SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for March
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Coherent detection for fiber optic networks
Thu, Mar 02, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Michael G. Taylor, University College LondonAbstract: Years ago coherent detection appeared the best choice for high bit rate receivers in fiber optic communications networks. Then the idea was abruptly discarded after the arrival of the EDFA. Today coherent detection once again offers an attractive solution to many of the issues facing long haul and metro optical transmission. In the latest incarnation real time digital signal processing is used to extract the signal from the coherent mixing products, and it is possible to apply processing in the digital domain to compensate for unlimited amounts of chromatic dispersion and other impairments. The results of experiments will be presented showing how coherent detection is implemented and how it can outperform direct detection in many ways. The flexibility offered by the DSP to modify the optical signal to fit each fiber link has benefits for optical network design, and some of these will be discussed.Bio: Dr. Taylor has 15 years experience in the development of fiber optic transmission products. After completing the Ph.D. degree at University College London in 1990 he joined STL Laboratories (subsequently Nortel) to work on the development of transmission products using optical amplifiers. In 1996 he moved to Ciena Corporation, where he worked on long haul transmission products. He led the development of the 10Gb/s product, and contributed to innovative design features such as the four wave mixing tolerant WDM solution. In 2003 he took an Honorary Senior Lecturer position at University College London, where he began work on new applications for optical coherent detection. He has published over 25 papers and been awarded 14 patents.Host: Professor Alan Willner, willner@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -539
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Delay, feedback, and the price of ignorance
Fri, Mar 03, 2006 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Dr. Anant Sahai, UC BerkeleyABSTRACT: In 1959, Shannon made a profound comment:"[The duality between source and channel coding] can be pursued further and is related to a duality between past and future and the notions of control and knowledge. Thus we may have knowledge of the past and cannot control it; we may control the future but have no knowledge of it."This comment cannot be understood in the traditional block-code setting and as a result, has remained entirely mysterious. To understand it, we must step back and consider end-to-end delay, since delay is what fundamentally allows the exploitation of the laws of large numbers to give reliability.In channel coding, we show that while feedback often does not improve fixed block-length reliability functions, it can significantly improve the reliability with respect to fixed delay! (Contrary to a "theorem" by Pinsker claiming otherwise.) A new bound, that we call the "focusing bound," allows us to calculate the limit of what is possible when the encoder is not ignorant of the channel's past behavior. In source coding, the price of ignorance is demonstrated by considering what happens when receiver side-information is withheld from the transmitter. Block-codes perform equally poorly, but nonblock codes can use side-information to dramatically improve the fixed-delay error exponent. Furthermore, a closer look at the dominant error events for these cases gives Shannon's otherwise cryptic comment a precise interpretation.These results suggest that the traditional information theoretic recommendation of using messages as big as possible is flawed as far as architectural guidance is concerned. When encoders are not ignorant, messages should be as *small* as possible while avoid integer effects, and queueing ideas should be employed to do appropriate flow control, even when facing hard end-to-end latency constraints.BIO: Anant Sahai received the B.S. degree in EECS in 1994 from U.C. Berkeley, and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1996 and 2001, respectively. In 2001, he developed adaptive signal processing algorithms for software radio GPS at the startup Enuvis in South San Francisco. He joined the EECS department at Berkeley as an Assistant Professor in 2002. His current research interests are in information theory and wireless communication, particularly the area of opportunistic spectrum reuse by cognitive radios.Host: Professor Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Diagnosis and Exploration of Massively Univariate Neuroimaging Data
Fri, Mar 03, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Thomas E Nichols, PhDDept. Biostatistics,
University of Michigan, Ann ArborHost: Prof. Richard LeahyAbstract:For either fMRI or EEG/MEG, the massively univariate approach a linear model at each of, say, 100,000 spatial elements in the brain. The p-values computed at each voxel depend on assumptions on the data, and inferences can not be trusted unless these assumptions are checked. However, distributional assumptions are rarely checked in neuroimaging due to the sheer scale of the data. In lieu of examining 100,000 diagnostic plots, we propose a combination of statistical and graphical techniques to efficiently diagnose model fit. We create images of diagnostic statistics sensitive to typical model-violations, and time series of summaries that detect problem scans. Together with an interactive spatiotemporal viewer, we demonstrate how summaries can be used to swiftly find rare anomalies in millions of data elements We demonstrate the method on single-subject fMRI data as well as group-level fMRI data. One specific finding is that, while the popular SPM software assumes the temporal autocorrelation tis spatially homogeneous, we find dramatic variation of the autocorrelation strength over the brain, suggesting that fMRI data requires spatially-varying autocorrelation modeling.Biography:Thomas Nichols is an Assistant Professor of Biostatistics at the University of Michigan. He received his Ph.D. in statistics from Carnegie Mellon University in 2001 where he also trained in cognitive neuroscience at the Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition. He has been active in the field of functional neuroimaging since 1992 when he joined the University of Pittsburgh's Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Center as a programmer and statistician. Dr. Nichols' research focuses on modeling and inference of functional neuroimaging data, including PET and Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI). He has developed methods and software for: Nonparametric analysis of PET fMRI data, inference methods which account for the multiplicity of searching the brain for changes in activity (SnPM); diagnosis and exploration of massively univariate models fit on imaging data (SPMd); and high temporal resolution reconstruction methods for PET.
