Emina Soljanin receives NSF Grant for Advancing Quantum Key Distribution

ECE Professor Emina Soljanin is the recipient of a new NSF award for the research project titled "Towards Full Photon Utilization by Adaptive Modulation and Coding on Quantum Links."  This is a two-year $500,000 collaborative effort between Rutgers and UCLA.

In this project, Dr. Soljanin and her team advance secure quantum communications.  Secure communication has long been an indispensable part of numerous systems, ranging from the more traditional such as finance and defense to the emerging ones such as the Internet of (battlefield) Things and health data management. The main advantage of private key encryption over the currently popular methods is that as long as the key bits are truly secret, it is provably secure, that is, insensitive to advances in classical and quantum computing algorithms. A Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) protocol describes how two parties, commonly referred to as Alice and Bob, can establish a secret key by communicating over a quantum and a public classical channel when both channels can be accessed by an eavesdropper Eve. For the widespread adoption of QKD, it is mandatory to provide high key rates over long distances. What has emerged as a bottleneck in practice is the inability to maximize the utility of information-bearing quantum states.  This project seeks to solve this inefficiency problem for frequency-time entanglement based QKD. The results will pave the way for practical quantum networks in which multiple Bobs communicate with Alice simultaneously though a multi-channel entanglement distribution in the presence of multiple Eves.
 
You can find more details on the project at the NSF page here
 
Congratulations Emina! 

NSF SII planning grant awarded to Rutgers Team

A team of Rutgers researchers is part of a multi-university initiative that has been awarded a $300K/1yr Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII) Planning Grant from the NSF. The other universities in this collaborative effort are Virginia Tech, University of Southern California, University of Colorado-Denver, Stevens Institute of Technology, University of California Irvine, Princeton University and North Carolina State University. The Rutgers team is led by Distinguished Professor Narayan Mandayam (PI). The co-PIs from Rutgers include ECE Assistant Professors Chung-Tse Michael Wu and Jorge Ortiz, CEE Assistant Professor Ruo-Qian (Roger) Wang and Dr. Joseph (Joe) Brodie from Atmospheric Research. SII is a recently announced program at NSF which includes funding for a planned $25M/5yrs research center with full proposals due in March 2021. An abstract of the project is given below:

This planning grant initiates concerted activities for research, education, and community engagement as a stepping stone towards ARIES: A proposed center for versatile, agile, reliable, and scalable spectrum, through a fundamentally novel framework guided by two principles: (a) A reductionist and integrative approach to spectrum research that can identify foundational (domain-agnostic) problems and then integrate them with domain-specific knowledge; and (b) A set of key spectrum attributes (agility, reliability, scalability, and versatility) that serve as a unified framework for quantifying the technical, policy, and social requirements of diverse stakeholders.

Congratulations to Narayan, Michael, Jorge, Roger and Joe!

NSF SII planning grant award for WINLAB Team led by Raychaudhuri

The NSF has awarded a $300K/1yr Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII) Planning Grant to a multi-university team led by Distinguished Professor Raychaudhuri (PI) and Ivan Seskar (co-PI) of Rutgers ECE/WINLAB. SII is a recently announced program at NSF which includes funding for a planned $25M/5yrs research center with full proposals due in March 2021. An abstract of the project is given below:

This proposal is aimed at the development of a comprehensive plan for an exceptional SII Center which would help maintain and extend US leadership in future wireless technologies, systems, and applications in science and engineering through the efficient use and sharing of radio spectrum. The team that has been assembled for this SII planning proposal spans eight universities (Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, U. Arizona, UT Austin, Oregon State, Princeton, and U. Wisconsin-Madison) and consists of well-established wireless researchers with prior contributions to spectrum across a range of specializations. The PIs propose to work together over the next 9-12 months to develop a compelling research agenda, round out the team’s expertise and diversity, conduct pilot studies to obtain preliminary results on key topics (TeraHz, passive spectrum users, and dynamic spectrum access), engage extensively with research, government, and industry stakeholders, and develop plans for experimental infrastructure and education/workforce development.

Congratulations to Ray and Ivan!

NSF SII planning grant award for WINLAB Team led by Raychaudhuri

The NSF has awarded a $300K/1yr Spectrum Innovation Initiative (SII) Planning Grant to a multi-university team led by Distinguished Professor Raychaudhuri (PI) and Ivan Seskar (co-PI) of Rutgers ECE/WINLAB. SII is a recently announced program at NSF which includes funding for a planned $25M/5yrs research center with full proposals due in March 2021. An abstract of the project is given below:

This proposal is aimed at the development of a comprehensive plan for an exceptional SII Center which would help maintain and extend US leadership in future wireless technologies, systems, and applications in science and engineering through the efficient use and sharing of radio spectrum. The team that has been assembled for this SII planning proposal spans eight universities (Rutgers, Columbia, NYU, U. Arizona, UT Austin, Oregon State, Princeton, and U. Wisconsin-Madison) and consists of well-established wireless researchers with prior contributions to spectrum across a range of specializations. The PIs propose to work together over the next 9-12 months to develop a compelling research agenda, round out the team’s expertise and diversity, conduct pilot studies to obtain preliminary results on key topics (TeraHz, passive spectrum users, and dynamic spectrum access), engage extensively with research, government, and industry stakeholders, and develop plans for experimental infrastructure and education/workforce development.

