Research

B. Jayant Baliga
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

This is a newly formed project for FREEDM that is funded from the Industry Pool Project 529737 - see attached documents

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

B. Jayant Baliga
09/01/08 - 08/31/09

To obtain accurate Impact Ionization Coefficients for GaN to allow precise design of Generation 2 GaN Power Devices.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

B. Jayant Baliga, Alex Q. Huang
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attached supporting documents. This is a continuation of Project 529669 from the prime FREEDM project 529598

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Mesut E. Baran
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

See supporting documents - this is a NEW FREEDM project that will be funded from research funds from FREEDM Industry pool 529737.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Mesut E. Baran
08/01/09 - 01/31/10

The project objective is to test the effectiveness using Branch Current State Estimation (BCSE) program for allocating feeder loads by phase, using information from Automated Metering Infrastructure (AMI) and Distribution Supervisory Data Acquisition and Control devices. Load allocation is one aspect of the larger load and state estimation problem for distribution systems. Distribution automation and AMI projects offer the promise of improved state estimation on distribution systems.

This project is sponsored by EnerNex Corporation.

Mesut E. Baran
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attached documents - this is a supplement for FREEDM project 529665 from the prime FREEDM 529598

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Mesut E. Baran
08/08/07 - 12/31/09

Effective management of distribution systems requires analysis tools that can estimate the state of the system (the operating condition). This project aims at development of two new analysis tools for this purpose. The main tool is the state estimator that will use the historical data and the real-time data to estimate the state of the system which is the voltages at all the nodes of a distribution feeder. The second tool will be a load estimator which will characterize the loads based on limited customer load data to be obtained from automated meter readers.

This project is sponsored by EnerNex Corporation.

Mesut E. Baran
09/01/08 - 08/31/09

This project has two objectives. The main objective is to develop a notional Freedm sys-tem simulation model. The system will be realistic enough to capture the system dynam-ics and component interactions that will occur on an actual 12kV distribution system. This notional system will be used as a common system for many of the studies for Freedm, especially during the early stages of development, such as system level simula-tion, component design, and control applications. The notional system will be delivered to the other teams who will need it to develop other applications for it. The second goal is to study functional performance of the notional system and demonstrate its proposed capabilities

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Alex Q. Huang, Douglas W. Barlage
09/01/08 - 08/31/09

To develop high current (up to 100A) and low voltage (300V to 12 00V) GaN power switches for secondary side of the solid state transformer. The initial goal is to achieve 100A/300V for Gen-2 SST.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Douglas W. Barlage
04/01/06 - 03/31/11

The focus of this supplementary effort is to focaus on small-signal parameter extraction for novel MOS devices and support the ongoing process development efforts that are the central focus of this proposal. Measurement in the 1 to 10 GHz range requires the low-frequency FET model to be modified such that it includes additional components that describe leakage, transconductance delay, and dispersion, if necessary. Due to the frequency range and geometry of the devices measured, S-parameters are the means of characterization. While GaN transistors have already been modeled and are currently sold commercially, this work investigates parameter temperature dependence and dispersion phenomena. Dispersion is an undesirable feature that reduces gain by reducing output resistance. It is more common to heterogeneous structures and devices that suffer from trapping effects. By understanding the origin and form of the dispersion phenomena better devices can be fabricated and more useful circuits designed.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Mark A. Johnson, Douglas W. Barlage
03/27/09 - 09/27/09

Investigation of the Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) epitaxial growth of Gallium Nitride based Schottky diode test structures on company supplied substrates for device fabrication. Subsequent diode test structures will be fabricated by company into diode structures for testing. Correlation between crystal defects in Gallium Nitride epitaxial layers and Schottky diode electrical characteristics are an intended area for investigation.

This project is sponsored by Kyma Technologies, Inc (formerly Carolina Sputter Solutions).

Nadia A. El-Masry, Salah M. Bedair
10/01/07 - 02/28/10

The objectives of proposed research are to investigate the effects of the built-in polarization field upon the FM and optical properties of GaN crystals doped with a magnetic dopant such as manganese or a rare earth element. Two main tasks are involved in this effort: (a) diffusion of magnetic dopants into polar and non-polar GaN surfaces, and (b) in situ magnetic doping during growth of III-nitride thin films on non-polar GaN surfaces. Following incorporation of the dopant, magnetic and optical properties of the GaN samples are to be characterized and assessed for spintronic device application. Correlation of these properties with the polar orientation of the GaN crystals is expected to lead to a better understanding of the physical mechanisms underlying FM behavior in III-nitride semiconductors.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Salah M. Bedair, Nadia A. El-Masry
06/01/09 - 02/28/10

Abstract

The principle technical barrier in improving LED performance is the low quantum efficiency and optical gain found in high percentage InGaN compounds. Recent research efforts have found that the use of the non-polar orientations of GaN is encouraging and that strategies that mitigate the detrimental piezoelectric field effects using m-plane are promising. The current state of m-plane GaN bulk substrate is presently limited by tiny, very expensive substrates. We avoid the use of small a-plane and m-plane substrates.

We propose to investigate sidewall epitaxy on the etched m-plane facet of GaN/Sapphire. The sidewall epitaxy approach is less traditional than previous LED device structures; it provides the following distinct device advantages such as:

1. High quality, low defect materials due to the advantages of lateral growth.

2. Elimination of detrimental piezoelectric field effects.

The current activities will be focused on LED structures to demonstrate the validity of the proposed concept. Future activities can then be extended to laser diodes.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Salah M. Bedair, Nadia A. El-Masry
05/01/08 - 04/30/11

The first cascade multiple junction solar cells reported by Bedair (1979) was based on AlGaAs/GaAs for the top and bottom cell with 16% conversion efficiency. Recent progress based on three junctions cell: GaInP(1.85eV)/GaAs(1.42eV)/Ge(0.67eV) with conversion efficiency ~32% and 40% at one sun 240x, respectively was reported.

It has been realized that conversion efficiency ?Ø > 35% and > 45% at on e sun and high x respectively can be achieved in four junction structure. The four junction cell requires materials system with band gap Eg: 1.9 eV/1.5 eV/1.0 eV/0.67 eV(Ge). Material system with Eg > 1.43 eV and lattice matched to GaAs (or Ge) are readily available such as InGaP (Al), GaInAsP and AlGaInAs. However, material system that collects photons in the 1.42 eV to 1.0 eV range and lattice matched to GaAs (or Ge) had proven to be very difficult to achieve.

We propose a new sub cell structure to collect photons in the energy range 1.4 ? 1 eV. This sub cell will be part of four junction cascade structure. The projected practical efficiency is in the range from 35% to 40% at one sun AM1.5 and ?Ø = 45% - 50% at higher solar concentration. NCSU will develop the new sub cell and Spectra Lab will integrate the developed sub cell into their four junction structures.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Energy (DOE).

Xiangwu Zhang, Subhashish Bhattacharya
02/09/09 - 02/08/11

This proposed work focuses on i) the development and deployment of advanced lithium-ion batteries that outperform the state-of-art batteries and ii) the design of a flexible & scalable digital power management system that integrate advanced batteries and solar cells into small satellites.

This project is sponsored by University of Florida.

Subhashish Bhattacharya, Alex Q. Huang, Richard D. Gould
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attached supporting documents - this is a continuation of FREEDM project 529666 from the prime FREEDM project 529598

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Griff L. Bilbro
01/01/09 - 10/31/09

We propose to apply our recent SKS technique for matching regions in image pairs to the problem of tracking objects in video sequences. The new tracking technique is expected to inherit the strengths of the underlying SKS technique, including computational efficiency as well as insensitivity to partial occlusion, rotation, translation, zoom, and brightness.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Gregory T. Byrd, William R. Davis
05/15/07 - 04/30/10

This project will investigate multi-core architectures, advanced design tools, and highly-parallel applications to exploit three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) for significantly higher performance and reduced power, compared to traditional two-dimensional multi-core chips. The use of emerging 3D IC technology has primarily focused on shrinking existing designs, achieving shorter wire delays and lower power dissipation without scaling transistor size. This work concentrates on the next-higher level of abstraction: the best mechanisms to integrate multiple processing cores into a power-ful parallel computing engine. The work will perform detailed tradeoff analyses of architectural alter-natives, especially with respect to memory hierarchy and interconnection networks, in order to discover approaches that fully exploit the benefits of 3D integration. This analysis will be performed at both the architectural level and the physical design level, and tools will be developed to allow information and constraints to smoothly flow between levels, enabling new opportunities for collaboration between architects and chip designers. The studies will be driven by highly-parallel applications that require high performance within strict power and thermal constraints, such as video compression and signal processing in embedded environments. The goal is to find the killer apps that will fully exploit highly-connected 3D chip multiprocessors.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Gregory T. Byrd
09/01/08 - 09/01/09

Energy consumption is a paramount concern in mobile consumer devices, such as

cell phones. This project will investigate and prescribe ways to use

emerging multicore architectures to reduce energy consumption for applications

running on the mobile device, such as web browsers, media players, and so forth.

This project is sponsored by Qualcomm.

Gregory T. Byrd
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

While much networking research is geared toward increasing throughput in the data plane, recent routers have experienced scalability problems in the control plane. The number of logical and physical interfaces is increasing, as is the complexity of router protocols and management services. This proposal aims to explore ways in which multicore and many-core processors can be used to address the scalability problems, in terms of both performance and programmer productivity.

First, we will select some open-source codes that are representative of interesting control-plane applications. Then, we will evaluate the concurrency present in those codes, determining which can benefit from a multicore approach. Finally, we will evaluate various architectural mechanisms (e.g., transactional memory, cache hierarchies and protocols, speculative memory accesses) that can improve scalability and performance, and/or make the parallel codes easier to write and maintain.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Advanced Computing & Communication.

Jim C Chang
01/31/06 - 01/30/10

IPA Extension for Jim Chang

This project is sponsored by US Air Force (USAF).

Jim C Chang
03/01/10 - 02/29/12

IPA Agreement: no abstract required.

This project is sponsored by US Army Research Laboratory (ARL).

Jim C Chang
12/01/09 - 02/28/10

Through actively participation, engagement and steering community activities and literature survey, this project is to evaluate the progress and the state-of-the-art of the multiscale research issues, and to arrive at a strategy for planning and execution of programs to achieve the vision of ?material-by-design?.

This project is sponsored by US Air Force-Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

Fred R. DeJarnette, Robert T. Nagel, Harvey T. Banks, Ashok Gopalarathnam, Vinod K. Saxena, Gregory D. Buckner, Mohammad Noori, Fuh G. Yuan, Jack R. Edwards, Mo-Yuen Chow
10/01/02 - 09/25/12

This project is sponsored by National Institute of Aerospace.

Mo-Yuen Chow
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

In this project, we propose to use Gene Library to classify and detect abnormality in vehicle movements in various traffic environments and to provide optimal real-time sampling rate adaptations and emergency interventions. The gene library stores relevant information in the memory for real-time fetching to avoid on demand optimization and computation. Artificial Immune Systems (AIS) optimization is used to tune the gene library so that the gene library can be used in real-time as well as can adapt to its environment for optimal solutions. The primary purpose of IDEA is to prevent accident caused by abnormal behavior of the impaired drivers during driving. At this phase, the attention is directed at assistive technology which warns the driver and drivers in the impact neighborhood of potential safety problem and generates the necessary corrective commands only under emergency situations. In order to achieve this goal, we propose to use the Intelligent Space (iSpace) concept, which is to integrate globally distributed sensor agents, distributed actuator agents, and distributed controller agents over networks to make optimal local decisions which cannot otherwise be achieved.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Mo-Yuen Chow
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attachments of documents - - Project renamed "Distributed Control of FREEDM System". This is a continuation of segment 529670 from the prime FREEDM project 529598

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Mo-Yuen Chow
06/13/08 - 10/12/09

This research seeks to identify the quantitative requirements for implementing congestion planning using massive real time, sensor data.

Specifically, we seek to investigate data gathering using probe vehicles, data transmission using wireless communications, massive data processing, and model building to analyze congestion relief strategies for near- and long-term planning purposes. The deliverables of this proposed work include a set of software tools for analyzing congestion relief strategies, covering all aspects from data gathering to planning. Hardware demonstration includes a preliminary prototype system consisting of a probe vehicle, iSpace communication, and congestion planning.

This project is sponsored by New Jersey Institute of Technology.

Mo-Yuen Chow, Simon M. Hsiang
09/01/07 - 08/31/10

The REU student is expected to:

- Involve in group research meetings related to the NSF ECS-0653017project;

- Assist the Graduate Research Assistant of this project to prepare and produce simulation study on the data mining on the GIS data of the power distribution systems;

- Assist to develop and update the Web of this NSF project for public information dissemination.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Huaiyu Dai
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

Intellectual Merit: Quickest detection is an important technique to detect the change of probability distribution in a random process being monitored. It is widely used in problems like financial decision making, environmental monitoring and industrial quality control. With the rapid development of networking techniques, there exist pressing demands to carry out quickest detection based on observations from many nodes and make decision at more than one nodes. Motivated by this demand, we propose to study collaborative quickest detection in ad hoc networks, in which nodes exchange observation statistics and make local decisions about distribution change. In contrast to existing theory of decentralized quickest detection, our proposed scheme does not need a data processing center, thus avoiding the round-trip time overhead and possible data congestion. Moreover, collaboration can enhance the agility and robustness of the detection of change.

An important application of collaborative quickest detection is spectrum sensing in cognitive radio systems. In such a system, secondary nodes need to monitor the activity of primary users, and should quit the frequency band once primary users emerge. It is essentially a problem of quickest detection since the secondary nodes need to detect the change as quickly as possible..Our proposed research can substantially reduce the response time of secondary nodes and decrease false alarms.

Our proposed research on collaborative quickest detection comprises the following four thrusts:

1. Aspect of statistical signal processing: we plan to study the rules of change detection when observations from different collaborators have different delays; we also plan to use Skorokhod embedding to study the performance of quickest detection.

2. Aspect of communication and information theory: we plan to study source coding for exchanged information as well as the corresponding communication complexity.

3. Aspect of networking: we plan to study the scheduling of broadcast for collaborative quickest detection in wireless networks, as well as the topology control for information exchange.

4. Aspect of application in cognitive radio: we plant to study monitoring the change of primary radio users in single or multiple frequency bands.

Broader Impact: The proposed research will contribute fundamental concepts and analytical tools to the new arena of collaborative quickest detection. It also provides new methodologies and techniques for fields like signal processing, communication theory and wireless networking. We also plan to apply the results of our proposed work in collaborative projects with Oak Ridge National Lab (ORNL).

The inter-disciplinary essence of our proposed research also lends itself to cross-disciplinary education. We plan to devise a one-semester graduate level lecture introducing quickest detection, cooperative communication and cognitive radios. Besides involving graduate students working toward master and doctoral degrees, this project also expects to attract traditionally underrepresented groups, particularly through the collaboration with the UTK chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE).

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Huaiyu Dai
09/01/07 - 08/31/10

Intellectual Merit: Wireless sensor network is taking an increasingly important role in our life, for which collaboration among sensor nodes is crucial for its success. In anticipated applications, a centralized solution is either not available or infeasible due to resource constraint and application demand. Therefore, cooperative schemes that are distributed, self-organized, scalable, and energy-efficient, are much desired for sensor networks.

