Announcing the 2023 Recipient of the Paul Panayotatos Endowed Scholarship in Sustainable Energy

Zhuolun Meng is a PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, working under the supervision of Professor Mehdi Javanmard. His research primarily focuses on biomedical devices, with a specific emphasis on the rapid and accurate detection of coral health status. This is crucial for ensuring the sustainability of coral, as it plays a vital role in various aspects of human life and the environment. 
 
The importance of coral reefs stems from their significant impact on humans and biodiversity. Coral serves as a critical food source for many people around the world. Globally, coral reefs have an annual economic value of $375 billion, and they provide food for over 500 million people across 94 countries and territories. In addition to being food sources, coral reefs also play a crucial role in protecting coastlines. They act as a natural barrier that buffers shorelines from wave action, preventing erosion and safeguarding highly productive wetlands, ports, harbors, and the economies associated with them. Furthermore, coral reefs have a substantial economic impact. For example, tuna fisheries heavily rely on baitfish that originate from coral reefs. In the Maldives, tuna fisheries contribute approximately $43 million per year to the country's GDP. The degradation of coral reefs could have significant implications for tuna fisheries and other economically important sectors. 
To address the need for rapid coral health assessment, Zhuolun Meng has developed a toolkit that combines smartphones and analysis test strips. This combination allows for immediate diagnostic results to be obtained in-field. Additionally, he has utilized a device called "nano-well" invented by Dr. Mehdi Javanmard's lab, which provides accurate and quantitative measurements of coral health status without the need for time-consuming laboratory experiments. These advancements enable efficient and effective monitoring of coral reefs in real-time, facilitating timely interventions and conservation efforts.
He obtained his Master's degree from the University of Florida ECE in 2020, prior to pursuing his PhD at Rutgers ECE. 
 
Many thanks to my advisor Dr. Mehdi Javanmard! I cannot be awarded without you!

WINLAB Team receives NSF Grant for Enabling Next Generation Terrestrial Wireless Network Coexistence with Active and Passive Satellite Systems

A team of WINLAB researchers led by Distinguished Professor Narayan Mandayam (PI) along with co-PIs Ivan Seskar (Chief Technologist, WINLAB) and Chung-Tse Michael Wu (Associate Professor, ECE), are the recipients of an award from the National Science Foundation under the Spectrum and Wireless Innovation enabled by Future Technologies- Satellite-Terrestrial Coexistence (SWIFT-SAT) program for the project "Software Defined Radio based Emulation of SAT-Terrestrial Network Coexistence in "FR3" Bands." This three-year project funded at $750,000 addresses an emerging topic of increasing interest, namely the opening up of new spectrum for terrestrial communications that allows coexistence with satellite uses such as: (i) commercial digital video broadcast (e.g. DIRECTV, DISH Network); and (ii) passive earth observation and sensing. 
 
Currently, the 5G spectrum includes Frequency Range 1 (FR1) below 7.125 GHz that is overcrowded, and Frequency Range 2 (FR2) covering mmWave bands between 24 and 52.6 GHz that is limited in coverage, due to challenges in deploying mmWave technology.  However, emerging use cases demand even higher data rates and lower latency, necessitating additional spectrum. Frequency Range 3 (FR3) bands between 7.125 and 24 GHz are promising for next generation terrestrial systems owing to their favorable propagation characteristics.  However, these systems must coexist with active commercial (e.g. digital broadcast) and passive earth observation (e.g. weather forecasting) satellite (SAT) services. Existing coexistence studies rely on modeling and simulations, lacking direct measurements or testbed-based emulation. This project develops software-defined radio (SDR)-based testbeds to study SAT-terrestrial network coexistence in the FR3 bands, by emulating dense 5G network and SAT coexistence enabled by machine learning (ML), specifically focusing on 12.2-12.7 GHz for active SAT coexistence and 10.6-10.7 GHz for passive SAT sensor coexistence. Leveraging the COSMOS sandbox at WINLAB, an SDR network is designed to emulate 5G radio networks, SAT transceivers, and passive radiometers in the targeted frequency bands. The research focuses on three key thrusts: (1) designing SDR-based heterodyne systems to emulate 5G New Radio (NR) and SAT waveforms, including metamaterial software-defined beamforming for studying coexistence between 5G terrestrial networks and active SAT systems like non-geostationary orbit fixed satellite service (NGSO-FSS); (2) developing integrated radio resource management strategies for spectrum coexistence in the 12.2-12.7 GHz through novel SDR-based network emulation and centralized spectrum server ML algorithms; and (3) emulating spectrum coexistence between 5G terrestrial networks and passive sensors on earth observation satellites, analyzing the sensitivity of passive radiometers to radio frequency interference (RFI) and developing ML algorithms for RFI identification and mitigation. The loss in “available" spectrum resulting from mitigation strategies enabling peaceful coexistence with SAT systems, is quantified. The creation of the FR3 testbed is valuable to the scientific community, accessible as an open resource fostering innovation and collaboration among researchers and industry professionals. 
 
