Focus Areas

The following focus areas are currently available. To view details on the courses for each focus area, view the Flow of Courses document.

Space Systems / Optics

Space research in the ECE Department is concentrated in the areas of spacecraft instrumentation for space environment characterization, Ionospheric physics, Magnetospheric physics, Space Weather Prediction, Spacecraft Systems Engineering, Spacecraft design, Advanced Materials for Spacecraft Electronics, Nano/Pico-Satellites and Spacecraft-Environment Interactions.

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Control Systems/Robotics

Control and robotics research at USU includes topics such as: cooperative control of multiple autonomous vehicles, autonomous control of robotic vehicles, networked mechatronic systems and their emerging advanced controls, distributed measurement and distributed actuation of distributed parameter systems. Our emphasis is on both theoretical development and real experimental platform validation.

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Signals / Communications

Communications and signal processing research at USU includes topics such as: 3D image formation from fused digital images/Ladar, software radio, development of error-correcting codes, atmospheric tomography, image and data compression, hyperspectral image exploitation, and adaptive echo-cancellation systems. Many aspects of these topics are being investigated ranging from the theoretical to the practical and efficient implementation in interesting applications.

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Computer Engineering

The computer engineering research consists of the following major sub areas:

Computer Architecture
Computer Architecture research in USU focuses on design of multicore processors, and explores the interaction of software and hardware. Current research topics include power and thermal analysis of multicore processors, dynamic specialization of individual micro-architectures for a range of applications (desktop, servers, multimedia), software-hardware co-design with special emphasis on virtualization techniques, multicore system design for 3D integration, incorporating circuit level technology trends into functional aspects of micro-architecture design, and GPU-based architecture for general purpose computation.
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VLSI Computer Aided Design (CAD)
VLSI-CAD research focuses on the modeling and optimization of VLSI circuits. Research projects seek solutions to the critical challenges faced by the integrated circuit designers as transistors are getting scaled to nanometer regimes. Specific research topics include thermal, reliability and variation aware design of floorplanning, placement and routing algorithms for integrated circuits; GPU based parallel CAD algorithm design; and thermal and electrical co-optimization of 3D integrated circuits.  
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Reconfigurable Computing
In the area of reconfigurable embedded computing, sub-topics include porting of high performance computing algorithms such as linear algebra kernels, molecular dynamics and other scientific routines onto multi-FPGA-CPU systems, exploring partial and dynamic reconfiguration for space based applications such as autonomous mission planning, navigation algorithms, as well as media processing such as image and video processing algorithms. In the area of fault tolerance computing, sub-topics include exploration of TMR, DMR with Hold, self healing circuits and related techniques to empower FPGAs with fault mitigation/tolerance features. In the area of 3D integrated circuits, sub-topics include thermal aware migratory logic through dynamic reconfiguration, self checking and healing circuits to recover from dynamic multiple soft errors, design automation tools such as synthesis, placement and routing that are aware of thermal and via connectivity issues in a 3D stack.
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Embedded Systems
For more information about research in the embedded systems area, email Click to view e-mail address

Solid State Electronics

Microelectronics research at USU focuses on miniaturized, integrated implementations of analog and digital systems. Current research topics include integrated circuits for spacecraft instrumentation; efficient architectures for implementing error correction in data communication systems; low-power and low-voltage analog circuits; design automation for mixed signal circuits (particularly analog-to- digital converters and integrated instrumentation); and highly- reliable RAM circuits. These research topics build on a foundation of advanced electronics, and analog and digital VLSI classes offered at USU, where silicon-level implementation and simulation are fully developed.

For more information, see the USU electronics wiki page http://electronics.wiki.usu.edu/ or email Dr. Chris Winstead Click to view e-mail address

EM / Microwaves

Electromagnetics and Microwave research at USU includes the following topics: computational electromagnetics, electromagnetic and microwave interaction in complex systems such as space enviorenment, bio-tissue, microwave circuits design, radio frequency microelectromechanical systems (RF MEMS), Novel antennas design, reconfigurable antennas for use in adaptive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. These research topics spans numerical analysis and practical implementation, providing a full EM research capability at USU.

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