This project proposes to employ belief propagation (BP) in wireless sensor networks, to provide a systematic and yet flexible framework to facilitate in-network cooperative processing. Belief propagation is a computing algorithm operating on graphical models, while in sensor networks there is a communication graph reflecting connectivity topology. We are interested in the scenario when the computing graph meets the communication graph. On the one hand, belief propagation facilitates distributed computing and inference in sensor networks. On the other hand, the application of belief propagation in wireless sensor networks is subject to severe communication constraints. On addressing this interaction, the fact that sensor networks are application driven brings a new angle into research.

Our proposed research comprises the following three main thrusts.

1) Convergence and correctness of the BP algorithm on general graphs, a challenging problem of high impact on its own, will be studied in the context of specific applications. The connection between BP fixed points and stationary points of some constrained minimization problems will also be pursued, and protocol designs will be jointly considered with theoretical study.

2) The influence of communication constraints will be explored with respect to message representation, message error and message scheduling, culminating in a comprehensive study on the tradeoffs among energy efficiency, accuracy, computational complexity, and delay.

3) The synergy of generalized belief propagation (GBP) with sensor networks, an almost brand-new area, will be explored. We will particularly study efficient methods of region partitioning for GBP, which is still more an art than a science. We also propose to study hybrid structures which can combine the advantages of in-network processing and data fusion.

Broader Impacts: Though this proposal targets wireless sensor networks, the proposed framework and fundamental research apply largely to general ad hoc networks as well. They can even be extended to virtual scenarios where a set of ?sensors? distributed over the Internet cooperate on a joint task through information exchange. If we think of wireless networks as a new kind of computer systems, belief propagation can serve as an effective programming language for them. The proposed work lies in the interface of networking, communications, and computing, heavily replying on the knowledge in information theory, communication theory, Bayesian inference, graph theory and models, and communication/computation/information complexity. It has the potential to advance the theory and practice of these areas, and contribute to the evolvement of next generation wireless networks.

The PI will seek to incorporate material inspired by this work (at an appropriate level) into the undergraduate and graduate curricula at North Carolina State University. Various channels will be utilized to disseminate research findings to industry and the broader public.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

William R. Davis, Paul D. Franzon
07/01/08 - 07/01/11

One of the primary drivers for new systems-on-chip is increasing memory. Studies of memory cost have predicted that as memory density increases, 3D integration becomes necessary to reduce cost-per-bit. Companies will avoid adopting 3D integration until it becomes the most cost-effective way to meet their system performance goals. Designers are also having difficulty evaluating 3D alternatives to 2D implementations. Therefore, an easy system for evaluating the performance of a new system-on-chip in a 3D process is needed to determine the performance enhancement offered by 3D. This document proposes a three-year research project to develop an open-source CAD framework and process design kit (PDK) to greatly simplify the task of evaluating the marginal cost of adopting 3D integration.

This project is sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corp..

William R. Davis
04/15/07 - 03/31/11

The goal of this 5-year project is to develop the fundamental design methodologies needed to make three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) a scientifically viable alternative to continued scaling of transistor gate lengths. A fully successful program will provide the models and methods needed to optimize, verify, and experimentally demonstrate high-performance and low-power 3D ICs. The first objective is to research the high-level abstractions needed to optimize energy and delay through memory structure, clock-tree topology, and floorplanning constraints. The second objective is to research methods for thermal verification of 3D ICs with analyses of the prediction error of current methods and new mathematic formulations to overcome the fundamental limitations of simulating heat-flow in 3D IC systems. The third objective is to experiment with these optimization and verification techniques in search of new computing applications with latency and power that cannot be achieved with traditional IC technology. Successful experimental confirmation of these methodologies will consist of fabricated 3D ICs that achieve half of the computational latency and power dissipation of traditional ICs with comparable transistor feature sizes.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

William R. Davis, Paul D. Franzon
09/01/07 - 10/31/09

This work will create an open-source, variation-aware 45nm PDK (Process Design Kit) for use in VLSI education and small-businesses. This kit will include the necessary layout design-rules and extraction command-decks to capture layout-dependent systematic variation and perform statistical circuit analysis. The kit will also include a standard-cell library with the necessary support files to enable full-chip place & route and verification for System on Chip designs.

This project is sponsored by Carnegie Mellon University.

William R. Davis
08/19/08 - 12/31/09

The DARPA STEEP program seeks to demonstrate transistors with delays of less than 5 ps, off-state/on-state power reduction of 10X/4X in phase I and 100X/25X in phase II. This work proposes to create a baseline-circuit test-bed for measuring delay and power of simple circuits to evaluate whether or not the goals of the STEEP program have been met. In order to allow the test-bed to operate at the highest speeds possible, it will be implemented as core to be integrated on-chip with the test circuits. To ease the insertion of this core into other processes, it will be implemented using a standard-cell approach as much as possible. To facilitate ease in testing, a simple interface will be developed, so that tests can be initiated using low-frequency pattern generators.

This project is sponsored by Wyle Laboratories.

Alexander G. Dean, Mihail L. Sichitiu, Thomas G. Wolcott
08/15/05 - 07/31/09

We propose to develop new methods and a framework to allow users to quickly implement efficient software-based controllers for customized network communication protocols. The wide variety of embedded systems communication requirements leads to numerous different embedded networking protocols -- a single generic solution would lead to excessive inefficiency in performance, cost, power, reliability, code size, and other areas. Automobiles, trucks, trains, elevators, aircraft, ships, security systems, factories, office building, sensor networks, and military vehicles all have varying communications requirements, leading to a variety of communication protocols. Networking protocol implementations using only traditional software methods for scheduling and context switching are often inadequate due to high timing overhead and variability. A dedicated hardware implementation requires the design of an integrated circuit, discrete logic or the use of programmable logic such as FPGA, and it often lacks the flexibility of a software solution. We proposed to develop methods, a toolbox and an associated communication framework to allow users to quickly implement software-based controllers for customized network communication protocols. More specifically, we will provide a complete networking stack featuring several options at each layer in the stack. Users will select specific protocol characteristics, and the tools of the framework will generate (and compile) the code that implements the specific protocol options for the desired application. C17A major component of the proposed work is evaluating the performance of the customized network stack. In the first phase, corresponding to different choices of the end user, the tool will provide an estimation of the performance of the proposed protocol stack: efficiency, delay, throughput, power consumption, expected error rates, etc. Since many performance parameters depend on the particular deployment scenario, we will also design an emulator that will enable an exact evaluation of the performance of the embedded system in the targeted environment. The goal of the performance evaluation component is to allow the designer to make the correct decisions will be made at the early stages in the product development. C2The proposed tool does not specifically target any class of embedded systems; however, we recognize that a solution with less resources will typically be preferrable not only due to monetary cost, but also size, energy and thermal constraints and hence we will seek efficient solutions whenever possible. Therefore, we will use software thread integration to provide efficient concurrency. Our work will allow practitioners to implement optimized protocols, by providing the design and analysis tools that bridge the gap between network and CPU simulation. More importantly, we foresee that a large percentage of the users of our system will be non-specialists. We will specifically provide custom-fit protocols that are needed in many non-communication engineering fields, such that a communication system will be much easier to design and debug. While the proposed tool will be very general and target a broad range of hardware (microcontrollers and transceiver), we will use two sample applications from two such unrelated field as a reality check mechanism. Specifically, we will consider ultrasonic biotelemetry, a powerful new research tool for analyses of movement, habitat utilization, physiological function and behavior of marine organisms as one of such applications of networking in unrelated fields. Furthermore, a structural health monitoring of reinforced bridges using wireless sensor networks will be a second application that we will consider when designing the general purpose networking protocol toolbox. We believe that many non-specialists in unrelated fields, but in need of communication protocols will benefit directly from the results of this project.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Alexander G. Dean, Eric Rotenberg
08/01/07 - 07/31/10

Real-time embedded systems execute multiple tasks within fixed time-constraints, i.e., deadlines. A large body of work has been developed for formally constructing real-time schedules in which all tasks satisfy their deadline constraints. Traditionally, real-time scheduling abstracts the processor in a gross way, without underlying details. This overly abstract framework is no longer sufficient given the complexity of memory hierarchies in contemporary embedded systems. There are at least two problems. First, there is little support to real-time system designers for transparently managing the memory hiearchy given real-time constraints. Second, by ignoring the memory hierarchy, there is lost opportunity for jointly allocating memory to tasks and scheduling the tasks. Conventional scheduling algorithms may not yield the best performance or power, compared to our new scheduling algorithms influenced by memory constraints.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Alexander G. Dean
09/01/09 - 02/28/10

This project will determine the feasibility of using and adapting an existing ultrasonic underwater communication system for communication in down-hole applications in the oil and gas well industry.

This project is sponsored by Weatherford International Ltd..

Mihail Devetsikiotis, Harry G. Perros
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

Network monitoring and measurement can be regarded as an essential function for developing education, research and corporate networks that can support innovative networking technologies, such as video-based distance learning applications and cloud computing infrastructures. We propose to design and implement a passive network monitoring tool that will be able to characterize novel applications, provide early warning for security incidents and provide traffic measurements available to the community through a web-based NCSU/NCREN network map. Following the measurement phase we propose to develop a traffic modeling mechanism that will identify the structural dependencies of traffic as it relates to social connectivity graphs and distances. More specifically our focus will be on: (1) conducting a series of detailed trials to capture data from different places across research and education campuses and identify the emerging traffic patterns; (2) using the trial results to deconstruct and analyze the intersecting networking and social distances of next generation of users (K-20); (3) incorporating these traffic patterns into a queueing model of a flow of IP packets with a view to calculating the end-to-end delay and packet loss rate. The results from this model will be used in cost-based parametric model in order to obtain the optimal network topology architecture.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Advanced Computing & Communication.

Mihail Devetsikiotis, Mitzi M. Montoya-Weiss
07/01/08 - 12/31/09

The objectives of this project are to study the communications, computing and social networking challenges of building effective large-scale, dynamic collaborative environments (CEs) through the VCL. In concert, the VCL and related CEs aim to support virtual work and distributed collaborations especially those that are fundamental to scientific exploration, collaborative visualization, and education.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Advanced Computing & Communication.

Hans D. Hallen, Alexandra Duel-Hallen
06/07/09 - 06/06/10

Wireless communications systems are widely modeled and measured. The successful model by is used by many groups and forms the basis for understanding propagation effects in a standard wireless system. It only allows statistical description of a channel, however, so is not adequate for testing algorithms whose performance is strongly affected by the precise local environment. In particular, testing these algorithms requires the creation of scenarios that are typical and others that are challenging. An example of such an algorithm is long-range prediction, which has been shown to enable adaptive modulation to achieve significant gains on the wireless channel, and is becoming widely studied. The variation of the channel parameters with position plays a large role in determining the achievable performance of the algorithm. We have developed a physical model to test long-range prediction. It provides the necessary insights for predicting challenging or typical scenarios, and creates simulated channels for testing long-range prediction that include physically realistic parameter variation in space. The physical model compares well with measurements for narrow band channels in a suburban environment, as judged by the performance of the long-range prediction algorithm. This is in contrast to the prediction of a Jake's model simulated channel, which does not include physically meaningful parameter variations (it is stationary). As we modify the model to other situations, such as prediction at a frequency other than the one sampled, prediction near complex scattering objects, and peer-to-peer systems that utilize sectored antennas, we have moved well beyond comparison of the model to measured channels. The measurements needed to verify the model in these cases are too involved and need too much interaction with model building to be realistically carried out by a remote group. We therefore propose here to purchase equipment and develop the measurement capabilities to insure that the models are reasonable and to develop insights to further enhance the model for these and future projects.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Alexandra Duel-Hallen, Hans D. Hallen
03/15/08 - 08/31/09

The objective of the proposed research is to improve performance of the Ultrawideband (UWB) systems by exploiting their physical channel characteristics. UWB communications has the potential to provide low cost and high speed service, and has attracted increasing interest since the release of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) spectral masks. The proposal focuses on alleviation of potential outages in the outdoor UWB systems due to shadowing and other difficult propagation environments by exploiting novel transmitter and receiver design methods.

Due to its very large bandwidth, the UWB channel suffers from frequency-dependent distortion of individual multipath components. This per-path distortion is not significant in systems with smaller bandwidth employed in most wireless systems. However, in UWB systems, some challenging propagation environments that can cause in outage, e.g. shadowing, reflection by a small reflector, or penetration through objects are characterized by per-path distortion and the associated frequency-dependent propagation loss. Moreover, these challenging scenarios are more prevalent in outdoor than in indoor UWB systems. For example, they arise when transmitting in a canyon-like street or over a hill. Most of the research on UWB communications has focused on the indoor systems. Thus, characterization of per-path distortion has received little attention, and exploitation of the frequency dependency to alleviate potential outages has not been proposed previously.

In the proposed research, a novel physical model of the outdoor UWB channel will be developed. This model will be provide typical and challenging data sets and insights required for designing and testing proposed communications algorithms for outdoor UWB systems. This new model is needed since existing models do not adequately characterize challenging outdoor propagation environments investigated in this project. Using this model, the effect of the frequency-dependent channel impairments on receiver design will be investigated. The objective is to determine feasibility of robust low complexity receivers in challenging outdoor UWB scenarios. Finally, it is proposed to explore adaptive transmission for the UWB channels with frequency dependent propagation gain. This idea is transformative - it is proposed to exploit the lower band of the UWB spectrum (as specified by FCC mask) up to 1GHz range to achieve transmission gain when the channel is strong in this part of the spectrum. The UWB research to date has focused on utilizing exclusively the upper part of spectrum (above 3GHz), thus neglecting potentially beneficial transmission at lower frequencies. The potential of selecting different parts of the spectrum adaptively will be exploited in this project.

Broader impacts: The proposed research is an interdisciplinary effort in communication theory, physics, and signal processing. Feasibility of improving UWB outdoor radio systems by exploiting their physical channel characteristics will be explored in preliminary results developed in this project. The graduate student involved in this project will be enriched due to the interdisciplinary nature of proposed research.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

William W. Edmonson
09/03/08 - 12/31/09

The development of miniaturized attitude control systems (ACS) that significantly increase the agility of small satellites with respect to state-of-the-art components is desirable. Three solutions considered for this type of ACS include: reaction wheel actuators (RWA)-based systems, underactuated control moment gyroscope (CMG)-based systems, and redundant CMG-based systems. In general, RWA-based systems require more power and provide less torque for a given mass/volume when compared to CMG actuators, due to the torque amplification characteristic of CMGs. Therefore, RWA-based systems are not ideal for attitude control of rapid retargetting small satellites.

Underactuated CMG systems have been suggested for small satellite systems, but their application is ad hoc, requiring specificity of the spacecraft to which they are being applied. Furthermore, in the event of a failure of one of the CMG actuators in an underactuated system, the ACS will experience total system failure. Both of these traits are counter to the National Space Policy needs of lower-cost, more-responsive space systems, thereby, rendering the underactuated CMG concepts inappropriate for cost effective responsive small satellite attitude control.

A redundant CMG actuation system can be designed to be cost effective and responsive. This is accomplished through the use of a standardized self-contained design actuator that is spacecraft independent and only requires integration into the spacecraft. Additionally, a failure of a single CMG does not cause ACS failure and the system can accommodate the reduced operational capability via software update. Furthermore, the redundancy allows for more sophisticated control and steering logic capabilities to avoid singularities, a condition suffered by all CMG-based attitude control systems (i.e., there are gimbal configurations in which the actuator cannot produce torque in an arbitrary direction). Therefore, a once-redundant four single-gimbal control moment gyro configuration is perceived as most cost effective and responsive ACS design.

