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Dr. Brian Floyd

A paper authored by Dr. Brian Floyd, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at North Carolina State University, has been awarded one of the Pat Goldberg Best Paper Awards for 2011 by IBM Research.

The paper, titled "Organic Packages with Embedded Phased-Array Antennas for 60-GHz Wireless Chipsets", was among more than 110 papers in computer science, electrical engineering and mathematical sciences that were published in refereed conference proceedings and journals in 2011 that were submitted by IBM Research authors worldwide

Dr. Floyd says, "The 60-GHz application space is very exciting, where the large amount of available bandwidth enables high-speed wireless communications for applications like uncompressed wireless HD video streaming across your living room and multi-gigabit-per-second short-range file transfer between portable devices. For these markets to flourish, low-cost electronics are required, which includes a low cost integrated circuit and a low-cost antenna and package solution. In this work, we demonstrate for the first time a complete packaged 16-element phased-array chipset solution with embedded antennas, based on low-cost organic packaging technology."

You can read the full article on the IEEE Website.

Abstract

 
Array in Package

A multilayer organic package with embedded 60-GHz antennas and fully integrated with a 60-GHz phased array transmitter or receiver chip is demonstrated. The package includes sixteen phased-array antennas, an open cavity for housing the ?ip-chip attached RF chip, and interconnects operating at DC-66 GHz. The 28 mm x 28 mm ball grid array package is manufactured using printed circuit board processes and uses a combination of liquid-crystal polymer and glass-reinforced laminates, allowing excellent 60-GHz interconnect and antenna performance. The measured return loss and gain of each antenna from 56 to 66 GHz are -10 dB and -5 dBi, respectively. Finally, the packaged transmitter and receiver chipsets, each working with a heat sink, have demonstrated beam-steered, non-line-of-sight links with data rates up to 5.3 Gb/s using 16-quadrature amplitude modulation single-carrier and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing schemes.

IBM Press Release

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Dr. Alex Huang

Dr. Alex Huang has been awarded $636,284 by Cree, Inc. for research on Testing, Characterization and Design Optimization of High Voltage SiC Gate Turn-off (GTO) Thyristors.

The award will run from January 5th, 2013 to September 4th, 2016.

Research Abstract: NCSU's FREEDM Systems Center will assist Cree in the testing, characterization and design optimization of future generation of high voltage gate turn-off (GTO) thyristior.

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Dr. Michael B. Steer

Dr. Michael B. Steer has been awarded $450,000 by the US Army - Army Research Office for research on Time-Frequency and Non-Laplacian Phenomena at Radio Frequencies.

The award will run from September 30th, 2012 to August 31st, 2016.

Research Abstract

Recent phenomenological investigations of the fundamental limits to the performance of radio, radar and sensor systems have revealed radio-frequency (RF) interference effects that do not have the expected integer calculus descriptions.  Some of these effects derive from electro-thermal diffusive interactions and it is believed that many other effects similarly derive from diffusion. Also, time-frequency effects have been discovered in which the temporal response of electronics excited by a pulsed RF signal is significantly longer than linear frequency-domain analysis would imply. It is believed that these derive from diffusion-like effects as well and require fractional calculus.  The project's premise is that using integer calculus-based analysis has resulted in sources of interference in RF systems being missed.  This project investigates the underlying physics of diffusive RF phenomena. Time-domain fractional calculus-based descriptions transformed into the frequency-domain become non-Laplacian (i.e. non-integer-based).  However, conventional analysis of RF structures is based on integer-based Laplacian frequency-domain analysis derived from integer calculus.   The project extends the engineer's RF analysis toolkit to include non-Laplacian models and abstractions. The work will lead to new paradigms for understanding interference at RF, for enhancing RF systems, for deriving fundamental limits of performance at RF, for developing signatures, and for manipulating RF electronics.

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Dr. Cranos Williams

Drs. Cranos Williams (PI), Terri Long (CoPI), James Tuck (CoPI), and Joel Ducoste (CoPI) have been awarded $999,754 by the National Science Foundation for research on Dynamic Regulatory Modeling of the Iron Deficiency Response in Arabidopsis thaliana.

