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Communication Systems and Data Networking

The strategic vision and goals of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering is to become a leading research-intensive ECE department in Canada. The department has identified several fields of research strength for which it has achieved a significant measure of national and international recognition. Communications Systems and Data Networking research area has been identified by the department as a prominent area of research strength with large number of highly qualified faculty members and graduate students undertaking cutting edge work in both basic and applied research.

The group's research projects are concerned with modeling of communication channels with fading, channel-coded CPM signals with asymmetric modulation parameters, optimizing and designing wireless and optical access and metropolitan network architectures and protocols, investigating vulnerability of large-scale electronic systems to external electromagnetic fields and interference, study of mobile ad-hoc networks, wireless high data rate channels and quality-of-service issues.

The Bell Centre for Information Engineering (BCIE) has been established with support from Bell Canada, to coordinate and enhance the Department's research activities in the Communications Systems and Data Networking research area. The mission of the BCIE is to create an environment that will encourage collaborative research between academia and industry and capitalize on human resources, infrastructure and knowledge of the founding members. The Centre is dedicated to fostering innovative basic and applied research in information engineering, working with industry, and government organizations to develop new communications and data networking technologies, and train the next generation of researchers and practitioners.

The communications systems and data networking group members carry out intensive collaborations with industrial and academic partners. They were successful in attracting research funds from NSERC, IBM, CRC, CFI, CITO, and others. In addition, group members have published their research findings in world-class peer-reviewed IEEE and international journals and leading conference proceedings. Moreover, the group members have extensive service record to the technical community. Here, their contributions range from conference planning duties, conference technical program committee roles (IEEE, SPIE conferences), conference session chairing functions, journals editorial roles, journal reviewing duties, and other efforts.

AREAS OF STRENGTH

Cooperative Intelligent Systems

This research is investigating the theoretical foundations and practical applications of computational intelligence with a specific focus on agenthood, coordination and cooperation in distributed "systems" environments. A key focus is on promoting the evolution of cooperative distributed engineering from an ad hoc, labour-intensive activity to a discipline that is managed and supported by technology.

Communications and Networking

This group's research projects are concerned with modelling of communication channels with fading, channel-coded CPM signals with asymmetric modulation parameters, investigating vulnerability of large-scale electronic systems to external electromagnetic fields and interference, study of mobile ad-hoc networks, wireless high data rate channels and quality-of-service issues.

FACULTY

Currently the group has seven faculty members and about thirty graduate students performing research in the area, and publishing extensively in journals and conferences. The members are:

RESEARCH FACILITIES

Currently, the ECE Department has excellent research labs and computing facilities. Since 1999, equipment and software purchases amounting to over $1.71 million have been made for the laboratory and computing facilities in the three programs offered by the Department. In 2002, a generous donation from Cisco of the networking equipment (worth approximately $750,000) has enabled us to expand both the SE and CE programs to offer state-of-the-art courses in networking.

In December 2003 the Communication Systems and Data Networking laboratories moved into a much larger space in the new Thompson Engineering Building. Additional computing facilities including 30 new PCs and 20 SUN workstations have been acquired for these laboratories. With a wide range of equipment and software, our researchers have access to the world of Microsoft, UNIX, SUN, Cisco, Oracle, Rational, and IBM PC-like.

All members of the CSDN group have NSERC research grants. Several members have been successful in securing funding from other sources to establish state-of-the-art research facilities.