By this redundant CMG (r-CMG) being a self-contained system allows it to be structured for plug-and-play satellite bus. The proposed project will be to develop a complete standalone r-CMG that will also include the digital processing unit for computing the control dynamics, and sensor inputs from GPS and Star Tracker. A bus protocol and form factor will be established in conjunction with NASA-Ames who is submitting a complementary proposed project.

This project is sponsored by University of Florida.

William W. Edmonson, Winser E. Alexander
08/01/08 - 06/30/13

The landscape of today?s space industry is an increasingly global one, with even more countries developing space technology capabilities. The pre-eminence of the U.S. in the aerospace industry can no longer be assumed, as was illustrated in the final report of the President?s Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry (The Aerospace Commission, 2002), ?The Commission?s urgent purpose is to call attention to how the critical underpinnings of this nation?s aerospace industry are showing signs of faltering ? and to raise the alarm.?

Responding to this call, current U.S. National Space Policy needs are dictating that smaller and[WE1] more agile space assets (i.e., small satellites) will be the primary focus for space agencies ? not totally excluding larger spacecraft as may be necessary,, but these will be the exception. New technologies and integrated systems that enable small satellites having stringent power, volume and mass constraints will actually increase space science opportunities because agencies can thus afford more of them ? which is also the technologies for enabling this new direction. These small sats will be of lower cost and function operationally-responsive space systems. This will allow the industry not to continue with countless cost overruns and schedule delays that have plagued many government space satellite programs, e.g. science-driven (NASA, NSF), weather (NOAA), and national defense (DoD) purposes. It has been further recognized by national space policy experts, that small satellites can complement the services provided by existing larger satellites, by providing cost effective solutions to specialist communications, remote sensing, and rapid response science and military missions.

Research focus/Intellectual merit: Small satellites are an enabling technology for addressing the current U.S. National Space Policy needs of a lower-cost, more-responsive space systems. Transitioning to small satellite systems introduces technical challenges not only for the fundamental spacecraft subsystems due to stringent low power, low volume/mass constraints, but also on the supporting infrastructure of space operations. This proposal is to request to establish a new collaborative NSF I/UCRC between educational partner University of Florida (UF) and North Carolina State University (NCSU). The center, to be known as the Advanced Small Satellite Technologies Research and Engineering Center (ASTREC), will have as its objective technological developments that produces improvements in time to orbit, cost, and performance of U.S satellite systems. Through these efforts, the pre-eminence of the U.S. space industry can be regained. In order to accomplish this objective, the Center will perform multidisciplinary research in the areas of small satellite technologies. The Center will utilize a design-build-fly (DBF) philosophy (similar to that utilized by the UAV community) to accomplish rapid transitions from low technology readiness levels to actual flight test. The emphasis will be on small satellite systems (particularly pico and nano-class) because they (i) provide rapid access to space, (ii) are technology drivers (mass, volume, power constraints) and (iii) are economically feasible.

Broader impact: To be good stewards of our space environment, the ASTREC is cognizant of [WE2]the potential impact of its DBF approach to the problems of space debris. In this regards, it is expected that one of the first demonstrators to be developed and evaluated by ASTREC will address on-orbit services such as debris removal though autonomous rendezvous and docking. Furthermore, it is imperative that this recovery capability becomes routine to the space industry, otherwise the community will not migrate towards Risk Tolerance because of the fear failure. However, with a capability for recovery, the fear of failure can be reduced, and in fact, the lessons learned from the failure can be utilized in a positive manner to develop a better product.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

William W. Edmonson
06/01/09 - 12/31/09

This IPA will be to support the design and definition of the GPS instrument for retrieving radio occultation data for the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) mission. This mission represents one of the decadal survey missions and its role is to address the following societal objectives: 1) benchmark a climate record that is global, accurate, tested against independent strategies that reveal systematic errors, and tied to international standards; 2) contribute to the development of an operational climate forecast model; and 3) to provide a disciplined decision structure that brings together data and forecasts into products that promote international commerce, social stability and security. The CLARREO spacecraft will carry three instruments that will measure the radiated infrared energy emitted from the Earth, the reflected solar radiation from the Earth, and atmospheric refractivity with active limb sounding using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) and associated receivers for deriving vertical profiles of temperature and pressure. The latter instrument is the GPS radio occultation, or GPS RO instrument.

During this IPA term Dr. Edmonson?s responsibility will be to serve as the CLARREO GPS RO Instrument Systems Engineer and lead the conceptual design of a GPS RO instrument to be presented at the CLARREO Mission Concept Review (MCR) in December 2009.

This project is sponsored by National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA).

William W. Edmonson, Winser E. Alexander
10/01/08 - 12/31/09

Reconfigurable processor platform has paved their way into embedded systems that is used in our daily lives. Examples of reconfigurable architectures include advanced cellular phones and PDAs. These reconfigurable architectures are able to bring flexibility and computing power to execute todays' applications. However, mapping on these reconfigurable platforms in an efficient way is still a problem that has not effectively been solved. The following questions need to be addressed.

?How can application designers efficiently map applications onto reconfigurable platforms?

?How to tackle the increasing application complexity combined with platform complexity?

It is clear that efficient mapping to reconfigurable processor is a problem and that will pose an ever-increasing obstacle for the designer in the future. Reconfigurable architectures limit their flexibility to a particular algorithm domain. An application specific IC lacks flexibility. And a general purpose processor is inefficient. Neither general purpose processors nor application specific architectures are capable of satisfying the power and flexibility requirements of future video applications. Instead, we want to make the architecture fit the algorithm, as opposed to making the algorithm fit the architecture. Two types of reconfigurable architectures exist: fine-grained in which the functionality of the hardware is specified at the bit-level and coarse-grained in which the functionality of the hardware is specified at the word-level or higher. High-level design entry tools are essential for reconfigurable systems, especially coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures. However, the mapping tools for coarse-grained reconfigurable architectures are far from mature.

This research proposes a method for mapping applications onto a coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture. We propose a mapping methodology that tackles the complex problem in four phases: translation, clustering, mapping and allocation. A coarse-grained reconfigurable architecture is used to demonstrate the proposed mapping method. During the translation phase, an input program written in a high-level language is translated into a control data flow graph (CDFG). Transformations and simplifications are performed on the CDFG. In the clustering phase, the CDFG is partitioned into clusters and mapped onto an unbounded number of fully connected array architectures. In the mapping phase, the graph obtained from the clustering phase is scheduled, taking array structure into account. The mapping and scheduling algorithm attempts to minimize the number of clock cycles used for the given application under the constraints of the number of arrays.

This project is sponsored by ETRI (Research Inst.-Electronics & Telecommunications).

William W. Edmonson
02/09/09 - 02/08/10

This effort will focus on development and implementation of advanced control methods for CMG actuated satellites. Initial will focus on the development and implementation of adaptive attitude controllers that exploit redundancy of the CMG configuration for precision attitude control.

This project is sponsored by University of Florida.

William W. Edmonson
02/09/09 - 02/08/10

This work involves two projects that will provide direction and a systematic design process. The Center?s 5 year plan will be addressed through the creation of a technology roadmap, which will identify critical satellite subsystem technologies and associated technology gaps. The design center development will provide the Center with design tools and processes for researchers to do architecting and development.

This project is sponsored by University of Florida.

Michael James Escuti
09/14/09 - 09/13/10

The PI and team will investigate polymer Polarization Gratings (PGs) optimized for reflective Liquid Crystal (LC) microdisplay projector systems. The target is to employ optical techniques and materials improvements to develop PG elements that produce enhanced extinction ratio and brightness of a PG-based projector using a reflective LC microdisplay, and to develop PG processing techniques and tools that enable commercially viable fabrication. As part of the effort, the NCSU team will coordinate and interact with the sponsor and with various microdisplay, projector, thin-film manufacturing, and optical companies, who are engaged by the sponsor, in order to facilitate access to advice, materials, components, fabrication tools, and independent verification supporting the research goals.

This project is sponsored by ImagineOptix Corp.

Michael James Escuti
10/13/09 - 12/16/09

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command with multiple liquid crystal polarization gratings (LCPGs), assembled into two wide-angle beam steering prototypes: (I) a one-dimensional, discrete, non-mechanical, electrically-switchable LCPG ternary beam steerer; and (II) a two-dimensional, continuous, mechanical, polymer PG beam steerer (known as a Risley Grating pair). We will optimize the material-properties for PG operation at a near-infrared wavelength (1.550 or 1.064 µm to be determined by the sponsor), which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered grating assemblies will be one of each of the two types specified above. While no guarantee of minimum transmittance is proposed, we understand that minimizing absorption loss and internal reflection losses are paramount.

This project is sponsored by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Michael James Escuti
09/01/06 - 08/31/10

This request is to support a talented, early-stage, female, PhD student (US citizen) to conduct research that contributes to and compliments the currently funded ECCS NSF grant (nsf proposal 0621906). Note that this is a GRS renewal, but is actually a new supplement. This student, Ms. Elena Nicolescu, will be enabled to invest fully into PhD research, and empowering her to expand her minority outreach activities.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Michael James Escuti
04/01/09 - 10/31/09

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) with multiple polymer polarization gratings (PGs), on glass substrates provided by BNS. We will optimize the material-properties for PG operation at midwave infrared (MIR) wavelengths (4.5-5 µm), which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered gratings will be as follows: x28 polymer PGs (circular-type), and up to x10 intermediate development samples.

The deliverables will have the following specs: 4.5 cm diameter clear aperture, ±7.5° diffraction angle (at 4.5 µm), and ≥ 99% diffraction efficiency into steered order. Further support (analysis and discussion) will be provided to assist BNS to characterize the optical properties at the MIR wavelengths (a capability that NCSU does not have).

Over the four-months of the proposed project, the PI will actively oversee the project, complete the theoretical design effort, analyze results, and supervise the student. The student will be responsible to complete the experimental optimization, fabrication, and characterization of PGs. PG fabrication will require the purchase of various liquid crystal and polymer materials and a stylus-type profilometer for characterization.

This project is sponsored by Boulder Nonlinear Systems.

Michael James Escuti
01/01/07 - 07/31/09

SUMMARY: The overall goal of this proposal is the development of a series of laboratory experiments for advanced undergraduate electrical engineering students that give hands-on experience with organic electronic materials and liquid crystal display technology. Inherently modular laboratory experiments are proposed for the fabrication and characterization of four devices: a single-pixel liquid crystal display (LCD), a polymer light-emitting-diode (pLED), a polymer field-effect-transistor (pFET), and an organic photo-voltaics (OPV). We will also design a comprehensive lab manual and identify a low-cost "kit" of materials and equipment necessary for its implementation, in such as way as to be inherently transferable to other universities. "Soft" organic materials are at the forefront of much current research and are the core technology of an increasing number of consumer products available now or in the near future (e.g. displays, lighting, flexible electronics, renewable energy devices). We maintain that soft electronic and photonic devices are some of the most compelling and accessible topics for undergraduates and their fabrication is comparably much simpler than the more traditional solid-state devices. We therefore aim to open this window of opportunity by creating coherent instructional materials that offer the hands-on experience of building and characterizing electronic and photonic devices (with minimal investment). Two independent experts will evaluate the effectiveness of the experiments, along with feedback from student participants. While being initially developed for the PI?s new electrical engineering course at North Carolina State University (Raleigh, NC), the complete lab kits will be disseminated in the second year to North Carolina Agricultural & Technology State University (Greensboro, NC).

INTELLECTUAL MERIT: The proposed advanced-level undergraduate lab experiments will highlight the operation of four devices (LCD, pLED, pFET, and OPV) by guiding each participant through their actual fabrication and characterization. The hands-on focus will afford an effective reinforcement to the basic concepts of electron and photon transport and emission relevant to all engineers, physicists, and material scientists. Our conceptual approach will be to build on the foundation of traditional education in solid-state semiconductors and address the differences in physical properties, fabrication processes, and device limitations/advantages. The fabrication and characterization rigs will be designed as simple as possible using spin-coating and/or dip-coating techniques.

BROADER IMPACT: The proposed experiments compliment traditional engineering curricula by providing flexible modules on organic electronics and liquid crystal displays for an independent course or for piecemeal augmentation for existing courses. Designed from the start to facilitate dissemination (in anticipation of a Phase 2 proposal), as part of this project we will transfer the modules to North Carolina Agricultural & Technology State University (the largest historically black college in NC) in cooperation with Professor Shanthi Iyer to augment their curriculum in organic electronics. The PI will also continue his partnership with the NCSU Science House, and will mentor minority students (9th-12th grades) in the Photonics Leaders and Xplorers programs and lead >40 students/summer in one or more of the proposed lab modules. Support is also requested for a dedicated graduate student to assist in the execution of the project at all levels. Our fundamental hope is that this laboratory will inspire more of our undergraduate students onto graduate-level research after they complete their Bachelor?s degree and even increase the pass-rate on the Fundamentals of Engineering (FE) exam at NCSU by broadly reinforcing many of the core solid-state concepts within electrical engineering.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Michael James Escuti
05/01/08 - 07/31/09

For the purposes of this proposal, my university lab at NCSU will provide ImagineOptix Inc with multiple polymer polarization gratings (PGs) on glass substrates for the purposes of integration into a transmissive-mode liquid crystal microdisplay projection system. We will optimize the material-properties of polymerizable liquid crystals for achromatic PG operation in the context of an LC projector system, which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered gratings meeting all specifications will be at least 10, but many dozens of intermediate PGs will be fabricated (some of which will be made available to ImagineOptix Inc for evaluation upon request). Preliminary and final integration of the PGs into the projector system will be done in close collaboration with ImagineOptix Inc.

The deliverable polymeric PGs will be optimized for operation across the visible wavelength range (450 nm to 650 nm), have diffraction efficiency of 95% or greater into the first orders, have low insertion loss (e.g. less than 2%), have low zero order leakage (e.g. less than 2%), diffract green (530 nm) light into angles 12° or greater, and have a clear aperture of 2 cm or greater. Uniformity and cleanliness will be a top priority, with an objective to have high diffraction over the entire aperture with a variation of less than 2%. After integration of the PGs into the projection display system, the objective is an overall contrast ratio of greater than 500:1 with a three-color light-emitting-diode (LED) light source.

Over the one-year of the proposed project, Dr. Escuti and graduate students will design, fabricate, and characterize the PGs, and integrate them into a transmissive-mode LC microdisplay projector system (provided via ImagineOptix Inc). This will involve the purchase of various materials, specialized characterization equipment, laboratory consumables, various custom machined parts for fabrication, and various other optical and opto-mechanical parts. This will require stipend and tuition for a graduate student, allowance for publication fees, and travel funds for the PI and student to travel to technical conferences. Funds are also provided for the PI to travel to visit specialty-materials vendors to support the materials-optimization process.

This project is sponsored by ImagineOptix Corp.

Michael James Escuti
05/16/09 - 12/31/09

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) with an assembly of multiple switchable polarization gratings (PGs) on glass substrates (provided by BNS), for the purposes of developing a simple beam deflector (steerer) for an light-emitting-diode (LED) light source. A key aspect of this research is to implement and evaluate techniques that will reduce or eliminate the chromatic dispersion of the steered beams. We will optimize the material-properties for PG operation at visible wavelengths, which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered gratings will depend on the dispersion-reduction study and final design to be determined within this project, but will likely be in the following range: up to x12 polymer PGs, up to x6 switchable PG, and up to x12 intermediate development samples.

