Section News

Monday, March 26, 2012, 7pm-10pm

Memorial University's Engineering Building, Room: EN-4000

On Monday, March 26, 2012 at 7pm, the Faculty of Engineering at Memorial is holding its annual "IEEE Student Night". This event is an opportunity for graduating engineering students to present and demonstrate their senior design projects. The evening will begin at 7pm sharp in the Engineering Faculty Lounge (room EN4000) in the Engineering Building at Memorial and will begin with three project presentations as chosen by classmates and instructors.

Following the presentations, there will be an opportunity to see demonstrations of all projects. Finally, the evening will conclude with the presentation of awards and consuming of pizza and drinks.

Any interested parties are encouraged to attend the evening. Students certainly will appreciate an opportunity to show to their future colleagues, the accomplishments of their final year projects. Parking has been arranged for Area 16, next to the University Centre.

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Robert Collett at robert.collett at gmail.com.

Thursday, February 2, 2012, 19:00 hours

Engineering Boardroom (EN 4002), Engineering and Applied Science Building, Memorial University

The IEEE - Oceanic Engineering Society and Marine Technology Society - Newfoundland and Labrador Section are pleased to present Radar Vision, an evening with two local leaders in radar research and development:

Mr. Joe Ryan, President, Delta Radar Inc.

Mr. Ryan will give an overview of his work as a leader in the development of radar technology for marine navigation and surveillance over the past three decades, including research and product development and commercialization efforts in advanced radar signal processing and HF surface wave radar. He will also discuss recent advances in radar hardware technology including Software Defined functionality that will provide new product development and research opportunities. Multi-mode radar offers the potential to bring vision-like capabilities to radar and extend its usefulness in the fields of navigation in ice, ocean parameter measurement and small target detection.

Ms. Madlena Hakobyan, PhD candidate, C-CORE

Ms. Hakobyan will describe her work in using ground based synthetic aperture radarfor monitoring motion and deformation, with a particular emphasis on monitoring changes to coastlines and coastal infrastructure.

For additional information, or to register, please contact either Randy Gillespie (randy.gillespie@mi.mun.ca) or Ralf Bachmayer (Bachmayer@mun.ca)

Monday, December 5, 2011, 7pm-9pm

EN 4002 (Main Boardroom), Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University

The IEEE Newfoundland-Labrador Section would like to invite you to its Annual General Meeting, this coming Monday, December 5th at 7pm. The agenda includes:

• A brief review of 2011 Section highlights, and an outline for plans for 2012 events and activities
• Report and business arising from the Oceanic Engineering Society Chapter
• A talk by MUN's Sailbot team. MUN Sailbot is a student-driven effort to design and build a low cost 2-m robotic sailboat for entry into international competition in 2011 (Annapolis, Maryland) and 2012 (Vancouver, British Colombia). Come listen to Jordan Smith and others speak about the team's challenges and triumphs!

An informal wine and cheese reception will follow the meeting.

Wednesday, November 30th, 2011, 2:15pm

EN 4002 (Main Boardroom), Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University

Speaker

Juin J. Liou, Pegasus Distinguished Professor, University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA, Chang Jiang, Scholar Endowed Professor, Ministry of Education, China Feng Chia Chair Professor, Feng Chia University, Taiwan, Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IET, Fellow of SIMTech

Abstract

Electrostatic discharge (ESD) is one of the most prevalent threats to electronic components. It is an event in which a finite amount of charge is transferred from one object (i.e., human body) to the other (i.e., microchip). This process can result in a very high current passing through the microchip within a very short period of time, and more than 35% of chip damages can be attributed to such an event. As such, designing on-chip ESD structures to protect microchips against the ESD stress is a high priority in the semiconductor industry. The continuing scaling of CMOS technology makes the ESD-induced failures even more prominent, and one can predict with certainty that the availability of effective and robust ESD protection solutions will become a critical and essential component to the successful advancement and commercialization of the next-generation CMOS technology.

An overview on the ESD sources, models, protection schemes, and testing will first be given in this talk. This is followed by the discussions of the challenges for designing and realizing ESD protection solutions in modern and next-generation integrated circuits.

