SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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EE-Systems Seminar
Mon, Oct 04, 2010 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Neal Patwari , University of Utah
Talk Title: Locate people without radio tags: Device‐free localization in wireless networks
Abstract: Abstract: Radio localization applications in sensor networks assume that the person to‐be¬located wears a radio tag, either a receiver or transmitter. We show that the tag is not necessary, except for identification. By measuring the changes in received signal strength (RSS) on static wireless links in the environment, we perform device‐free localization (DFL), i.e., estimation of the location of changes in the physical environment, and thus, inference of the locations of people in the environment. Such localization can be done when the network nodes are outside of a building, and the people are inside of the building, and thus have application for emergency responders arriving at a building that is dangerous to enter. Since static wireless networks are ubiquitous in indoor environments, we expect DFL using RSS to be useful in secure facilities, in which the locations of un‐tagged (potentially unauthorized) people should be monitored. While wideband radar provides similar capabilities, the use of RSS opens the door for DFL applications built using standard wireless networks. This talk will describe 1) new multipath channel fading models which provide the basis for our ability to accurately estimate a person's location; 2) algorithms for RSS‐based device‐free localization; and 3) lessons learned from prototype development and deployment. We will discuss the unanswered questions and future research directions in RSS‐based DFL.
Biography: Bio: Neal Patwari received the B.S. (1997) and M.S. (1999) degrees from Virginia Tech, and the Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2005), all in Electrical Engineering. He was a research engineer in Motorola Labs, Florida, between 1999 and 2001. Since 2006, he has been at the University of Utah, where he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Computing. He directs the Sensing and Processing Across Networks (SPAN) Lab, which performs research at the intersection of statistical signal processing and wireless networking. His research interests are in radio channel signal processing, in which radio channel measurements are used to improve security and networking and to perform localization. Neal has been involved with experimental prototypes of sensor networks deployed for centralized and distributed sensor localization, radio tomographic imaging, and secret key establishment. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2008 and the 2009 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Magazine Paper Award. He is an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) -
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shane Goodoff
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. -
Short Range Radio Research in Twente
Wed, Oct 06, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Arjan Meijerink, University of Twente
Talk Title: Short Range Radio Research in Twente
Abstract: The research and education by the Telecommunication Engineering Group at the University of Twente is dedicated
to physical layer topics in communications. Three research tracks have prominence: Short Range Radio, Microwave Photonics,
and Electromagnetic Compatibility. Arjan is active in the Short Range Radio division, and will briefly outline the interests and
activities of this group. Furthermore he will present some results of the research that he did during his short sabbatical in
Belfast last year. This concerns the performance analysis of a frequency offset modulation scheme using wideband noise carriers.
The main advantage of such a scheme is that it enables fast receiver synchronization without channel adaptation, while
providing robustness to multipath fading and in-band interference. This is important for low-power wireless systems with bursty
traffic, such as sensor networks. In the talk a semi-analytical framework for evaluating its bit error rate performance in
wideband frequency-selective fading channels will be described. Some numerical results will be presented, based on channel
models developed in the IEEE 802.15.4a channel modeling subgroup. These illustrate that the considered system can be
designed with a lower fading margin than a narrowband system.
Biography: Arjan Meijerink received the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering (both with honours) from the
University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His PhD research was on coherence
multiplexing for optical communication systems, and was performed under supervision of Prof. W. van Etten, in the
Telecommunication Engineering (TE) Group. From 2005 to 2007 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the TE Group, carrying out
research on photonic beamformers for broadband phased array receive antennas, using fully integrated, ring resonator-based
optical beamforming networks. Since 2007 he has been an Assistant Professor in the TE group. He teaches an undergraduate
course on random signals and noise, and is involved in research on new radio transmission techniques for short-range
applications, such as wireless sensor networks. His particular interest is in resilient, low-power UWB transmit-reference
modulation techniques, stochastic channel modeling, and UWB-based ranging and localization techniques. In 2009 he was a
Visiting Lecturer at the Wireless Communications Research Group, at the Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK.
Currently he is a Visiting Scholar in the WiDeS Group. His research work involves stochastic channel modeling and time-of-arrival
estimation using UWB signals.
Host: Dr. A. F. Molisch
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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. -
EE-Systems Seminar
Fri, Oct 08, 2010 @ 11:00 AM - 01:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Anima Anandkumar, U.C.Irvine
Talk Title: "Distributed Algorithms for Learning and Cognitive Medium Access with Logarithmic Regret"
Abstract: I will talk about the problem of distributed learning and channel access in a cognitive network with multiple secondary users. The availability statistics of the channels are initially unknown to the secondary users and are estimated using sensing decisions. There is no explicit information exchange or prior agreement among the secondary users and sensing and access decisions are undertaken by them in a completely distributed manner. The challenge is to ensure that learning of channel availabilities and distributed channel access among the secondary users do not sacrifice the cognitive system throughput (number of successful secondary transmissions) to a large extent and to design policies which minimize this loss. We propose policies for distributed learning and channel access which achieve order-optimal cognitive system throughput under self play, i.e., when implemented at all the secondary users. Equivalently, our policies minimize the sum regret in distributed learning and access, which is the loss in secondary throughput due to learning and distributed access.