More details on the project can be found at the NSF page here.

Congratulations to Narayan, Ivan, and Michael!

Narayan Mandayam, Yingying Chen and Ivan Seskar received NSF grant

Narayan Mandayam, Yingying Chen, and Ivan Seskar received a new grant from National Science Foundation titled "FMRG: Cyber: Manufacturing USA: NextG-Enabled Manufacturing of the Future (NextGEM)." 
 
This is a large project with a total award of $2,999,632 for 4 years. Yuebin Guo from MAE is the project PI, Narayan Mandayam, Yingying Chen together with Jinggang Yi and Weihong Guo (both from MAE) serve as Co-PI, and Ivan Seskar serves as Senior Personnel. 
 

Future smart manufacturing should be flexible, versatile, scalable, modular, and plug-and-play in contrast to the conventional static sequential manufacturing paradigm. This future manufacturing paradigm has stringent requirements of ultra-low latency, highly flexible connectivity, high reliability, and high computing intelligence. However, the current long end-to-end latency, limited flexibility, and the lack of computational intelligence in shop floors impose critical barriers to achieve such a future manufacturing paradigm. The advent of 5G and future 6G (NextG) wireless communication holds the key to overcome these challenging barriers and reshape future manufacturing fundamentally. This project will develop a NextG-enabled manufacturing (NextGEM) research framework, an open-access NextGEM cyberinfrastructure, and use-inspired testbeds to enable and demonstrate transformative manufacturing capabilities. The outcome of this project will not only advance the knowledge base of ultra-low latency manufacturing but also translate the enabling technologies into broad practice. The created knowledge, methods, and tools will transform a wide spectrum of latency-critical manufacturing sectors and other industries with similar challenges to realize significant business values such as improved operation efficiencies, reduced defects, and emerging new business models to drive growth. 
 

More details of the project can be found at:
 
Congratulations to Narayan, Yingying, and Ivan!

Narayan Mandayam Appointed Acting Director of WINLAB

Distinguished Professor Narayan Mandayam has assumed the position of Acting Director of WINLAB, the Rutgers University Wireless Information Network Laboratory. The one-year appointment became effective on August 1, 2023. Dr. Mandayam, who has served as WINLAB’s associate director and as ECE department chair, steps into the acting directorship while long-term director and ECE Distinguished Professor Dipankar Raychaudhuri is on sabbatical.
 
With its focus on wireless technology research and industry partnerships, WINLAB has been a leading industry-university research center and collaborative forum on innovative wireless technologies and their applications since it was established in 1989. Under the leadership of Dr. Raychaudhuri, WINLAB has enriched its research portfolio, which includes everything from information theory and radio technology to wireless systems and mobile networks and computing. WINLAB’s current comprehensive and synergistic research program aims to advance research in the areas of smart cities and vehicles, eHealth, security and privacy, wireless and mobile networks, machine learning, the Internet of Things (IoT), and more.
 
Dr. Mandayam, whose research interests encompass smart city resilience, privacy and security in IoT, and energy efficient IoT, will provide outstanding leadership in developing a focused research and operational plan for WINLAB over the next year.

Rutgers Welcome Week

Rutgers Welcome Week will set the foundation to support your academic and personal journey and will focus on providing you opportunities to foster connections, learn about Rutgers culture and learn to navigate the campus and all its resources.

The complete Welcome Week schedule will also offer School Academic Welcome Sessions, Student Success resources and Open Houses, and more! 

 

ECE Ice Cream Social

Join us on on Wednesday, September 13 at 12pm for ECE Ice Cream Social Event.

ECE is excited to kick off Fall 2023 semester as we welcome new and returning ECE undergraduate and graduate students.

Join us for fun, let's eat some ice cream and hang out.

ECE Graduate Tea and Coffee Hour

Starting September 21st, the ECE Graduate Program will host a Weekly Tea and Coffee Hour on Thursdays from 3:30 - 4:30 in EE-240. The event will run every subsequent Thursday of the Fall semester. 
 
Faculty and students are encouraged to attend to network and get to know each other outside of the lab and classroom environments. 
 
The goal is to foster a greater sense of community within the department! 

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