Biography

Biography of Juin J. Liou: Juin J. Liou received the B.S. (honors), M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville, in 1982, 1983, and 1987, respectively. In 1987, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando, Florida where he is now the Pegasus Distinguished Professor and UCF-Analog Devices Fellow. His current research interests are Micro/nanoelectronics computer-aided design, RF device modeling and simulation, and electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection design and simulation.

Dr. Liou holds 7 U.S. patents (1 more filed and pending), and has published 9 books, more than 240 journal papers (including 16 invited articles), and more than 190 papers (including 78 keynote or invited papers) in international and national conference proceedings. He has been awarded more than $10.0 million of research contracts and grants from federal agencies (i.e., NSF, DARPA, Navy, Air Force, NASA, NIST), state government, and industry (i.e., Semiconductor Research Corp., Intel Corp., Intersil Corp., Lucent Technologies, Alcatel Space, Conexant Systems, Texas Instruments, Fairchild Semiconductor, National Semiconductor, Analog Devices, RF Micro Device, Lockheed Martin), and has held consulting positions with research laboratories and companies in the United States, China, Japan, Taiwan, and Singapore. In addition, Dr. Liou has served as a technical reviewer for various journals and publishers, general chair or technical program chair for a large number of international conferences, regional editor (in USA, Canada and South America) of the Microelectronics Reliability journal, and guest editor of 3 special issues in Microelectronics Reliability and Solid-State Electronics.

Dr. Liou received ten different awards on excellence in teaching and research from the University of Central Florida (UCF) and six different awards from the IEEE. Among them, he was awarded the UCF Pegasus Distinguished Professor (2009) – the highest honor bestowed to a faculty member at UCF, UCF Distinguished Researcher Award (four times: 1992, 1998, 2002, 2009) – the most of any faculty in the history of UCF, UCF Research Incentive Award (three times: 2000, 2005, 2010), UCF Trustee Chair Professor (2002), and IEEE Joseph M. Biedenbach Outstanding Engineering Educator Award in 2004 for his exemplary teaching, research, and international collaboration. His other honors are Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of IET, Fellow of Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology, Fellow of UCF-Analog Devices, Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Electron Device Society (EDS), and Distinguished Lecturer of National Science Council. He holds several honorary professorships, including Chang Jiang Scholar Endowed Professor of Ministry of Education, China – the highest honorary professorship in China, NSVL Distinguished Professor of National Semiconductor Corp., USA, Chang Gung Endowed Professor of Chang Gung University, Taiwan, Feng Chia Chair Professor of Feng Chia University, Taiwan, Chunhui Eminent Scholar of Peking University, China, Cao Guang-Biao Endowed Professor of Zhejiang University, China, Honorary Professor of Xidian University, China, Consultant Professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China, and Courtesy Professor of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China. Dr. Liou was a recipient of U.S. Air Force Fellowship Award and National University Singapore Fellowship Award.

Dr. Liou has served as the IEEE EDS Vice-President of Regions/Chapters, IEEE EDS Treasurer, IEEE EDS Finance Committee Chair, Member of IEEE EDS Board of Governors, and Member of IEEE EDS Educational Activities Committee.

Our Nominations Committee has compiled a list of candidates for the 2012-2013 executive. In accordance with our bylaws members have 14 days to nominate alternate candidates by petition.

The slate of nominees is as follows:

• Chair: Cheng Li (automatic ascension from Vice Chair)
• Vice Chair: Brian Kidney
• Treasurer: Geoff Holden
• Secretary: Andrew Cook

Tuesday, September 13th, 2011, 5:00pm - 6:00pm

EN 4002 (Main Boardroom), Engineering and Applied Science, Memorial University

Speaker

Claudio R. C. M. da Silva, Assistant Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech

Abstract

Dynamic spectrum access is a new concept that offers the potential for more efficient use of the radio spectrum and improved spectrum sharing. In such systems, users first identify idle or underutilized spectrum with the use of spectrum sensing and/or white space databases and then, following pre-defined rules, dynamically access the "best" frequency bands on an opportunistic and non-interfering basis. In this talk, we address one important issue yet to be overcome in order to bring sensing-based dynamic spectrum access to reality, which is the design of spectrum sensing algorithms for realistic propagation environments. First, we present the design of methods for the detection and classification of communication signals when the channel state is unknown. We then discuss spectrum sensing in the presence of man-made and natural noise.

