Research

B. Jayant Baliga
07/01/09 - 08/14/11

(a) To extract impact ionization (I.I.) coefficients of GaN grown on silicon substrates and to perform electron-beam-induced-current (EBIC) measurements on GaN transistors and diodes to determine the electric field distribution.

(b) To perform electrical characterization of the high voltage lateral GaN-on-Si transistors.

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

B. Jayant Baliga, Alex Q. Huang, Douglas C Hopkins
09/01/08 - 08/31/12

This project will focus on the development of 15-kV Silicon Carbide switches to replace the Gen-I silicon solution. Our analysis in Year-3 has demonstrated that a 15-kV Field Controlled Diode (FCD) can provide a much lower on-state voltage drop of only 5-volts while also providing fault current limiting capability. In Year-4, we propose to design and fabricate FCDs to experimentally demonstrate the feasibility of this concept. No reverse blocking SiC devices have been reported in the literature. Techniques to obtain reverse blocking capability that matches the forward blocking capability will be explored in Year-4 to enable fabrication of symmetric blocking FCD devices in Year-5. This is necessary to eliminate the series diode. Our goal is to deliver 15-kV, 10-A devices for use in the FID by the end of Year-5 for use in the Gen-II test-beds. However, the voltage rating of the devices will be limited by high voltage starting SiC material that can be acquired from CREE Inc.

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

Mesut E. Baran
07/01/09 - 08/31/12

The main goal of this project is to demonstrate the two main FREEDM system functions on the prototype Green Hub: an Intelligent Fault Management (IFM) system and an Intelligent Energy Management (IEM) system which will control the system resources to automate the system operation. The demonstration platform will consist of digital simulation of the Green Hub on the RTDS platform and a GEN I SCADA system which implements the IEM. The IFM functionality will be demonstrated with a protection system consisting of a fiber optics based communication backbone providing data to a centralized computer for decision making. Based on the functions to be developed and demonstrated, functional specifications for IEM and IFM will be developed.

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

Mesut E. Baran
09/01/08 - 08/31/12

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
06/01/10 - 05/31/13

Various feeder monitoring projects have been undertaken over the last decade for power quality and automation. These studies have indicated that one of the main uses of the monitoring data will be to locate the faults. The studies have also demonstrated that the monitored data contains signatures of many disturbances due mainly to the equipment disoperation or failure. These signatures therefore can be used to identify equipment that is disoperation or about to fail. The goal of this project is to enhance these two functions and demonstrate their performance on an actual test system.

This project is sponsored by Allegheny Energy, Inc..

Mesut E. Baran
09/01/11 - 08/31/12

To manage the voltage variations in the FREEDM system both at the primary (high voltage) and secondary (low voltage) levels while maintaining the efficiency of the system under varying operating conditions.

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

Mesut E. Baran, Alex Q. Huang, Subhashish Bhattacharya, Pam Page Carpenter
07/01/10 - 06/30/13

North Carolina State University will develop and implement an accelerated, professional Master of Engineering degree to educate the next generation electric power engineering workforce (which includes engineers, innovators, entrepreneurs, and industry leaders) who will be ready to move into leadership positions within the electric power industry and facilitate the transformation of the current power system into a national, clean-energy smart grid. The proposed program, Master of Engineering in Electric Power Systems (ME-EPS), is an innovative program which will give students a thorough understanding of the tools, methods, and practice of electric power engineering through an intensive educational experience directly applicable to an industry career. The degree will be suitable for a recent graduate, as well as experienced professionals seeking retraining to change careers or enhanced training to expand their career opportunities.

The proposed ME-EPS program will fill a critical need for electric power industry engineering staff development, as its courses will be carefully targeted to meet specific industry needs identified by a thorough needs assessment. The ME-EPS program goal is to provide a comprehensive professional graduate degree that encompasses a broad treatment of the engineering, management, and profession skills needed in industry. Hence, this new program is fundamentally different from other degree programs and professional "short courses" currently offered. The program will consist of a set of integrated courses that will cover both core power engineering topics, as well as new cross-disciplinary technical topics relevant to the clean-energy smart grid. The program integrates four main components:

i) Core power engineering topics integrated into three courses: Fundamentals of Power Engineering, Power System Operation and Control, and Power Distribution System Operation and Management.

ii) Cross-disciplinary courses for smart grid applications. These will be totally new courses not available in current engineering programs: Electric Power Generation; Power Electronics and Its Power System Applications; Communication and Cyber Security Systems for Smart Grid; and Distribution Systems and Smart Grid Applications.

iii) Hands-on-Experience on Smart Grid Applications: Each course will have a lab or a project to provide hands on experience. To further promote integration of concepts and provide hands on experience, there will be a capstone project.

iv) Professional Skills Training: To complement the engineering training and provide professional skills, the program will include three integrated courses: The Business of the Electric Utility Industry, Engineering Economics and Project Management, and Professional Skills.

The proposed program will be an intensive 10-month program to be taught in three sessions: a one month summer session focusing on fundamentals of power engineering, and two regular fall and spring semester sessions each with five classes. Thus, the second major outcome of the project will be the large number of engineers to be trained through this program with the skills urgently needed by the power sector. The proposed program will train and educate three cohorts of students averaging 20, 30 and 50 in Years 1 to 3, respectively. The graduates of this innovative program will be highly sought after in the industry which will be facing severe engineering shortages in the near future.

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

Douglas W. Barlage
04/01/06 - 03/31/12

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.

Nadia A. El-Masry, Salah M. Bedair
10/01/07 - 09/30/11

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 US Army - Army Research Office.

Salah M. Bedair
10/01/11 - 09/30/14

We develop technique to improve the efficiency of multi-junction solar cell structure. The techniques make better use of the solar spectrum, so each cell: Ge-GaAs ?InGaP will pass the same short circuit current. This will move the effective band gap of both the middle and top cell to lower values. We will maintain the lattice matched conditions in this approach, avoiding defects that may compromise the quality of these materials, specially the top cell.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Salah M. Bedair
09/15/11 - 08/31/14

We plan to investigate the processes of defect reductions in III-nitride compounds grown on sapphire substrates. We also plan to investigate the accommodations of lattice mismatched defects by the growth on nano wires substrates. We will use several new concepts and approaches based on the overgrowth of coalescence films on low defect density nano wires of GaN and AlGaN. These nano wires will etched from MOCVD grown films.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Salah M. Bedair, John R. Hauser
09/01/11 - 08/31/14

We propose to reduce the current cost of multijunction (MJ) solar cells by developing a robust tunnel junction (TJ) to connect the various sub-cells. This TJ is capable of operating at high solar concentration (~2000?e) with high peak current and minimal voltage drop across the TJ.

Tunnel Junction Problems and Proposed Approaches:

1) The properties of as-grown tunnel junctions (TJ) deteriorate due to high temperature exposure, during the growth of the middle and top cells, which make the MJ structure not suitable for high solar concentration.

Approach: Insert diffusion barriers and modify the band structure at the junction interface.

2) Fluctuations in the TJ properties due to non-uniform doping levels and the variation in the concentration optics affect the performance of the MJ solar structure.

Approach: Increase excess current by the manipulation of impurities in the highly doped films.

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

Salah M. Bedair, Nadia A. El-Masry
05/01/08 - 04/30/12

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 ?0 > 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 ?0 = 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).

Subhashish Bhattacharya, Alex Q. Huang
09/01/10 - 08/31/13

Advanced 15kV SiC IGBT power technology offers several significant advantages for grid scale power conversion systems, such as a Transformerless Intelligent Power Substation (TIPS), including significant efficiency improvement up to 98%, elimination of the 60 Hz distribution transformer, 40-50% reduction in power converter weight and size, significantly reduced component count, and 50% reduction in cooling requirements. As a result, 15 kV SiC IGBT power devices represent a transformational technology that will be essential for widespread utilization of TIPS and other high frequency grid scale power conversion systems to enable distributed generation and storage for the Smart Grid. The objective of this program is to rapidly advance the state of the art of this 15 kV SiC IGBT power technology by developing 15 kV / 20 A SiC IGBTs as well as 15 kV / 100 A SiC IGBT power modules, and demonstrating a 100 kVA TIPS using these power modules.

This project is sponsored by Cree, Inc..

Subhashish Bhattacharya
07/30/10 - 07/29/13

1. Attend and actively participate in yearly workshops involving all consortium universities presenting our experiences and new developments to the other participants.

2. As much as possible, disseminate the UMN curriculum to other regional universities, technical and community colleges.

3. Submit a brief quarterly progress report to the University of Minnesota who will provide an online form for the report.

This project is sponsored by University of Minnesota.

