ECE Professor Yingying Chen (PI) and WINLAB Chief Technologist Ivan Seskar (Co-PI) are the recipients of an award from the National Science Foundation under the CISE Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program for the project "Nation-wide Community-based Mobile Edge Sensing and Computing Testbeds.” This is a three-year $1.5M collaborative effort led by Rutgers with Indiana University, Temple University, and NYIT, with Rutgers receiving $710,000.

The project will build a large-scale, mobile edge sensing and computing infrastructure to provide practical experimental environments, rich user tools and services, and data/model sharing. It has the capability of supporting heterogeneous edge sensing. It aims to enable novel research in low-effort sensing data collection and model training in practical environment setups. The infrastructure will provide remote accessible smart cars and robots carrying mobile edge devices equipped with different types of sensors (e.g., WiFi, acoustic, light, vibration, etc.). Researchers can remotely configure the moving trajectories of smart cars and robots and adjust the sensors to study internal experimental environment factors and derive environment-independent models. This configuration capability flexibly provides many combinations of experimental setups, which can significantly reduce researchers’ efforts in experimenting numerous environments or setups in order to understand edge device behaviors and derive computing models.

More details on the project can be found at the NSF page here.

Congratulations Yingying and Ivan!

ECE Professor Wade Trappe is the recipient of an award from the National Science Foundation under the Spectrum and Wireless Innovation enabled by Future Technologies (SWIFT) program for the project "Wideband Spectrum Coexistence Enabled by Photonic Circuits: Cross-Layer Design and Implementation." This is a three-year collaborative project with Rowan University and Princeton University funded at $750,000 with Rutgers receiving $170,000. 

The focus of the proposed effort is to create a framework for spectrum coexistence that is beneficial for both active and passive users. Instead of simply switching to higher and undeveloped frequencies (which passive users of radio spectrum are often unable to do), the proposed research uses high frequency, optical signal carriers for interference separation, enabling the coexistence of active and passive users. The proposed coexistence solution will enable continuous availability of wideband spectrum for passive users, an important requirement for detecting unknown signals, since the bandwidth and the time window for unknown astronomical, atmospheric, and geospace signals cannot be manipulated. Specifically, the effort will develop technologies that mitigate the interference observed by redesigning the transceiver hardware and exploring communication protocols at multiple layers. In the physical layer, the photonic system separates a mixed received signal in the congested radio spectrum by upconverting the signal carriers to optical frequencies, providing over 100GHz of bandwidth in a single channel. At the network level, communication protocols are redesigned to enable passive users to continuously access wideband spectrum and coexist with active users. The network layer protocol will optimize the deployment of the hardware system to minimize the cost of new infrastructures, better share spectrum, and improve communication throughput.

More details on the project can be found at the NSF page here.

Congratulations Wade!

Chung-Tse (Michael) Wu, an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received a prestigious Director’s Fellowship Award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). He was a recipient of a DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) in 2019.

The highly competitive DARPA Director’s Fellowship Award provides an additional year of funding and support to a select group of DARPA Young Faculty Award recipients who have demonstrated exceptional technical achievement and leadership at the end of their initial two-year base award period.

“I am immensely grateful and truly humbled and honored that the research carried out by my team has been recognized by this highly prestigious award,” says Wu. “It will enable us to continue working on cutting-edge research in developing wideband antenna arrays.”

Wu’s project, “Metamaterial Integrated Ultra-Broadband Antenna Array with Embedded Reconfigurable Non-Foster Circuits,” seeks to develop an antenna relay with ultra-broad instantaneous bandwidth able to provide spectrum flexibility in communication and high resolution in radar sensing for military applications. “The project can potentially have a profound impact on next-generation radar sensors and communication systems where a large instantaneous bandwidth is demanded,” says Wu.

The DARPA YFA program exposes leading junior faculty to Department of Defense, or DOD, national security challenges by providing them with funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to help them devise research projects that address the nation’s security needs. Over time, the DARPA YFA program hopes to seed the next generation of STEM practitioners who will focus much of their careers on DoD and national security issues.

Photo caption: Chung-Tse (Michael) Wu (right) is pictured with students Yichao Yuan and Minning Zhu (left to right) inside the anechoic chamber located in Dr. Wu's Microwave Research Lab. The object is a wideband horn antenna.

Prof. Roy Yates will serve as the new ECE Undergraduate Director for the period from July 1, 2021 to June 30, 2022. Prof. Yates has been an outstanding researcher and educator and contributed to the department's success in many roles during his time at Rutgers. Over the last 4 years, he has been instrumental in recruiting several outstanding faculty colleagues to the department as the Chair of the ECE faculty search committee. He currently serves on the Chancellor-Provost's Strategic Diversity Planning committee. He has also served in leadership roles at WINLAB, including as Director and Associate Director.