COLLABORATIONS AND INDUSTRY LINKS

Communication Systems and Data Networking group members carry out intensive industry collaborations. Many of our faculty have well-established research collaboration with industry and projects supported by external funding. For example:

  • The image analysis project is actively involved with local industry partners as well as the Robarts Research Institute on developing flexible frameworks for image analysis by integrating multiple knowledge sources and forming hypothesis. Applications of such architectures include image understanding and computer aided diagnosis. This project has also funding from CITO, NSERC and IRIS-PRECARN.
  • Members also have collaborative research activities that deal with CSDN issues in such areas of Electrical Engineering as design of information systems for power system automation, software engineering issues in power system simulation, monitoring and control.
  • There is collaboration with CAS (Centre for Advanced Studies) Faculty Fellow Program from IBM Toronto Laboratories. This gives opportunities to the faculty and graduate students to carry out research and establish relationships with development groups within IBM Canada. A current CAS fellowship is directly supporting a graduate student doing research on Autonomous Database Administration and Maintenance.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

A. Dounavis

  1. A. Dounavis, R. Achar and M. Nakhla, "Addressing Transient Errors in Passive Macromodels of Distributed Transmission Line Networks", IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 50, no. 12, pp. 2759-2768, Dec. 2002.
  2. I. M. Elfadel, H. M. Huang, A. E. Ruehli, A. Dounavis and M. Nakhla "A Comparative Study of Two Transient Analysis Algorithms for Lossy Transmission Lines with Frequency-Dependent Data", IEEE Transactions on Advanced Packaging, vol. 25, no. 2, pp 143-153, May 2002.
  3. A. Dounavis, R. Achar and M. Nakhla "Efficient Sensitivity Analysis of Lossy Multiconductor Transmission Lines with Nonlinear Terminations", IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 49, no. 12, pp. 2292-2299, Dec 2001.

A. Ouda

  1. Abdelkader Ouda and Mahmoud El-Sakka, "Localization And Security Enhancement of Block-Based Image Authentication", IEEE International Conference on Image Processing, ICIP2005, pp. I-673-676, Genova, Italy, September 2005.
  2. Abdelkader Ouda and Mahmoud El-Sakka, "A Step Towards Practical Steganography Systems", International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, ICIAR '05, Lectures Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 3656, Springer-Verlag, pp. 1158-1166, September 2005.
  3. Abdelkader Ouda and Mahmoud El-Sakka, "A Secure and Localizing Watermarking Technique for Image Authentication", International Conference on Image Analysis and Recognition, ICIAR, 2004, Lectures Notes in Computer Science, LNCS 3211, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, Heidelberg, pp. 759-769, September 2004.
  4. Abdelkader Ouda and Mahmoud El-Sakka, "A Practical Version of Wong's Watermarking Technique", IEEE International Conference on Image Processing ICIP '04, pp. 2615-2618, Singapore, October 25, 2004.

R. K. Rao

  1. Bhumi A. Dave and Raveendra K. Rao, "Data Transmission using Digital Asymmetric Phase Continuous Chirp Signals", Accepted for presentation in 6th World Wireless Congress 2005, May 24-27, 2005, San Francisco, USA.
  2. Bhumi A. Dave and Raveendra K. Rao, "Phase-Coded Nonlinear Asymmetric Chirp Modulation", Accepted for presentation at IEEE CCECE 2005, May 1-4, 2005, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.
  3. K. Umapathy, S. Krishnan and Raveendra K. Rao, "Audio Signal Feature Extraction and Classification using Local Discriminant Bases", Proc. Seventh Biennial Conf. on Signal Processing and Communications, SPCOM-2004, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, Dec. 11-14, 2004.

A. Reyhani-Masoleh

  1. A. Reyhani-Masoleh, "Efficient Algorithms and Architectures for Field Multiplication Using Gaussian Normal Bases," IEEE Transactions on Computers, pp. 34-47, Vol. 55, No. 1, January 2006.
  2. A. Reyhani-Masoleh and M. A. Hasan, "Low Complexity Word-Level Sequential Normal Basis Multipliers," IEEE Transactions on Computers, pp. 98-110, Vol. 54, No. 2, February 2005.
  3. A. Reyhani-Masoleh and M. A. Hasan, "Low Complexity Bit Parallel Polynomial Basis Multiplication over GF(2^m)," IEEE Transactions on Computers, pp. 945-959, Vol. 53, No. 8, August 2004.
  4. A. Reyhani-Masoleh and M. A. Hasan, "Efficient Digit-Serial Normal Basis Multipliers over Binary Extension Fields," ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Special Issue on Embedded Systems and Security, pp. 575-592, Volume 3, Issue 3, August 2004.
  5. A. Reyhani-Masoleh and M. A. Hasan, "Towards Fault Tolerant Cryptographic Computations over Finite Fields," ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), Special Issue on Embedded Systems and Security, pp. 593 - 613, Volume 3 , Issue 3, August 2004.