Subhashish Bhattacharya
07/05/11 - 03/30/12

The goal of this project is to design, develop and test a DC/DC 3-level and 3-phase Dual-Active Bridge (DAB) and 3-phase DC/AC power converter using the SiC 1200V MOSFET and 1200V JBS Diode to demonstrate weight and size reduction at power conversion ratings of 10kW.

This project is sponsored by Cree, Inc..

Xiangwu Zhang, Subhashish Bhattacharya
02/09/09 - 07/31/12

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
04/15/11 - 12/31/11

This project aims to integrate a UPS system with PV array. The steps for UPS integration with an actual PV system will be done followed by testing of the UPS system with the 40kW PV array.

This project is sponsored by Eaton Corp..

Subhashish Bhattacharya, Alex Q. Huang, Mesut E. Baran
06/25/11 - 06/24/12

This project proposes to develop and deploy a distributed fast voltage regulation system to accommodate high penetration of renewable generation. The specific objectives of this project are to produce an integrated power electronics system for the objective of providing fast voltage regulation, with a specific emphasis on the speed of response required to respond to grid disturbances under high penetration of fluctuating and intermittent Distributed Energy Resources (DERs). We plan to develop and demonstrate a solution which makes it economical to place distributed Dynamic VAR Compensator systems (DVCs) throughout the distribution grid, in order to improve efficiency, power quality and stability for Smart Grid distribution systems and ultimately support a transition from centralized voltage regulation to distributed regulation. In addition, this project will develop distribution system algorithm that will allow improved and controllable voltage profiles within all voltage regulation zones of the distribution grid. Implementation of the algorithm would enhance interoperability between the fast DVC and existing (slower) voltage control devices (such as LTCs, voltage regulators and power factor correction capacitors) allowing higher penetration of DERs and possible micro-grid operations.

This project is sponsored by Varentec, LLC.

Subhashish Bhattacharya
08/01/10 - 12/31/11

The goal of this project is to investigate and evaluate design concepts and develop specifications for a Medium-Voltage DC amplifier system with DC side active filter design.

This project will develop requirements for the MVDC amplifier system and develop and evaluate system topologies and their specifications. The system rating is 5MW with input 3-phase 4.16kV and dc side voltage variation from 0-20kV, with both passive and active loads supplied at different dc voltage levels.

This project is sponsored by Florida State University.

Subhashish Bhattacharya
08/15/11 - 12/31/11

The goal of this phase I project is to investigate modular transformer based system with power electronics back-to-back converter integration issues and to design and implement an experimental scaled testbed. The project will explores and compares possible configurations aiming for the extension in the dynamic and steady state operating range of the network with Modular Transformer Converters (MTC). The Phase I of the project will also investigate and procure a suitable modular controller for the experimental scaled testbed system which can be expanded as more MTCs are added to the system.

This project is sponsored by GE Global Research.

Subhashish Bhattacharya
05/17/10 - 12/31/11

This project is to investigate power conversion technologies suitable for storage integration.

This project is sponsored by ABB, Inc.

Subhashish Bhattacharya, Alex Q. Huang, Richard D. Gould
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

The goal of this project in Year 3 is continuation of the Gen-I SST work done in year 1and year 2? which is on target towards the objectives listed below for Year 2. The work completed in Year 1 and year 2 are listed in the NSF project review under Y1-E-C5 and in the SST paper published in the FREEDM conference.

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

Subhashish Bhattacharya
09/01/10 - 08/31/11

The goal of this project is to design, build, test and deliver two LV SSTs for the Y3.D.C2 DC Microgrids project and to research and investigate a ?Controller for the Solid State Transformer to Implement Self-Commissioning of Active Loads allowing for Autonomous 'Multi-Plug' Operation?. This will be used to demonstrate the integration of various distributed renewable energy resources (DRERs) and distributed energy storage devices (DESDs) into the FREEDM System through the 400V DC bus in the SST.

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

Aranya Chakrabortty
09/01/10 - 04/30/13

1. To perform rigorous data analysis and information extraction from PMU data in order to implement the identification algorithms in real-time. The PI and his group have been provided with real PMU data from the US west coast grid by Southern California Edison, Inc., which particularly calls in for a significant amount of data analysis.

2. To develop a visualization software platform by which these algorithms can be presented in a visually attractive way to facilitate quick understanding of power system disturbance events by the system operators.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Aranya Chakrabortty
03/01/11 - 02/29/16

This NSF-CAREER proposal strives for novel and transformative approaches to formulate, investigate and validate the almost untouched problem of wide-area damping control of large-scale electric power systems using synchronized phasor measurements. Following the US Northeast blackout of 2003, tremendous research efforts have been devoted to the visualization and postmortem analyses of Synchrophasors, leading to a formative understanding of how the Wide-area Measurement System (WAMS) technology may be used for dynamic health monitoring of complex power system networks. However, owing partly to a slowness in learning, and partly to a shortage of control system engineers in the WAMS community, no rigorous research has yet been done to transcend from monitoring to the next phase - namely, feedback control. With over 132 Phasor Measurement Units (PMU) currently operating in the US West Coast power system, and over 60 PMUs operating in the Eastern Interconnect, producing over 2 billion data samples per day, control by human operators is obviously not sustainable. An autonomous, highly distributed, bandwidth-efficient, real-time control system is needed to shape the oscillatory dynamics of these interconnections using Synchrophasor-feedback.

This project will make a step towards building such control systems, using concepts of nonlinear circuit theory, fundamental physics, and graph theory.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Aranya Chakrabortty
11/01/10 - 08/14/11

This proposal was submitted by the PI to the NCSU Strategic Research Initiative (SRI) funding solicitation on August 27th, 2010. The main objective of this project is to construct an on-campus Cyber-Physical System (CPS) research group among the faculty members of Computer Science, ECE, Math and NCSU Solar Center, and, more importantly, to organize a two-day workshop where leading researchers from

selected external universities will be invited to share research ideas on the applications of Cyber-physical systems in electric smart grids with this group. Thereafter, a proposal will be developed by the group members for the CPS program solicitation of the National Science Foundation in the 'large' funding category in March 2011.

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

Aranya Chakrabortty
10/01/10 - 09/30/11

The main themes of this proposed research are :

1. Development of concrete mathematical frameworks to address challenging and pertinent problems on WAMS-based modeling, control and optimization of geographically distributed interconnected power systems, especially from a network point of view.

2. Data analyses, pattern recognition and visualization of power system dynamics involving both large and small-scale generation networks.

3. Cyber-physical interpretations of power system operations through a successful integration of WAMS-based sensing and FACTS-based actuation technologies with underlying problems in computation, topological dynamics, communication constraints, etc.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Strategic Research Initiative.

Aranya Chakrabortty, Subhashish Bhattacharya
10/01/11 - 12/31/12

The objective of this research project is to develop an experimental framework for testing transient stability, frequency response and oscillation damping of the US Western Interconnection using a Real-time Digital Simulator (RTDS). We will construct detailed dynamic models of the WECC power system, starting from the major generation clusters in Alberta, Washington and Oregon to the load clusters in Southern California, Montana and Arizona with intermediate voltage support at appropriate points. The impact of operating conditions, unforeseen contingencies, and intermittency of renewable generation on the inter-area oscillations in WECC will be studied and validated using an RTDS based emulation framework.

This project is sponsored by Southern California Edison Co. (SCE).

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

IPA Agreement: no abstract required

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

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

No abstract currently available.

This project is sponsored by National Institute of Aerospace.

Mo-Yuen Chow
09/01/08 - 08/31/12

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 - 08/31/12

DGI is FREEDM?s ?Operating System? providing the resource management services of IEM, IFM, and IPM and interfacing with the SST. Architecturally, DGI consists of multiple computational processes that execute on computational platforms running Linux (LinuxComp) that interact with InterProcess Communication (IPC) supported by RSC/DGI functions.

This project implements DGI in the HIL environment of the RTDS, physical DGI and RSC hardware/software, and a physical SST controller board. The deliverables will primarily be the DGI run-time system followed by a demonstration of two DGI aspects, Distributed Energy Management, and Distributed Fault Detection, Reconfiguration and Recovery.

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

Mo-Yuen Chow, Simon M. Hsiang
09/01/07 - 08/31/11

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 - 08/31/12

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.

Peng Ning, Huaiyu Dai
09/01/10 - 08/31/13

Jamming resistance is crucial for applications where reliable wireless

communication is required, such as rescue missions and military

applications. Spread spectrum

techniques such as Frequency Hopping (FH) and Direct Sequence Spread

Spectrum (DSSS) have been used as countermeasures against jamming

attacks. However, these anti-jamming techniques require that senders

and receivers share a secret key to communicate with each

other, and thus are vulnerable to insider attacks where the

adversary has access to the secret key.