Congratulations to Ray and Ivan!

Engineers in Action: A Conversation with Nicholas Paraskevopoulos

 
We are pleased to offer prospective students, parents, teachers, counselors, and others a chance to learn about the Rutgers Engineering experience from the perspective of our alumni. Please register to receive more information about our Engineers in Action events as they become available. After submitting your form, you will receive virtual event details and how to join on the day of. We look forward to sharing our alumni stories and answering your questions.
 

COSMIC grant awarded to Columbia, Rutgers, U Arizona and CCNY

A Rutgers/Columbia/Arizona/CCNY team has been awarded a $3M/3yr grant (Rutgers amount $840K) from NSF entitled "IRNC: Testbed: COSMOS Interconnecting Continents (COSM-IC)".  The Rutgers PI is WINLAB Chief Technology Officer Ivan Seskar, with Distinguished Professor Dipankar Raychaudhuri as co-PI.  The project is aimed at development of an international networking and wireless testbed by federating US research testbeds including COSMOS, ORBIT, FABRIC and PEERING with experimental facilities in Ireland, Greece, Brazil and Japan.  The federated international testbed will enable experimental research on a wide range of  optical, wireless, SDN networking, inter-domain routing and edge computing experiments at a global scale.  
 
Congratulations to Ivan and Ray!

COSMIC grant awarded to Columbia, Rutgers, U Arizona and CCNY

A Rutgers / Columbia / Arizona / CCNY team has been awarded a $3M/3yr grant (Rutgers amount $840K) from NSF entitled "IRNC: Testbed: COSMOS Interconnecting Continents (COSM-IC)". The Rutgers PI is WINLAB Chief Technology Officer Ivan Seskar, with Distinguished Professor Dipankar Raychaudhuri as co-PI. The project is aimed at development of an international networking and wireless testbed by federating US research testbeds including COSMOS, ORBIT, FABRIC and PEERING with experimental facilities in Ireland, Greece, Brazil and Japan. The federated international testbed will enable experimental research on a wide range of optical, wireless, SDN networking, inter-domain routing and edge computing experiments at a global scale.
 
Congratulations to Ivan and Ray!

Mehdi Javanmard Wins DARPA Young Faculty Award

ECE Associate Professor Mehdi Javanmard has received the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) for the project titled "Lab-on-a-Microparticle: Injectable Wirelessly Powered Label-free Nanowell Sensors for In Vivo Quantification of Protein and Small Molecules." The objective of the DARPA YFA program is to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions, and expose them to DoD needs and DARPA’s program development process. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring and industry and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of national security needs. The long term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues. Mehdi has also been recognized previously with a NSF CAREER Award. This most recent DARPA YFA is the second such award in successive years in the ECE department (along with 8 active NSF CAREER Awards), reflecting the phenomenal successes of our young faculty members!
 
Congratulations on this outstanding achievement, Mehdi!
 

Mehdi Javanmard Wins DARPA Young Faculty Award

ECE Associate Professor Mehdi Javanmard has received the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA)for the project titled "Lab-on-a-Microparticle: Injectable Wirelessly Powered Label-free Nanowell Sensors for In Vivo Quantification of Protein and Small Molecules." The objective of the DARPA YFA program is to identify and engage rising stars in junior research positions, and expose them to DoD needs and DARPA’s program development process.The YFA program provides funding, mentoring and industry and DoD contacts to awardees early in their careers so they may develop their research ideas in the context of national security needs. The long term goal of the YFA program is to develop the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and National Security issues. Mehdi has also been recognized previously with a NSF CAREER Award. This most recent DARPA YFA is the second such award in successive years in the ECE department(along with 8 active NSF CAREER Awards), reflecting the phenomenal successes of our young faculty members!

Congratulations on this outstanding achievement, Mehdi!
 

ECE Researchers receive NSF Grant for Design of Secure IoT Devices


A team of ECE faculty members led by Assistant Professor Chung-Tse Michael Wu (PI) have received an Early Concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) award from the NSF for the project titled "Directional Modulation Non-Contiguous OFDM Retrodirective Communication for Secure IoT." This project includes Associate Professor Waheed Bajwa and Distinguished Professor Narayan Mandayam as co-PIs. The total award amount for this two-year project is $300,000.

This project aims to address a critical security issue in IoT applications that are susceptible to malicious spoofing attacks via an innovative PHY solution combining Non-Contiguous Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (NC-OFDM) transmission and a directional modulation retrodirective array. As compared with traditional OFDM transmissions, NC-OFDM transmissions take place over a subset of active subcarriers to either avoid incumbent transmissions or for strategic considerations. On the other hand, retrodirective antenna arrays are well known to be able to respond to the interrogator by sending a signal back to the interrogator location without a priori knowledge, which is particularly useful in a multipath-rich environment. One way to realize the directional modulation functionality is to use time-modulated antenna arrays, in which the aliasing effects resulting from the time-modulation frequency are used to distort the signals in the undesired directions. Furthermore, the project will establish that the unique integration of NC-OFDM and directional modulation enabled by a time-modulated retrodirective antenna array whose modulation frequency is the NC-OFDM subcarrier can potentially lead to an unprecedented level of PHY hardware security against spoofing attacks by an adversary, even when the adversary is equipped with sophisticated Machine Learning based attack techniques.


Congratulations to Michael, Waheed and Narayan!
 

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