The award will run from August 15th, 2012 to July 31st, 2017.

Research Abstract

Multicellular organisms such as plants react to abiotic stress with a multitude of physiological and molecular responses orchestrated by key regulatory proteins, or transcription factors. Experimental datasets, such as transcriptional profiles, are often used to identify critical, yet, uncharacterized transcription factors in these responses.  Limitations in these datasets caused by constraints in experimental perturbations and finite experimental resources are the reasons why traditional approaches have revealed few key regulating and controlling elements, particularly in model organisms such as Arabidopsis thaliana.  The PIs hypothesize that additional computer-based simulations from dynamic gene regulatory models can be used in combination with clustering approaches to expand the perturbation space and assess secondary and tertiary control mechanisms, leading to the identification of hidden regulatory relationships between genes and transcription factors. They propose to develop a novel modeling and parallel computing paradigm to identify previously uncharacterized regulatory components that control iron homeostasis in A. thaliana across multiple cell types.

The interdisciplinary approach proposed by these PIs presents a new paradigm that 1) unifies novel genomic experimental techniques, engineering modeling approaches, and parallel computing to clarify the role of known regulatory elements and 2) identifies new regulating components involved in iron homeostasis within and across different cell types. Their integration of systems engineering, plant biology, and computer engineering will help create new solutions to existing problems and encourages a vision for addressing challenging issues that have, to date, remained intimidating using traditional approaches. Their results will lead to methods for stretching critical resources and increasing crop yields to feed the projected 9 billion people in 2050 through development of plants that exhibit improved function in low nutrient soils, or plants that can contain elevated nutrient content.

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Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty

Aranya Chakrabortty has been awarded $360,000 by the National Science Foundation for research on SEP Collaborative: Integrating Heterogeneous Energy Resources For Sustainable Power Networks - A Systems Approach.

The award will run from September 15th, 2012 to August 31st, 2016.

Research Abstract

This project will take a unique approach in examining how management and control of large-scale and distributed energy resources can contribute to both stabilization and improving the performance of for power systems with high penetration of renewable energy. The research will involve a system theoretic end-to-end analysis from detailed characterization of the energy sources through propagation of these inputs through the power transmission and distribution network. An important aspect of the proposed research is the ability of this interdisciplinary team to examine not only the technical and physical system challenges but to include the related regulatory, policy and market challenges that must be dealt with in order to implement any proposed power system changes.

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Dr. John Muth

Dr. Tania Paskova and Dr. John Muth have been awarded $383,532 by the National Science Foundation for research on III-Nitride LED Structures on Sidewall Grown Semipolar Facets.

The award will run from July 1st, 2012 to June 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract

The proposed research addresses a long-standing issue of growing importance to the nitride-based optoelectronic technology, namely the internal quantum efficiency of nitride emitters in green-yellow region, and how the nonpolar/semipolar alignment of the active device regions can help to improve the device performance.  An in-depth investigation will be undertaken to gain a comprehensive understanding of the basic properties of semipolar GaN/InGaN LED structures produced by lateral sidewall growth. The dominating growth mechanisms, the defect formation and evolution, the In and doping element incorporation efficiency, and the strain in structures with different semipolar orientations will be studied, aiming to establish the best approach for producing low-defect-density semipolar LED structures with enhanced internal quantum efficiency.

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Dr. Edgar Lobaton

Dr. Edgar Lobaton, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University, has been awarded $206,192 by the University of California - Berkeley for research on Provably Safe Automotive Cyber-Physical Systems with Humans-in-the-Loop.

The award will run from October 1st, 2012 to September 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract: The automotive sector is one of the richest targets for emerging innovations in Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Increased content electronics, non-contact sensors, controls and communication with the environment and the driver will change the way we drive and interact with our cars in the near future. However, despite the enormous number of fatalities and injuries on US and world roads, there is an enormous gap between research achievements in autonomous drive and the active safety systems currently available in production vehicles. We propose a paradigm shift which looks at whole cyber physical vehicle/environment/driver and thus address all its three main critical components: (A) the vehicle/environment interaction, (B) the driver uncertainty and (C) the provably-safe intervention under the predicted uncertainty of A and B.  We will develop a novel science for  of Cyber-Physical Systems with the goal of obtaining a provably safe human-centric autonomy where  certification is evidence-based and evolves with the system (as new driver behaviors, scenes, slipping dynamics enter in the database of the CPS we construct in real-time). Robustness is measured against bounded state-dependent uncertainty of a driver/vehicle interaction model and of the scene reconstruction.