The objective of this project is to develop a suite of techniques

to defend against insider jammers in DSSS and FH based wireless

communication systems. We will develop novel and efficient

insider-jamming-resistant techniques for both DSSS- and FH-based

wireless communication systems. Our proposed research consists of two

thrusts. The first thrust is to develop novel spreading/despreading

techniques, called DSD-DSSS (which stands for DSSS based on

Delayed Seed Disclosure), to enhance DSSS-based wireless communication

to defend against insider jamming threats, while the second thrust is

to develop a new approach, called USD-FH (which stands for FH

based on Uncoordinated Seed Disclosure), to enable sender and

receivers using FH to communicate without pre-establishing any common

secret hopping pattern. A key property of our new approaches is that

they do not depend on any secret shared by the sender and receivers. Our solution

has the potential to significantly enhance the anti-jamming capability of today?s wireless communication

systems.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Huaiyu Dai
07/01/10 - 06/30/13

This work intends to contribute to an automatic reasoning framework for networked systems through research in two areas: structured variational methods and their distributed implementation, and distributed clustering. Interaction and integration of these two components will also be explored, leading to a holistic cross-layer approach for automatic reasoning in networked systems.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Huaiyu Dai
09/01/07 - 08/31/11

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 - 07/01/12

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 - 03/31/13

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, Eric Rotenberg
11/01/11 - 10/31/12

This document proposes a project to train a graduate student in the art of digital circuit design and

verification for micro-processors. The student will be expected to work part time at Qualcomm in Raleigh, NC while taking a normal course-load and completing a graduate masters thesis at NCSU.

The graduate thesis for the student will cover the verification and design of one or more of the digital modules to be implemented in Prof. Rotenberg's FabScalar project, which involves the design of a highly reconfigurable superscalar processor.

This project is sponsored by Qualcomm.

Alexander G. Dean, Eric Rotenberg
08/01/07 - 01/31/12

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, Subhashish Bhattacharya
08/15/11 - 07/31/13

The goal of this project is to improve the energy efficiency of cost-sensitive embedded systems through aggressive voltage scaling. We seek to increase (at minimal cost) the number of separate voltage domains in a system and run each as efficiently as possible. Dynamic voltage and frequency scaling methods are standard on systems which can afford the additional costs to save the energy. Supporting multiple voltage domains incurs overhead such as additional voltage regulators/converters and level translators. Improving energy efficiency allows a designer to extend a systems operational life, reduce battery size and weight, and use more sophisticated (and computationally intense) control methods. Recent advances in subthreshold voltage processor design offer tremendous opportunities to reduce energy requirements for

computation. Energy-scavenging, ultracapacitor and wireless power transmission technologies are rapidly advancing, further increasing opportunities.

We plan to reduce costs by moving control into software and general-purpose hardware on common microcontrollers. A second challenge is further reducing system cost, size and weight by removing noise-filtering components. When an SMPS switches current on and off through the inductor, it generates wideband harmonic noise. We will use real-time system approaches to prevent SMPS switching activity from coinciding with noise-sensitive operations. There are additional challenges: determining practical power supply and system architectures, adapting existing methods in power-aware real-time and non-real-time scheduling to such systems, implementing this mixed-criticality system with robust software in a practical way on real hardware which partitions critical code from application code, that software becomes critical), and evaluating the trade-offs among the many design parameters.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Mihail Devetsikiotis
12/22/10 - 06/30/12

The recent proliferation of High Definition video services and Mobile applications has led not only to an increase in the demand for bandwidth for broadband access networks, but also to the need for new Service Delivery Architectures. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are now looking on how to reengineer their broadband access infrastructure to accommodate intelligent aggregation and optimize

for QoS sensitive services. The goal is to build service-rich, cost effective and robust environments that would be extremely scalable, but also versatile enough, to accept the transformations resulting from the introduction of emerging traffic and usage patterns [1]. The main challenges include nonstop delivery, service flexibility, policy management and reduced risk. For this reason, we try to identify the appropriate architectural approach and sizing model for the aggregation network, based on the next generation traffic patterns.

More specifically, we will focus on investigating the degree of ?centralization?, single-edge vs. multi-edge characteristics, and degree of clustering. Input parameters include the emerging traffic and usage patterns, geographic distribution of sources and destinations, connectivity of the social networks involved, spatial statistics, all in addition to the temporal characteristics such as degree of self-similarity and burstiness.

This project is sponsored by Time Warner Cable (TWC).

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.

Michael James Escuti
08/10/10 - 11/30/11

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will provide Raytheon Network Centric Systems (the ?Sponsor?) with multiple polymer polarization gratings (PGs), predominantly fabricated at NCSU but employing substrates substantially provided by the Sponsor. We will optimize the material-properties for PG operation at near-infrared wavelengths (1.064 microns), which will involve both theoretical modeling and experimental fabrication.

This project is sponsored by Raytheon.

Michael James Escuti
02/01/10 - 01/31/15

This request is to support one NCSU undergraduate student (Scott Gaffer, a rising, double-major senior) to work on research directly associated with the activities carried out by the PI under the currently funded grant.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Michael James Escuti
11/01/10 - 09/30/11

The main objective of this proposal is the design of an optimized holographic lithography tool, suitable to implement UV polarization holography at the sponsor?s facility. The PI and student will provide Boulder Nonlinear Systems (BNS) with the overall optical design, identify a build of materials with recommended vendors based on the PI?s experience, and draft an initial set of recipes for polarization grating fabrication. In addition, after all parts and materials are acquired by the sponsor, the PI and/or student will travel to the sponsor?s facility for setup, calibration, and personnel training.

This project is sponsored by Boulder Nonlinear Systems.

Michael James Escuti
03/08/10 - 02/21/12

For the purposes of this proposal, the PI will be responsible for designing and studying polarization gratings for a diffractive coarse steering module.

This project is sponsored by Boulder Nonlinear Systems.

Michael James Escuti
09/01/10 - 08/31/11

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, and to develop PG processing techniques and tools that enable commercially viable fabrication.

This project is sponsored by ImagineOptix Corp.

Michael James Escuti
09/01/11 - 08/31/12

The PI and team will investigate polymer Polarization Gratings (PGs) and novel retarders optimized for Liquid Crystal (LC) projector systems, among other devices. 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, 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.

Do Young Eun
03/01/06 - 02/29/12

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 - 08/31/12

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 - 08/31/12

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.

Brian Allan Floyd
11/01/11 - 10/31/14

Under this program, AKM engineers will be trained in millimeter-wave integrated circuit design as visiting scholars and then AKM and NC State will work jointly to develop advanced millimeter-wave circuits and systems using silicon integrated circuit technology.

This project is sponsored by Asahi Kasei Microdevices Corp..

Brian Allan Floyd
03/01/11 - 02/28/14

The large available bandwidth and/or the small wavelengths at millimeter-wave(mmWave) frequencies make possible large-volume applications such as 60-GHz communications, 77-GHz radar, and 94-GHz imaging. Within these applications, there are requirements to either steer a beam around an obstruction (60 GHz) or focus energy in a specific direction (77/94 GHz); therefore, mmWave phased-arrays in silicon is an important and growing commercial research area. Critical work remains related to power reduction of the array elements and cost-effective test, both to be pursued in this project. First, significant power reduction is needed for the phased arrays to make them viable in battery-powered devices or to reduce heat-sinking requirements. Second, since test can dominate overall cost, built-in-self-test techniques must be developed for the phased array to reduce the time of test of a complete array, to reduce the need for mmWave test equipment, and to enable phased-array manufacturing test at both wafer and package-level. In this project, a low-power 60-GHz four-element phased-array transmitter prototype with built-in-self-test will be developed in 0.12-ìm SiGe BiCMOS technology and then scalable test techniques will be developed for this demonstration platform which are applicable to 60-GHz radios, 77-GHz radars, 94-GHz imagers, and even >100-GHz sensors.

This project is sponsored by University of Texas - Dallas.

Brian Allan Floyd, John F. Muth
09/28/11 - 05/27/12

A multi-gigabit-per-second one-way heterodyne communication link will be developed for operation at sub-terahertz carrier (0.1-0.4 THz) frequencies for short-range, covert communications. The feasibility of using MaXentric Technologies? existing commercial-off-the-shelf multi-Gb/s millimeter-wave radios in E-band (60-90 GHz) for the intermediate frequency (IF) of the radio will be explored. Custom frequency converters between the sub-THz carrier and the E-band IF will then be designed using advanced silicon-germanium technology, and the overall performance of such a system will be estimated.

This project is sponsored by MaXentric Technologies, LLC.

