Labs and Centers

The Applied Electromagnetics and Wireless Laboratory (AEWL), supervised by Professor Aloi, combines its expertise in applied electromagnetics and wireless applications, along with its measurement and modeling capabilities to address issues relating to signal propagation modeling, channel characterization, EMC, antenna design, and antenna performance on complex structures. Antenna measurements at the component-level can be performed from 1.0 GHz up to 6.0 GHz in an anechoic chamber while vehicle-level antenna measurements can be made at the Automotive Antenna Measurement Instrumentation (AAMI), which is a spherical near-field system. The AAMI was made possible with a $400K award from the NSF. Also, four workstations equipped with advanced hardware and three-dimensional electromagnetic field solver softwares are available to perform antenna modeling, antenna placement, EMC, and scattering analyses. Learn more:  www.oakland.edu/aewl/

This laboratory, supervised by Professor Cheok, was established by a grant from Ford Motor Company. It emphasizes use of computer-aided software for designing virtual rapid prototyping of mechatronics components and systems. Saber and Simplorer are two such software packages. Students procure parts and build their mechatronic project based on the design. Numerous term projects built from this approach have timely and successfully been completed by students.

The Broadband Wireless Communication Laboratory (BWCL), supervised by Professor Li, is equipped with state-of-the-art equipment to pursue advanced research in various areas of wireless communication. One of the current projects, funded by NSF and General Motors, involves development of an wireless ultra wideband (UWB) sensor network for automotive vehicles.

Since its establishment in the early 80s by Professor Loh, the Center for Robotics and Advanced Automation (CRAA) at Oakland University has been at the forefront of research and development in the areas of controls, robotics, automation and machine vision. Over the last two decades, CRAA has successfully completed numerous R&D projects sponsored and funded by the national research organizations and agencies, department of defense and military sectors, local automotive industries, and the State of Michigan. In addition to the funded projects, the faculty associated with CRAA has published numerous articles in various academic and technical journals, industrial magazines and conference proceedings to report and disseminate their research findings.

The Chrysler Welding Research Laboratory, supervised by Professor Das, was established in 2003 with a gift from Chrysler Corporation. It serves as an active research center for development of advanced techniques for weld monitoring and control. It is equipped with many AC and MFDC weld controllers, industry-standard weld guns, and facilities for conducting research in the area of advanced weld control techniques.

The Chrysler Controls and Robotics Laboratory, jointly supervised by Professors Das and Gu, was established in 2006 by a gift from Chrysler Corporation. It serves as an active research center in various areas of controls and robotics. It is equipped with two state-of-the-art industrial-grade robots, advanced control equipment, and advanced communication hardware to pursue advanced research in simulation and testing of robotic control and communication schemes.

The Embedded Engineering Research Laboratory, supervised by Professor Rawashdeh, is engaged in research on methodologies, design, verification, and implementation of embedded systems. The lab's current research focus is on online reconfiguration as means to fault-tolerance for real-time safety-critical distributed embedded systems targeting automotive applications. Other interests and extensive experiences are in the areas of rapid prototyping, product development, data acquisition and control in addition to novel technologies for low- and high-altitude autonomous aerial vehicle systems.

The Intelligent Ground Vehicle Laboratory, supervised by Professor Cheok, emphasizes systems integration of technologies for mobile robots. The robot platforms include Airtrax omnidirectional vehicles, a Packbot, many student built teleoperated vehicles. Navigation technologies for the robots include computer vision, ultra-wideband ranging radios, GPS, LIDAR, IMU, etc. Embedded communication and control devices are essential for the system integration. The key technologies lie in the communication networks and artificial intelligence of the mobile robot.

The Microelectronics System Design Lab, supervised by Professor Abdel-Aty-Zohdy, is a well recognized research center for design, testing and evaluation of prototype Very Large Scale Integrated Circuits (VLSIC). The MSDL has the expertise, tools and facilities needed to build advanced microelectronic circuits and systems for the defense, biomedical, and industrial applications. These include Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs), Integrated signal processing circuitry, Sensors and actuators integrated interfacing circuits, Neural Networks, Analog and Digital Implementation for smart ICs, Automotive Electronics Design, Evaluation, Implementation, and Testing.

The Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS) laboratory, supervised by Professor Qu, was established recently to pursue advanced research in MEMS and Nano-electromechanical Systems (NEMS). It has a fume hood and wet chemical etch setup for MEMS device fabrication preparation, and also houses workstations equipped with COMSOL, Mentor Graphics, and other software. Most fabrication processes are carried out at the Michigan Nanofabrication Facility. The lab is equipped with mechanical and optical characterization tools for MEMS devices, including a precision rotary table, an electromagnetic shaker, a laser vibrometer and other instruments.

The Real Time Embedded Digital Signal Processing (DSP) Systems Laboratory, supervised by Professor Ganesan, involved in efficient and optimal design for size, power consumption, performance, features, and cost. This lab focuses on analysis of the embedded systems for ability to meet critical and non-critical tasks, and meet functional and non-functional requirements. Ability to conserve power by adjusting the task schedule, use of advanced DSP processors, advanced FPGAs with soft-core multiple CPUs and microcontrollers with wired or wireless interfaces, analysis of network protocols like CAN (controller area network), design of sensors using MEMs for rugged environment, multiprocessor and multi-core CPUs based design for high performance and fault tolerance, are some of the areas of research.

The research mission of this lab is to design and develop large-scale, Real Time, Embedded, and DSP Systems. Also, we collaborate to world class corporate labs to meet the recent research challenges, namely, Hitachi, Texas Instruments, Free Scale, Intel, US Army, SAE, etc.

Following courses are offered by RTEDSP at the graduate level in the area of Embedded Systems, DSP, and Real Time Systems.

Course	Title	Faculty
ECE 570	Microprocessor-based Systems Design (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan
ECE 573	Embedded Systems Verification & Validation (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan
ECE 576	Embedded Systems using FPGA (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan
ECE 664	Parallel  Embedded Computer Architecture (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan
ECE 666	Real Time Systems (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan
ECE 671	DSP in Embedded Systems (4)	Dr. Subra Ganesan

Please feel free to contact us for any questions:

Subra Ganesan, Ph.D.
Director, RTEDSPL
105 Dodge Hall of Engineering
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 
Oakland University
Rochester, Michigan 48309

Work:
248-370-2135 (Lab)
248-370-2206 (Off)
Fax: 248-370-4633
E-mail: [email protected]