Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE Department Seminar: From Linear Systems of Equations to Linear Dynamical Systems: A Talk on Distributed Controllers Design and Applications

May 17, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Serban Sabau,University of Pennsylvania Time: 1:30 PM -- 2:30 PM, May 17th (Friday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Consider that a linear time-invariant (LTI) plant is given and that we wish to design a stabilizing controller for it. As a general hypothesis throughout the talk, the controllers we are interested in - have access only to partial measurements. In the first part of the talk, as a way to model this hypothesis we impose that the class of admissible controllers (are LTI and) must comply with a pre-selected sparsity pattern. The sparsity pattern is assumed to be quadratically invariant (QI) [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: The Case for Transmit Only Communication

April 24, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Richard P. Martin,Associate professor Computer Science Department, Rutgers University Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Apr. 24th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT The past 15 years has seen significant investigation of sensing networks, however, widespread adoption has yet to occur. In this talk, we describe a new class of Transmit Only (TO) protocols that addresses this gap. The key observation is that we can greatly improve the simplicity, reliability and energy consumption of the sensors by using a small network of well-connected, powered receivers. Comparing several generations of sensor nodes to a TO design, we first show that the [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Rehabilitation Learning in Virtual Reality with Robot Assistance

March 27, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Katherine G. August,University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Institute of Neuroinformatics, Zurich, Switzerland Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Mar. 27th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Many patients experience severe motor, proprioception and tactile sensory loss following stroke, spinal cord injury, Guillain-Barre syndrome, traumatic brain injury, or with Cerebral Palsy which disrupts body schema and sensory dependent skills. For many, there are no traditional therapies available and patients fail to use the hand and arm dramatically affecting their quality of life. A number of learning strategies can be employed for technology assisted rehabilitation, yet only a few, such as [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: MAC in Motion: Delivering Differential Services in Drive-Thru Internet

March 22, 2013

Speaker:Prof. Xuemin (Sherman) Shen,Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada Time: 11:00 AM -- 12:00 PM, Mar. 22th (Friday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 219 ABSTRACT The pervasive adoption of IEEE 802.11 radios in the past decade has made possible for the easy Internet access from a vehicle, notably drive-thru Internet. However, originally designed for the static indoor applications, the performance of IEEE 802.11 in the outdoor vehicular environment is still unclear especially when a large number of fast-moving users transmitting simultaneously. In this talk, we first introduce the Vehicular ad hoc Networks. We then discuss the throughput performance of [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Planning, Decision Making & Learning for Robotic Information Gathering

March 20, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Geoffrey A. Hollinger,Viterbi School of EngineeringUniversity of Southern California Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Mar. 20th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Typically when robots are tasked with gathering information (e.g., in urban search and rescue, environmental monitoring, and aerial surveillance scenarios), human operators must oversee almost every aspect of the operation to ensure completion of the task. Strict human oversight not only makes such deployments expensive and time consuming but also makes some tasks impossible due to the requirement for heavy cognitive loads or superhuman reaction times. These limitations can be mitigated by making the robotic information gatherers [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: The Role of Electromagnetics in Biomedicine and Healthcare: From Implantable Diagnostic Sensors to Non-Invasive Cancer Screening

March 18, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Negar Tavassolian,Postdoctoral Associate, Cima LabDavid H. Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer ResearchMassachusetts Institute of Technology Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Mar. 18th (Monday), 2013 Location: McLean Building, Room 510 ABSTRACT Recent advances in electromagnetics theory have played a fundamental role in pushing the frontiers of biomedical technology. Interaction of electromagnetic fields with biological systems can be extremely beneficial and lead to novel medical applications. This talk will focus on measurement methods and instruments for probing external and internal electric and magnetic fields as relevant to biomedical applications. I will first discuss bio-sensing strategies based on nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) relaxation measurement [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Digital Multimedia Forensics and Anti-Forensics

March 7, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Matthew Stamm,University of Maryland in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Mar. 7th (Thursday), 2013 Location: McLean Building, Room 510 ABSTRACT As the use of digital multimedia content such as images and video has increased, so have the means and the incentive to create digital forgeries. Presently, powerful editing software allows forgers to create perceptually convincing digital forgeries. In response to this, researchers have begun developing digital forensic techniques capable of identifying digital forgeries. These forensic techniques operate by detecting imperceptible traces, known as fingerprints, left by editing operations in digital multimedia content. Little consideration, [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Dynamical Processes on â€˜Coupledâ€™ Complex Networks: Cascading Failures, Information Epidemics, and Complex Contagions

