Abstract

The Global Positioning System (GPS) has provided the ability to determine a body's position, velocity, and attitude anywhere on the surface of the globe, which has led to many advances in land, marine, and air navigation systems.  With the absence of Selective Availability (SA), a GPS receiver can provide three-dimensional velocity measurements with accuracies of 3 cm/s (1??, horizontal) and attitude measurements with an accuracy of 0.4 degrees.  Furthermore, GPS can be augmented with inertial sensors in order to decrease GPS errors and provide measurements between GPS outputs as well as during loss of GPS signals.  This talk will cover the origins of GPS, the various measurements possible using GPS, as well as the measurement limitations and new applications of GPS.  One such application of GPS is autonomous control of unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs).  Both military and commercial applications of UGVs will be discussed with examples from the DARPA Grand Challenge and John Deere's Autosteer tractors. 

Biography

David Bevly received his bachelors from Texas A&M University in 1995, master's from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1997, and doctorate from Stanford University in 2001, in mechanical engineering.  He joined the faculty of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Auburn University in 2001 as an assistant professor.  Dr. Bevly's research focuses on vehicle dynamics as well as modeling and control of vehicle systems.  Specifically, Dr. Bevly has developed algorithms for control of off-road vehicles and methods for identifying critical vehicle parameters using GPS and inertial sensors. He has received two Young Investigator Proposals from the Office of Naval Research and the Army Research Office, and was recognized by the College of Engineering with the Alumni Engineering Council Outstanding Faculty Award and Alumni Engineering Council Junior faculty Research Award.

Presentation Materials
The Global Positioning System and its Use for Control of UGVs 

Abstract

Orphanage Emmanuel is located outside of the remote city of Guaimaca, Honduras and is managed by David and Lydia Martinez along with a staff of up to 15 volunteers. It has been in operation for 17 years and now takes care of over 420 children. It is entirely supported by donations from individuals across the US and Denmark.  This Orphanage has never turned away a child, regardless of health or emotional issues.

In order to provide adequate phone and internet service for the Orphanage, a team of Auburn Engineers initially decided to set up a satellite dish along with some wired internet connections. The wired connections proved inadequate, and given that the Orphanage encompasses over 1000 acres it was determined that a wireless system was needed. This presentation will discuss the implementation of a wireless internet (WiFi) system which provides internet and VOIP/PBX service to a medical clinic, internet café, administrative offices, school offices, a computer laboratory, six residences, a volunteer dorm, and farm training center. This system has been operational for over two years and has proven very reliable and useable.

Biography

Charles D. Ellis was born in Charleston, SC, on January 19, 1958.  He received his bachelor's  degree in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and master's of electrical engineering in 1988 - both from Auburn University. He recently completed all coursework and qualifications for a doctorate in electrical engineering which will be awarded in the spring of 2007.

He has worked as a lead IC process engineer for Texas Instruments, Dallas Texas, in charge of the Dielectrically Isolated, Advanced Digital Bipolar MX missile components.  He also worked at Insouth Microsystems as IC fabrication manager, setting up a new CMOS fab line which fabricated Silicon accelerometers, gate arrays, and custom IC's.  He has worked at Honeywell Solid State Electronic Division, Colorado Springs, Co., in charge of implementing the Diffusion/Ion Implant areas for a new 6" VHSIC Fabrication facility.  He then took charge of four process technologies at Honeywell which included radiation hardened IC MOS (RICMOS), Dual-Poly Pwell Analog CMOS, CCD, and a baselined Metal-Gate CMOS process.  He developed a process for achieving a sub 0.2 nA/CM2 dark current for the CCD process for which he was awarded the 1986 Divisional Outstanding Achievement Award.  He is presently the director of the Microelectronics Laboratory at Auburn University where he is responsible for all ECE microelectronics research facilities and also principle investigator for various contracts.