For the scenario when the number of secondary users is known to the policy, we prove that the total regret is logarithmic in the number of transmission slots. This policy achieves order-optimal regret based on a logarithmic lower bound for regret under any uniformly-good learning and access policy.
We then consider the case when the number of secondary users is fixed but unknown, and is estimated at each user through feedback. We propose a policy whose sum regret grows only slightly faster than logarithmic in the number of transmission slots. I will also talk about some exciting open problems in this context.
Biography: Anima Anandkumar received her B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras in
2004 and her MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 2009. She was at the Stochastic Systems Group at MIT, Cambridge, MA as a post-doctoral researcher. She has been an assistant professor at EECS Dept. and a member of center for pervasive communications and computing (CPCC) at U.C.Irvine since July 2010. She is the recipient of the 2009 Best Thesis Award by the ACM Sigmetrics Society, 2008 IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award, 2008 IBM Fran Allen PhD fellowship, and student paper award at 2006 IEEE ICASSP. Her research interests are in the area of statistical-signal processing, network theory and information theory.
Host: Bhaskar Krishnamachari
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Shane Goodoff
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. -
Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging
Wed, Oct 13, 2010 @ 02:00 AM - 03:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Dorit S. Hochbaum, ISE, University of Southern California
Talk Title: Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging
Abstract: Image segmentation is to determine a partition to the "main" areas of the image and identify them as associated with different types of objects. This is of particular importance in medical imaging where blur conceals information of critical importance. The problem is modeled as minimization of deviation penalty, from the captured colors of the pixels, and separation penalty, which is associated with two adjacent images having different colors.
We describe a very efficient and best possible polynomial time algorithm for the problem. This algorithm is more efficient than most procedures based on spectral techniques, partitioning approaches or heuristic clustering. We then demonstrate how to apply the procedure for the purpose of recovering hidden features in de-blurred medical images.
Biography: Dorit S. Hochbaum is a Daniel Epstein chair professor at the ISE department at USC. Professor Hochbaum holds a Ph.D from the Wharton school of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Hochbaum held a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon university's Tepper school of business (GSIA), and then joined UC Berkeley where she was a full professor and chancellor chair at the department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR). Her research interests are in the areas of approximation algorithms and design and analysis of computer algorithms and discrete and continuous optimization. Her recent work focuses on efficient techniques for network flow related problems, ranking, data mining and image segmentation problems.
Professor Hochbaum is the author of over 140 papers that appeared in the Operations Research, Management Science and Theoretical Computer Science literature. Professor Hochbaum was named in 2004 an honorary doctorate of Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, for her work on approximation algorithms. Professor Hochbaum was awarded in 2005 the title of INFORMS fellow.
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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. -
Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging
Wed, Oct 13, 2010 @ 02:00 AM - 03:15 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Dorit S. Hochbaum, ISE, University of Southern California
Talk Title: Image Segmentation with Optimization Techniques Used for Medical Imaging
Abstract: Image segmentation is to determine a partition to the "main" areas of the image and identify them as associated with different types of objects. This is of particular importance in medical imaging where blur conceals information of critical importance. The problem is modeled as minimization of deviation penalty, from the captured colors of the pixels, and separation penalty, which is associated with two adjacent images having different colors.
We describe a very efficient and best possible polynomial time algorithm for the problem. This algorithm is more efficient than most procedures based on spectral techniques, partitioning approaches or heuristic clustering. We then demonstrate how to apply the procedure for the purpose of recovering hidden features in de-blurred medical images.
Biography: Dorit S. Hochbaum is a Daniel Epstein chair professor at the ISE department at USC. Professor Hochbaum holds a Ph.D from the Wharton school of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Professor Hochbaum held a faculty position at Carnegie Mellon university's Tepper school of business (GSIA), and then joined UC Berkeley where she was a full professor and chancellor chair at the department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IEOR). Her research interests are in the areas of approximation algorithms and design and analysis of computer algorithms and discrete and continuous optimization. Her recent work focuses on efficient techniques for network flow related problems, ranking, data mining and image segmentation problems.
Professor Hochbaum is the author of over 140 papers that appeared in the Operations Research, Management Science and Theoretical Computer Science literature. Professor Hochbaum was named in 2004 an honorary doctorate of Sciences of the University of Copenhagen, for her work on approximation algorithms. Professor Hochbaum was awarded in 2005 the title of INFORMS fellow.
Host: Prof. Rahul Jain
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Estela Lopez
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Oct 15, 2010 @ 02:30 PM - 03:30 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. David Howard and Dr. Edward Preisler , TowerJazz
Talk Title: TowerJazz: SiGe BiCMOS, MEMS Capabilities and Foundry Process Offerings ... Still Just 50 Miles From USC
Abstract: In this talk we will briefly review process offerings from TowerJazz, Newport Beach, CA, which include SiGe BiCMOS, RF CMOS, Power CMOS and MEMS capabilities, including monthly SiGe BiCMOS shuttle runs...all still just 50 miles south of USC.