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Regina Morton
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
BIOLOGICAL CIRCUITS
Tue, Mar 07, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
ELECTRICAL ENGINEERINGDISTINGUISHED LECTURER SERIES"BIOLOGICAL CIRCUITS"Prof. Jehoshua (Shuki) BruckComputation and Neural Systems and Electrical EngineeringCalifornia Institute of TechnologyAbstract:Motivated by the intriguing functionality of gene regulatory networks we study chemical reactions (biological) circuits. We observe that those circuits are vastly different when compared to existing computing structures like logic circuits. In particular, the two strikingly different ingredients in biological circuits are feedback in memoryless computation and the stochastic behavior of devices in deterministic systems. Are these two biologically inspired concepts useful in improving the design of existing computing structures? I will provide a positive answer to this question and argue that progress in our understanding of biology depends on the development of new abstractions for reasoning about computation.Bio:Jehoshua (Shuki) Bruck is the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor of Computation and Neural Systems and Electrical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. He was the founding Director of the Caltech Information Science and Technology (IST) program. His research combines work on the design of distributed information systems and the theoretical study of biological circuits and systems. He received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology, in 1982 and 1985, respectively and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1989. Dr. Bruck has an extensive industrial experience, including working with IBM Research for ten years where he participated in the design and implementation of the first IBM parallel computer. He was co-founder and Chairman of Rainfinity (acquired in 2005 by EMC), a spin-off company from Caltech that focused on software products for management of network information systems. Dr. Bruck is a Fellow of the IEEE, the recipient of an IBM Partnership Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a National Science Foundation Young Investigator Award, six IBM Plateau Invention Achievement Awards, an IBM Outstanding Innovation Award and an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award. He published more than 200 journal and conference papers in his areas of interests and he holds 25 US patents. His papers were recognized in journals and conferences, including, winning the 2005 S. A. Schelkunoff Transactions prize paper award from the IEEE Antennas and Propagation society (joint with M. Franceschetti and L. J. Schulman) and the 2003 Best Paper Award in the 2003 Design Automation Conference (joint with M. Riedel). Host: Prof. Keith Chugg, ext. 07294
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Andrew J. Viterbi Distinguished Lecture with Dr. Toby Berger
Thu, Mar 09, 2006 @ 05:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
"Information Exchange Among Neurons in Sensory Cortex"PROF. TOBY BERGERProfessor of ECE, University of VirginiaProfessor Emeritus, Cornell UniversityReception at 5:00p.m.Lecture at 6:00p.m.Abstract:Each of the tens of millions of neurons in primate sensory cortex receives information in the form of neural spike trains from some 10,000 other such neurons, referred to collectively as its "afferent cohort". The axon of each neuron in the afferent cohort of neuron N is incident to a synapse on N's dendritic tree. In response to this "bombardment," neuron N generates a spike train of its own which propagates along its axon to the some 10,000 neurons in its afferent cohort. The nature of this "neural code" and of the information that it does and does not communicate has long been a subject of intense study by both theoreticians and experimentalists. For several decades much of this debate was concerned with whether the neural code is a timing code or a rate code. Recent experiments have established that the firing patterns of individual neurons in primary visual cortex (i.e., brain regions LGN, V1, V2,...) are highly reproducible when stimulus intensities are made to vary nearly identically during each of a series of experimental trials. This finding speaks heavily in favor of timing codes being the dominant information-conveying mechanism in primary cortex.We propose and analyze a simple, biologically feasible model of neural coding in primary cortex in which the time variation in bombardment intensity that each neuron experiences gets accurately encoded into differential delays between the successive spikes it emits. That is, we proffer that neurons in primary sensory cortex exchange information via what communication theorists refer to as differential pulse position modulation (DPPM) and neuroscientists refer to as interspike interval (ISI) durations. This form of neural information exchange has several highly desirable properties including low delay, low complexity, high throughput, and energy efficiency.Three sources of error in the conveyance of data via ISI durations are analyzed: (i) timing jitter in spike generation instants (ii) timing jitter engendered by differential rates of axonal propagation of successive spikes, and (iii) timing jitter in the accuracy with which spike arrival times can be estimated and remembered at synapses. The analysis reveals that neural spiking thresholds must decay with time; preliminary experimental results suggest that this is indeed the case.The mathematical tools employed include Stein-Chen Poisson approximation theory, analysis of the variance of the threshold crossings times of filtered Poisson processes, and classical analysis of the estimation of the arrival time of a known pulse shape corrupted by additive Gaussian noise.Bio: Toby Berger was born in