The deliverable will be an assembly of stacked PGs, which overall has the following specs: ¡Ý 35 mm diameter clear aperture, ¡À15¡ã maximum steering angle, approximately 2¡ã steering resolution, and will be optimized for blue LED defined by BNS with approximately ¡À6¡ã divergence angle. A further deliverable will be summary report of the theoretical modeling of the dispersion-reduction techniques, and a full spectral characterization of the samples.

Over the 7.5-months of the proposed project, the PI will actively oversee the project, complete the theoretical design effort, analyze results, and supervise the students. The students (one graduate student and one undergraduate student) will be responsible to complete the experimental optimization, fabrication, and characterization of PGs. PG fabrication will require the purchase of various liquid crystal and polymer materials, and several fabrication supplies/tools. A subcontract is required to support an off-campus electrician to re-wire several electrical circuits within the PI?s laboratory to increase the current/voltage capacity of the facility to enable proper operation of the PG fabrication tools necessary for this project. Funds are also requested for one visit by the PI and/or students to BNS for final integration of the project deliverables.

This project is sponsored by Boulder Nonlinear Systems.

Michael James Escuti
06/30/09 - 12/18/09

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide Raytheon Network Centric Systems with multiple switchable liquid crystal polarization gratings (LCPGs), predominantly fabricated at NCSU but employing substrates and materials substantially provided by Raytheon. We will optimize the material-properties for PG operation at near-infrared wavelengths (1.064 µm), which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered gratings will be as follows: x6 switchable PGs (circular-type) on Raytheon substrates, and up to x10 intermediate development samples.

The deliverables will have the following specs: up to 4 cm diameter clear aperture (limited in part by substrate geometry to be defined by Raytheon), ±5° diffraction angle (at 1.064 µm), and ≥ 98% diffraction efficiency into steered order. Further support (analysis and discussion) will be provided to assist Raytheon to characterize the optical properties at the NIR wavelength. NCSU will practice exposures with the new materials and geometry as preliminary work before the (final) deliverable samples.

Holographic exposure will occur at NCSU for all deliverable and development samples. It is possible that cell assembly and LC filling will also occur at NCSU, depending on the results of preliminary tests. Since the substrates being provided by Raytheon for the proposed work have not been tested within NCSU?s holographic fabrication process, NCSU will give every reasonable effort to understand and solve unexpected fabrication issues. The PI will commit to augment processing capability to improve particle-free samples, and will augment our NIR characterization tools. NCSU will fabricate all required project specific mounts/jigs for assembly, exposure, and LC filling.

Over the five-months of the proposed project, the PI will actively oversee the project, complete the theoretical design effort, analyze results, and supervise the student. The PI will also provide appropriate numerical modeling, experimental characterization, and future-proposal writing support. The student will be responsible to complete the experimental optimization, fabrication, and characterization of PGs. PG fabrication will require the purchase of various liquid crystal alignment and polymer materials, the purchase of additional NIR optics for characterization, and funds to partially offset the purchase of a replacement HeCd (UV) laser tube used for fabrication.

This project is sponsored by Raytheon.

Michael James Escuti
01/01/09 - 09/30/09

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide Southeast TechInventures (STI) with multiple polarization gratings (PGs) on transparent substrates, in both switchable and polymeric modes. We will optimize the material-properties and fabrication for the purposes of the C and L telecommunication bands (around 1550 nm), which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication. The number of final delivered gratings will be 20 to 40, depending on the results of our theoretical analysis and initial experimental studies.

The deliverable PGs will be optimized for operation around 1550 nm, have a clear aperture of 2 cm or greater, and diffract the aforementioned wavelengths into angles 5° or greater. We will aim for transmitted attenuation of over 25 dB, insertion loss in transmitting state of less than 0.2 dB, low polarization sensitivity (polarization dependent loss), and low temperature dependent loss, but we must note that these parameters are precisely the unknown quantities that this research aims to optimize. A further deliverable will be summary report of the theoretical modeling and measured electro-optical data on the PG components and evaluation of any limitations.

Over the one year proposed project, the PI and a graduate student (currently supported on an unrestricted fellowship) will design and fabricate the aforementioned PG samples, forward them to STI, and assist in the data analysis. PG fabrication will require the purchase of various liquid crystal and polymer materials and several optical and opto-mechanical parts. Travel funds are required for the PI and/or a graduate student to travel to a technical conference to report on this work, and to publish this work jointly with STI in at least one peer-review journal.

This project is sponsored by Southeast TechInventures (STI).

Michael James Escuti
10/16/07 - 10/15/09

For the purposes of this proposal, my university lab at NCSU will provide Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) with large-area polarization gratings (5 cm aperture) for beam-steering, including both switchable and polymerized versions. These will be optimized for a near-infrared wavelength (1.5 microns), have diffraction efficiency of 95% or greater into a single order, have low insertion loss (e.g. less than 5%), and be arranged to diffract into the following angles: 1.25°, 2.5°, 5°, 10°, and 20°. Uniformity and cleanliness will be a top priority, with an objective to have high diffraction over the entire aperture with a variation of less than 2%. All work will be done in close collaboration with BNS, and the number of final delivered gratings will be somewhere between 20 to 40 gratings, and will depend on the testing of the multiple approaches in the first year.

This project is sponsored by Boulder Nonlinear Systems.

Do Young Eun
03/01/06 - 02/28/11

The current Internet is the most complicated man-made

system in which an enormous degree of largeness coexists with

heterogeneity. As the size of the network and the number of

concurrent end-users increases, the number of possible states for

all users in the network also grows at an exponential rate. The

sheer dimension of a space over which those interactions take

place severely limits our ability to describe and analyze such a

large network.

For a large network with many users, the so-called ``fluid''

modeling or ``mean-field'' approach has proven extremely

successful and versatile. From a microscopic point of view, each

user or flow in a network is subject to network protocols or

probabilistic laws that specify how it should evolve depending on

the current status of all users. When the network consists of an

extremely large number of such users interacting with each other,

however, it is impossible to obtain a complete, probabilistic

description of the network status because there are so many

probabilistic equations to solve. Instead of enumerating all possible

interactions among users and the corresponding transitions

to their next states, the mean-field approach, relying on

probabilistic limit theories such as the law

of large numbers, allows us to describe

the average macroscopic behavior of network dynamics in terms of a

set of relatively simple and deterministic difference/differential

equations. As the fluid or mean-field approach offers intuitive

and manageable solutions to describing large network dynamics, it

has been the de facto technique for almost every aspect of

current networking problems including congestion control,

stability analysis, optimization-based techniques, as well as

wireless multi-hop communications network.

However, this mean-field type of approach has fundamental

limitations; it is valid only when the system is scaled as

required by the underlying theory. For other type of scaling the

systems, the mean-field approach may break down and often

wrongfully predict even the first-order system dynamics.

Unfortunately, however, there hardly exists any result or even

attempt to address these limitations and problems associated with

the mean-field approach, and this confines our choice of network

design to a very small subset of what can actually be chosen.

Our goal in this project is to understand the fundamental

limitations of the fluid or mean-field approach to many network

problems, and as a remedy, to develop a stochastic approach to the

analysis and design of large networks. By judiciously applying

appropriate limit theory with key randomness inherent in the

network dynamics still intact, we will provide new guidelines on

large network design and achieve far better resource utilization,

all of which are impossible to obtain via the traditional fluid or

mean-field approach.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Do Young Eun
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

Over the last several decades, mobility has been central to various applications, ranging from the classical problems of searching for a moving target and rescue mission in military and disaster settings, to deploying mobile ad-hoc/sensor networks for surveillance and data communication over hostile terrain and underwater. In particular, recent technological advances in communicating/sensing devices as well as abundant network protocols designed for mobile ad-hoc/sensor networks have opened up a new possibility for viable networks with satisfying performance over such unpredictable, mobile, and disadvantaged environments. While the random mobility pattern of mobile nodes in these networks has posed serious challenges and been considered as the main source of uncertainty and disruption of communication links among nodes, the mobility can also enable us to achieve reliable and predictable performance, if it is properly controlled and actively exploited.

The long-term goal of this proposed research is to develop a unified methodology for efficient protocol design and control of nodes in heterogeneous MANETs under non-Poisson contacts. While the non-Poisson contacts and inherent heterogeneity among mobile nodes pose serious challenge, we take this challenge as a golden opportunity toward `high-performance' MANETs, by exploiting unknown heterogeneity and non-Poisson dynamics in an adaptive but rigorous manner. Our goal further extends to the use of mobile nodes with controllable mobility that can autonomously exploit the changing diversity in non-Poisson heterogeneous dynamics of nodes' mobility.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Do Young Eun, Wenye Wang
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

This proposal focuses on the theoretical foundation for wireless mobile networks, particularly on the characterization of link-level dynamics by a stochastic analysis approach. Advancements in embedded wireless devices, together with the wireless networking technologies, have driven a ``mobile social networks'' which are a dominant part of our working and non-working lives. The usage of wireless devices unavoidably induce user mobility in diverse settings over multiple space/time scales, ranging from traditional cellular phone users and Wi-Fi users in moderate-to-dense networks, to nomadic users and mobile robots/sensors in multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks and delay/disruption-tolerant networks (DTNs) over larger space/time scales. In all these scenarios, the users'

mobility is the fundamental source of uncertainty and randomness as it translates into spatial-temporal changes in the link-level dynamics, which in turn affects every corner of the performance of network algorithms and protocols running over these mobile users.

A detailed research plan is

proposed which addresses the unique challenges presented by mobility-induced link dynamics. This plan concerns not only fundamental understanding of {\em delay-sensitive} communication networks, it also studies contact/inter-contact dynamics in {\em delay-tolerant} networks which may play an important role in mobile social networks. In particular, the research plan focuses on three

issues: (1) Modeling, analysis, and statistical characterization of mobility-induced link dynamics. Our objective is to study a set of metrics at the link-level, such as inter-contact time, residual link lifetime, path-breakage rate, and more because of their immediate effects on network design and performance. More importantly, we will provide a plethora of statistical properties over a wide range of {\em timescales} as well as {\em physical environments} via microscopic link modeling and stochastic ordering. These works, which have not been carefully investigate before, clearly distinguish our proposed work. (2) Spatial-Temporal Dynamics in mobility modeling in multiple space/time scales rather than being dependent on {\em a

priori} networking environments. In particular, we take a

multiscale mobility modeling approach to capture the

interdependency between spatial and temporal dynamics of mobile

nodes, such as diffusive behaviors. In a stochastic setting, mean

square displacement (MSD) is used to study {\em micro-scale,

meso-scale, macro-scale} mobility trajectory and their impact on

link-level dynamics by quantifying the degree of spatio-temporal

interdependencies among link-level metrics and the network

operating points. Therefore, our results will provide an integrated framework of mobility modeling and operation regime. (3) The scaling limits for link-level metrics under various network operating

regimes. As a new research thrust, we will develop a systematic

approach to explore scaling regime subject to network architecture

and configuration, such as the number of mobile nodes, size of the

domain, and employed forwarding/routing algorithms. Specifically, we will

identify the inherent causes of Poisson limits as a limiting

random process that occurs in various mobile ad-hoc networks.

Further, we will find the scaling regime that is

valid for different time-scale link-level dynamics.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Paul D. Franzon, Michael B. Steer, Mo-Yuen Chow
07/29/09 - 12/31/10

NCSU will develop algorithms, sensor and sensor processing circuits for self-healing analog and radio frequency (RF) integrated circuits.

This project is sponsored by Raytheon.

Paul D. Franzon
02/01/07 - 08/31/09

NCSU will support Irvine Sensors in the development of CAD strategies to ensure that chip sets that can be secured from reverse engineering and tampering attacks

This project is sponsored by Irvine Sensors Corporation.

Paul D. Franzon
07/01/08 - 06/30/11

Research Experience for Undergradruates Supplement.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

K. P. Sandeep, Paul D. Franzon, Josip Simunovic
06/01/09 - 06/30/10

Researchers have been attempting to address the growing need in the food industry to monitor temperatures at various locations within food products (under batch and continuous flow conditions) to facilitate filing of a process with the FDA, to improve product quality, and enhance food safety measures. In thermal processing of particulate foods, the temperature at the critical point (slowest heating point in the system) is of particular interest. Several techniques (described below) exist to determine internal temperatures of particulates. However, none of these techniques meet the needs of the food industry (due to concerns related to accuracy, cost, non-invasiveness etc). Thus, the current study will focus on developing a sensor to measure internal temperatures of particulates in real-time and tailoring it to meet the needs of the food industry.

This project is sponsored by Ohio State University Research Foundation.

K. P. Sandeep, Paul D. Franzon, Josip Simunovic
09/01/06 - 08/31/10

The overall objective of the current study is to develop a sensor that can be used to determine the location and internal temperature of food particles as they flow through the heating, holding, and cooling sections of an aseptic processing system. The sensor will then be implanted in the cavity of a "conservatively" designed carrier particle (conservative from a heat transfer and flow standpoint) such that the thermal treatment received by this particle will always be less than that received be every other particle in the real food product. Thus, if this carrier particle receives adequate heat treatment (pre-determined F0 value), then the entire food product would be rendered commercially sterile.

The need for this study arises from the recommendations of a workshop sponsored by the Center for Advanced Processing and Packaging Studies (CAPPS) and the National Center for Food Safety and Technology (NCFST) which was also attended by FDA and industry personnel. Tetra Pak made use of the results of this workshop to successfully "file" an aseptic process for multiphase foods with the FDA. However, this product-process combination was not commercialized. Several food processors have been trying to develop a similar process for their food products and one of the main problem is the lack of a reliable tool to validate their process and at the same time ensure a high product quality. The sensor system to be developed in this study will serve as that tool.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Agriculture (USDA).

Paul D. Franzon
11/01/09 - 10/31/12

NCSU will investigate the following:

o Energy-efficiency-optimized system integration and packaging

o Unconventional, optimized package design for microscopic sensor systems and RF

o Packaging for energy-harvesting microscopic systems

This project is sponsored by University of California - Berkeley.

Paul D. Franzon, Tushar K. Ghosh
10/01/07 - 09/30/10

An integrated, low-cost Braille reader will be developed using micromachining techniques and polymer actuator technologies.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Education (DED).

Paul D. Franzon
11/01/06 - 05/31/10

With higher core clock speeds, and the trend to multi-core, the demands on chip I/O are increasing rapidly. The key question is how to increase both the density and speed of chip I/O without increasing packaging costs. At high speeds, crosstalk issues typically dictate inter-pair spacings of four times the wire width in PCBs, and rich use of power and ground shields in connectors. In this research, we will investigate coding and circuit techniques that enable a group of signals to travel down a wire bundle, and potentially connectors and cable assemblies, without crosstalk. This will enable wires to be spaced at minimum manufacturable spacings permitting an overall increase in wire density of a factor of two or more.

This project is sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corp..

Paul D. Franzon, Mehmet C. Ozturk, Michael B. Steer
08/24/09 - 01/29/10

NCSU will model a high tuning range varactor and a reconfigurable RF electronic structure using it.

This project is sponsored by Raytheon.

Paul D. Franzon
11/01/06 - 12/31/09

NCSU will support ISC in 3D packaging.

This project is sponsored by Irvine Sensors Corporation.

Paul D. Franzon, Angus I. Kingon, John Michael Wilson
09/25/06 - 12/31/09

ACCI promises high-density, low-power chip I/O, sockets and connectors. In year 05-06, we demonstrated the robustness of ACCI for capacitive and inductive connections. We also had extensive engagements with several technology transfer partners. The intent this year is to produce a complete transferable technology, including demonstration of issues related to laminate packaging, demonstration of a socket system and a connector system. In addition, we will complete the design and deliver a board for a planned test in near earth orbit.