The majority of the talk will cover TowerJazz SiGe HBT transistor technology application in a variety of emerging markets: high frequency wireless, optical networking, phased array radar, high voltage and complementary BiCMOS for analog. In the discussion, the critical device parameters for NPN and PNP devices, such as cut-off frequency, gain, noise figure, breakdown voltage, etc. will be tied to each market segment. Trade-offs in device performance in order to meet multiple criteria per market segment will also be discussed
Biography: David Howard received his Sc.B. in Mechanical Engineering, Sc.M, and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science Engineering, all from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. His focus has been in process and device integration for new nodes, features and devices in Si-CMOS based manufacturing, in particular integration of CMOS, interconnect, passive devices, SiGe HBTs, and MEMS. He is currently Executive Director, New Product Technology, at Jazz Semiconductor, Newport Beach, CA, managing new technology implementation for programs that include MEMS, Bi/CMOS and Aerospace. Prior to Jazz, David held positions at IMEC, Rockwell Semiconductor & Conexant Systems (1995-2002). David was a remote assignee to SEMATECH (1998), participates in DARPA programs, and is a member of the ITRS wireless working group.
Edward Preisler, PhD, Manager SiGe Device Group at Jazz Semiconductor, CA. Ed received his B.S. E.E. 1998 University of California San Diego, Ph. D. Applied Physics 2003 California Institute of Technology, and was a Post Doctoral Fellow, IBM T.J. Watson Laboratory, 2003-2004. In addition to SiGe BiPolar devices and RF CMOS, Ed has experience in High K / Single Crystalline Oxide Dielectrics, Antimonide Avalanche Photodiodes, Germanium-on-Insulator Processing and Devices. Ed is a member of the ITRS Wireless Roadmap Bipolar Device Committee and IEEE BCTM Process Technology Committee.
Host: Prof. Hashemi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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. -
Computation Over Networks
Wed, Oct 20, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Nikhil Karamchandani, University of California at San Diego
Talk Title: Computation Over Networks
Abstract: The general problem of computation over networks can be used to model many different scenarios, ranging from environmental monitoring to intrusion detection. The goal in such problems is to design efficient schemes for computing different target functions over various network topologies.
In the first part of the talk, we will model the problem as a generalization of ânetwork codingâ and attempt to characterize the maximum ârate of computationâ. A cut-based upper bound is proposed and we study the tightness of this bound for different target functions and network topologies.
The second part of the talk will focus on a model more suitable for real dynamic networks. In such networks, it is infeasible to continuously adapt the operations at all nodes according to the changing network topology or demand function. Hence, we will restrict most nodes in the network to always perform the same operation (in particular, randomized linear network coding) and only some nodes will change operations depending on the the current target function/topology. We will study efficient computation schemes for different functions in this model.
Biography: Nikhil Karamchandani received the B.Tech degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 2005, the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at San Diego in 2007, and is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California at San Diego. His research interests are in communication theory and include network coding, information theory, and random graphs. He received the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (CalIT2) fellowship in 2005.
Host: Alex Dimakis
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Gerrielyn Ramos
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. -
Automatic Modulation Classification
Fri, Oct 29, 2010 @ 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Professor A. K. Nandi, The University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom
Talk Title: Automatic Modulation Classification
Abstract: Automatic modulation classification (AMC) attempts to determine the modulation of a received radio signal in the baseband. This has civil and military as well as covert and overt applications. For example, AMC is an essential part of a software defined radio (SDR) system. There has been a long tradition of various research directions in AMC. Most of the methods fall into two approaches. One is called decision theoretic; the maximum likelihood is one such approach when one knows the underlying probability density distribution. It can also be regarded as a classification problem and machine-learning methods can be adapted as long as one discovers some useful features. In this seminar I shall present the nature of the problem, offer some existing ways to explore it, and review some of the results obtained so far. It is still a topic of current interest.
Biography: Professor Asoke K. Nandi received the degree of Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge (Trinity College), Cambridge, U.K., in 1979. Since March 1999 he has been at the University of Liverpool and holds the David Jardine Chair of Signal Processing. Currently, he is interested in the areas of machine learning for signal processing, evolutionary algorithms, signal classification, bio-medical signal processing, and communications research. He has authored or co-authored over 400 technical publications, including two books and over 170 journal papers. Professor Nandi is a Fellow of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, the Institution of Engineering and Technology, the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society for Arts, and the British Computer Society.
Host: Professor Sanjit Mitra
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - EEB 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Talyia Veal
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. -
Integrated Systems Seminar Series
Fri, Oct 29, 2010 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Prof. Babak Daneshrad, UCLA
Talk Title: Research Stemming from the Development of a MIMO OFDM Testbed
Host: Prof. Hashemi
Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 248
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Hossein Hashemi
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.