New York, NY on September 4, 1940. He received the B.E. degree in electrical engineering from Yale University, New Haven, CT in 1962, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in applied mathematics from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA in 1964 and 1966, respectively. From 1962 to 1968 he was a Senior Scientist at Raytheon Company, Wayland, MA, specializing in communication theory, information theory, and coherent signal processing. From 1968 through 2005 he was a faculty member at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY where he held the position of Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor of Engineering. In 2006 he became a professor in the ECE Department of the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Professor Berger's research interests include information theory, random fields, communication networks, wireless communications, video compression, voice and signature compression and verification, neuroinformation theory, quantum information theory, and coherent signal processing. He is the author of Rate Distortion Theory: A Mathematical Basis for Data Compression and a co-author of Digital Compression for Multimedia: Principles and Standards, and Information Measures for Discrete Random Fields.HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERINGCelebrating 100 years of Engineering!For more information: http://csi.usc.edu/news/viterbi-invitation.pdf
Location: Ethel Percy Andrus Gerontology Center (GER) - ontology Auditorium
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Rethinking Sensor Networks from the Physical Layer Up
Wed, Mar 22, 2006 @ 03:30 PM - 04:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
SPEAKER: Prof. Upamanyu Madhow, UCSBABSTRACT: Sensor networks open up the exciting possibility of "googling" the physical world, with potential applications going well beyond the current focus on environmental monitoring, homeland security, and defence. Recent research activities in sensor networks at a variety of institutions have produced valuable experience in deploying networks of hundreds of sensor motes. While such moderate-sized networks are adequate for a large class of applications in the near term, we remain far from realizing the vision invoked by the phrase "Smart Dust", of hundreds of thousands of nodes providing comprehensive coverage of large geographic areas. In addition to the fundamental difficulties of networking such large numbers of nodes, another key constraint that is likely to persist for the foreseeable future is energy consumption: for large-scale deployments, sensor nodes must survive for long periods on a small battery, or to operate by scavenging energy from the environment. In this talk, we first provide a brief overview of the broad range of research activities in our group. We then focus on new concepts, and associated prototyping efforts, for scaling sensor nets up in size and ease of deployment, and down in energy consumption per node. These concepts include massively scalable Imaging Sensor Nets, in which "dumb" sensor nodes play the role of pixels imaged by sophisticated collector nodes, and distributed beamforming, in which "smart" sensor nodes collaborate to increase energy efficiency or range by emulating an antenna array.BIO: Upamanyu Madhow is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His prior appointments include serving as a faculty in the ECE Department of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and as a research scientist at Bell Communications Research (now Telcordia). He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1985. He received the M. S. and Ph. D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1987 and 1990, respectively.Dr. Madhow's research interests are in wireless communication, sensor networks and multimedia security. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and recipient of the NSF CAREER award. He has served as Associate Editor for Spread Spectrum for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, and as Associate Editor for Detection and Estimation for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He is a "highly cited" researcher (http://www.isihighlycited.com), and is among the top 10 most cited authors in computer science over the period 1993-2003, according to the ISI Web of Science (http://in-cites.com/top/2003/first03-com.html).Host: Professor Urbashi Mitra, ubli@usc.edu
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mayumi Thrasher
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Challenges in Reducing High Volume Manufacturing Test Cost for Micro-processors
Fri, Mar 24, 2006 @ 10:20 AM - 11:20 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
CENG SEMINAR SERIES"Challenges in Reducing High Volume Manufacturing Test Cost for Micro-processors "Dr. Sreejit ChakravartyIntelABSTRACT:This talk is aimed at a general audience who are not familiar with Microprocessor testing. The basics of high volume manufacturing (HVM) testing will be introduced. The major cost components of HVM testing and the challenges going forward will be highlighted. Detailed discussion on any given topic will be left to the Q&A session.BIO:Dr. Sreejit Chakravarty spent about 11 years in academia as an Associate Professor of Computer Science at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Since 1997 he has been with Intel Corporation where he is a Principal Engineer in the Test Technology group. He is the technical lead in various test research projects targeted at Intel's microprocessor products, including advanced fault models, various aspects of at-speed testing and PV-si correlation issues. He serves on the program and organizing committees of several IEEE conferences and has delivered several keynote addresses at IEEE sponsored conferences. Dr. Chakravarty is a Fellow of the IEEE. Host: Prof. Melvin Breuer, x04469