This project is sponsored by US Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL).

Jerome J. Cuomo, Roger C. Sanwald, Edward Grant
06/01/07 - 12/31/09

Demonstrate next level of system reliability that will allow "prototypes" to ?be "flown" on a test bed. This will include additional electronic design support for wireless sensors for airframe crack detection.

This project is sponsored by DRS Technologies.

Alexej I. Smirnov, William C. Holton, Ki Wook Kim, Veena Misra
09/01/04 - 08/31/10

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Alex Q. Huang
11/15/07 - 09/15/10

Continue the development of ETO based AC breaker.

This project is sponsored by Sandia National Laboratories.

Alex Q. Huang
07/01/06 - 12/31/10

This project is sponsored by NCSU Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC).

Alex Q. Huang
07/01/08 - 12/31/09

This is a subcontracted to North Carolina State University (NCSU) from MST. NCSU will focus on design, development and demonstration of a distributed power flow controller for series applications. Software simulations shall be conducted to show the control and operation of the ETO-based DPFC. The developed controller shall be verified at NCSU.

This project is sponsored by Missouri University of Science and Technology.

Xiangwu Zhang, Alex Q. Huang, Peter S. Fedkiw, Saad A. Khan
09/16/09 - 08/15/12

The objective of the proposed work is to use electrospinning technology to integrate dissimilar materials (lithium alloy and carbon) into novel composite nanofiber anodes, which simultaneously have high energy density, reduced cost, and improved abuse tolerance. The nanofiber structure also allows the anodes to withstand repeated cycles of expansion and contraction. These composite nanofibers are electrospun into nonwoven fabrics with thickness of 50 ìm or more, and then directly used as anodes in a lithium-ion battery. This will eliminate the presence of non-active materials (e.g., conducting carbon black and polymer binder) and result in high energy and power densities. The nonwoven anode structure also provides a large electrode-electrolyte interface and, hence, high rate capacity and good low-temperature performance capability.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Energy (DOE).

Alex Q. Huang
09/01/05 - 12/31/10

This project is sponsored by NCSU Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC).

Alex Q. Huang
06/01/09 - 12/31/09

This project will focus on several advanced power manage IC control concepts such as variable phase number control in VRM and constant on-time control, as well as advanced power device study via simulation and literature review. Due to the limited funding this year, two half time students will be supported by this project, one on IC design and one on device study.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Semiconductor Power Electronics Center (SPEC).

Brian L. Hughes, John F. Muth
08/05/08 - 08/04/10

This program will investigate the performance improvements of underwater optical communication systems that can be obtained by the use of modern error-control coding techniques. The project entails fabrication of an FEC subsystem for underwater communications as well as integrating the FEC processor with a coherent receiver developed by Ambalux.

This is a $750,000 Phase II STTR program joint with Ambalux with $225,000 applied to NC State: $135,000 in the first 24 months and a $90,000 option for the following 8 months.

This project is sponsored by Ambalux Corporation.

Brian L. Hughes, Gianluca Lazzi
09/15/07 - 08/31/10

Recent research on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications has shown that deploying arrays at the transmitter and receiver can dramatically improve the capacity of wireless multipath channels. Since the physical size of a transceiver is often limited, increasing the number of array elements often requires closer inter-element spacing and leads to signal correlation and mutual coupling. Coupling can profoundly impact the received power, diversity and system capacity. Moreover, this impact depends essentially on aspects of the transceiver design, such as antenna matching and the dominant sources of noise.

Intellectual Merit: This project seeks to develop a systems-level perspective on the design of compact array transceivers for wireless communications. The aim is to understand how antennas, matching networks, amplifiers and communications algorithms interact to determine overall performance, and to jointly optimize the design of these interacting subsystems. Three issues are addressed: (1) channel models which incorporate diverse noise sources, transceiver design and interference from other users for both narrowband and broadband channels; (2) the impact of different noise sources and propagation environments on the fundamental performance limits of coupled MIMO systems, as well as on performance of specific diversity and multiplexing techniques; (3) information-theoretic design criteria to jointly optimize the array, matching, amplifiers and communications algorithms.

Broader Impacts: This multi-disciplinary project combines theoretical studies with experiments using an antenna testbed. The mix of theory and hardware demonstrations will provide opportunities for student participation at all levels. This work has the potential to significantly advance science and engineering by providing a more unified view of the RF front end and by developing new models, communications algorithms and matching techniques which may significantly improve wireless performance.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Zhenhua Jiang, Mesut E. Baran
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

The is a new FREEDM segment from the FREEDM Industry Project 529737 - see supporting attached documents

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Dennis H. Kekas
07/01/03 - 06/30/10

CACC administrative expenses.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Advanced Computing & Communication.

Dennis H. Kekas, Glenn Kleiman
07/01/08 - 06/30/10

Center for Advanced Computing and Communication in association with the Friday Institute, National Science Foundation, and NSA High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) seek to advance outcomes from the recent National Workshop on Stimulating and Sustaining Excitement and Discovery in K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Education by supporting a new online computer science curriculum pilot, aiding the NC State Kenan Fellows program to expand to national audience, and supporting existing residential middle grade math and related science summer camp sponsored by UMES.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Dennis H. Kekas, Laurie A. Williams
06/01/09 - 06/01/12

Extensive research has shown that software metrics can be used to identify fault- and failure-prone components and to predict the overall quality of a system early and throughout the software development lifecycle, before products are released for use. We seek to extend this work to identify security metrics to effectively identify vulnerability-prone and attack-prone components of software run in a virtualized computing environment and to predict the overall security of the virtualized system prior to release. Specifically, we will examine the capability of security metrics obtained from code artifacts, inspections, and testing to highlight security for the risk-based prioritization of re-design, inspection, and testing efforts to fortify software as necessary.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Dennis H. Kekas, Peng Ning, Mladen A. Vouk, Rudra Dutta, John C. Bass
04/03/08 - 11/30/12

This program will establish a national Secure Open Systems Institute (SOSI), located on North Carolina State's premier Centennial Campus that will be a global center for Open Systems security research and development.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Dennis H. Kekas, Glenn Kleiman
07/15/07 - 06/30/10

Center for Advanced Computing and Communication in association with the Friday Institute, National Science Foundation, and NSA High Confidence Software and Systems (HCSS) seek to advance outcomes from the recent National Workshop on Stimulating and Sustaining Excitement and Discovery in K-12 STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) Education by supporting a new online computer science curriculum pilot, aiding the NC State Kenan Fellows program to expand to national audience, and supporting existing residential middle grade math and related science summer camp sponsored by UMES.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Ki Wook Kim, Marco Buongiorno-Nard
09/01/06 - 08/31/10

The objective of this research is to explore spin dependent properties of the carriers in carbon nanotubes and their potential device applications. The approach is based on the theory and numerical (ab initio) modeling of carrier spin relaxation and transport dynamics in carbon nanotubes. Specific concepts/structures leading to a novel class of spintronic nano-devices will also be pursued beyond the current scaling limit.

Intellectual merit: This research effort will provide (1) theoretical understanding of the mechanisms of carrier spin dynamics in carbon nanotubes; (2) design of novel device architectures that exploit the unique spin transport properties; (3) a coherent hierarchy of spin device simulation methods that can be scaled to large-scale processes. Overall, the key outcome will be a fundamental description of the feasibility of advanced spintronic devices based on carrier spin dynamics in carbon nanotubes.

Broader impact: Through an interdisciplinary training effort, a new generation of scientists and engineers will be produced with expertise that is not limited to a single discipline, but rather who are trained to attack complicated problems with a broad outlook using methods that transcend traditional barriers between science and engineering disciplines. It will be built on the strong outreach and public education record of the principal investigators that includes live and web-based tutorials on nanotechnology, working with high school students and their teachers in summer programs, and participation in national committees on public implications of nanotechnology. If successful, pursued nano-devices could also offer significant technological and economical benefits.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Ki Wook Kim
10/01/09 - 01/31/10

This research program proposes to theoretically exploit the unique properties of nanoscale graphene based structures for highly functional spintronic applications at room temperature. To overcome the non-magnetic nature of intrinsic graphene, two promising phenomena will be explored that can introduce desired spin magnetic functionalities with electrical control. The first approach attempts to incorporate the magnetism by forming a hybrid structure with appropriate magnetic materials. The interactions between graphene electrons and magnetic ions at the interfaces result in effective magnetic fields that can affect the characteristics of both graphene and magnetic layers. The second approach envisions introducing the magnetic effects by utilizing non-zero magnetic moments induced at the edge states, defects, vacancies, etc. Both of these effects are expected to be readily amenable for electrical control through the dependence on graphene electronic properties. With the development of appropriate models, the main focus of investigation is to analyze the physical properties and basic functionalization principles, particularly as the dimension of the structure shrinks, and to examine their device potential including spin magnetic switches and bio-chemical sensors. If completed successfully, the proposed research can have significant potential impacts on room-temperature carbon based spintronics, integration of magnetism with nanoelectronics, multi-functional devices, etc.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Ki Wook Kim
09/01/03 - 10/31/09

The magnetism in semiconductors is the basis for the emerging field of semiconductor-based spin-polarized electronics, or spintronics. It enables information representation to be based on angular spin momentum, rather than electron charge. The advantages of employing spin as a state variable include reduced power dissipation and increased information capacity. Substantial progress has been made recently in the materials development with the advent of a number of magnetic semiconductors doped with transition metals that are ferromagnetic at or above room temperature (e.g., the nitrides, Ge, and some II-VI?s). The advantages of the semiconductor-based systems over the metallic counterparts include the controllability of the ferromagnetism (via bias and/or doping) along with the potential compatibility with CMOS-based processing technology. Hence, it offers unique opportunities for quantum manipulation of both charge and spin in nanoscale systems. The purpose of our investigation is to theoretically explore nanoscale magnetic semiconductor materials and structures for information processing and storage applications (i.e., memory and logic devices) beyond the ITRS roadmap.

This project is sponsored by University of California.

Ki Wook Kim
04/01/08 - 03/31/11

As a member of the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics (SWAN) sponsored by the Nano Electronics Research Corporation (NERC) Nanoelectronics Research Initiative (NRI), the focus of the NC State team will be on accurate modeling of phonon transport properties at realistic interfaces with materials and/or dimensional mismatch including silicon-on-insulator, graphene on a dielectric or a substrate (e.g., SiC), nanowire/tube on a dielectric as well as nanowire/dot grown on a substrate. Following a hierarchical strategy, the specific aim is two-fold: (1) Develop/calculate first principles phonon structures based on the density functional theory and the density functional perturbation theory and (2) formulate a phonon/thermal transport model for a variety of nanoscale interfaces through extracting relevant parameters from the microscopic calculations.

This project is sponsored by University of Texas.

Ki Wook Kim
07/01/06 - 10/31/09

This is a supplementary proposal to an existing ARO award. The proposed add-on research effort will explore the use of graphene nanostructures for spin-based memory and logic devices. It is aimed at demonstrating that the novel electronic properties of atomically thin graphene can be used as the basis of non-volatile memory and logic devices. It is possible that graphene nanostructures can lead to device concepts enabling electrical control of the magnetic state. Specifically, the add-on research will examine in detail the phenomena based on changes in the band structure of graphene though electrically modulated magnetic interactions. A theoretical study will be pursued to develop the physical understanding of these phenomena, coupled with device design to optimize memory and logic operations. This effort is leveraged against significant advances in measuring properties of graphene nanostructures along with recent results concerning spin-based magnetic devices achieved by the PI.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Ki Wook Kim, David Schurig, Robert J. Trew
04/01/08 - 03/31/11

The objective of the proposed research is to explore the feasibility of engineering quasi-coherent thermal emission for application to thermal energy harvesting. The approach is to utilize the high energy density stored in the evanescent field of the surface excitations present on a thermal source composed of a polar semiconductor, by transforming it into spectrally and/or spatially selective radiation for ready extraction. Both theoretical and experimental methods will be used to demonstrate the concept.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Ki Wook Kim, Marco Buongiorno-Nard
11/03/08 - 12/31/09

As a member of the team led by HRL on carbon electronics for RF applications, the NCSU participants will perform state-of-the-art first principles electronic/phonon structure calculations of graphene nanostructures based on Density Functional Theory for band structure engineering, and conduct transport simulations to establish the relevant properties (such as the velocity vs. field characteristics) leading to the optimal device design. Once completed successfully, this research effort will provide a multi-scale modeling hierarchy where the results of the first principles calculations will be used as parameters of macroscopic models for the evaluation of carrier scattering rates, mobility mechanisms, carrier transport and in general develop realistic transport models in graphene based electronic devices.

This project is sponsored by HRL Laboratories.

Robert M. Kolbas, John F. Muth
02/20/08 - 09/27/09

Rare earth elements have many photonic applications and unusual properties. In this study, rare earth doped materials will grown and provided to an Army research lab.

This project is sponsored by CAS, Inc..

Hamid Krim
05/15/06 - 09/30/09

Fully automatic understanding and interpretation of a scene have long eluded researchers. Scene understanding often invokes tasks which are hierarchical in nature. The problem of scene understanding is broad in scope and open, and the cognition step, as one of its key components remains one of its major limitations.

At the center of cognition, lies understanding brain functionality which by its high complexity remains a hot topic of research to address the slow progress in machine-based image understanding. The robustness and resilience of biological systems(e.g. one may recognize an object despite some occlusion and/or additive noise) have, however, have increasingly attracted more researchers as a rich source of inspiration, which has led to investigations of smaller and potentially simpler biological entities. The goal in this proposed effort is to exploit biologically inspired invariants in objects to develop a methodology to efficiently and accurately represent 2/3D objects as weighted-graphs for classification and recognition problems as is crucially important in scene understanding applications. This builds on measured data from a recently funded laboratory which in effect allows easy validation but controlled experiments for quick verification.

This project is sponsored by US Navy-Office Of Naval Research.

Hamid Krim
01/15/07 - 11/30/09

To complement our current effort on 3D target modeling and classification, we propose to focus on two main tasks:

- Explore well suited features in target imagery to be integrated in an existing Tracking Algorithm,

- Develop a hierarchical set of features which remain as invariant as possible to the Euclidean Group of transformation. The invariance seeks to preserve ?tracking lock? while the hierarchical property is for layered registration to adapt to dynamic environments requiring different levels of precision and hence difficulty in acquiring registration.

This project is sponsored by US Air Force-Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

Hamid Krim
05/01/09 - 12/31/09

This work is to adapt a fusion algorithm developed in this group and make it compatible to imagery and computable on a dedicated Processing Architecture.

This project is sponsored by Rockwell Collins.

Gianluca Lazzi
12/15/03 - 12/14/10

This proposal is a supplement to the existing grant in support of the electromagnetic and thermal experimental and numerical activities for the development of a retinal prosthesis to restore partial vision to the blind. As outline in the original proposal, the retinal prosthesis system under development by the "Retina Team" requires an efficient and compact wireless telemetry system for power and data, an effective retinal stimulator, and implantable electronics characterized by limited power dissipation. This is critical for progress toward next generation higher resolution retinal prosthetic devices: computational and experimental models and methods, capable of accurately determining electrical and thermal interactions, are needed so that a) smaller telemetry coils can be designed, b) the electromagnetic and thermal safety of the telemetry device and implanted microchips can be determined, c) electromagnetic safety in the presence of external sources such as the MRI fields can be established; d) the characteristics of the fields and currents induced in the retina by the stimulating array can be predicted.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Energy (DOE).

