RITE Site Project Descriptions: Summer 2003
1.
Artificial Bat Echolocation for Biological Modeling and Robotics
Prof. T. Horiuchi and
Prof. J. Simon
.The Computational Sensorimotor Systems Lab (CSSL) directed by Profs. Timothy Horiuchi and Jonathan Simon will have a project this summer for 1-2 MERIT undergraduates to design, simulate, and construct circuits and PC boards for a small acoustic sonar system for investigating biological algorithms of bat echolocation. This project will involve some reading of electronics as well as biological literature in addition to the circuit simulation and physical construction. Integrated circuit design may be possible. This work will support on-going research in the lab and will involve students directly in the research topics of the lab.
Course Prerequisites: Junior-level analog electronics and signal processing (Equivalent to UMCP courses ENEE 312 and ENEE 322).
2. Automatic Speaker-Independent Speech Recognition
Prof. C. Espy-Wilson
There is an increasing demand for automatic speaker-independent speech recognition solutions for desktops and wireless handheld devices. The latter application places serious constraint on the available memory. The development of accurate, efficient, robust and speaker-independent digital signal processing algorithms for speech recognition is the subject of intensive on-going research in the Department. Many of the research activities involved, such as the evaluation of algorithms across different databases and the development of fast algorithms, are suitable projects for undergraduate students. Typical subprojects include the conversion of MATLAB code into C, the evaluation and comparison of different algorithms in the various components of the recognition system, and the application of these algorithms on environmental sounds to see how well they are characterized and distinguished from speech.
3. Cell Clinics for Bioelectric Interface with Single Cells
Prof. P. Abshire
Interfacing electronics to biological systems leads
to the possibility of creating devices capable of being used as biosensors, environmental
monitors, and hybrid bioelectronic computational engines. The potential applications in
healthcare, security, and scientific research are numerous. Students will contribute to
ongoing research in the Integrated Biomorphic Information Systems Laboratory to develop such
bioelectronic and biophotonic interfaces to single cells. These interfaces consist of
microelectronic circuits integrated together with micromechanical structures for cell
manipulation and capture. Subprojects include circuit design and simulation, characterization
of integrated circuits, design and construction of PC boards and interfaces, and development
of methods for cell manipulation. This project involves review of electronics and biological
literature in addition to design, simulation, testing, and physical construction.
Prerequisites: integrated circuits and/or MEMS and/or physiological experience.
4. A Compact Radio Design for CMOS Implementation
Prof. R. Etienne-Cummings
This project has two components. First, the group will design and implement a radio
communications system with discrete components. Models for the devices will be obtained and the circuits will be simulated in SPICE.
Design must achieve short-range digital transmission with low power consumption and reliable signal-to-noise ratio. Various RF circuit
design principles and communication protocols must be considered. A physical implementation and testing of the design is also required.
The system will be demonstrated by linking two PC via their RS232 serial ports. Second, based on the results of the discrete version,
an integrated circuit design will be developed. The IC version will be designed for a state-of-the-art CMOS process offered through MOSIS.
Prerequisite: Circuits and VLSI hardware design experience.
5. Computer Recognition of Faces
Prof. R. Chellappa
Computer recognition of faces has applications in access control, ATM machines and in human/computer interfaces. In this project, the student(s) will develop global principal component analysis/linear discriminant analysis or feature-based approaches for verifying the presence/absence of a human and then determine the human's gender, identity and emotions. Using images acquired by a camera mounted on a PC, the algorithms will be able to produce an electronic log of the human's arrival/departure record. Emphasis will be placed on real-time implementations of existing algorithms.
6. Event-based Neuromorphic Communication and Computation
Prof. P. Abshire
Neuromorphic engineering is a multidisciplinary field that
develops engineered systems for tasks like vision, audition,
and navigation, based on architecture and design principles
from neural systems. While most biological neurons
communicate using discrete events called action potentials,
or spikes, few electronic systems employ this form of signal
representation. The advantages of this form of communication
include reliability and energy efficiency, and in recent
years neuromorphic engineers have developed electronic
systems that employ event-based asynchronous communication
and learning. This project will address two complementary
issues in the design of such systems: comparison to other
forms of signal representation and communication, and design
and simulation of electronic circuits for event-based
communications, such as integrate-and-fire neurons and event
processors. This project involves review of electronics and
biological literature in addition to design and simulation of
integrated circuits.