Biography

Claudio R. C. M. da Silva is an Assistant Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech. His current primary research interests are opportunistic spectrum access and cognitive communications, including single-radio and cooperative spectrum sensing, coexistence of heterogeneous wireless systems, and the scalability of cognitive networks. He received the B. S. and M. S. from the State University of Campinas, Brazil, in 1999 and 2001, respectively, and the Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego in 2005, all in electrical engineering.

Dr. da Silva received the best student paper award at the 2003 IEEE Conference on Ultra-Wide Band Systems and Technologies, and was a California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) graduate student fellow for the 2001-2002 academic year. He spent the summer of 2004 with the Corporate Technology Group of Intel Corp. Dr. da Silva is a Senior Member of the IEEE and has served on the technical program committee of numerous IEEE conferences in the communications area.

NECEC 2011 is fast approaching. The call for papers is out (PDF available here) and abstracts are due by September 12^th.

For more information, please visit http://necec.engr.mun.ca.

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011, 11:00 am

Memorial University's Engineering Building, Faculty Lounge, Room: EN-4000

Speaker

Dr. Akira Chiba, FIEEE, Professor of Electrical Engineering Tokyo Institute of Technology

Abstract

Recent research and development of bearingless motors are presented. Bearingless motor is a combined electric motor with magnetic bearing functions. The first prototype was successfully suspended at MUN in 1990 when the presenter was a postdoctoral fellow. The recent developments are involved with wide gap and compact structures. In the presentation, a project on a wide gap bearingless motor with full 5-axis active suspension is presented. In addition, a novel winding structure of a middle point current injection type bearingless motor is presented. Some other bearingless motors are also introduced.

This presentation focuses on how to use a combination of rapid prototyping, Customer Development Cycles and Lean Start-up principles to quickly iterate through ideas, define your customers, collect their feedback and build the minimum product that they will pay for. It also discusses important concepts such as sticking to very slim vertical markets, providing whole experiences, and the Smoke Test Landing page.

Biography

Akira Chiba (IEEE S'82-M'88-SM'97-F'07) was born in Tokyo, Japan in 1960. He received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1983, 1985 and 1988, respectively. In 1988, he was a Research Associate at the Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, Tokyo. From 1992 to 1993, he was a Research Lecturer; from 1993 to 1997, a Senior Lecturer; from 1997 to 2004, an Associate Professor; and from 2004 to 2010, a Professor. Since 2010, he has been a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. From 1990 to 1991, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. He has been studying magnetically suspended bearingless ac motors, super high-speed motor drives, and HEV and EV motors. He is the author or co-author of more than 720 papers including the first book on "magnetic bearings and bearingless drives" in 2005; and he has 56 patents including submitted ones so far.

Friday, July 29th, 2011, 3:15 pm

Memorial University's Engineering Building, Faculty Lounge, Room: EN-4000

On Friday, July 29th, 2011, the IEEE Newfoundland-Labrador Section Computer, Communication, and Circuits & Systems Joint Societies Chapter is co-sponsoring a talk with the Memorial University Computer Engineering Research Lab (CERL). Mr. Michael Winter will speak about his own experiences as an entrepreneur and will share knowledge about how to start a company. All IEEE members are invited to attend.

Biography

Michael Winter graduated from MUN Computer Engineering in 2008. Throughout Michael's six years in MUN he became passionate about entrepreneurship and using technical skills to bring new ideas to market. After graduating Michael joined the St. John's based start-up Virtual Marine Technology and led the development of their small boat equipment simulator. Then in October 2009 Michael and two other MUN engineering students were recruited by Canadian entrepreneur Sir Terry Matthews to join his Ottawa based Wesley Clover incubator and start Cambrai Solutions. With Wesley Clover's guidance Cambrai made their first sale 6 months after founding and have since deployed their software in the UK, US, and Australia.