Gianluca Lazzi
09/01/04 - 08/31/09

In this project we will investigate thermal effects (models and methods) of bioimplantable devices developed in the ERC at the University of Southern California.

This project is sponsored by University of Southern California.

Gianluca Lazzi
05/28/08 - 09/30/09

We request an extension to our project "Electromagnetic Simulations in Support of Protocol Driven Studies to Measure Absorbed Radiofrequency, Microwave and Millimeter Wave Energy" to 30 September 2009 to complete the most recent simulations and their analysis as requested by the sponsor. The statement of work is unaltered other than the research task outline in the original statement of work will now be completed no later than 30 September 2009, and we estimate that an additional $19,000 is necessary to complete the work. The original statement of work still stands other than all work efforts are extended to 30 September 2009. The overall goal of this proposal is to continue our effort toward the development of novel quasi-static and time-domain bioelectromagnetic modeling methods that will ultimately lead to the modeling of human electromuscular incapacitation

(HEMI) exposures. Specifically, we will continue the process of adapting our unconditionally stable time-domain electromagnetic method (ADI) for reducing the computational time required for low-frequency biotelemetry simulations necessary for this task as well as consider the use of other codes that we have developed recently, such as the multiresolution impedance method. This work will be conducted in close collaboration with the Naval Health Research Center Detachment, Directed Energy Bioeffects Laboratory, which will provide the models and data to be used in the simulations. Computer codes utilized for the simulations will be shared with Brooks City-Base.

This project is sponsored by Henry M. Jackson Foundation.

Michael D. Dickey, Gianluca Lazzi
09/01/09 - 08/31/12

We propose a new paradigm in antenna design and development that can lead to very low-loss radiating/receiving devices that are mechanically stretchable, flexible, and "self-healing". These properties offer a wide spectrum of possibilities in reconfigurable antennas for wireless and tactical sensor applications, with spectral response and geometry that can be modulated by strain, motion, pressure, and electric potential.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Xun Liu
08/01/09 - 07/31/12

This proposal describes a collaborative cybersystem research for the next three years. Its main objective is to defend Internet services against malicious attacks through innovative secure mechanisms applied jointly at network and physical layers. The research agenda includes robust on-line network anomaly detection, agile packet filtering, and hardware design innovation for cyber-security. It will deliver effective, low-cost, and easy-to-upgrade solutions to secure the next-generation Internet.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Leda Lunardi, John F. Muth
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

At present, single cell and single molecule fluorescence studies have been a powerful toolset for understanding cellular processes. However, one can argue that traditional optical microscopy most of the photons are wasted with only a very small number of photons are exciting fluorophores of interest. The remaining photons are producing autofluorescence from the medium, heat within the cell and are undesirable. The goal of this portion of the project is to fabricate an array of nano-lights to create an intelligent microscope slide. By breaking the paradigm of requiring an external light source to propagate through the microscope, the nano-light emitters will be a powerful new tool for investigating cell/surface interactions and performing selective area fluorescence studies of individual cells. In addition to acting as nano-light sources for fluorescence excitation, we can also build intelligence into the nano-lights by constructing using peptides/protein binding interactions to mediate a surface plasmon resonance effect that in turn will alter the amount of light that is emitted from the nano-light. The three technological thrusts of this portion of the project are: Fabrication of nano-light emitters in an array format will also allow selective areas of an individual cell to be illuminated. Selective excitation of fluorophores present in specific areas of the single cell will: Significantly improve the signal to noise ratio by reducing the total amount of background fluorescence. Allow selective activation of photosensitive biomolecules in one portion of the cell while leaving other portions of cells untouched. Allow selective photoactiviated peptide synthesis in nanosized areas, rather than micrometer or millimeter scale areas as is presently done. Fabricate nano-lights where the efficiency of output is mediated by surface plasmon interactions with peptide/protein binding events. This will allow one to watch individual elements of the nano-light array to be turned on/off as the cell moves across the array. Retain compatibility with standard microscope instrumentation. The transparency of wide band gap semiconductor materials potentially allows the slide to be used with both inverted and non-inverted microscopes.

This project is sponsored by UNC - UNC Chapel Hill.

Leda Lunardi
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attached documents

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Mark A. Johnson, Leda Lunardi
05/01/09 - 04/13/11

An research supplemental through SBIR-II research companies for collaboration with NSF Engineering Research Centers. Supplements available through 'Dear Colleague Letter" of Oct 30, 2008. Sinmat, an existing small business performing a SBIR Phase-II research project will collaborate with researchers in the NSF FREEDM Systems Center ERC on the preparation, characterization and measurement of bulk semiconductor wafers for power devices in the FREEDM Systems Center roadmap. Research will include the fabrication Schottky Barrier Diodes on epitaxially deposited semiconductor layers following Chem-mechanical polishing using Sinmat developed materials and processes.

This project is sponsored by Sinmat, Inc..

Leda Lunardi, John F. Muth
09/30/07 - 08/31/09

Conventional environmental exposure monitoring requires bulky instrumentation without providing a personalized history of environmental exposure. The long-term goal of this feasibility study is to provide a low-cost, noninvasive, low-profile, real-time, personal environmental exposure monitor platform that is virtually unnoticed by the user for maximum performance and convenience. This platform will provide a quantitative, reliable, in-field measurement of personal-level, point-of-contact exposure to a variety of airborne chemical toxins of particular interest to health conscious end-users, sports enthusiasts, the immunocompromised, and medical professionals.

This project is sponsored by Valencell Inc..

Leda Lunardi, John F. Muth, Robert M. Kolbas
01/15/09 - 12/31/10

In this proposed effort with Valencell, Inc., NC State University (NCSU) will be responsible for thin film deposition, device fabrication and optoelectronic characterization of both. NCSU will investigate and optimize thin film deposition parameters such as film composition, temperature and deposition environment to obtain bright phosphors with spectrally narrow luminescence at specific wavelengths. This includes both crystalline materials such as gallium oxide and aluminum oxide, as well as spin-coated materials such as doped spin-on-glass. Multi-wavelength light emitting devices will be fabricated at NCSU using readily available photolithographic techniques to produce both coplanar and vertically stacked phosphor arrays on sapphire, ruby and other substrates. Fabrication process steps will be refined to optimize the efficiency and reliability of the resultant devices including phosphor geometry. Compatibility with unpackaged UV LEDs for monolithic devices will also be investigated. Devices and thin films will be characterized at NCSU, using available visible and near-infrared spectrometers and detectors for wavelength and power optimization.

This project is sponsored by Valencell Inc..

Veena Misra, John F. Muth
06/01/08 - 05/31/11

We seek support for four undergraduate students to support our existing collaborative research activities on high density metal and semiconductor nanoparticles for memory and photonic applications at North Carolina State University and University of Missouri at Columbia. These four undergraduate students, two housed at each university, will be involved in research on i) Stability of nanoparticles formed by ALD and PVD, ii) characterization of MOSFETS made with nanoparticles from both institutions and iii) modeling of nanoparticle formation and devices. These different aspects of the research will provide these undergraduate students with a comprehensive exposure to nanoparticle device research and will be used as a tool to attract them to the graduate program.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Veena Misra, Alex Q. Huang, Mark A. Johnson
09/01/09 - 08/31/10

See attached documents - Dr. Misra please attach your budget justification for this new proposal

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Veena Misra, Mehmet C. Ozturk, Michael James Escuti
04/01/08 - 03/31/11

The use of state variables other than electronic charge offer great new opportunities for novel logic and memory approaches and can help create a new computation roadmap. Recently, domain wall logic has been demonstrated using ferromagnetic nanowires wherein all the basic logic functions needed to create any arbitrary logic circuit have been realized. This novel logic technology brings with it the possibility of low power electronics, low cost of fabrication and high density. However, a robust interface between the domain wall logic and input/output circuitry has not been established. The goal of this proposal is to integrate domain wall ferromagnetic nanowires with magnetic tunnel junctions via coupled magnetic nanostructures that can provide magnetic gain needed to drive I/O circuitry. The structure would employ stray fields and coupling between magnetic domains to flip the free layer of a magnetic tunnel junction and modulate a current. The proposed device would fill a missing link between devices in the newly emerging field of magnetic domain logic and conventional electronics.

This project is sponsored by University at Albany (SUNY).

Veena Misra
10/01/09 - 09/30/10

This goal of this proposal is to initiate a study to investigate high-K dielectrics and metal electrodes as blocking oxides and control gates, respectively. The overall goal is to understand fundamental charge transfer mechanisms through high-K IPD under program/erase (P/E) and retention conditions. These objectives will be met by conducting the following research Tasks:1) Explore the role of interfaces, i.e. between IPD and charge storage layer and also between IPD and metal control gate and evaluate the impact on P/E and Retention 2) Investigate IPD composition, microstructure, anneals and charges on the P/E and retention characteristics. This will include single layer IPD vs. multilayer IPD for barrier engineering. 3) Explore the role of work function of the control gate work function on erase and retention characteristics. Evaluate electron back tunneling from gate into the floating gate and hole tunneling in the opposite direction.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Veena Misra
05/12/08 - 08/31/09

The interface region of the dielectric and the SiC is critical in determining mobility characteristics. It is suspected that the high thermal budgets, such as those associated with thermal oxide growth, lead to defect formation in the transition region (SiCxOy) between SiO2 and SiC and also in the SiC layer itself. This suggests that low temperature gatestack formation, such as use of deposited oxides, may be a very useful route in minimizing defects. However, the interface characteristics of deposited oxides with SiC need to be thoroughly investigated. Although, recently work has shown that MOCVD Al2O3 films deposited on SiC at 190°C have given high mobility values, an ultra thin SiO2 layer under these have given even higher record mobility numbers suggesting that having some SiO2 may be important. This in fact is very similar to what has been observed in silicon CMOS devices and underscores the importance of both the interface region and the thermal budget. Based on the above discussion, the focus of this work is to: i) understand the role of the gate dielectric process on threshold voltage and mobility and ii) engineer the dielectric to optimize the threshold voltage. These two objectives will be met by investigating alternative gate dielectrics via atomic layer deposition.

This project is sponsored by Cree, Inc..

Gregory N. Parsons, Orlin D. Velev, Veena Misra, Christopher B. Gorman, Michael D. Dickey
07/25/08 - 09/30/10

The goal of this project is to advance fundamental understanding of novel inorganic nanostructures integrated with photoelectronic organic materials, to expand the field of nanomaterials for renewable energy devices and systems.

This project is sponsored by US Dept. of Energy (DOE).

Veena Misra
09/01/08 - 08/31/09

? Project Objective (one paragraph)

The objective of this task is to develop critical process modules to enhance the performance of SiC power devices required for Generation 2 of the FREEDM ERC. Specifically, these devices will consist of 2A, 15kV 4H-SiC IGBTs and diodes that will be used for the primary side of the solid state transformers (SST) and for the Fault Interrupt Devices (FID). Processes developed under this sub-thrust will also improve the performance of the low voltage SiC MOSFETs (100A/300V) that may be used on the secondary side of the SST. There are several critical process challenges that need to be overcome to meet the objectives for the IGBTs and MOSFETs, especially for the primary side of the SST. The objective of this project is to address two critical process modules (in order of percent effort):

A) Threshold voltage control via gate dielectric and gate electrode engineering (~80-90%)

B) Intermetallic dielectrics to prevent gate to source shorts and leakages (~10%)

The focus of the first year will primarily be placed on the first two modules. The third module will be addressed only if time and resources permit, and if necessary, this module will be moved to the second year. This will be a multidisciplinary and a multi-campus effort to effectively meet the goal of Generation 2 SiC power devices.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

John F. Muth
01/01/07 - 12/31/10

This is a $10,000 undergraduate Fellowship from the NCMR that is being routed through NSF as a supplement.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Mark A. Johnson, John F. Muth
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

This is a continuation of Project 529716 from the Prime FREEDM project - 529598 - please see attached documents. **Dr. Johnson will need to attach a Budget Justification Word Document during his approval.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

John F. Muth, Gianluca Lazzi, Leda Lunardi
12/22/08 - 12/21/10

Professors Leda Lunardi and John Muth will grow materials and fabricated antenna structure as outlined in the Proposal AF073-0004 written by Digital Fusion and NCSU.

Professor Lazzi will simulate and design antenna structures in accordance with Proposal AF073-0004 0004 written by Digital Fusion and NCSU.

This project is sponsored by Digital Fusion Inc..

John F. Muth, Leda Lunardi
09/12/07 - 09/01/10

The future tactical ocean environment will be increasingly complicated. In addition to traditional communication links there will be increased reliance on underwater networks and a proliferation of unmanned vehicles in space, in the air, on the surface, and underwater. Above the air/water interface wireless radio frequency communications will continue to provide the majority of communication channels. Underwater, where radio waves do not propagate, acoustic methods will continue to be used. However, while there have been substantial advances in acoustic underwater communications, acoustics will be hard pressed provide sufficient bandwidth to multiple platforms at the same time. Acoustic methods will also continue to have difficulty penetrating the water/air interface. This suggests that high bandwidth, short range underwater optical communications have high potential to augment acoustic communication methods.

This project is sponsored by Naval Research Laboratory.

Mehmet C. Ozturk, Veena Misra
07/01/06 - 12/31/09

Supplement funds are to fund another student to work on the awarded project research.

This project is sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corp..

Mehmet C. Ozturk, Mihail Devetsikiotis
03/01/07 - 02/28/11

Funds are requested to create a site for research experiences for rising seniors in Electrical and Computer Engineering. Ten students from different institutions will be sponsored every summer for a period of 10 weeks. The students will work on independent research projects with the mentoring ECE faculty and learn about research performed in different ECE specialization areas. The students will be exposed to various elements of academic life including ethics, diversity and forming collegial relationships.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Eric Rotenberg
07/01/08 - 06/30/11

It is becoming increasingly difficult to tap additional performance from a general-purpose superscalar processor by conventional microarchitecture and technology scaling. In the past, abundant scaling potential hid the fact that a single processor design is an inefficient bridge between diverse workloads and the underlying technology. Now, eliminating this inefficiency -- by tailoring superscalar processors to workloads -- may well be the chief source of performance scaling available to designers in the near future, barring any breakthroughs in CMOS technology scaling, non-CMOS technologies, instruction-level parallelism, automatic thread extraction, or programming paradigms.

On the other hand, a single workload-customized superscalar processor is not robust across workloads. Thus, it is not economically viable in general-purpose systems running a range of workloads. A heterogeneous chip multiprocessor (HCMP), comprised of many workload-customized superscalar processors, is an attractive solution to this dilemma. Unfortunately, designing and fabricating a true HCMP is not economically viable for a whole other reason: it has too many different superscalar processors, multiplying design and verification effort and possibly exceeding the scope of known project management methods.

This proposal explores a new approach to designing and fabricating superscalar cores, called FabScalar. It borrows the notion of a standard cell library for ASIC design. A standard cell library provides many "flavors" of simple gates, complex logic components, and even whole cores. Not only are there many different component types, but a given component type may come in many variations, with different choices of speed, power consumption, and area. The synthesis tool uses partially or fully specified objectives (frequency, total area, etc.) and selects from the standard cell library to meet specified objectives while optimizing any unspecified objectives.