March 6, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Osman Yagan,CyLab, Carnegie Mellon UniversityPittsburgh, PA 15213 Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Mar. 6th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT The past decade has witnessed a great deal of research interest on dynamical processes in complex networks, and most of the focus has been on individual networks that live in isolation. However, many real-world systems consist of a web of interacting networks that are coupled together. Examples include the power grid, the Internet, the transportation network, and the global financial network. Therefore, there is a need for studying the effect of coupling on various network properties, and this has [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Reliable and Secure Cryptographic Hardware and Deeply Embedded Systems

February 28, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Mehran Mozaffari Kermani,Postdoctoral Research FellowPrinceton University Time: 1:30 PM -- 2:30 PM, Feb. 28th (Thursday), 2013 Location: Room 110 Altorfer Building ABSTRACT Computing platforms are expected to be deeply embedded within physical objects, including human body, creating an Internet of Things. These embedded computing platforms enable a wide spectrum of applications, including implantable and wearable medical devices, smart homes, smart meters, physical infrastructure monitoring, and near-field communication (NFC) or radio-frequency identification (RFID)-based emerging applications. The explosion in devices and connectivity creates a much larger attack surface, hence opening up new opportunities for malicious attacks and, therefore, requiring effective implementations of cryptographic primitives. [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: End-to-End QoS Provisioning for Multimedia Services in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

February 20, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Yu-ning DONG,Professor Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Feb 20th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT With the growth of multimedia applications, dynamic evolution of networks makes the provision of Quality of Service (QoS) a complex process over heterogeneous networks with different protocols and different QoS domains. To establish end-to-end QoS, lots of efforts have been made to find ways to integrate QoS mapping solutions. However, in both academia and industries, to support effective end-to-end QoS for multimedia services over heterogeneous networks remains a challenge. This talk will discuss the challenges and possible [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Evolution to 4G Wireless - the dominant role of LTE

February 13, 2013

Speaker:Dr. Vijay K. Varma,Applied Communication Sciences Red Bank, NJ Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Feb 13th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT The trend towards All-IP networks and the increased demand for multimedia services prompted the wireless industry to adopt a packet based radio-access technology and an optimized packet core network. Evolved Packet System (EPS), an evolution to GSM and UMTS technologies - with an industry-adopted name of Long Term Evolution (LTE) – has become the most dominant technology in the race for 4G wireless. This talk will address the evolution from GSM/UMTS technologies to 4G wireless dominated by the LTE. [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: The ShareTable Family Communication System: a Case Study of HCI as a Way of Inventing

January 16, 2013

Speaker:Lana Yarosh,Research Scientist, AT&T Labs Research Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Jan 16th (Wednesday), 2013 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Human-Computer Interaction is an approach to inventing something new by starting with a human need first. I follow the process of one such invention through the steps typically taken in HCI: identifying a problem, working with potential users to understand how the problem can be solved, making something new, and taking it back into the real world to see if it works. In my talk, I describe the process of creating the ShareTable a system for supporting better contact between parents [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Distinguishing Users with Capacitive Touch Communication

October 3, 2012

Speaker:Tam Vu,Ph.D candidate, Department of Computer Science, Rutgers University Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Oct. 3th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT As we are surrounded by an ever-larger variety of post-PC devices, the traditional methods for identifying and authenticating users have become cumbersome and time-consuming. In this paper, we present a capacitive communication method through which a device can recognize who is interacting with it. This method exploits the capacitive touchscreens, which are now used in laptops, phones, and tablets, as a signal receiver. The signal that identifies the user can be generated by a small transmitter embedded into [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Push the Limit of WiFi based Localization for Smartphones