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Dr. Dror Baron

Dr. Dror Baron has been awarded $422,732 by the National Science Foundation for research on CIF: Small: Universal Signal Estimation from Noisy Measurements.

The award will run from September 1st, 2012 to August 31st, 2015.

Research Abstract

Motivation: A ubiquitous feature in many signal processing systems is to learn the input statistics from historical data. In these systems, Bayesian methods perform statistically optimal signal processing. However, there are applications including file compression, speech recognition, network monitoring, and compressed sensing in which it might be impractical to learn the statistics a priori. In such applications, a statistical approach that adapts to the data at hand must be used.
The information theory community has championed the use of universal algorithms, they achieve the best possible statistical performance asymptotically despite not knowing the input statistics.
These algorithms have had tremendous impact in lossless compression, where the goal is to describe data as succinctly as possible while allowing a decoder to reproduce the input perfectly. In sharp contrast, universal algorithms have had little impact on other areas.

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The NC Department of Cultural Resources has produced a video tribute to Dr. B. Jayant Baliga, the 2012 winner of the NC Award for Science. Baliga is Distinguished University Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and founding director of the Power Semiconductor Research Center at North Carolina State University.

 
Dr. B. Jayant Baliga

Baliga invented, developed and commercialized the Insulated Gate Bipolar Transistor (IGBT), an energy-saving semiconductor switch that controls the flow of power from an electrical energy source to any application that needs energy. IGBT-enabled applications, found in everything from cars and bullet trains to refrigerators and light bulbs, have saved the world's consumers more than $15 trillion and now help form the basis for the emerging smart grid.

The IGBT's widespread impact earned Baliga the 2010 National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation's highest honor for technological achievement. He has been listed among the "Eight Heroes of the Semiconductor Revolution" by Scientific American.

A member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1993, Baliga holds more than 120 US patents and is an author of 18 books and more than 550 publications. He joined the NC State faculty in 1988.

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Dr. Eric Rotenberg

Dr. Eric Rotenberg has been awarded $350,000 by the National Science Foundation for research on SHF: Small: Design for Competitive Automated Layout (DCAL) of Mobile Application Processor.

The award will run from August 1st, 2012 to July 31st, 2015.

Research Abstract

For two decades, personal computers and servers have been powered by increasingly sophisticated superscalar processors. The last few years has even witnessed the introduction of superscalar processors into smart phones and tablet PCs, in order to provide richer user experiences. There are important trends in both domains: server-class processors require unsustainable design effort, as evidenced by a select few, highly trained, large design teams in industry proliferating superscalar processors; mobile devices are evolving at an extraordinary pace. These trends suggest it is time to take a radical departure in the way superscalar processors are designed. In particular, the PI proposes superscalar processor design automation. This project explores challenges and solutions at key levels:

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Paul Franzon, Eric Rotenberg, Rhett Davis, James Tuck, Huiyang Zhou and Steven Lipa have been awarded $4,019,617 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) for research on 3D-Enabled Customizable Embedded Computer.

The award will run from September 19th, 2012 to February 14th, 2018.

Research Abstract

The proposed effort will investigate new approaches to building ultra low power computers.

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Dr. Rhett Davis

The Silicon Integration Initiative (Si2) has awarded Dr. Rhett Davis, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, one of two distinguished service awards at its annual conference this week.

The Distinguished Service Award to Davis is based on his ten years of support of Si2. Davis was the first academic to adopt OpenAccess into his course work and lab exercises at NC State. This served to train fresh students in this new platform and expand knowledge in this new area.