In FabScalar, a "standard cell" is a whole superscalar pipeline stage. A Standard Superscalar Library (SSL) provides many "flavors" of instruction-fetch stages, instruction-decode stages, rename stages, issue stages, and so forth. Thus, it differs from a conventional standard cell library in that its components -- pipeline stages -- are what characterize a canonical superscalar processor, which has been well codified by industry and academia over several decades of study. Its central components are neither logic-level components at one extreme nor whole cores at the other, enabling the high level synthesis of a superscalar processor from the natural pipestage level. Thus, FabScalar is a first step for enabling quick and simple design of effective HCMPs. These HCMPs will provide a better microarchitectural bridge between diverse workloads and underlying technology.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Eric Rotenberg
09/03/09 - 12/31/10

Sequential programs spend most of their time iterating over elements of objects. Iteration is launched by a base instruction that produces an initial address, which in turn depends on elaborate computation. A novel technique is proposed whereby distant correlated ancestors predict the initial address. This is exploited for a number of microarchitecture applications that parallelize or accelerate the computation derived from iterating over objects.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Eric Rotenberg
07/01/07 - 06/30/10

DRAM is predicted to displace SRAM in future embedded systems (cell phones, sensor nodes, etc.) as functionality evolves. This future can be better met by dealing with the DRAM refresh problem and thereby reap the capacity benefits of DRAM without impacting battery life.

The key lies with exploiting dramatic variations in retention times among different DRAM pages. We recently proposed Retention-Aware Placement in DRAM (RAPID), novel software approaches that can exploit off-the-shelf DRAMs to reduce refresh power to vanishingly small levels approaching non-volatile memory. The key idea is to favor longer-retention pages over shorter-retention pages when allocating DRAM pages. This allows selecting a single refresh period that depends on the shortest-retention page among populated pages, instead of the shortest-retention page overall. We explore three versions of RAPID and observe refresh energy savings of 83%, 93%, and 95%, relative to conventional temperature-compensated refresh. RAPID with off-the-shelf DRAM also approaches the energy levels of idealized techniques that require custom DRAM support. This ultimately yields a software implementation of quasi-non-volatile DRAM.

In addition to providing real value for highly-functional, energy-constrained, and cost-constrained computing/communication devices, we believe RAPID is inexpensively deployable because it is based solely on software and commodity off-the-shelf DRAM. The next step in this research is to integrate RAPID into one or more real system prototypes of interest to CACC members, including a cell phone and/or a sensor node.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Advanced Computing & Communication.

Eric Rotenberg
09/15/09 - 08/31/12

Continued microprocessor performance scaling is hindered by many factors. One factor above all, the branch prediction bottleneck, constrains the ability to tackle other factors. This project proposes a new direction in branch prediction research.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Eric Rotenberg
07/01/07 - 06/30/10

In the 90s, the theme of speculation drove innovation in all aspects of processor design and led to significant cumulative performance gains. Today, single core performance is not scaling as impressively due to technology issues and the lack of a compelling theme to drive a new generation of microarchitecture innovation. While the now popular multi-core theme is important, it poses more of a challenge than a solution because much software remains non-parallel. Thus, the multi-core theme must be combined with a new sequential-program-centric thrust. This project puts forward a new microarchitecture theme. We propose a paradigm in which the processor has an unprecedented view of the structure of a running program. Like speculation in the past, this paradigm will enable a new generation of powerful performance optimizations.

We propose that current processors are fundamentally performance limited because they narrowly focus on fine-grained program behavior. In particular, they treat individual memory accesses (loads and stores) to program data separately. The novelty of our proposal is recognizing that program data is naturally organized into objects and an object is accessed as a whole via clusters of instructions we term object phases. The additional novelty of this project lies in developing powerful optimizations enabled by object and object phase identification. Our centerpiece and truly novel strategy becomes evident from object phases. When the processor detects the end of a phase operating on an object, signaling an end to modifications (stores) to the object, the next phase can be anticipated and the corresponding code can be specialized according to the new data stored within the object. This represents an unprecedented execution model: when the data in an object or objects change, the program changes with it in real time thereby continuously compressing the future dynamic instruction stream in reaction to object modifications. We observe millions of instructions between successive object phases to a given object, providing ample time for specialization before the next phase. Furthermore, this execution model presents a unique form of parallelization, where the program under observation is not parallelized itself but rather compressed, and the specialization process itself is highly parallel by virtue of assigning responsibility for different objects to different processors in a multi-core or many-core platform. Thus the proposal unifies the prevailing multi-core theme with our new sequential-program-centric theme.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Eric Rotenberg
04/01/07 - 03/31/10

In the 90s, the theme of speculation drove innovation in all aspects of processor design and led to significant cumulative performance gains. Today, single core performance is not scaling as impressively due to technology issues and the lack of a compelling theme to drive a new generation of microarchitecture innovation. While the now popular multi-core theme is important, it poses more of a challenge than a solution because much software remains non-parallel. Thus, the multi-core theme must be combined with a new sequential-program-centric thrust. This project puts forward a new microarchitecture theme. We propose a paradigm in which the processor has an unprecedented view of the structure of a running program. Like speculation in the past, this paradigm will enable a new generation of powerful performance optimizations.

This project is sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corp..

David Schurig
09/28/09 - 07/14/14

As part of the fulfillment of the proposed research by the Duke lead team in response to BAA

08-019, NCSU personnel will perform analytical, simulation, design and fabrication tasks. The

NCSU effort will focus on the design and fabrication of optical elements, particularly those with

near field imaging capability, including near field magnifiers (also known as hyper lenses).

Coordinate transformations that correspond near field optical elements will be examined subject

to constraints that lead to less extreme material properties, thus facilitating implementation. Unit

cells and layouts will be examined with consideration of sample fabrication and measurement

issues, for implementations at frequencies up to and including the infrared range.

This project is sponsored by Duke University.

Rudra Dutta, Mihail L. Sichitiu
06/16/09 - 06/15/10

This proposal proposes to build an outdoor wireless mesh testbed comprised of a large number of low-cost experimental fabricated nodes and a small number of commercially available nodes. The testbed will be built in two stages: in the first stage, nodes placed on pushcarts will be temporarily placed outdoors for trials and tests; in the second phase, permanent antenna placements will be installed on equipment poles over a large area of the Centennial Campus of North Carolina State University. The testbed will leverage experience of, as well as enable the research of NCSU researchers participating in the Secure Open Systems Institute (SOSI), currently engaged in DoD, NSF, and other projects. Current and envisaged research activities of SOSI researchers address secure and redundant routing, energy-efficient routing, topology control, localization, cross-layer optimization, security and performance of SIP and VoIP, secure virtualization of network and compute resources, social networking. The proposed testbed will provide realistic large-scale outdoor wireless network environments for evaluating and validating the ideas, protocols and systems conceived from these activities. The data and experience gained from operating and managing a real network environment will also provide practical insights for students and researchers on the operation of large-scale heterogeneous mesh networks that help identify new security and performance problems and develop their practical solutions.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Mihail L. Sichitiu, Injong Rhee
08/15/06 - 07/31/10

Mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) have been the focus of significant

research activity in the past decade. Thousands of algorithms and

protocols for MANETs have been proposed, evaluated and compared.

One of the defining characteristics of MANETs is their mobility.

Cellular and wireless local area networks also involve mobility, but,

due to their fixed infrastructure, the effects of mobility are more

limited. In MANETs the breakage of a link between two nodes may affect

more than just the two nodes, as that link may be used as a routing

path by several other nodes. Furthermore, if a proactive routing

protocol is employed, updates on the status of any link in MANETs can

propagate through the entire network.

Although a few MANET testbeds have been implemented, due to the

tremendous logistical difficulties and expenses associated with large

mobile testbeds, the vast majority of the proposed protocols have been

evaluated through simulation (usually employing network simulator).

Either for convenience, or for its simplicity the random waypoint

(RWP) mobility model is by far the most popular mobility model used in

simulation experiments. A much smaller percentage of papers use

detailed simulations (e.g., in vehicular networks, using realistic car

following models that follow the roads) to generate the mobility

traces. Although it was repeatedly pointed out that the results from

simulations using RWP differ both quantitatively, as well as

qualitatively from those using detailed mobility simulations, most

papers avoid the trouble of generating realistic mobility traces.

Intellectual merit:

We propose to develop and evaluate a hybrid mobility model that is

relatively easy to generate and, at the same time, produces realistic

mobility traces, that in turn, result in meaningful simulation results

for MANET simulations.

The proposed model has the desirable characteristics that it is

customizable to match any scenario (e.g., busses in a city, students

in a campus, or zebras in a herd), while allowing the users to vary

key parameters (number of nodes, density, etc.).

Broader impacts:

Since for the foreseeable future MANET performance evaluation will be

based on network simulations, we expect that the results of this

project will be widely used in the MANET community. We envision that

the proposed model will effectively replace the RWP as the

standard mobility model used in any MANET performance evaluation.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Wesley E. Snyder, Siamak Khorram
02/15/07 - 11/30/09

A hyperspectral imager produces an image with a hundred or more

spectral measurements at each pixel. A multispectral imager on the

other hand may sample the spectrum in only three to ten bands. Given

hyperspectral data, one can synthesize multispectral data by simply

integrating over the appropriate portion of the spectrum at each

point. One would think that a pattern classifier based on

multispectral data would perform poorly as compared to the same type

of classifier based on hyperspectral data, since surely

information is being lost in going from many measurements to few.

However, we know that the hyperspectral data is highly correlated

and that much research has shown that the data has many fewer

degrees of freedom than the number of individual bands. This work

will show how to use the hyperspectral data to it fullest advantage

to detect and classify a target, then design a lower dimensional

multispectral system that can perform the same task using fewer

resources that can be implemented on a smaller platform.

This project is sponsored by US Air Force-Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).

Wesley E. Snyder, Griff L. Bilbro
09/01/09 - 05/31/10

The authors will develop mathematics and algorithms which will allow a single operator to teleoperate a team of robots, using information obtaind by cameras on the robots.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Yan Solihin
09/01/06 - 08/31/09

Today's software systems run on a number of platforms and

environments and are increasingly dynamic in nature.

Heterogeneity in the runtime environments occurs at

different layers (hardware, operating system, runtime

libraries, virtual machine) and may cause the software to

behave differently on different machines. Different

instances of the software may also behave differently

because of the dynamic nature of the software. For example,

it is very common for a software system to be highly

configurable, extensible through plug-ins, and dynamically

upgradeable and adaptable.

For these reasons, it is becoming difficult to asses the

performance of a software systems without considering the

context in which it will run. However, evaluating the

software in all possible configurations and environments is

typically infeasible, whereas considering only a subset

thereof may not be representative of the way the software is

going to be used. Therefore, the analysis of software

behavior is shifting from a purely in-house activity to a

task that is increasingly performed on live runs in the

production environment. This shift has spurred much interest

in runtime monitoring approaches that can collect

information about software's behavior when it runs on users'

platforms. In the last years, monitoring approaches have

been defined for a range of domains (e.g., performance

optimization, testing, runtime verification, security).

Unfortunately, most existing approaches to runtime

monitoring are limited in three main ways. First, they are

defined ad-hoc, which makes it difficult to extend and adapt

them to new contexts. Second, they use monitoring code that

is hand-crafted and unmodifiable at runtime, which limits

their suitability for highly adaptive, self-monitoring

systems. Third, they are typically defined within only one

computational layer (e.g., software, operating system, or

hardware)---they do not take advantage of the capabilities

offered by the other layers and do not leverage the

interplay across layers.

The long term goal of this proposed research is to define a

general approach to efficient runtime monitoring of software

that leverages software and hardware capabilities in a

synergistic way. The approach will allow for specifying

monitoring tasks using a language that provides suitable

abstractions. Such specifications would then be

automatically analyzed and translated into primitive

monitoring tasks that would be distributed across

software and hardware layers to minimize the performance

overhead.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Yan Solihin, Alexander G. Dean
09/01/09 - 08/31/12

The proposed work will improve memory systems for high-performance

real-time embedded systems. We will develop methods implemented in

hardware and software to create fast, efficient memory systems with

easily predicted performance. This is critical to designers of

systems with real-time requirements, as memory access time affects

task execution time. A task's worst-case execution time (WCET)

is the fundamental metric which is used in equations to determine how

to make task scheduling decisions. For most non-trivial hardware and

software, computing the exact WCET is impossible. This leads designers

to estimate a safe WCET bound which is guaranteed by design to

never be smaller than the actual WCET. The closer the WCET bound is to

the WCET, the more efficient the system can be, as there is less time

dedicated to a margin of safety. Unfortunately, it is difficult to

analyze the timing impact of caches and virtual memory systems on a

task's WCET bound, much less WCET, resulting in overly conservative

WCET bound estimates which may make the use of cache and virtual

memory impractical. The goal of this proposal is to investigate

methods to improve cache and virtual memory performance in a way that

is easy to predict.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Yan Solihin
09/15/09 - 08/31/12

Increasing amounts of potentially valuable data are stored and processed in

computer system, which motivates increasingly sophisticated attacks to obtain

and/or tamper with this information. Protection against such attacks is needed

for many important features of secure computing, such as enforcement of

copyright protection for content and software, prevention of reverse

engineering, trusted distributed computing, and fairness (prevention of

cheating) in virtual environments.

One important emerging threat are hardware attacks, which exploit the fact

that data can be read or modified directly in the system's memory using devices

that dump or scan memory chips. Data transfered along system buses is similarly

vulnerable to hardware attacks. These attacks may be more difficult to perform

than software-based attacks, but they are also very powerful. A physical attack

can bypass all software security protection in the system, allowing attackers

to read memory locations that store cryptographic keys and other sensitive

information that may be used in software protection schemes. Widely available

and inexpensive mod-chips that bypass Digital Rights Management in game systems

demonstrate that physical attacks are very realistic threats.

We propose: (1) To conduct detailed investigation into secure booting

and configuration mechanisms for secure processors, (2) To explore how

secure processors can support system features such as virtualization,

virtual memory, inter-process communication, secure I/O communication,

and achieve all those with low performance and storage overheads, and

(3) To investigate how secure processor technology can be supported in

a variety of computer platforms such as single processor systems, mobile

systems, and multiprocessor systems with various interconnect topologies.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Michael B. Steer
04/09/08 - 04/08/10

Three dimensional silicon interposer technology will combine active silicon integrated circuits with silicon layers comprising passive components to enable complex electronic systems to be designed and cost-effectively realized. Enhanced performance will be achieved by enabling close integration of high performance passives with active integrated circuits. This project will design, model and experimentally characterize the passive circuits to be used in the interposer concept. Novel radio frequency circuits including matching networks, filters, chokes, transformers and baluns will be developed.

This project is sponsored by Boise State University.

Michael B. Steer, William R. Davis, Paul D. Franzon
07/05/04 - 01/13/10

The central aim of this proposal is development of a workflow that supports three dimensional integrated circuit (3DIC) design and, with minimal change, will support module design. Work will address partitioning of high performance functions among individual integrated circuits in the 3DIC stack, reuse of the existing integrated circuit design infrastructure, and the critical thermal environment in 3DICs. The project requires good thermal modeling and thermally-oriented design.

This project is sponsored by Parametric Technology Corporation (PTC).

Jon-Paul Maria, Michael B. Steer
10/19/09 - 04/30/11

The team of North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Teledyne Scientific & Imaging (TSI) will develop tunable materials in accordance with the Defense Microelectronic Activity (DMEA) High Performance Tunable Materials Program (HPTM Task 09-9C3). The materials development effort will be founded on combinatorial synthesis methods ideally suited to solving issues of defect chemistry which regulate the relationships between the non-linear dielectric response and dielectric loss. Furthermore, a powerful combination of microwave theory and electromagnetic simulations will be used to identify the best methods for incorporating ferroelectric capacitors into microwave circuits. Finally, this collective learning will be translated into a set of prototype microwave circuits of military and commercial interest. These will demonstrate the potential for improved wireless systems through integration of functional advanced ferroelectric thin films.