September 19, 2012

Speaker: Hongbo Liu Electrical and Computer EngineeringStevens Institute of Technology Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Sep 19th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Indoor localization is a critical enabler for location based smartphone applications. In many environments (e.g., airport terminals, railway stations and shopping malls), the location helps users access navigation, merchandise and promotion information; businesses need it to understand the patterns of customer visit and stay. Although there have been some recent commercial offerings and a plethora of academic work on indoor localization, highly accurate indoor localization on smartphones remains elusive. Based on our empirical investigation of the suitability [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Indirect Reciprocity Security Game for Large-Scale Wireless Networks

August 29, 2012

Speaker:Dr. Liang Xiao,Associate Professor, Department of Communication Engineering, Xiamen University Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, Aug 29th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 319 ABSTRACT Radio nodes can obtain illegal security gains by performing attacks, and they are motivated to do so if the illegal gains are larger than the resulting costs. Most existing direct reciprocity-based works assume constant interaction among players, which does not always hold in large-scale networks. In this work, we propose a security system that applies the indirect reciprocity principle to combat attacks in wireless networks. Because network access is highly desirable for most nodes, including potential attackers, [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Indoor Mapping and Localization in a Non-Gaussian World

May 30, 2012

Speaker: Tin Kam Ho, Piotr Mirowski and Ravi Palaniappan (in collaboration with Harald Steck, Philip Whiting and Michael MacDonald) Statistics and Learning Research - Enabling Computing TechnologiesBell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent Time: 2:00 PM -- 3:00 PM, May 30th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 203 ABSTRACT As mobility moves onto the center stage of telecommunications, there is an increasing need for the network system’s ability to follow users and objects in all types of environments. Radio-Frequency (RF) fingerprinting is an interesting solution for indoor localization and tracking. Accurate localization enables the system to provide location-based services, optimize network deployment and improve the system’s energy [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Technology and Standard in Virtual-view 3D Systems

May 15, 2012

Speaker: Hsueh-Ming HANG Distinguished Professor, Department of Electronics Engineering, Associate Dean, College of Electrical and Computer Engineering National Chiao-Tung University Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, May 15th (Tuesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 321 ABSTRACT 3D video products are aggressively growing recently. One step further, the virtual-viewpoint (or free-viewpoint) video becomes the research focus. It is also an on-going standardization item of the international MPEG Committee. In addition to the movie special effect people have seen, one application of a virtual-view system is the multi-view auto-stereoscopic (glasses free 3D) display. Practically, a densely arranged camera array is used to acquire input images [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Capacity of Distributed Antenna Network by using Single Carrier Frequency Domain Adaptive Antenna Array

April 26, 2012

Speaker: Dr. Wei Peng Tohoku University Time: 1:30 PM -- 2:30 PM, April 26th (Thursday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 110 ABSTRACT Single-carrier frequency domain adaptive antenna array (SC-FDAAA) has been proposed and proved to be effective in suppressing multiple access interference (MAI) in a severely frequency selective fading channel. We studied the performance of SC-FDAAA in a distributed antenna network (DAN). In order to make it clear whether the performance of SC-FDAAA can benefit from the distributed nature of DAN or not, a comparison is made between DAN and the traditional cellular network, i.e., central antenna network (CAN). This talk will cover [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: The Power of Location

April 25, 2012

Speaker: Prof. Janne Lindqvist WINLAB, Rutgers University, NJ Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, April 25th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 203 ABSTRACT Many location-sharing systems have been developed over the past 20 years, but only recently have these systems started to be adopted by consumers. One of the major successes so far in terms of user adoption is Foursquare, which reports having over 15 million users as of January 2012. We will discuss our user studies and surprising uses of Foursquare. Furthermore, in this talk, we will discuss our work on privacy protection for users of location-based services, and how location [Read more...]

ECE Department Seminar: Greening the Network with Energy-Efficient TCP

April 18, 2012

Speaker: Anwar Walid Bell Labs Time: 3:00 PM -- 4:00 PM, April 18th (Wednesday), 2012 Location: Babbio Center, Room 203 ABSTRACT The goal of building energy-efficient information and communication networks is now widely embraced. Various mechanisms are being developed to save energy at network nodes based on local traffic conditions and objectives; however, their cumulative impact on the end-to-end application performance is not well understood. TCP is the dominant transport protocol on the internet, and its end-to-end operation ties in the performance of all energy saving mechanisms in the network. We develop a network utility theory to study and design distributed algorithms for [Read more...]