Prerequisites: Matlab experience, biophysics at the level of UMCP course ENEE435.
7. Geolocation
Using Wireless Networks
Prof. R. Liu
Geolocation using existing wireless networks such as cellular networks and wireless LAN has become an important subject. For example, the newly created standard on E-911 system will be capable of providing callers' locations to the emergency call center. In this project, a hardware prototype of a wireless geolocation system based on the current WLAN infrastructure using smart antenna will be built. The antenna array will measure the directions of arrivals to determine the directions of the signals. The WLAN systems will be either IEEE 802.11a or 802.11b. The goal of this project is to build the system using FPGA boards, PC, and other tools and to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach through experiments.
8. GPS-Based Location Determination
Prof. P. S. Krishnaprasad
GPS (global positioning laboratory) represents a remarkable integration of several major advances in the field of electrical engineering-from satellite communication, coding, estimation of signals in noise, to real-time signal processing via fast, low power circuitry on portable devices--providing us the capability to determine with increasing precision and accuracy, the location and speed of a GPS-equipped platform practically anywhere on earth. It is expected that initially, work in the proposed project would emphasize a view of the integration of subject matter inherent to GPS, demonstrating how systems concepts, such as filtering algorithms (e.g., Kalman filters and various nonlinear filters), mathematical descriptions of orbital mechanics of satellites, and differential or interferometric techniques, and phase tracking techniques contribute to the advances in precision and accuracy achievable via GPS. The project will also provide opportunities for studying applications of GPS to motion control, and in this context also investigate integration of a variety of other sensor technologies (e.g., inertial and optical/acoustic proximity sensors) with GPS for this purpose. It is expected that initially, work in the proposed project would emphasize a view of the integration of subject matter inherent to GPS, demonstrating how systems concepts, such as filtering algorithms (e.g., Kalman filters and various nonlinear filters), mathematical descriptions of orbital mechanics of satellites, differential or interferometric techniques, and phase tracking techniques contribute to the advances in precision and accuracy achievable via GPS. The project will also provide opportunities for studying applications of GPS to motion control, and in this context also investigate integration of a variety of other sensor technologies with GPS for this purpose. Students selected under the RITE site program will be able to pursue software development in this arena (with interesting challenges in integer optimization for phase ambiguity resolution, cycle slip detection and mode switching in satellite tracking). A primary goal of the project will be for students to learn the principles and carry out implementations of motion determination algorithms based on filtering and estimation theory and gain a better appreciation of issues in signal processing influenced by noise characteristics associated to the GPS system.
9. Multimedia Watermarking and Steganography
Prof. M. Wu
In the recent decade, new devices and powerful software have made it possible for consumers worldwide to access, create, and manipulate multimedia data. Internet and wireless networks offer ubiquitous channels to deliver and to exchange such multimedia information. However, the potential offered by the information technology era cannot be fully realized without the guarantee on the security and protection of multimedia data. Digital watermarking are schemes to embed imperceptible data in digital multimedia for a variety of applications, including ownership protection, tampering detection, access control, and annotation. With a few variations, the same technologies can be used as steganographic tools for covert communications.
This project is to develop a software toolbox for watermarking and steganography. The toolbox will provide a collection of reusable modules, many of which are common in watermarking different types of multimedia signal (such as image, video, and audio) and in different applications (such as ownership protection, tampering detection, and digital fingerprinting). The successful deployment of this toolbox will enable fast prototyping of watermarking and steganography systems for new applications with a variety of multimedia signal. Besides being exposed to exciting results from latest research and the state-of-the-art development tools, students in this project will be able to create their own pictures and music with invisible images and silent messages hidden in.
10. Secure Multimedia Multicast over Wireless Networks
Prof. M. Wu and
Prof. R. Liu
The ubiquity of communication networks is facilitating the development of wireless and Internet applications aimed at allowing users to communicate and collaborate amongst themselves. In the near future, group-oriented services will be customary - they will be essential for increasing productivity in the workplace, and they will be integral to how we redefine our sense of community. Restricting access to authorized users through encryption is the first-line of defense to secure group communications that are often implemented through multicasting. The problem of access control is made more difficult when the content is being distributed to a group of users and the membership will most likely be dynamic. The project is to develop a testbed by building a software library for secure multimedia multicast. The current version provides basic multicast communications, basic security modules, and a cool multimedia prototype of "Secure Slides Show". Students in MERIT'03 will further develop this software library to vividly visualize of the "behind-the-scene" process of security management, and to realize secure multicast of video and audio. If time permits, a prototype of secure audio multicast will also be ported to iPAQ, a multimedia PDA running Pocket PC operating system. Through this project, students will be exposed to new algorithms from the latest research on securing group communications as well as the state-of-the-art development tools.