Presentation Materials
Wireless Internet and VOIP Service for a Remote Orphanage in Honduras (PPT)

Biography

Samuel Ginn is a distinguished Alabama native and graduate of Auburn University's College of Engineering recognized as a pioneer in the world of wireless technology and communication.  His generous support to the College of Engineering funded the nation's first wireless engineering program; in 2001 the college was renamed as the Samuel Ginn College of Engineering.  He continues to demonstrate his commitment to Auburn University and to higher education as a member of the university's board of trustees.

Ginn began his 42-year career in the telecommunications industry in 1960 as a student engineer with AT&T in Cincinnati, Ohio.  He was appointed vice president of network operation for AT&T Long Lines in 1977.  He joined the Pacific Telephone Group in 1978 as vice president in the Los Angeles area, became president and chief operating officer of Pacific Telephone and in 1988 was appointed chairman and chief executive officer of Pacific Telesis Group.

In April 1994, AirTouch Communications spun off Pacific with Ginn as its chairman and CEO.  At AirTouch, Ginn created nearly $1 billion a month in shareholder gain and added more than $2-billion value for the company's employee stockholders. In June 1999, AirTouch completed a $62-billion merger with Vodafone and Ginn assumed the company chairmanship.  He retired from Vodafone in May 2000.

Ginn has also served as chairman of the California Business-Higher Education Forum, the California Business Roundtable, and the Committee on Jobs.  He has served as a member of several corporate boards including CH2M Hill, First Interstate Bank, Pacific Telesis Group, Safeway Inc., Transamerica Corporation, Vodafone PLC, AirTouch Communications, Hewlett Packard and Fremont Group, LLC.

He is a Sloan fellow at Stanford University's School of Business and is currently an overseer at the Hoover Institute in Palo Alto, California.

Abstract

Cellular technology has come a long way, from first concepts at Bell Laboratories in the late 1940s, working systems designed during the'70s, leading to commercial analog cellular systems in the early '80s, followed by 2G systems in the '90s and global 3G rollouts currently ongoing. Subscriber acceptance has been an eye-opener for market analysts. A high-profile McKinsey/AT&T study in 1986 famously predicted no more than a million wireless subscribers in the U.S. by the turn of the century, citing several 'insurmountable' barriers to market growth. Contrast that with today's reality nearing 2.5 billion subscribers across the globe who are using digital wireless technologies for voice, email, internet access, music and video services. While the McKinsey study 'predicted' that wireless voice would remain a luxury, we now know that hundreds of millions across the developing world clearly see it as a necessity and have used cell phones to make their first call and remain in touch, whether at home or on the move, across town, country and continent. New spectrally efficient technologies are enabling innovative and economical services for broadband wireless access, supporting an ever growing variety of highly-integrated semiconductor devices supporting tiered capabilities and feature rich applications, including high quality imaging, mobile television, interactive mobile games, videoconferencing and social networking. Wireless Wide Area Network operators are provisioning cost-effective All-IP communication facilities and supporting service architectures around the world, connecting communities that have thus far had limited or no telecommunications access. Costs for network equipment and handsets have plummeted in large part due to fierce global competition from Asian vendors.

Anil Kripalani will take a look back at where we have been over the past two decades in the global world of wireless. After setting the foundation by listing key enabling technologies, he will elaborate on the future capabilities of mobile devices, illustrating the convergence with consumer electronics, as well as the benefits and innovative services/applications such devices will offer device manufacturers, operators, content providers, application developers and end users.  He will then venture a perspective on what seems to be the most critical question in the communications industry today: what's coming next in mobile communications?

Biography

Anil Kripalani is corporate senior vice president for Global Technology Affairs at QUALCOMM Incorporated based in San Diego, Calif. Kripalani actively promotes the global adoption and deployment of current broadband standards, and positions next-generation wireless air interface and network technologies that enable wireless multimedia services. In the past, his responsibilities have included global standards planning, technology marketing, network applications engineering and international administration.

Prior to joining QUALCOMM in 1994, Kripalani spent more than 18 years at AT&T Bell Laboratories, AT&T Network Wireless Systems and AT&T Information Systems and last served as a department head for Wireless Systems and Local Access Architecture in AT&T's Chief Architects Division. He was also responsible for cellular base station system software development and cross-functional project management.

