ECE Professors Jane Gu and Omeed Momeni Receive NSF Award
We are thrilled to announce two of our ECE faculty -- Professor Jane Gu and Professor Omeed Momeni -- as recipients of an NSF (National Science Foundation) grant up to $500,000 for their collaborative work on the project titled “Energy Efficient (sub)mm-Wave Transceiver Phased Array for High Speed and Secure Wireless Communications.”
Following is an excerpt from the project abstract:
“In today’s Big Data Era, the relentless exponential increase of data generation, especially of real-time data from personal daily activities coupled with emerging applications, not only offers great and unprecedented opportunities, but also imposes a significant challenge to process and transmit the ever- increasing large volume and variety of data in a timely manner and avoid being drowned in the constantly fast-expanding gigantic data sea. One of the key enablers to achieve this goal is an energy-efficient and ultra-high-data-rate wireless communication system that matches and, at the same time, scales with the data generation rate. Moreover, wireless communication systems are vulnerable to data intrusion with the increasing number of access networks and nodes in dynamic and open communication environments. This forms a big challenge to wireless cybersecurity. Therefore, to satisfy the needs in the Big Data Era, the next generation wireless communication systems with improved energy efficiency and ultra-high data rate while achieving enhanced security is demanded.
“The project will develop a reconfigurable and scalable wireless communication system, operating at mm- wave to sub-mm-wave frequencies, that can be efficiently reconfigured into three operation modes: ultra-high data rate for short distance, high data rate for medium distance, and medium data rate for long distance. If successful, the system’s data rate and energy efficiency will be orders of magnitude higher than existing technologies and therefore the new system will open a new door for secure and ultra-high-speed wireless applications.” When asked what the long term impact of this project would be regards to the University and research, Professor Momeni responded, “We hope to initiate the reconfigurable high-data-rate communication project and make UC Davis one of the important centers to do such research in the country. We would also like to use this opportunity to train PhD students and attract industry to further fund our efforts in high speed communication.”
The NSF distributes its funding through awards and grants. According to its website, the NSF receives 40,000 proposals every year and only funds 11,000 of them. We would like to once again congratulate Professor Jane Gu and Professor Omeed Momeni on this incredible achievement.