This project is sponsored by Defense Microelectronics Activity.

Michael B. Steer
11/01/06 - 10/31/10

It has been shown that a communication device returns an apparently unique signal when scanned by a simple pulsed microwave signal. This project will use a radar-like signal to determine how large a class of devices can be characterized this way. The work is largely experimentally based. The challenging aspects of the work are managing dynamic range, and minimizing the time required to perform a sweep. It is expected that that the data and analysis undertaken will determine the practicality of the reflection technique in characterizing devices using novel waveforms.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Michael B. Steer, Kevin Gard
07/01/05 - 04/30/10

This supplemental proposal accelerates the transition of signal modeling and measurement technologies to Army facilities. Technologies proposed herein are targeted for transition to the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the Intelligence and Information Warfare Directorate (I2WD). The impact will be broader and address the need for that part of battlefield monitoring concerned with the interaction of fields and electronics. We will research, develop and deploy a simulation environment for modeling the interaction of electromagnetic signals and circuits. Signal processing technologies will be adapted to extract information from scattered returns and in-circuit signals. Parameterized models of systems will be developed. Novel strategies for parallelizing the circuit simulation effort will be explored. Coupled with these activities will be the realization of small ruggedized instrumentation for detecting small signals in the presence of large signals.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

J. K. Townsend
05/15/07 - 01/14/10

Ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio has been shown to offer advantages that make it well-suited for many tactical, military applications.

In particular, the UWB waveform has the potential for good Low Probability of Intercept/Low Probability of Detection (LPI/LPD).

The body of literature on UWB impulse radio is growing.

However, most of the work in the area of UWB impulse radio does not address issues that apply to the ad-hoc radio network environment.

We propose to investigate ultra-wideband technology with emphasis on the tactical military mission.

The requirements of tactical communications have some important differences when compared to commercial radio, and include covertness, survivability, rapid deployment, and low power in an ad-hoc, peer-to-peer environment.

Our approach will be to leverage our recent results in the area of chip discrimination with the transmitted reference UWB schemes.

This research will provide new theoretical and practical architectures and techniques that do not require the restrictive assumptions of the current state of the art.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Robert J. Trew
05/26/09 - 05/25/10

This is an IPA agreement between NCSU and NSF for Dr. Robert J. Trew to serve as Director of the ECCS Division aT NSF for one year.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Robert J. Trew, Ki Wook Kim
05/19/09 - 11/19/12

This research program proposes to explore the feasibility of engineering thermal radiation for application to thermal energy harvesting. The approach is to utilize the high energy density stored in the evanescent field of surface excitations present on a thermal source composed of a polar semiconductor, by transforming it into spectrally and/or spatially selective radiation for ready extraction. At nanoscale distances, near-field thermal excitations of polar semiconductors occupy narrow bands at THz frequencies. These excitations, in the form of surface waves, establish a quasi-coherent, evanescent field with high energy density. Properly designed surface microstructures can convert the power available in evanescent modes to propagating modes with high efficiency. The proposed effort is directed towards advancements in a theoretical model that can be used to both (1) investigate and develop an understanding of the fundamental physical mechanisms associated with the phenomenon, and (2) serve as an aid in designing experiments that can be used to verify the phenomenon, as well as serve as a guide to optimizing device structures. Various test structures will be fabricated and tested in order to verify the theoretical predictions and demonstrate the feasibility of engineered thermal emission. A number of rectification schemes will also be investigated for harvesting the enhanced thermal radiation in the THz frequency and eventually converting it to the dc energy.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Laboratory.

Robert J. Trew, Griff L. Bilbro
03/14/08 - 04/30/11

This project is directed towards the development of mathematical models for AlGaN/GaN HFETs that can be used to investigate physical phenomena that affect both short term and long term reliability. Physical processes are modeled and used as a basis to explain reliability issues.

This project is sponsored by University of California - Santa Barbara.

Robert J. Trew, Griff L. Bilbro
04/01/05 - 03/31/11

This investigation will make use of a series of advanced physics-based device models that have been previously developed. These models will be modified and enhanced with appropriate physical phenomena that will permit accurate simulation of realistic HFET device performance. The models will be used to determine optimized device designs for mm-wave operation. Physical effects to be investigated include:

· Channel charge transport models that properly account for interface scattering and velocity vector variation.

· Space-charge and high current density effects in the source-gate region.

· Channel current non-confinement under large-signal RF voltage.

· Electron transit-time and channel depletion region phenomena.

· Accurate models for channel breakdown will be developed. The IMPATT-mode of operation will be thoroughly investigated.

· Design modifications to permit full development of channel current while sustaining high dc and RF voltage will be investigated and determined.

· Charge trapping/de-trapping under large-signal transient conditions

· Dc and transient thermal effects

The models will be calibrated with experimental data and will serve to guide improved device design.

This project is sponsored by University of California - Santa Barbara.

James Tuck, Yan Solihin
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

The project seeks to develop helper computing technology for enhancing

reliability and security of computer systems.

As software complexity increases and threats from security attacks grow, a

new low-overhead approach for improving software reliability and security

is urgently needed. In helper computing, relatively autonomous ``helper''

threads or processes execute extra code on behalf of the application on

separate processors or thread contexts.

In the past, the use of helper threads was constrained to prefetching and branch

prediction.

In this project, we propose exploring a new and novel use of helper computing for improving software reliability and security. With helper computing, reliability and security functionalities that are normally performed as parts of the application code are off- loaded to the helper thread/process. This enables sophisticated functionalities to be computed in parallel with the application without slowing down the

application much.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

James Tuck
09/15/09 - 02/28/11

Effective dynamic memory disambiguation limits many practical approaches for code analysis, optimization, and debugging. A potential avenue for overcoming the traditional limits of hardware memory disambiguation is through the use of signature registers. Such registers can operate on hundreds of addresses simultaneously. Such registers can be exposed to software through a flexible and general interface for use in a wide variety of systems. However, because signatures represent sets of addresses imprecisely, they are prone to false positives which limit their accuracy and effectiveness. This research will investigate the effectiveness of exposing signature registers to software. It will develop a new code analysis technique in GCC that leverages such signatures, and it will leverage previous code optimization and debugging techniques developed for signatures. Using these scenarios as a foundation, the effectiveness of signatures will be evaluated along two fronts. First, software exposed signatures will be compared to other hardware memory disambiguation techniques. The performance, complexity, and power costs of each mechanism will be compared to show the relative merits of a signature-based design. Also, the hardware implementation for signature registers will be investigated and refined to reduce false positives. Cycle-accurate, event-driven simulation enhanced with power models will be used for evaluation.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Thomas K. Miller, Stephen J. Walsh, Dianne Raubenheimer
01/01/09 - 12/31/11

Driven by changes in the global economy, entrepreneurship has become one of the fastest growing academic areas within the nation's 335 engineering schools. As a result, hundreds of courses and programs in entrepreneurship are now offered to engineering students. Despite the widespread adoption of these curriculum changes, we have done little to examine different program models, faculty beliefs and teaching practices, and infrastructure and how these differences relate to students' entrepreneurial knowledge, skills, and attitudes. Clarifying the relationship between faculty beliefs and practices, program characteristics, and student learning is necessary if we are to provide guidance to faculty in how to create and improve these educational experiences and evaluate their success.

In response to the above needs, we propose to conduct in-depth examinations of entrepreneurship initiatives at three schools that produce large numbers of engineering graduates. We will examine faculty beliefs and teaching practices, program and course characteristics, and assessment practices, and will analyze how they relate to student learning outcomes.

This project is sponsored by National Collegiate Inventors & Innovators Alliance.

Wenye Wang
03/01/06 - 02/28/10

Multihop wireless networks are expected to provide dependable communications against a wide range of failures, such as failures cased by node mobility and more importantly, misbehaviors and malicious attacks because they promise to have a significant impact on communications, information process, and next generation networking paradigm in complimenting cellular networks, local area Wi-Fi networks, and the Internet. Nevertheless, because of node mobility and distributed architecture, multihop wireless networks render a set of unique dynamics and vulnerability in providing dependable communications. The design goal of resilient networks has an significant impact on design paradigms and methodologies of multihop wireless networks in all aspects, such as routing, scheduling, topology control, quality of service, and access control. The field of resilience-to-failure is still in its adolescence as there is a critical gap in the fundamental understanding we need for future research in protocol design and algorithm implementation for mobile wireless networks. Therefore, we propose to design an analytical framework of network resilience and new algorithms in building a prototype in this work.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Wenye Wang, Alexander G. Dean
09/01/08 - 08/31/10

See attached supporting documents. This is a continuation of FREEDM project 529672 from the prime FREEDM project 529598.

Please see revised budget - Dr. Wang needs to attach Budget Justification for project

This project is sponsored by NCSU Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems Center (FREEDM).

Wenye Wang, Peng Ning
03/01/05 - 02/28/10

The goal is to study vulnerabilities of medium access in wireless

networks and develop preventive algorithms for protection and reactive

algorithms for recovery in the aftermath of cyber-attacks The approach

will be to start with detailed middle-ware based traffic injecting,

monitoring, measurement, and analysis in the Networking of Wireless

Information Systems (NeTWIS) lab of North Carolina State

University. The collected data will be later used for evaluation and

verification of our proposed solutions.

We will derive simpler drivers for wireless devices with different

power, processing capability, and operation systems to capture all

traffic that initiate an effort of communications at the

MAC-layer. Then we will develop resilient MAC-layer mechanism, which

target to main categories: DoS attacks aimed at reducing network

availability, and selfish/greedy behaviors that favor some selected

nodes but affect the overall network availability. This effort

includes authentication of MAC-layer frames, surviving and recovering

from MAC-layer DoS attacks. By considering multi-radio networks as a

promising technique for military applications, we propose to design a

MAC-oriented resource management framework for enhancing network

availability. This mechanism is capable of precisely discovering

accessible wireless networks and fairly allocating transmission slots.

The expected result of this research is a new approach to solving the

unreliable medium access problems by combining cryptographic approaches

and networking design.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Wenye Wang, Hamid Krim
04/01/08 - 03/31/11

This project addresses two thrusts, namely network vulnerabilities and recovery strategies in the aftermath of WMD attacks. More specifically, this research targets a set of fundamental issues to understand network response following an attack by WMD/WME: how to model a network topology in the presence of attacks/failures from random threats; how to estimate or predict network survivability to sustain critical applications; how to design/form network architecture to approach the theoretic limits of network robustness; and how to inter-operate with other available/limited sources for fast communication recovery.

The proposed research is {\em unique} in that (i) it focuses on analysis of new models and on metrics which capture a multitude of failures along with their interdependence in order to understand fundamentals of network response to WMD stresses, and (ii) it focuses on the development and analysis of recovery strategies when there is incomplete knowledge of potential threats, faulty network protocol behavior, and resource outage due to unknown causes. Both issues have not been addressed in previous studies and literature of networking science.

In this project, we will be concentrating on military networking infrastructures such as combat strategic systems, and tactical ad hoc networks, which carry time-sensitive information and demand for reliable and non-disruptive communications. The results of this research will advance the state of knowledge on network response to WMD attacks and leverage military communication capabilities by designing robust, self-healing, complex network architecture which interact with other networks.

This project is sponsored by Defense Threat Reduction Agency.

Wenye Wang
02/09/09 - 02/08/10

The objectives of the project will be achieved by evaluating the technology for single-hop communication links, including an investigation of both radio and laser options. The study will also create mobility models based on link path dynamics. At the end of project, we will deliver 1) report on down selection of inter-satellite communication link technology, with proof-of-concept demonstrations. 2) Small satellite communications-based mobility model ; 3) Network routing protocol with accompanying performance analysis

This project is sponsored by University of Florida.

Wenye Wang, Mo-Yuen Chow
09/01/05 - 12/31/09

This is a request for supplemental funding to support extensive stay at an international institute by the PI and her graduate student to gain international research experience and perspective, and to enable closer research interaction between North Carolina State University and Wireless Research Institute at Shanghai Jiaotong University, China

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Cranos Williams
07/01/09 - 06/30/10

The predictive ability of any biochemical pathway model is solely based on our ability to estimate the appropriate values, or range of values, of the component concentrations and kinetic parameters. These values should effectively capture the range of activity of the pathway given the observed activity seen in the measurements. In considering erroneous measurements where any concentration within some upper and lower bound of the measurement is equally valid, it is imperative to estimate the full range of component concentrations and kinetic parameters that are consistent with the potential range of valid measurement concentrations. We propose to develop a bounded estimation approach for biochemical pathway models that will estimate the range of parameters and concentrations that are consistent with the uncertain measurements. An accurate range on these estimates better reflects the uncertainty associated with the model and allows us to better predict the range of possible activity given this uncertainty. Our proposed method is an extension of the classical predictor-corrector approach, which has be shown to be useful in other estimation approaches.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Faculty Research & Professional Development Fund.

Weidong Zhang, Peiji Zhao
05/01/07 - 04/30/10

The double-barrier resoant tunneling diodes with staggered band alignments can admit significant interband tunneling current in addition to conduction band electron transport. This research seeks to develop multi-band models for understanding of basic transport physics of I-RTDs when subjected to magnetic fields and when composed of diluted magnetically-ordered type II superlattices. Here magnetically ordered I-RTDs refers to the situation where a small percentage of sublattice cation sites from one or two heterostrucutre layers are substitued by Mn magetic ions, which carry localized magnetic moments. The exchange coupling between conduction and valence-band electrons of a semiconductor with strongly localized substutional Mn d electrons inside a magnetic field may be significient. Therefore spin dependent tranport equation sets are derived by decoupling the total (at least six-band) Hamiltonian into ?spin-up? and ?spin-down? subsets where both Zeeman splitting and strong sp-3d exchange interaction are included in both. The objectives of this research are: (1) to calculate the resonant conduction-band current and interband Zener tunneling current; and (2) to study the nanoscale feedback dynamic processes arising from interband tunneling and its accompanied space charge accumulation. Therefore, these investigations will develop new models and execute simulations to analyze and engineer specific DMS device configurations suitable for a two-phase charging-discharging THz oscillator and explore other possible applications such as spintronics.

This project is sponsored by Army Research Office.

Weidong Zhang
11/15/08 - 09/10/10

The objective of this STTR program is to model, design, build and demonstrate a novel, hybrid solid-state, interband resonant tunneling diode (I-RTD) oscillator capable of operating across broad portions of terahertz frequency band (300?600 GHz) at room temperature, with estimated terahertz output power levels in the 3?10 mW range. Such record terahertz oscillator performance will be of great use in military relevant applications such as chemical and biological agent detection, standoff imaging of concealed weapons and explosives, high-speed data processing and communications, and characterization of bio-molecular based devices and systems. Phase I of this program succeeded in modeling the I-RTD device, and generating candidate device structures based on the InGaAs/GaSbAs/InP compound semiconductor system, which can be synthesized in conventional epitaxial layer deposition systems, and then processed into devices. Phase II will grow epitaxial wafers of these material structures, process them into devices in Spire?s semiconductor foundry, and test the devices for terahertz emission spectra, output power vs. drive conditions, and device operating temperature limitations. Phase II will also continue and extend device structure modeling and carry out electrical modeling of the I-RTD devices and their associated circuits.

This project is sponsored by University of Virginia.