Kripalani has been associated with the wireless industry for 22 years and has been active for 16 of those years in the area of wireless standards development. He serves on the Executive Committee of the Telecommunications Industry Association board of directors as chair of TIA Standards. He has previously served on the board of governors of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Open Mobile Alliance and is chairman of the board of the Center for Telecom Management at USC's Marshall School of Business. He serves on the Advisory Board of the WINMEC Center at UCLA. He is affiliated with the TiE entrepreneurial organization (The Indus Entrepreneurs) as a charter member and has recently joined their board of directors for the TiE Wireless SIG (Special Interest Group). He serves on the Executive Council of the International Engineering Council and on the board of directors of the San Diego Symphony.

Kripalani holds a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India and a master's degree in computer science from the University of California, Los Angeles. He holds a patent in signaling networks.

Abstract

Wireless communication has become an integral part of our lives.  We rely on several wireless technologies to provide voice and data at home and on the road.  Today there are various competing and complementary standards for voice and data, and new products with wireless capability appear every day.  The radio front-end circuitry is a key component in such systems, converting electromagnetic energy incident on the device to bits of data processed by the baseband circuitry.  The design and manufacturing of these radios is currently time-consuming and expensive.  This talk will review three new ways of utilizing spectrum, UWB, 60 GHz, and Cognitive Radios.  We will demonstrate that a CMOS radio with multiple antennas can utilize the 60 GHz spectrum for Gb/s wireless LAN/PAN connectivity.  We will also discuss a potential radio architecture for multi-standard and multi-mode applications, the Cognitive Universal Radio (COGUR), which is more amenable to mass production, integration, and multi-standard operability.

Biography

Ali M. Niknejad received his bachelor's in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1994, and master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997 and 2000. From 2000-2002 he worked at Silicon Laboratories in Austin, TX, where he was involved with the design and research of CMOS RF power amplifiers for wireless communication applications. Presently he is an associate professor in the EECS department at UC Berkeley. He is a co-director of the Berkeley Wireless Research Center (BWRC) and the BSIM Research Group. He served as an associate editor of the IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits and is currently serving on the TPC for CICC and ISSCC. His current research interests lie within the area of analog integrated circuits, particularly as applied to wireless and broadband communication circuits. His interests also include device modeling and numerical techniques in electromagnetics.

Presentation Materials 
The Brave New World of Wireless Communication 

Biography

Peters Suh is currently the president of Vodafone Ventures Ltd. Prior to joining Vodafone, he was a managing director for Fremont Communications a  $250-million private equity fund focusing on telecommunication investments.  Peters was previously vice president, chief technical officer for Vodafone's  Global Internet Services group and he has also held a number of positions with  AirTouch, including vice president of Internet Services and vice president of  Management Information Services.  Peters  is a director of Mirapoint, Inc. a privately held messaging company and the  Vodafone-US Foundation. Peters holds a B.A. and M.B.A., both from the  University of California, Los Angeles.

Abstract

Networks of distributed wireless sensors capable of collecting, storing, and disseminating a variety of environmental data have the potential to enable the next revolution in information technology. Research to date on such sensor networks has largely been focused on techniques for building the sensors, and on self-configuring protocols for establishing communication between them. However, in order to fully exploit their potential, a core system-theoretic framework for the design, analysis and application of sensor networks is needed. This presentation will describe recent efforts towards the development of such system-theoretic foundations, and outline some open problems and challenges that lie ahead.

Biography

Venugopal V. Veeravalli received his doctorate degree in 1992 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He is currently a professor in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and a research professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He served as a program director for communications research at the U.S. National Science Foundation in Arlington, Va. from 2003 to 2005, and has held academic positions at Harvard University, Rice University and Cornell University.

His research interests include distributed sensor systems and networks, wireless communications, detection and estimation theory, and information theory.  He is a Fellow of the IEEE and currently on the Board of Governors of the IEEE Information Theory Society.  Among the awards he has received for research and teaching are the IEEE Browder J. Thompson Best Paper Award in 1996, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 1998, and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 1999.