advanced anomaly detection.
Dr. Garrison Greenwood
October 18th, 2019
The Ultimatum Game is studied to see how people respond in bargaining situations. In the 2-player version each round a player can be a proposer or a responder. A proposer makes an offer on how to split a monetary amount and responder either accepts or rejects the offer. If accepted, the money is split as proposed; if rejected both players get nothing. N-player models suggest offers decrease over time but are still accepted. However, in human experiments players acted irrationally and rejected offers they deemed unfair. In this talk it is shown a (μ/μ,λ)-evolution strategy can evolve offer and acceptance thresholds that promote fairness. Then a single self-interested player is added who ignores fairness and instead exploits the other players by maximizing his payoffs. Monte Carlo Tree Search (MCTS) is used to adaptively control this self-interested player's offer levels during the game. Our results indicate MCTS can produce payoffs for this player as much as 40% higher than the population average payoff.
Dr. Ivan Sutherland, co-authored with Marly Roncken
May 31th, 2019
Abstract
The widespread “clocked" design paradigm for digital logic assumes that events distributed over space
are “simultaneous”. The simultaneous assumption conflicts with Einstein’s view of time and space: events
separated in space cannot be simultaneous because of the universal delay of light speed. Digital logic is
now fast enough that light speed matters. Most digital logic designs conflict with Einstein’s view of time
and space and high speed computing designs suffer from their conflict with Einstein.
At the Asynchronous Research Center we promote a Link and Joint alternative design paradigm that
replaces global clock signals with self-timing to acknowledge that events separated in space must happen
at separate times.