11. Neuromorphic Signal Processing
Prof. S. Shamma and
Prof. J. Simon
Neuromorphic engineering is a novel direction in Bioengineering that is based on the design and fabrication of artificial neural systems, such as vision chips, head-eye systems, auditory processors, and autonomous robots, whose physical architecture and design principles are based on those of biological nervous systems. The last decade has witnessed major advances in the theory of neurally inspired signal processing and its hardware implementation in analog and digital VLSI. Most significant has been the appreciation that biological sensory and motor systems offer novel ideas on how to construct machines that exhibit robust, sensitive, and adaptive behaviors, and even potentially complex cognitive abilities. The research that underlies this young field is truly diverse ranging from the purely theoretical studies of computational complexity and learning algorithms, to the highly applied image and speech understanding systems. The department’s research includes the formulation of auditory algorithms for speech and music recognition and understanding, the design of echolocation systems mimicking the bat ultrasound, the exploration, modeling and analysis of the brain's sensory processing systems, and the detailed modeling of sound localization abilities of the barn owl. Many components of this research activity, such as real-time implementation of algorithms on DSP chips and development of analog VLSI circuits, testing them, and integrating them within bigger systems, are suitable projects for undergraduate students. In addition, this collection of projects lends itself to robotic implementations, especially with autonomous vehicles, projects that are especially suitable for a group effort where the integration of multiple modalities and technologies is necessary. The MERIT students will use custom chips that have been developed in the labs and integrate them into a demonstration system. Various algorithms for image processing will be implemented using these systems. The students will be exposed to a wide range of engineering concepts, ranging from analog and digital signal processing to hardware realization of image processing algorithms. The results may be published at conferences and/or in technical journals. The technical and communicational skills of the students will be enhanced by exposing them to high-level research, requiring written technical papers/reports and oral presentations.
12. Wireless Communication over Fading
Channels with Side Information
Prof. P. Narayan
There are a variety of situations in which the transmitters and receivers in a communication system must operate without a complete knowledge of the probability law which governs the channel over which transmission occurs. This can happen, for instance, in mobile wireless communication where owing to the mobility of the users, the degradation of the transmitted signals due to multipath, shadowing and propagation losses, is time-varying. This time-varying behavior of the channel probability law is typically described in terms of the evolution of an underlying channel ``state" which describes the ``condition" of the channel. The channel state, e.g., the degree of fading, can often be measured or estimated, and varying extents of channel state information (CSI) provided to the transmitters and receivers. A key objective of our work is to study how CSI can be gainfully used in devising transmitter and receiver strategies so as to enable reliable and efficient communication. Two models are of particular interest in the context of wireless communication. The first model concerns the uplink of a mobile wireless channel with multiple (mobile) senders transmitting to a single (base-station) receiver. The objective is to determine transmitter/receiver structures, including channel-access strategies and encoding/decoding schemes, for reliable and efficient communication. The second model considers the downlink of a mobile wireless channel with a single (base-station) sender transmitting receiver-specific as well as common information in a broadcast mode to multiple (mobile) receivers. The base-station is equipped with multiple antennae. The tasks for MERIT students to perform are: (1) Understand the (theoretical) models mentioned above, and (2) Conduct numerical studies for assessment of system performance (e.g., throughput) for various statistical models of the channel fade.
13. Neural Interface Circuits and Testing
Prof. P. Abshire and
Prof. T. Horiuchi
Modern neurophysiology has shown that many structures in the brain use sophisticated, distributed representations of information across populations of neurons in order to perform even simple tasks. More sophisticated and invisible electronic interfaces for acquiring simultaneous data from large populations of neurons in vivo are needed in order to support and stimulate these current efforts to understand the brain. Students will develop methods for recording, processing, and transmitting neural signals. They will develop algorithms and design circuits for the neural interface while developing an experimental preparation suitable for testing these circuits and recording extracellular neural signals in flies. This project involves review of electronics and biological literature, design and simulation of integrated circuits, testing and physical construction, and hands-on work with a simple invertebrate neural system.
Prerequisites: integrated circuits and/or biological experience.