A. Shami

  1. N. Ghani, A. Shami, C. Assi, M. Y. A. Raja, "Intra-ONU Bandwidth Scheduling in Ethernet Passive Optical Networks," in press, IEEE Communications Letters, 2004.
  2. A. Shami , C. Assi, N. Ghani et al. "Connection Management Protocols for Dynamic Lightpath Provisioning in Future WDM Networks," Photonic Network Communications Journal, vol. 6 (1), pp.25-32, July 2003.
  3. A. Shami, Y. Ye, C. Assi, S. Dixit, and M. Ali "Integrated Routing/Signaling Protocols in GMPLS-based Optical Networks", SPIE Optical Networks, Vol. 3, No. 4, July/August, 2002.
  4. C. Assi, A. Shami, et al. "Optical Networking and Real-Time Provisioning; An Integrated Vision For The Next-Generation Internet", IEEE Networks, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 36-45, July/August 2001.

R. Sobot

  1. R. Sobot, "Adaptive Equalizer in CMOS", IEEE Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Volume 32, Issue 2, pp.83-86, Spring 2007.
  2. T. Johnson, R. Sobot, S. Stapleton, "CMOS RF Class D Amplifier with a Fractional Sigma-Delta Bandpass Modulator", Microelectronics Journal, Volume 38, Issue 3, pp.439-446, March 2007.
  3. T. Johnson, R. Sobot, S. Stapleton, "Manchester Encoded Bandpass Sigma-Delta Modulation for RF Class D Amplifiers", IET Circuits, Devices and Systems, Volume 1, Issue 1, pp.21-26, February 2007.
  4. R. Sobot, S. Stapleton, M. Syrzycki, "Tunable Continuous Time Bandpass Delta-Sigma Modulators with Fractional Delays", IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems Part I: Regular Papers, Volume 53, Issue 2, pp.264-273, February 2006.
  5. R. Sobot, S. Stapleton, M. Syrzycki, "A Fractional Delay Sigma-Delta Upconverter", IEE Electronics Letters, Volume 41, Issue 23, pp.15-16, November 2005.

X. Wang

  1. X. Wang, Y. Wu and J-Y. Chouinard, "Time and Frequency Synchronization Schemes for OFDM based Mobile Broadcasting", Chapter 11 in Handbook of Mobile Broadcasting: DVB-H, DMB, ISDB-T and MediaFLO, CRC Press, to be published, April 2008.
  2. X. Wang, Y. Wu, and J-Y. Chouinard, "A New Position Location System Using DTV Transmitter Identification Watermark Signals", EURASIP Journal on Applied Signal Processing, vol. 2006, pp.1-11, Article ID 42737, 2006.
  3. X. Wang, Y. Wu, J-Y. Chouinard, and H.-C. Wu, "On the Design and Performance Analysis of Multi-Symbol Encapsulated OFDM Systems", IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 55, no. 3, pp. 990-1002, May 2006.
  4. X. Wang, P. Ho and Y. Wu, "Robust Channel Estimation and ISI Cancellation for OFDM Systems with Suppressed Features", IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, vol.23, no. 5, pp.963-972, May 2005.
  5. W. Bretl, W. Meintel; G. Sgrignoli; X. Wang, S. M. Weiss; K. Salehian, "ATSC RF, Modulation, and Transmission", Proceedings of IEEE, vol.94, no.1, pp.44-59, (Invited paper), Jan. 2005.
    

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Western Ontario
room 279 Thompson Engineering Building, London, Ontario Canada N6A 5B9
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