Brian Allan Floyd
07/07/11 - 07/06/13

The "Interferometric imaging using Repurposed mIllimeter-wave phased arrayS (IRIS)" research program will develop techniques to enable the addition of imaging capabilities to existing defense-related communication or radar phased-array platforms. This hardware re-use approach to imaging eliminates the payload associated with a traditional millimeter-wave passive imager, which will allow for longer flight times for unmanned airborn vehicles (UAVs) while adding a valuable imaging, navigation, and surveillance capability. The repurposing of the existing phased array will be accomplished through the implementation of code-division multiplexing together with interference-pattern based imaging (interferometry). Architectural and performance trade-offs will be explored and a feasibility study will be completed. Finally, a 94-GHz phased-array circuit prototype will be designed and fabricated to demonstrate the program results.

This project is sponsored by Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

Paul D. Franzon, Michael B. Steer, Mo-Yuen Chow
07/29/09 - 12/31/11

Create tools and methods to increase the lifetime of RF and Radar chips.

This project is sponsored by Raytheon.

Paul D. Franzon
07/01/11 - 06/30/14

We will investigate advanced schemes to reduce chip to chip crosstalk and thus permits denser systems to be built

This project is sponsored by Semiconductor Research Corp..

Paul D. Franzon
07/01/08 - 06/30/12

An undergraduate will assist in this project over summer

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Paul D. Franzon, Veena Misra, Neil DiSpigna, John F. Muth, Eric Rotenberg
08/01/11 - 07/31/12

Work will be conducted on a new unified memory device.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

K. P. Sandeep, Paul D. Franzon, Josip Simunovic
12/15/10 - 12/14/11

There has been a growing interest in continuous flow thermal processing of acid and low-acid foods containing large particulate. However, one of the issues encountered by processors is the relatively high degree of damage to the particulates. The damage can manifest itself in the form of chipping, indentation, rounding of edges, formation of fines etc. These are caused by collision of particles with pipe walls, valve bodies, temperature measuring probes, other particles, and any other protrusion in the pipe through which the product flows. The effects of these collisions are more pronounced at higher temperatures, wherein a softening of the particles takes place. Thus, the current study will focus on developing a sensor to determine the forces experienced by particulates in a multiphase food product as they are being processed in a continuous flow thermal processing system. This will facilitate the process of minimization of damage to particulates during processing.

This project is sponsored by Ohio State University Research Foundation.

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

Design miniature 3D systems.

This project is sponsored by University of California - Berkeley.

Paul D. Franzon, William R. Davis, Eric Rotenberg
07/01/11 - 08/31/14

The key to successfully exploiting 3DIC technology to is design the architecture and circuits to take maximum advantage of the available vertical interconnect while avoiding hidden costs in additional complexity, design time, test effort and yield loss. This proposal describes an approach that achieves that goal.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Paul D. Franzon
07/12/10 - 12/31/11

NCSU will produce a system design capable of accelerating the performance of important speech processing functions at low power.

This project is sponsored by Spansion Inc..

Paul D. Franzon, William R. Davis
07/01/11 - 06/30/12

3DIC promises significant performance and power advantages for 3DIC. However, a serious concern is hot spots. This effort will result in SystemC model of the hardware in a portion of an application processor, together with a transient thermal model.

This project is sponsored by NCSU Center for Efficient, Scalable and Reliable Computing.

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).

Brian L. Hughes
09/01/10 - 08/31/13

In recent years, multi-element antenna arrays have assumed an increasingly central role in the design of wireless communication systems. Recent results on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have shown that deploying multi-element arrays at both the transmitter and receiver can dramatically improve the capacity of wireless channels in the presence of rich multipath. Since the capacity of MIMO systems increases with the number of transmit and receive elements, it is desirable to use as many elements as possible. However, since the physical size of the transmitter and receiver are often limited, increasing the number of elements often requires closer inter-element spacing and inevitably leads to correlation and mutual coupling. Coupling can profoundly impact the received power, available diversity and overall system capacity. Moreover, this impact depends not only on the kind of antennas used and the way they are arranged in space; it also depends in an essential way on key aspects of the wireless transceiver, such as the antenna matching network and the dominant sources of noise.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Brian L. Hughes, Gianluca Lazzi
09/15/07 - 08/31/11

This proposal requests supplemental REU funds to support two undergraduates to conduct research directly related to the objectives of this NSF-sponsored project. Both research projects will be conducted in the first half of 2010 in the Wireless Systems Engineering Laboratory at North Carolina State University.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Iqbal Husain
09/01/11 - 08/31/12

The objective of the project is to develop torque ripple minimized four-quadrant controller for a three-phase switched reluctance machine for electric power steering (EPS) with implementation on EPS system hardware.

This project is sponsored by Nexteer Automotive.

Dennis H. Kekas, Peng Ning, Mladen A. Vouk, Rudra Dutta, Laurie A. Williams, Mihail L. Sichitiu, Michael A. Rappa, John C. Bass
04/03/08 - 11/30/13

North Carolina State University (NCSU), led by the Department of Computer Science and the Institute of Advanced Analytics in conjunction with the Institute for Next Generation IT Systems (ITng), will create and manage a Science of Security Lablet (SOSL) research organization on behalf of the National Security Agency (NSA).

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Ki Wook Kim
11/01/09 - 10/31/12

As a member of the FCRP Center on Functional Engineered Nano Architectonics led by UCLA, our primary aim is to exploit novel ideas with significant potential device impacts in the newly emerging nanoengineered hybrid (or composite) structures by combining the advantages of multiferroics and semiconductors. The emphasis for semiconductors will be on atomically thin cases in a multilayered environment to facilitate nonlinear (or correlated) phenomena. Specifically, we will theoretically investigate various structures and materials in search of realizable and robust combinations for device applications. Relevant physical models will be developed and the feasibility of the underlying mechanisms in multiferroic hybrid structures examined in close collaboration with experimental groups. The application of proposed hybrid switches to memory and logic functions will be analyzed to establish the performance metrics. Device modeling will follow for the optimal design and operating conditions for experimental verification.

This project is sponsored by University of California - Los Angeles.

Ki Wook Kim
10/01/09 - 01/31/12

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 US Army - Army Research Office.

Ki Wook Kim
04/01/08 - 12/31/12

As a member of the South West Academy of Nanoelectronics sponsored by the

SRC/NERC Nanoelectronics Research Initiative, we propose to theoretically

investigate phonon/thermal transport in graphene tunneling transistors and related nanoscale devices with the ultimate goal of phonon engineering for optimum performance. Adopting a multi-scale approach, the focus of the investigation will be on accurate modeling of realistic structures with materials mismatch such as graphene/dielectric and graphene/metal interfaces.

This project is sponsored by University of Texas - Austin.

Ki Wook Kim, David Schurig, Robert J. Trew
04/01/08 - 03/31/12

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 - 12/31/11

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, Mark A. Johnson
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

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).

Robert M. Kolbas, John F. Muth
09/01/10 - 08/31/12

Cooperative research in the area of thermoelectics for waste heat recovery and other energy applications will be performed.

This project is sponsored by Phononic Devices, Inc..

Hamid Krim, Henry J. Trussell
07/01/10 - 06/30/13

Fundamental problems in science and engineering have become increas-

ingly interdisciplinary, requiring knowledge and expert input from several

areas of research. This is both challenging and exciting. The primary chal-

lenge faced by researchers is to keep abreast of new developments in tangen-

tial research areas to their own, not to mention those which are considered

di®erent. The increasing complexity of newly arising problems has on the

other hand, invariably required a multifaceted approach to viewing and un-

derstanding them, and ultimately produce a solution.

To that end, the PIs propose to host a regularly scheduled seminar series with preeminent and leading reseachers in the US and the world, to help promote North Carolina as a center of innovation and knowledge and to ensure safeguarding its place of leading research.

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Hamid Krim
03/17/11 - 03/31/12

The Missile Defense Agency is pursuing collaborative applied technology development activities with selected organizations in the Czech Republic. The projects are unclassified. They are designed to demonstrate and enhance relationships by developing technologies that are of interest to MDA. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) funded phase 1 of a project that was conducted in partnership with the Czech Technical University (CTU) in Prague. The U.S. University was our prime contractor. A substantial portion of the effort was conducted by CTU since we were interested in their unique image reconstruction techniques. In very broad terms, our interest in MDA is in combining the images from several sensors with angular diversity into a coherent picture. While we will eventually apply the algorithms that do this to the missile defense problem (discrimination, pattern matching, etc), we are developing an approach based on the more basic techniques that the Czechs have developed in relation to more simple problems. This SOW is for a follow-on effort that would take advantage of progress made in the first year and include the continuation of basic algorithm research and process development for stereoscopic image analysis. The prime contractor is a U.S. educational institute, whose goals and purpose are more aligned to the CTU. The task will incorporate multimodal EO/IR and SAR (if available) sensor data to enhance 3D reconstruction with a focused effort on reconstructing partially obscured images using a target?s or sensor?s motion.