Si2 is the largest organization of industry-leading semiconductor, systems, EDA and manufacturing companies focused on the development and adoption of standards to improve the way integrated circuits are designed and manufactured, in order to speed time-to market, reduce costs, and meet the challenges of sub-micron design. Now in its 24th year, Si2 is uniquely positioned to enable timely collaboration through dedicated staff and a strong implementation focus driven by its member companies. Si2 represents nearly 100 companies involved in all parts of the silicon supply chain throughout the world

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Dr. Griff Bilbro

Dr. Grif Bilbro has been awarded $300,000 by the Triquint Semiconductor, Inc. for research on Modeling TriQuint devices for DARPA MPC.

The award will run from December 21st, 2011 to December 31st, 2012.

Research Abstract

NCSU will model AlGaN/GaN HFETs for TriQuint under the MPC/DARPA effort over the next 2 or 3 years.

Twice a year, NCSU will develop a time domain model of TriQuint's current GaN FETs,  validate it against TriQuint characterizations of devices, then simulate the operation. There are three devices in each interation, a depletion mode logic device, an enhancement mode logic device, and a RF switch. Quantities of interest include  Ron, Roff, propagation delay and transition energy for the E/D logic, and off-state reactance.

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Devesh Tiwari

Devesh Tiwari, a teaching assistant and PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at NC State University, has received an Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award.

The Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Awards serves as the primary university-level forum for recognizing exceptional contributions made by Graduate Teaching Assistants to the educational excellence of the University. This annual event is a celebration of excellence in graduate student teaching in the laboratory and classroom. The UGSA Teaching Effectiveness Committee invites the Directors of Graduate Programs (DGPs) to nominate a small number of TAs that exemplify outstanding teaching and mentoring and go beyond what is required of them. All departments are encouraged to participate so that their students receive the recognition they deserve.

Tiwari taught a section of ECE 209 in Fall 2012 and was mentored by Dr. Greg Byrd.

The award ceremony was held on March 18, 2013 at the McKimmon Center.

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Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya

Dr. Subhashish Bhattacharya has been awarded $234,444 by the GE Global Research for research on Resilient Multiterminal HVDC Using High Voltage High Frequency Electronics Capability.

The award will run from April 4th, 2012 to January 22nd, 2015.

Research Abstract

GE Global Research in collaboration with North Carolina State University and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute proposes a resilient multi-terminal current-link based HVDC transmission technology, to enable dynamic routing of electric power with high efficiency and reliability. The proposed technology is modular which allows system scalability to achieve any voltage and power rating. Each module is based on a high-voltage high-frequency power conversion topology in which the galvanic isolation is achieved by a high-frequency (20-50kHz) step-up transformer. Hence, the low-frequency grid side transformer is eliminated which results significant reduction in the system footprint. Due to current-link based power transmission, the proposed technology is naturally fault tolerant and hence it is suitable for multi-terminal HVDC system.

The nature of the proposed work includes both proof of concept and early stage device prototyping categories.

Following tasks will be executed to satisfy the technical performance targets of the proposed technology:

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Dr. Edgar Lobaton

SACNAS-NCSU, a new group being lead by Dr. Edgar Lobaton, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded the SACNAS 2012 Most Outstanding Recruitment Effort Role Model Award. As stated in the award notification letter, "Your efforts for the 2011/2012 academic year are exemplary of the type of accomplishments and activities that are in line with the SACNAS mission, vision, goals and values." The SACNAS-NCSU is in their first year as a chapter at NC State.

SACNAS is the Society for the Advancement of Chicanos/Hispanics and Native Americans in the Sciences. The main goal of the chapter at NCSU is to provide mentoring between graduate students and undergraduate students who are underrepresented in the scientific disciplines. They aim to improve the public understanding of and appreciation for Chicanos, Latinos, Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and other underrepresented minorities in the sciences. This chapter will provide a forum for students from all science-related majors to come together for academic, community service and social activities at North Carolina State University.

As a chapter awardee, the SACNAS-NCSU has been asked to participate in the SACNAS Chapter Recognition Reception that will be held at the 2012 SACNAS National Conference in Seattle, WA.