Abstract

Most start-ups fail because of a lack of customers, not a failure of product development. Traditionally entrepreneurs developed an idea, a business plan, a product, then hopefully sold it to customers. But my mentors have taught me how that plan is entirely backwards. Start with the customers first, then build a product for them.

This presentation focuses on how to use a combination of rapid prototyping, Customer Development Cycles and Lean Start-up principles to quickly iterate through ideas, define your customers, collect their feedback and build the minimum product that they will pay for. It also discusses important concepts such as sticking to very slim vertical markets, providing whole experiences, and the Smoke Test Landing page.

Friday, June 24, 2010, 6:30 for 7pm

The Fluvarium

Tickets only $20 each for IEEE members and one guest; non-members $30 each. Please specify lobster, steak or vegetarian dinner at time of ticket purchase. Salads, rolls, dessert, tea, coffee and 2 drink tickets included! Catered by the Fluvarium.

Deadline for tickets: noon, Monday, June 20th

For tickets, contact any member of the IEEE Newfoundland & Labrador Section Executive.

Tuesday, April 26, 2011 at 2:30pm

Memorial University's Engineering Building, Room: EN-4002

Cooperative Wireless Multicast : Cooperation Strategy and Incentive Mechanism

Speaker: Dr. Hai Jiang, Assistant Professor
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Alberta, Canada

Abstract:

Multicast is a bandwidth efficient mechanism to provide wireless services for a group of nodes. Providing reliable wireless multicast is challenging due to channel fading. This work investigates cooperation among receiving nodes to enhance the reliability of wireless multicast. A time division based cooperative multicast strategy is proposed, and the optimal scheduling scheme is found to maximize the system throughput. It is shown that the optimal relay number is bounded by a threshold, and the optimal time allocation can be found using an efficient algorithm. Numerical results show that the proposed strategy can enhance network performance when the average channel condition between receiving nodes is better than that of the direct link. To provide incentive for cooperation, this work further studies the interactions among selfish nodes using a game theoretical approach. The cooperative multicast process is modelled as a repeated game and the desired cooperation state which satisfies absolute fairness and Pareto optimality is found. A Worst Behaviour Tit-for-Tat incentive strategy is designed to enforce cooperation and its effectiveness is studied under both the perfect and the imperfect monitoring scenarios. To address the issue of imperfect monitoring, an interval based estimation method is proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed strategy can enforce cooperation efficiently even the monitoring is imperfect.

Speaker Bio:

HAI JIANG received the B.S. degree in 1995 and the M.S. degree in 1998, both in electronics engineering, from Peking University, China and the Ph.D. degree in 2006 in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada. Since July 2007, he has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada. His research interests include radio resource management, cognitive radio networking, and cross-layer design for wireless multimedia communications. He received an Alberta Ingenuity New Faculty Award in 2008 and a Best Paper Award from IEEE GLOBECOM 2008. He served as a Co-Chair for the General Symposium at the International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) 2007, the Communications and Networking Symposium at the Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering (CCECE) 2009, and the Wireless and Mobile Networking Symposium at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2010.

Friday, April 1, 2011, 7pm-10pm

Memorial University's Engineering Building, Room: EN-4002

On Friday, April 1, 2011 at 7pm, the Faculty of Engineering at Memorial is holding its annual "IEEE Student Night". This event is an opportunity for graduating engineering students to present and demonstrate their senior design projects. The evening will begin at 7pm sharp in the Engineering Boardroom (room EN4002) in the Engineering Building at Memorial and will begin with three project presentations as chosen by classmates and instructors.

Following the presentations, there will be an opportunity to see demonstrations of all projects. Finally, the evening will conclude with the presentation of awards and consuming of pizza and drinks.

Any interested parties are encouraged to attend the evening. Students certainly will appreciate an opportunity to show to their future colleagues, the accomplishments of their final year projects.

If you have any questions about the event, please contact Dr. Dennis Peters at dpeters at engr.mun.ca.