AUB ECE Seminar

Improving Wireless Data Transmission Speed and Reliability to Mobile Computer Platforms

Prof. Brian L. Evans
Embedded Signal Processing Laboratory
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering
The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas

bevans@ece.utexas.edu

Lead graduate students: Kapil Gulati and Marcel Nassar
Undergraduate students: Arvind Sujeeth and Navid Aghasadeghi
Other collaborators: Keith R. Tinsley, Intel Labs

Tuesday, July 15, 2008
American University of Beirut, Beirut, Lebanon

Slides

Abstract

We are exploring a new dimension in improving the speed and reliability of wireless data transmission to mobile computing platforms, such as notebooks, cell phones, and handheld computers. This new dimension is to mitigate the wireless interference generated by the mobile computing platform itself. In mobile computer platforms, clocks and busses generate significant radio frequency interference (RFI). RFI also includes radiation events from power saving strategies, such as switching subsystems on/off as well as scaling clock frequencies and supply voltages up/down based on subsystem demand. RFI may be viewed as a combination of independent radiation events, and is impulsive in nature.

In this talk, we model impulsive noise/interference from the mobile computer platform using Middleton Class A and Symmetric Alpha Stable models. We validate these noise models using RFI measurements of platform noise. We develop several processing approaches to mitigate platform noise in wireless receivers. The specific contributions of this talk are to evaluate the

  1. performance vs. complexity tradeoffs of parameter estimation algorithms,
  2. closeness of fit of parameter estimation algorithms to measured RFI data from the computer platform, and
  3. communication performance vs. computational complexity tradeoffs for linear and nonlinear methods to mitigate computer platform RFI in wireless receivers.

Biography

Prof. Brian L. Evans is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. Prof. Evans' research efforts are in embedded real-time digital signal and image processing systems. His research group derives application performance bounds and optimal algorithms to achieve those bounds, as well as low-complexity algorithms and embedded prototypes. In signal processing, his group conducts research in multicarrier wired and wireless data communication systems. In image processing, his group researches high-quality halftoning for desktop printers and reflective displays. Prof. Evans has published over 180 refereed conference and journal papers, and has graduated 16 PhD students. He was awarded a 1997 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He was a Visiting Associate Professor in fall 2002 at Cornell University and summer 2005 at the American University of Beirut.


Mail comments about this page to bevans@ece.utexas.edu.