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Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty (L) with one of his students

NC State University has received a $200K research grant from the US Department of Energy to advance its ongoing research and education in wide-area monitoring and control of power systems using Synchronized Phasor Measurements (or "Synchrophasors"). Synchrophasors are high-resolution measurements of the currents and voltages of large power systems that capture detailed oscillations of the power flows in different parts of the grid -- particularly useful to analyze critical disturbances such as a blackout. The devices that measure Synchrophasors are called Phasor Measurement Units (PMU). In this project, NC State researchers will use Synchrophasor data -- provided by our local utility company Duke Energy as well as a long-standing collaborator, Southern California Edison -- to create reliable power system models by which critical disturbances such as blackouts can be predicted and controlled.

The two-year project is headed by Dr. Aranya Chakrabortty, Assistant Professor in Electrical & Computer Engineering, together with co-investigators Dr. Mesut Baran, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Dr. Pam Carpenter, MS-EPSE Education Program Manager.

Over the past one year, Chakrabortty and his research group have developed a hardware-in-loop laboratory infrastructure using multiple PMUs integrated with a Real-time Digital Simulator (RTDS), housed at the FREEDM Systems Center. The RTDS is a supercomputer that can simulate large and complicated power system models in almost real-time. This facility will now be extended to create a multi-port, multi-user, and multi-vendor network of PMUs spread across the three campuses of NC State, Duke University and UNC Chapel Hill through an existing metro-scale fiber optic communication network called the Breakable Experimental Network (BEN), hosted by the Renaissance Computing Institute (RENCI). This PMU network will allow multiple users at various points of the network to process and communicate PMU data between each other, and collaboratively use them for critical applications such as power oscillation monitoring, distributed state estimation and, most importantly, distributed control. For example, local users in this PMU network may access artificial PMU data generated by RTDS simulations in real-time, run their individual local algorithms using these data, and then communicate the results to neighboring users until the control-loop reaches a global consensus over time. The project will also study the sensitivity of these distributed control algorithms on network latencies, data loss, and malicious attacks by hackers. Chakrabortty and his team will collaborate with local utility company Duke Energy as well as with longstanding collaborator Southern California Edison, ABB, and RENCI to realize this network testbed.

 
Diagram

The Renaissance Computing Institute at North Carolina State University opened in early 2007 and supports the use of visualization technology and analytical methods to explore engineering, scientific, design and educational challenges. The site focuses primarily on serving the NCSU community, its partners and collaborators.

The Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems Center, headquartered on NC State University's Centennial Campus, is one of the latest Gen-III Engineering Research Center (ERC) established by National Science Foundation in 2008. The FREEDM Systems Center will partner with universities, industry and national laboratories in 28 states and nine countries to develop technology to revolutionize the nation's power grid and speed renewable electric-energy technologies into every home and business.

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Cyborg Insect Networks for Exploration and Mapping

Alper Bozkurt, Edgar Lobaton and Mihail Sichitiu have been awarded $880,000 by the National Science Foundation Cyber-Physical Systems Program for their research on "CPS: Synergy: Collaborative Research: Cyborg Insect Networks for Exploration and Mapping (CINEMa)". The total award amount is $1,000,000 as an additional award of $120,000 was granted to Ty Hedrick at UNC-Chapel Hill Biology Department as a part of this research effort. The award will run from October 1st, 2012 to September 30th, 2015.

Research Abstract

Autonomous navigation in unknown and dynamic environments has been a major challenge for synthetic mobile robotic agents. On the other hand, insects can easily solve such complex navigational problems and demonstrate remarkably stable and optimized locomotion skills in almost any environment. This project aims to develop a mobile sensor network where insects are used as mobile biological-robotic (biobotic) nodes. Insects, in fact, build a "natural" sensor network through the use of their biological sensing organs and release of chemical, mechanical and optical cues to communicate the information to the rest of the group. In the scope of this project, a novel cyber-physical communication network will be established among the individual insect in addition to the aforementioned natural one. For this, insects will be equipped with synthetic electronic sensors to sense additional cues, neuromuscular stimulation systems to direct the control of the insect and microcontrollers with radios to establish an RF link between the insects. This novel network will enable operation of insect biobots in complicated and uncertain dynamic environments for applications such as environmental sensing and search-and-rescue operations after natural disasters.

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