This project is sponsored by US Missile Defense Agency.

Hamid Krim
06/01/10 - 03/31/13

Two separate efforts are currently being pursued that could greatly benefit each other. One is the exploration of a sensing-modality (polarimetric infrared), its application to a fundamental framework (layered-sensing) and, consequently, an evaluation of that framework's utility. The second is a more "basic research" effort focused on the calculation of abstract network characteristics based in the theory of algebraic topology, a powerful computational tool. The first work, while application driven,

needs the rigor afforded by the second; the second work needs a testing ground, which the first lends itself to, naturally in many facets.

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

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 - 08/31/11

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
08/15/10 - 07/31/12

This work will investigate into the properties of materials suitable for piezoelectric micro electromechanical systems devices employing bimorph cantilever beams for energy harvesting. The goal is to maximize output voltages for further integration with processing electronics into subsystems for sensing applications.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Leda Lunardi
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

NC State University will be responsible for the following educational activities in support of the FREEDM Systems Engineering Research Center:

? Dr. Leda Lunardi will serve as Education Director and as such will oversee budgeting, reporting, and partnership with all education program partners. Dr. Lunardi will serve on the FREEDM Systems Center Leadership team.

? Dr. Leda Lunardi will coordinate the E&D program in all campuses, data collection, recruiting, international exchange, graduate fellowship, REUs, portfolio and maintain the overall goals of the program. Some of the tasks are done with the Education program assistant (TBA) that manages the day-to-day details of Center education program at NC State, see above. Dr. Lunardi will work closely with precollege education team to coordinate the every-one-mentor-one features of the Center. Dr. Lunardi will also help develop and implement exit surveys for the undergraduate and graduate students, and work closely with Dr. Pat Dixon from CIRL for the program evaluation assessment.

? Dr. Lunardi will manage applications for twenty two (22) REUs, Q&A's, web page updating, oversee placement with FREEDM Center faculty and will provide logistical support, subsistence, and academic support for their research projects.

? Dr. Lunardi will serve as the SLC advisor. She will also oversee Center seminars speakers for themes as diversity and career development.

? Dr. Lunardi will work with the Director of Industry and Innovation, Mr. Ewan Pritchard, for identifying industry mentors and internships for students.

? Dr. Lunardi will collect all Center applications for international and exchange students, awards, fellowships and will recommend to the Center Director, Dr. Alex Huang, who makes the final decision.

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

Jagdish Narayan, Leda Lunardi, Mark A. Johnson
05/01/09 - 01/31/12

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, Lisa L. Grable
07/15/10 - 06/30/13

This REU Site program builds on existing projects related to the Gen 3 Engineering Research Center (ERC) NSF Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management (FREEDM) Systems. It will engage 12 undergraduate students with the unique opportunity to work on research topics related to energy storage, semiconductor power electronics, electrical sub-systems, solar and photovoltaic systems, processing issues related to fabrication of solar arrays and semiconductor power devices, in addition to education. Our team consists of faculty from different departments in the college of engineering, college of textiles, and physics.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Veena Misra, John F. Muth
06/01/08 - 05/31/12

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, B. Jayant Baliga, Douglas C Hopkins, Mark A. Johnson
09/01/09 - 08/31/12

The objective of this project is to fabricate and demonstrate normally-off lateral Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (MOS) GaN/AlGaN High Electron Mobility Transistors (HEMTs) power devices and diodes for the second generation of the solid state transformer (SST) for IPM having 600V of blocking voltage characteristics and 10-Ampere current capability with a specific on resistance of 3 mohm-cm2.

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

Veena Misra
08/22/11 - 08/21/12

In this proposal, we will explore novel dielectrics and ultra scaled channel lengths to achieve ultra high performance GaN devices. We will also characterize and model reliability of these devices.

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

Veena Misra, Mehmet C. Ozturk, Michael James Escuti
04/01/08 - 09/30/11

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
07/28/11 - 07/27/12

In this proposal, we seek to gain fundamental insight into the properties of SiC power devices with engineered high-K gate dielectrics. Specifically, we aim to achieve high channel mobility with positive threshold voltages using separate and independent control of the interface and engineered high-k dielectric layers, and understand the mechanisms that impact channel mobility.

This project is sponsored by Toyota Motor Engineering & Manufacturing North America, Inc..

Veena Misra
10/01/09 - 09/30/11

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 dielectrics under program/erase and retention conditions.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Gregory N. Parsons, David E. Aspnes, Duane K. Larick, David A. Shultz, Veena Misra, Jon-Paul Maria
08/16/10 - 08/15/13

Through interdisciplinary doctoral education in Nanoscale Electronic and Energy Materials (NEEM), North Carolina State University (NC State) proposes to increase its commitment to interdisciplinary graduate training in electronic and energy materials related to nanotechnology. This interdisciplinary field comprises several areas designated by the GAANN Program as critical to national need: Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, Chemistry, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, and Physics. Our goal is to enlarge the pool of U.S. citizens and permanent residents who will pursue teaching and research careers in nanoscale electronic and energy materials, thereby developing the academic and research infrastruc¬ture necessary for increasing U.S. competitiveness in this area and the basic science upon which its future success depends. Through outstanding faculty and facilities, as well as long-standing cooperative arrangements with other universities, government, and industry, NC State is uniquely situated to provide excellent graduate education in nanoscale electronic and energy materials.

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

Gregory N. Parsons, Orlin D. Velev, Veena Misra, Christopher B. Gorman, Michael D. Dickey
07/25/08 - 07/24/13

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).

John F. Muth, Salah M. Bedair
10/11/11 - 04/10/12

This program investigates the development of Blue/Green Lasers for underwater communications.

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

John F. Muth
01/01/07 - 12/31/11

While there has been work on the propagation of light underwater for marine biology, underwater imaging and underwater laser radar, the components used thus far have been originally designed for other applications and are not optimized. This suggests substantial improvements can be made with novel devices. The ability to calculate link budgets for realistic water conditions would represent a fundamental advance for undersea communication systems, and knowledge of the characteristics of blue/green emitters and detectors is essential. Autonomous vehicles and machines are rapidly proliferating and using light to communicate provides another dimension to system design to explore without using up more RF bandwidth.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

John F. Muth
07/01/11 - 12/31/11

This project will assist the company PureLux Incorporated in developing a novel light emitting device.

This project is sponsored by PureLux.

Justin Schwartz, John F. Muth
08/15/11 - 08/14/13

This Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II project is proposed to address high temperature superconductor (HTS) insulation to help improve quench protection without any increase in volume manufacturing cost. The project proposes to increase magnet stability and at least double the quench propagation velocity (QPV) in HTS magnets via nanoengineered, thermally conductive, turn-to-turn insulation. In Phase II we will further enhance the insulation layer and also increase thermal conductivity of the epoxy so that the QPV will be further increased to six times that achieved with currently used insulators but at similar or lower costs. This is a critical achievement for HTS magnets in general, and in particular for those generating magnetic fields >25 T.

This project is sponsored by nGimat Co..

John F. Muth, Gianluca Lazzi, Leda Lunardi
12/22/08 - 08/21/11

NCSU will deliver a mounting device for the prototypes they created. This device is to interface with a commercial high voltage power supply which Digital Fusion currently has and will allow the prototypes to be mounted in a standard optics unit.

This project is sponsored by Digital Fusion Solutions Inc..

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

This project continues development of a multiwavelength light emitter to be incorporated into health monitoring applications designed by Valencell Inc.

This project is sponsored by Valencell Inc..

John F. Muth
10/13/10 - 10/11/11

This proposal addresses the fabrication of infrared sensors that may be used in instrumentation for military, medical and industry applications.

This project is sponsored by New Jersey Microsystems, Inc.

John F. Muth
05/16/11 - 10/15/11

The thermal conductivity and electrical properties of materials will be measured to assist in the design of water pumps. This potentially improves the efficiency of water pumps.

This project is sponsored by Pentair Water Pool and Spa, Inc..

John F. Muth
04/01/11 - 08/31/12

Everyone remembers the 100-day horror of the BP oil spill and the 24-hour coverage on CNN of the leakage. But, do you remember the camera lens view of the oil spill from the depths of the ocean? We remember the billowing oil in front of the lens, which made it impossible to see anything else, and maybe that was the point. What if you were a diver trying to fix the spill, or a remote-operated vehicle (ROV) relying on the camera for navigation? Your job would be near impossible with the oil clouding your view. Unfortunately, operators of ROVs run into these vision-limited situations every day. WolfTracks seeks to combat the drawbacks of underwater cameras.