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Digital Circuits Using Carbon Nanotubes: Modeling, Design, and Architectures
Fri, Mar 24, 2006 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
CENG SEMINAR SERIES"Digital Circuits Using Carbon Nanotubes: Modeling, Design, and Architectures "Dr. Ali KeshavarziCircuit Research Labs, IntelBSTRACT:Scaling of Silicon technology continues while research has started in other novel materials for future technology generations beyond year 2015. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) with their excellent carrier mobility are a promising candidate. We have studied the promise that carbon nanotube-based electronics hold for digital circuit design. We investigated different carbon nanotube based field effect transistors (CNFETs) for an optimal switch. Schottky Barrier (SB) CNFETs, MOS CNFETs, and state-of-the-art Si MOSFETs were systematically compared from a circuit/system design perspective. A simulation environment incorporating an atomistic device description and a look-up table based circuit solver has been used. The role of parasitics in CNFET design shows that performance is limited by the gate overlap capacitance and the quality of nano contacts to these promising transistors. Optimal geometries and transistor architecture have been proposed to provide maximum performance while minimizing parasitics. Analysis of high performing single tube SB CNFET transistor structures revealed 1 to 1.5 nm to be the optimum CNT diameter for high speed digital application. We determined optimal spacing and layout of CNT arrays, an architecture that is most likely required for driving capacitive loads and interconnects in digital applications. Circuit applications impact the choice of packing density in CNFET arrays. Highest packing density is required for driving large capacitive loads for example this is achieved by placing CNTs of 1 nm in diameter at 1.6nm apart in an array formation. However, if CNT arrays are driving other CNT arrays, a looser packing density will be sufficient.CNTs with their high current density, despite several serious technological barriers, show potential for performance improvement. For benchmarking purposes, we will discuss a figure of merit for evaluating CNTs. From a process technology perspective, further research is required on material quality of the CNTs, on the growth of the nanotubes in a predetermined direction with good control of diameter thickness (for control of variation), on making doped CNTs for MOS CNFETs, on fabricating CNT-based transistor arrays, and also on producing reliable nano-contacts to the nanotubesBIO:Dr. Ali Keshavarzi received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. He is a senior staff research scientist at Circuit Research Laboratories (CRL) of Intel Corporation, Portland, Oregon. He is currently focusing on long-term research in low-power/high-performance circuit techniques and transistor device structures for future generations of microprocessors. Ali has been with Intel for thirteen years, has published more than 20 papers and has more than 30 patents (20 issued and the rest are pending patents). Ali has received the best paper award at 1997 IEEE International Test Conference at Washington, D.C. on testing solutions of intrinsically leaky integrated circuits. Ali is a member of the ISLPED & ISQED technical program committees.Host: Prof. Massoud Pedram, x04458
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - -248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Rosine Sarafian
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Large Microwave Antenna Arrays for Radio Astronomy and Space Communications
Wed, Mar 29, 2006 @ 12:00 PM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
DR. SANDER WEINREB
California Institute of Technology
ETA KAPPA NU SEMINAR SERIESAbstract: Much greater collecting area for microwave signals impinging on Earth is needed for three major objectives: 1) wide bandwidth communication to manned or robotic space probes at planetary distances, 2) radio astronomy observations which provide fundamental information about the origin and composition of the universe, and 3) search for radio communications due to extraterrestrial civilizations. In the past increases in collecting area were achieved by increasing the diameter of large radio telescopes – essentially more steel. The current system approach to this problem is to replace the large mechanical structures with innovative use of electronics, computers, and mass production of small antennas. Current large array projects will be described and technology developments in the areas of wideband antenna feeds and very low noise amplifiers will be discussed. Bio:Sander Weinreb's interests and expertise are in the area of instrumentation for radio astronomy and communications. He introduced digital correlation techniques into radio astronomy (1960), was a co-discoverer of the first molecular line (OH, 1963), led the electronics system design for the Very Large Array (1966-1975), and introduced and developed cooled field-effect transistor amplifiers for radio astronomy (1978-1988). Since leaving NRAO in 1989 he has worked on microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) applied to military applications at Martin Marietta, astronomy applications at U. of Massachusetts, and space-borne meteorological applications at JPL. At JPL he is currently leading the design of the electronics of a large microwave array for the NASA Deep Space Network. He received BS (1958) and Ph.D (1963) degrees from MIT and is presently a Principal Staff Member at JPL and a Faculty Associate at Caltech. http://www-scf.usc.edu/~hkn/Location: John Stauffer Science Lecture Hall (SLH) - 100
Audiences: EE Graduate Undergrad and Faculty Invited
Contact: Ericka Lieberknecht
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
