Electrical and Computer Engineering Newsblog

Category: Research

Brian Flanagan Receives 2nd Place in 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium

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flanagan-PosterBrian Flanagan, a computer engineering major, was among the winners of the 2017 Undergraduate Research Symposium held on Friday, March 17 in the lobby of the Rozsa Center.

A record number of abstracts and posters were submitted this year – an astonishing 71 – representing every school or college on campus. Flanagan was awarded Second Place for his research on “The Effects of Uncertain Labels on Damage Assessment in Remotely Sensed Images”. Faculty advisor was Tim Havens, ECE and CS William and Gloria Jackson Associate Professor.

The annual Symposium is conducted by the Pavlis Honors College and highlights the amazing cutting-edge research being conducted on Michigan Tech’s campus by some of our best and brightest undergraduate students.

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ECE’s Microfabrication Facility launches new website

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MFF_homepage Michigan Tech’s Microfabrication Facility, housed under the Department of Electrical and Computer, has launched its new website mtu.edu/microfabrication.

The Microfabrication Facility (MFF) consists of thin film, plasma etching, photolithography, and temperature processing equipment. MFF capabilities are broad and applicable to areas of biomedical engineering, chemistry, chemical engineering, electrical engineering, physics, materials science, and mechanical engineering. Deposition, sputtering, etching, and photolithography capabilities together with microcharacterization measurement systems enable precision device engineering.

The new site enables users to schedule reservations and check the live status of the MFF equipment, along with other user friendly features. MFFmenu

The MFF was also recently selected as a member of the Northern Nano Lab Alliance (NNLA), a regional network of university fabrication facilities. The mission of the NNLA is to help each member improve their support of academic research in applied nanotechnology.

MFF managing director Chito Kendrick, PhD, says “Being a member of the NNLA allows for a partnership with some of the local regional universities that have similar nano/micro fabrication facilities, and will indirectly expose Michigan Tech to the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which has replaced the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network (NNIN). This opens up availability to systems that are currently not provided by the MFF. The partnership will also benefit the MFF staff with access to technical support and loaning equipment from the other groups; also we are exploring ways to reduce the operational costs of these facilities.”

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High Resolution ToA Estimation via Optimal Waveform Design

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ToA PaperThis paper introduces a novel method to improve the Time of Arrival (ToA) estimation resolution for a fixed available bandwidth in the presence of unknown multipath frequency selective (MPFS) channels. Significant desire on utilized bandwidth reduction in wireless technologies endorses exploiting this technique to increase ranging resolution and/or time synchronization while low bandwidth signal are exploited. Exploiting this method would have extensive impact on variety of technologies which enjoys ToA as ranging technique such as radar, wireless communications and etc.

By Mohsen Jamalabdollahi, Student Member, IEEE, and Seyed (Reza) Zekavat, Senior Member, IEEE.

Published in: IEEE Transactions on Communications ( Volume: PP, Issue: 99 )

DOI: 10.1109/TCOMM.2017.2654240

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ToA Ranging and Layer Thickness Computation in Nonhomogeneous Media

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Seyed Reza Zekavat
Seyed Reza Zekavat

This paper, by Mohsen Jamalabdollahi (WLPS), and Seyed Reza Zekavat (ECE/WLPS), introduces a novel and effective ranging approach in Non-Homogeneous (NH) media consisting of frequency dispersive submedia via time-of-arrival (ToA) and Direction-of-Arrival (DoA) merger. Exploiting this technique, sensor node can be localized with in variety of NH media such as underground layers with different water content, airborne to underwater channels or even human body.

Moreover, this technique proposes a novel approach which can be utilized for layer thickness detection which have an prominent impact on the area of geoscience and remote sensing.

This paper is published in IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing which is ranked the second journal in area of remote sensing according to Scholar google metrics.

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Leonard Bohmann Quoted on the Handling of Power Outages

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The Virginia Gazette quoted Leonard Bohmann, associate dean of Michigan Tech’s College of Engineering, in a lengthy article on power companies’ back-up plans for handling power outages on peninsulas caused by faults in the transmission system.

Dominion Virginia Power sets plan for emergency blackouts

Dominion Virginia Power has taken the unusual step of planning for an emergency blackout, with a plan to cut power to 150,000 customers on the Peninsula in the extremely rare event of faults at two components of its high-voltage network occurring at a time when demand for power is high.

Leonard Bohmann
Leonard Bohmann

“In an ideal world, you wouldn’t need an RAS because the system should be able to handle two faults. But it looks like their plan to deal with shutting the power plant has been taking longer than they expected,” said Leonard Bohmann, a professor of electrical engineering at Michigan Technological University, who lives in one of the few other regions of the country where a similar plan is in place, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

Read more at The Virginia Gazette, by Dave Ress.

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Cyber-Physical Systems Story Featured

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Shiyan Hu
Shiyan Hu

Online outlets from the National Science Foundation to Science Daily to Electronic Product Design and Test have featured a research keynote paper led by Shiyan Hu (ECE) on cyber-physical systems. Other outlets include: Communications of the ACM, Industrial Safety and Security Source, Michigan Ag Connection and close to a dozen other science blogs.

In the News

Science 360, a science news website published by the National Science Foundation (NSF), featured a Michigan Tech research news story about Shiyan Hu’s (ECE) research as its top headline story of the day on Jan. 4.

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Lucia Gauchia Quoted on Graphene Batteries

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Lucia Gauchia
Lucia Gauchia

Lucia Gauchia (ECE, ME-EM) discusses graphene batteries in a Business Insider post about Henrik Fisker’s new electric car model. A number of other business, tech and science news media picked up the story including Yahoo! News, the San Francisco Chronicle, seattlePI.com and Latest Nigerian News.

Henrik Fisker is using a revolutionary new battery to power his Tesla killer

We took a closer look at the battery technology Fisker is promising to use, which he refers to as “the major leap, the next big step.”

Rather than working with conventional lithium-ion batteries, Fisker is turning to graphene supercapacitors.

Graphene is both the thinnest and strongest material discovered so far.

“Graphene shows a higher electron mobility, meaning that electrons can move faster through it. This will, e.g. charge a battery much faster,” Lucia Gauchia, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and energy storage systems at Michigan Technological University, told Business Insider. “Graphene is also lighter and it can present a higher active surface, so that more charge can be stored.”

Read more at the Business Insider, by Danielle Muoio.

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Shiyan Hu to Deliver CPSCom 2016 Keynote

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Shiyan Hu
Shiyan Hu

Shiyan Hu (ECE) is delivering a keynote talk at the Ninth IEEE International Conference on Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom 2016). CPSCom, sponsored by IEEE Computer Society, is a major CPS technical conference in IEEE and is a premier forum to bring together researchers to present the state-of-the-art research results and exchange ideas in the area of CPS. In the ninth year of the successful CPSCom conference series, the organizing committee invited three world-leading CPS experts to deliver the keynote speeches. The conference takes place December 15-18, 2016, in Chengdu, China.

Hu will deliver the talk of “Smart Energy Cyber-Physical System Security: Threat Analysis and Defense Technologies.” In addition to directing the Center for Cyber-Physical Systems on campus, he is an ACM Distinguished Speaker, an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, an invited participant for U.S. National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Symposium, and a recipient of National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award. He is a Fellow of IET and the Editor-In-Chief of IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory & Applications. More information about his keynote speech can be found online.
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