Many consumers who currently purchase underwater ROVs utilize vision-based systems?cameras?for providing user feedback. Vision-based systems are inherently limited under water simply by the distance that light can travel. Light backscatters in water creating hot spots and otherwise noisy images. Additionally, shadows can create confusing and distorting images. The often deployed alternative solution to cameras for many of these problems is sonar. Sonar provides clear 3D images of the seafloor, allowing ROV operators much more detailed maps, and allows for larger ranges to be surveyed simultaneously. However, sonar falls short when it comes to price. In speaking with two of the largest ROV manufacturers SeaBotix and VideoRay, we learned that sonar solutions for these vehicles can exceed the cost of the ROV by 10 times. Sonar solutions offering resolution in the magnitude of 1' start at a cost of around $35,000 and can climb as high as $150,000. SeaBotix believes that current sonar technology may be cost-prohibitive to many customers who could benefit from accurate 3D mapping technologies.

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

Afsaneh Rabiei, Steven Christopher Shannon, Mehmet C. Ozturk, Mohamed A. Bourham
09/01/10 - 02/29/12

This is to request funding to purchase and install a new Ion Beam Assisted Deposition unit and house it at the NCSU Nano-Fabrication facility.

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

Eric Rotenberg
07/01/08 - 06/30/12

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 - 12/31/11

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
09/01/10 - 08/31/13

Different applications achieve their highest performance on different processing hardware. The goal of this project is to design a universal computer architecture that can achieve the same effect as custom-fabricating the optimal processing hardware for arbitrary application behaviors.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

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
01/01/11 - 12/31/14

A confluence of factors have caused the dramatic improvements in single-processor performance to come to a near-standstill. We are forced to recognize that age-old microarchitectural bottlenecks can no longer be ignored. This project explores a comprehensive set of innovative hardware/software techniques to eradicate "branch mispredictions", once and for all. Doing so will lead to unprecedented scaling of instruction-level and memory-level parallelism, both of which are crucial for scaling single-processor performance for years to come, with greater energy efficiency than ever before.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Rudra Dutta, Mihail L. Sichitiu
06/16/09 - 12/31/11

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 US Army - Army Research Office.

Wesley E. Snyder, Wenye Wang
08/12/11 - 08/11/14

Access control and user authentication are key elements for protecting information systems. Access control and protection from the insider threat has been identified as one of the most significant issues in information assurance. In many Army missions, keyboards and card readers may not be available; however, the soldier may be using a hand-held communication device with a touch-sensitive screen. In such a scenario, drawing a simple sketch is likely to be the most efficient and effective mechanism for access control. The soldier in the tactical environment will be provided with an easy-to-use, high reliability access control mechanism.

The text-based password has been a longtime mechanism for users to gain access to

information system such as computers or network access. However to maintain security, users have been burdened with stringent password rules, such as password length and the use of special characters. Multiple passwords for different systems and frequently expiring passwords make the use the passwords a nightmare for many users. This frequently results in security risks, as users write their passwords down and use the same password on many systems. To overcome the burdens of password systems, the authors propose to develop a novel method for computer-access security, allowing the user to draw a simple sketch as his/her password. In this project we will develop a new sketch recognition algorithm, based on the PIs prior successful work in shape recognition. The new sketch based password system will be implemented and evaluated.

The user desiring access (referred to as the artist hereafter), will draw a sketch on a

digitizer pad or touch-sensitive screen (e.g. iPad). The sketch will be matched to a data base of sketches. The principal innovation of the proposed algorithm is treating the sketch as a function of time, and using local measures of that function as parameters for the shape-recognition algorithm, SKS.

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Wesley E. Snyder
10/01/11 - 06/30/12

This project will provide a biologically-plausible explanation for some gestalt

phenomena observed in the human visual system. This exploratory STIR project will limit itself to examination of straight-line detection, but it seeks an explanation for the detection of long lines which extend across a significant portion of the visual field, may be partially occluded, and may not pass through the fovea at all. This work should lead to a better understanding of non-local sensing, particularly in the visual system.

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Yan Solihin, Alexander G. Dean, Mihail L. Sichitiu, Thomas G. Wolcott
09/01/09 - 08/31/14

The proposed work will advance the state of the art in sensor networks for monitoring the underwater environment. The work will use these results in conjunction with other enhancements to an existing rapid software prototyping tool to create a low-cost sensor network infrastructure for intensively monitoring and exploring estuarine and shallow coastal environments. The PIs will collaborate with scientific and environmental professionals in North Carolina, the Southeastern US and the Chesapeake Bay area to develop, apply, evaluate and promote this infrastructure.

We propose to build a low-cost estuarine sensor network infrastructure which relies upon wireless

(RF) communication to support over-the-air communication to monitor data in real-time and upload it to the internet for dissemination. Data will be gathered by a variety of inexpensive submerged and above-water networked nodes, including fixed stations, buoys, and vehicles (remotely operated and autonomous), some of which have been developed by a collaborator at NOAA.

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.

Yan Solihin
08/01/11 - 07/31/14

Today, the primary tool used for evaluating future computer system designs is simulation, where each machine instruction and its impact on processor and memory state are simulated in great details. While powerful and versatile, processor simulation is exceedingly slow: roughly four to five orders of magnitude slower than native execution. Unfortunately, in the future, solely relying on processor simulation will be too constraining, due to increasing cache sizes that requires longer simulation time, increasing use of hypervisor or user-level virtual machines that need to be simulated as well in addition to the Operating System, increasing number of cores on chip that result in longer simulation time, and increasing occurrence of multi-programmed and multi-threaded workload.

Analytical modeling is an attempt to capture fundamental relationships between various parameters of a design and to capture how they affect performance or power/energy consumption. An analytical model is much faster to run and can be reasonably accurate. Unfortunately, widespread use of analytical models have been hampered by the lack of widely available toolset that researchers can use and build upon, and the high barrier of entry into using and developing them. The objective of this proposal is to integrate various disparate analytical models into a single toolset that can be used by researchers for computer architecture design and evaluation. The expected outcome of this project is a tool that aids processor simulation through three important roles: providing ability to reason about what parameters determine the outcome of a performance phenomenon, discovering insights into how architecture parameters fundamentally relate to one another, and providing first-order approximation that allows narrowing down the search space for simulation studies. The impact of this project is that it enables computer design and evaluation to be improved significantly in terms of quality (deeper insights can be obtained), as well as resource efficiency (less simulation time is required to arrive at the same observations).

The project has the following components. One component is analysis of various analytical models in order to characterize their input, output, key techniques, and assumptions. Another component is common denominator analysis and model integration analysis, in order to identify common denominators of various models. The third component is a support infrastructure for the models. The fourth component is a toolset that integrates the analytical models, benchmarks, profiling tools, documentation into a software package that the community can use through an easy-to-use and intelligent interface. The final component is integration of the project into existing courses, with an emphasis on classroom materials suitable for undergraduate course. These materials will be made available for public download, and community enhancement and extension.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Daniel D Stancil, David Schurig
09/01/10 - 08/31/12

I propose to design and fabricate three dimensional lenses based on the modified Luneburg design. These lense will address IC comunity needs in specific frequency ranges of interest. The design will employ the transformtion method to find an intial material property specification with a subsequent relaxation to obtain a simplifed material property tensor that is at least diagonal in a convenient coordinate sytem or possibly isotropic. In that latter case, broadband operation is possible. These material specifications will be implemented with metamaterials.

This project is sponsored by Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Michael B. Steer
06/01/10 - 05/31/12

The annual Workshop on Audio Technologies is sponsored by the Office of the Chief Scientist and by the Army Research Office in March or April of each year. This project is for the support of the fifth workshop in the Washington, DC area. The aim of the workshop is providing the intelligence community an exposure to the state-of-the-art audio-related technologies, and also exposure the academic community to areas of concern to the community.

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Jon-Paul Maria, Elizabeth C. Dickey, Michael B. Steer
06/20/11 - 01/31/13

Ferroelectric oxides such as barium strontium titanate (Ba1-xSrxTiO3 or BST) can be incorporated into frequency tunable RF and microwave devices creating a class of tunable circuits that enable advanced military and commercial radar, sensor, and communication systems. The progress of previous programs exploring these technologies has been promising, and state of the art tunable capacitors exhibit performance characteristics that are appropriate for widespread integration. All trajectories indicate that ferroelectrics will be a valuable future technology, by additional investments in basic issues of materials, integration, and design.

This project is sponsored by Defense Microelectronics Activity.

Michael B. Steer
09/14/10 - 09/13/12

This proposal integrates electrical modeling using the circuit simulator fREEDA with a finite difference time domain electromagnetic simulator developed by REMCOM. The combination will enable fully physical modeling of device interactions with time-varying electromagnetic fields. The proposed tool will be able to model the high fidelity time domain of radio transceivers circuits with both nonlinear and dynamic characteristics. Further, the transceiver modeling will be coupled with the ability to model time varying antenna radiation patterns. Thus the goal of this proposed project is to integrate proven circuit modeling tools with electromagnetic modeling and simulation tools. The proposed tool will support not only radiated energy but also the effects of external fields such as co-site interference on the circuitry. This will enable researchers to more completely understand the nature of co-site interference and facilitate the development of co-site mitigation strategies.

This project is sponsored by Remcom, Inc..

Michael B. Steer, Zhiping Feng
11/01/10 - 10/31/11

Silicon circuit boards have several chips mounted and interconnected with fine multilayer copper interconnects with through silicon vias making connection through a backside metal to solder pads. This project involves the simulation, modeling and experimental characterization of these interconnects and through silicon vias.

This project is sponsored by RTI International (aka Research Triangle Institute).

Michael B. Steer, Hamid Krim, Mohammed A. Zikry, David Schurig
08/01/10 - 07/31/13

This project will develop the basic science of acoustic and electromagnetic interactions leading to the engineering of new sensors that can exploit the knowledge that these interactions provide about the environment. Stand-off probing of surface and buried objects using acoustic probes is complicated by the poor knowledge of nonlinear and diffusive acoustic effects. Great insights, including differentiation of objects, can be obtained by exploiting nonlinear acoustic interactions and by exploiting long-tail effects resulting from acoustic diffusion inside an object. The overall concept is to develop the fundamental knowledge enabling the development of a tricorder-like device for interrogating the environment thus contributing to total situational awareness

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

Michael B. Steer, Kevin Gard
07/01/05 - 08/31/11

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 US Army - Army Research Office.

Robert J. Trew, Ki Wook Kim
08/23/10 - 08/22/13

As a member of the research team led by the University of Arkansas, we will investigate electronic transport in graphene nanostructures for potential applications to high frequency (terahertz) sources and interconnects. Detailed theoretical models will be developed and multi-scale numerical simulations conducted to elucidate the unique advantages and fundamental limitations of this emerging material system. The obtained physical characteristics of graphene based nanostructures will be applied to devise and optimize advanced terahertz device concepts. Experimental demonstration will be pursued in collaboration with the team members.

This project is sponsored by University of Arkansas.

Robert J. Trew
05/26/09 - 05/25/12

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 another 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 US Army - Army Research Laboratory.

Robert J. Trew, Griff L. Bilbro
03/14/08 - 04/30/13

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.

James Tuck, Yan Solihin
09/01/08 - 08/31/12

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 - 02/29/12

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 - 02/28/13

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.

Alex Q. Huang, Ewan Gareth David Pritchard, Edward A. Baker, Srdjan Miodrag Lukic, Wenye Wang, Mesut E. Baran, Mo-Yuen Chow, Mark A. Johnson
09/01/08 - 08/31/13

The Future Renewable Electric Energy Delivery and Management Systems (FREEDM) Center at North Carolina State University (NCSU) will partner with the Advanced Vehicle Research Center (AVRC) in Danville, VA, to develop an intelligent Battery Management System (iBMS) for application in hybrid electric vehicles (HEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs) and battery electric vehicles (BEVs). Advanced high power and high energy storage, like lithium ion, are the most critical components for vehicle performance and cost. Any malfunction in the battery pack typically causes degradation or complete failure in vehicle performance, dramatic reduction of battery service life as well as high operation and maintenance costs. Thus, a robust and intelligent battery management system (BMS) is absolutely required to manage the battery cells for avoiding malfunction. The need for this technology is immediate, and an AVRC intellectual property assessment has suggested a very significant market potential.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Wenye Wang, Alexander G. Dean
09/01/08 - 08/31/11

The project goal is two-fold: First we aim to identify a fundamental problem for reliable and secure FREEDM, which includes the communication requirements for the FREEDM intelligent energy management nodes and intelligent fault management nodes, and putting together, as an intelligent systems which are connected via off-the-shelf communication product, to categorize and formulate the optimal design problem to satisfy different applications, and to provide guidelines of the state-of-art communication and networking facilities. In other words, the outcome of this project will be able to make contributions to the body of knowledge regarding FREEDM as a showcase of SmartGrid. At the mean time, our result is expected to identify new research problems for general area of communication, security, and networking.

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

Alex Q. Huang, Mesut E. Baran, Wenye Wang, Subhashish Bhattacharya, Iqbal Husain
08/15/10 - 08/14/12

The goal of this project is not only to eventually demonstrate the overall FREEDM system concept and operation (functionality) in a realistic 12 kV distribution system, but also to power the whole center headquarters space by renewable and sustainable energies. It is also used as a major component to educate public and policy maker on the merits of our revolutionary FREEDM concept.

This is the top level testbed project for the 1 MW GEH. This project started in Year 3. In Year 3, the focus has been the acquisition of key equipment needed for the hub. In Year 4, the focus will be shifting more towards integrating center developed technologies into the hub.

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

Wenye Wang, Alexandra Duel-Hallen
09/01/10 - 08/31/13

This proposal supplement focuses on channel measurements to complement the theoretical investigation for vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) of the parent proposal. As one of the most promising large-scale applications of mobile ad hoc networks, vehicular networking has emerged as a radically new paradigm for the design of networking protocols, mobility models, and a variety of new applications for our daily lives. This technology has its roots in on-board sensors in vehicles, global position systems (GPS) receivers, and algorithms/protocols in ad hoc networks, which enable vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications without infrastructure equipment (e.g., base stations in cellular systems). While a good level of understanding of network performance has been accumulated, it does not fulfill the needs of VANET, partially because of lack of deployment of sound channel models, and partially due to the challenges of modeling and analysis for vehicular environments with significant dynamics and randomness. As vehicular communications advance large-scale and social networks, there is an acute

and timely demand for exploring fundamental principles of mobility-induced channels and network dynamics, which have not been studied systematically, but have tremendous impact on a wide range of research areas, such as channel prediction, routing protocol designs, optimization techniques for performance analysis and estimation, and modeling of network architecture and topology.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Wenye Wang, Hamid Krim
04/01/08 - 07/31/13

The national infrastructure, such as civilian and military telecommunication networks, power grids, and transportation systems are vulnerable to large-scale physical attacks in WMD environments. Under such attacks, the intrinsic nature of {\em

networking} inevitably surrenders a given infrastructure to cascading or correlated failures in both temporal and spatial domains, which in turn, have a great and potentially devastating impact on network operation availability and performance. In the extension period of this project, we will focus on network vulnerability to such failures and on assessing network availability, subject to variations in traffic and user

demands, as well as critical elements. To this end, we will first study the underlying network topology that is used to monitor, detect, and identify attacks, by analyzing the topological structure (i.e., operational state) of a network. We will subsequently explore how {\em cascading} and {\em correlated} failures are formed and will propagate in networks, and how such failures disrupt communications. Then we will define a set of new metrics to measure/evaluate network vulnerabilities in order to

identify the conditions and scenarios that would have the maximum destructive effect on the network in geographical regions, virtual domains, and connectivity.

This project is sponsored by Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

Wenye Wang
02/09/09 - 07/31/12

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.

Vincent Chiang, Ronald R. Sederoff, Hou-min Chang, David C. Muddiman, Cranos Williams, Fikret Isik, Joel J. Ducoste, Christopher P. Smith
09/01/11 - 08/31/14

Plant cell walls are the essential components of feedstocks for biomass based liquid fuel alternatives to petroleum. The secondary cell walls of woody plants contribute greatly to biomass and are targets for improving potential feedstocks. In the application of systems biology to development of new biofuels, as in any complex biological process, predictive modeling is the central goal. We propose to use a systems approach with genome based information and mathematical modeling to advance the understanding of the biosynthesis of the plant secondary cell wall. To do this, we will use multiple transgenic perturbations and measure effects on plants using advanced quantitative methods of genomics, proteomics, and structural chemistry. The combination of quantitative analysis, transgenesis, statistical inference and systems modeling provide a novel and comprehensive strategy to investigate the regulation, biosynthesis and properties of the secondary cell wall.

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

Vincent Chiang, Ronald R. Sederoff, Joel J. Ducoste, Fikret Isik, David C. Muddiman, Cranos Williams, Christopher P. Smith, Reza A Ghiladi
09/15/09 - 08/31/13

Lignin is a unique and complex phenylpropanoid polymer, important in plant development and response to environment. We propose to advance our knowledge of lignin biosynthesis by developing a comprehensive pathway model of regulatory and metabolic flux control mechanisms. Our primary tool will be systematic gene specific perturbation in transgenic Populus trichocarpa. We will perturb all 34 known lignin pathway and regulatory network genes in P. trichocarpa using artificial microRNA (amiRNA) and RNAi suppression. From each independent transgenic perturbation, we will obtain quantitative information on transcript and protein abundance, enzyme kinetics, metabolite concentrations, and lignin structural chemistry. Using statistical correlation and path analysis, we will integrate this information to develop a mechanistic-based signaling graph and metabolic flux model for the pathway and its regulation leading to specific lignin structures. This model will reveal regulatory constraints on steady-state flux distributions and show how genes and other process components affect flux activity of lignin precursors, composition, and linkages. In this way, we will provide a systems biology approach to this fundamental pathway. There are few opportunities in higher plants to integrate genomics, biochemistry, chemistry and modeling to develop a comprehensive understanding of biosynthesis and structure of a major component of morphology and adaptation.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Weidong Zhang
06/17/11 - 03/16/14

The proposed research investigations will apply physics-based models and advanced numerical simulations to investigate the electronic and photonic properties of InAs/GaSb broken-gap heterostructures in the context of electron-injection driven light emission and lasing. The primary objective of this research is to develop fundamental insights into the electron and hole processes within a novel broken-gap interband resonant tunneling diode (I-RTD) structure that has been shown to offer potential for significant photonic emission and lasing at terahertz (THz) frequencies. This work conducted under this project will theoretically analyze the electron/hole transport and associated recombination processes and it will generate optimized heterostructure laser device designs that will be able to achieve significantly increased levels of terahertz (THz) frequency output power at relatively high operating temperatures (as high as ~102 W/cm2, above 200K). As will be explained in the proposal, the results from this academic research project will also be coordinated with experts within the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) and the U.S. Army Edgewood Chemical Biological Center (ECBC) to motivate collaborative activities that can be used to: realize the required broken-gap heterostructure material structures; fabricate the single-diode and arrayed micro-pillar laser devices; and execute testing for the output power and efficiency performance.

These research activities will make strategic use of broken-gap heterostructures to define completely new device solutions to the long-standing THz-frequency gap in source technology. The work will make refinements and optimizations to a previously conceptualized unipolar double-barrier GaSb/InAs/GaSb heterostructure device that simultaneously leverages resonant-electron-injection and interband-electrontunneling- depletion to realize electron population inversion, while at the same time mitigating the scattering effects that degrade the lasing process, so as to allow for achieving large available optical gain at very long wavelengths. Here, the broken-gap heterostructures allows for bringing into close proximity a population of upper-state electrons (i.e., that are confined within the double-barrier conduction-band well) with a population of lower-state holes (i.e., that are confined within the right GaSb valence-band well). The resulting key innovations are the depopulation of the valence-band well by ultrafast heavy-hole interband tunneling (i.e., time constant < 100 ps) which creates and maintains the spatial heavy-hole charge accumulation in the right GaSb barrier region by greatly outperforming the electron-filling caused by nonradiative scatterings (e.g. optical phonon and Auger).

Hence, this basic physical phenomenon suggests that powerful and tunable laser diodes are achievable, and the research proposed here seeks to apply physics-based modeling (e.g., multiband Kane model formalism) to define device structures (i.e., both double-barrier and cascaded structures) that will yield large optical gain at very long wavelengths. In addition, the interband photon emission naturally occurs in TE mode, which offers engineering advantages as compared to the familiar inter-subband quantum cascade laser which produces TM mode lasing. Specifically, the TE polarization allows for implementing the InAs/GaSb diode as a vertical-cavity surface emission laser (VCSEL), and does not require complex circuitry. Hence, this project will also define and investigate VCSEL type architectures that utilize arrays of InAs/GaSb quantum micro-pillars to mitigate thermal effects due to large drive currents so as to realize much large output powers and power efficiencies. The planned research will prescribe designs for the material hetero-layers, device geometries and cavity arrays that will be needed for realizing an optimized solid-state source for operation around 1 THz. This research effort will leverage collaborations with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory for achieving the required materials growth and devi

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Weidong Zhang
10/01/11 - 07/31/12

The objective of this research is to explore the development of first principal and hybrid first principal quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) simulation techniques that can help to discover novel bio-organic electronic functionalities and test these emerging physics-based modeling approaches in biological (bio) electronic and bio-chemical scenarios and sensing applications. More specifically, this research will focus on studying molecular conformations, electronic structure of ground and excited states, dynamics of bio-molecular systems and nanostructures that have relevance to future electronic systems and bio-chemical applications of interest to the U.S. Army and U.S. Department of Defense. This project seeks to support the development of novel functionality including portable, light-weight nano-sensors of bio-warfare or chemical threat agents to be used on a battlefield. For example, a sensing material using functionalized DNA origami panels as unit cells is envisioned where target-molecule- induced change in the tensor dielectric function produces a measurable diffraction of a wave transmitting through the material. Also, the scientific exploration in this project will be directed toward a research of fundamental mechanisms of stem cell growth with the goal to identify opportunities for novel medical treatments with regenerative capabilities for injured military and civilian personnel that have a potential to dramatically improve outcomes.

This project is sponsored by US Army - Army Research Office.

Weidong Zhang, Peiji Zhao
05/01/07 - 12/31/11

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 US Army - Army Research Office.

Huiyang Zhou
08/24/11 - 02/14/12

This project is a subcontract of a STTR Phase I project. We plan to investigate the feasibility of developing scalable approaches for utilizing many-core GPUs or multi-core CPUs to accelerate acoustic simulation.

This project is sponsored by EE Boost, Inc..

Huiyang Zhou
01/01/11 - 12/31/14

In this proposal, we investigate novel architectural solutions to achieving performance enhancement at the 1:1:1 (performance:power:area) cost ratio for single-threaded programs.

This project is sponsored by Intel Corp..

Huiyang Zhou
08/17/09 - 04/30/13

Given their ever increasing complexity, modern software systems are plagued with software defects, commonly known as bugs. It usually takes significant amount of efforts for software developers to locate the defects after a program failure is observed. Due to the limited on-chip resource at the time, traditional architectural support for debugging was limited to a basic set of primitive functions like breakpoints and watchpoints. With the advances in semiconductor technology, the resource constraint is less of a concern and much more powerful architectural support becomes possible to be implemented to ease software debugging. In this research, novel software-hardware integrated approaches are developed to automatically pinpoint software defects and the aim is to develop a computer that can automatically pinpoint the faculty code in either sequential or parallel programs and potentially generate a fix to the defect.

Previous work on architectural support for debugging mainly focused on one aspect of debugging activities including faithfully reproducing program failures or detecting potential bugs. In comparison, this research introduces novel architectural support for: bug detection to report potential bugs, bug isolation to find the relevant bugs based on cause-effect relationship between the potential bugs and the program failure, and bug validation to generate quick fixes to the isolated bugs, thereby forming a complete process of automated debugging. Bugs in both sequential and parallel programs are the target in this research. For parallel programs, the research investigates thread interaction under the transactional memory programming model and develops novel automated debugging schemes for concurrency bugs. The research also includes the prototype of the novel architectural supports to evaluate their effectiveness with real-world applications.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.

Huiyang Zhou
09/15/09 - 08/31/12

Embedded digital systems are ubiquitous and may contain sensitive information that could be used for malicious purposes if fallen into the wrong hands. Therefore, strong cryptographic algorithms have been incorporated inside these devices. However, attackers have switched their targets from the cryptographic algorithms themselves to the hardware/software implementations of these algorithms, through ?side-channel? chip measurements. From a hardware perspective, such side-channel attacks can be implemented at both the circuit-level and architecture-level. Although much research has been performed in mitigating side-channel attacks, these solutions are inflexible, unsystematic, and have high overhead. The goal of this research is to develop a universal solution that synergistically combines both architecture-level and circuit-level countermeasures for mitigating all major categories of side-channel attacks, to yield an extremely secure, highly flexible, low overhead digital system design methodology. In this proof-of-concept project, preliminary research will be carried out at both levels. At the architecture-level, novel architectural support to mitigate architecture-level timing and access-driven attacks will be developed. At the circuit-level, Delay-Insensitive Ternary Logic will be utilized to design the new architectural support as well as other key components of a MIPS32 4K-compatible embedded microprocessor. The effectiveness and efficiency of side-channel attack resistance at both architecture-level and circuit-level will be evaluated. Educational modules of circuit-level and architecture-level attack mitigation will be developed. Graduate and undergraduate students, especially from underrepresented groups, will be involved in this project. The research outcome will be disseminated to the academic and industrial communities through journal articles, conference presentations, and appropriate websites.

This project is sponsored by National Science Foundation.