Department News

A new book hit the streets in August 2010. The book, Principles of Waveform Diversity and Design, is published by SciTech Publishing, and is the first book dedicated to current and future applications of waveform diversity in radar, sonar, communications, and passive sensing. Along with former PhD student Tom Nelson, Prof. Rice contributed Chapter 28: MIMO Communications Using Offset Modulations. The chapter was based on a presentation given by Michael Rice and Tom Nelson at the Waveform Diversity and Design Conference in 2006. Rice and Nelson were invited to expand their presentation to a full chapter for the book. Tom Nelson completed his PhD, titled, "Space-Time Coding With Offset Modulations," in 2007 and now works for L-3 Communications, Communication Systems - West in Salt Lake City, Utah.

ECEn department chair Michael Jensen was recently named editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Antennas & Propagation, a top journal in the field of antennas and propagation.

An article entitled "A high-gain CMOS op amp using composite cascode stages," written by Don Comer, Dave Comer, and PhD graduate, Lisha Li was recently published in the March issue of the International Journal of Electronics (British). The article reports work by the BYU Mixed-Signal Circuits group that maximizes op amp gain by operating several of the MOS devices in the subthreshold region. Research in the subthreshold operation of amplifier stages is continuing in an effort to minimize power consumption for portable applications in the biomedical instrumentation area.

Attention College of Engineering and Technology students. Spend spring term in Nanjing China while you: study globalization, engineering, and technology, prepare for the job market by gaining global experience, visit and interact with engineering firms in China. No prior foreign language skills needed. Come and learn about the program, courses, costs and financial aid available. The information session will be held on Monday, October 5 @ 3:00 p.m. in room 254 of the Clyde Building. For more information see Professor Brent Nelson, 459 CB, 422-6455. Study Abroad 2010

A tiny optical device built into a silicon chip has achieved the slowest light propagation on a chip to date, reducing the speed of light by a factor of 1,200 in a study reported in Nature Photonics (published online September 5 and in the November print issue).

Professor Mike Wirthlin and graduate students Patrick Ostler and Nathan Rollins gave "The World is Our Campus" broader meaning Monday when they projected their schoolwork into outer space on the shuttle Endeavor.

ECEn graduate student Brent Williams who has finished his PhD and will formally graduate in August 2010, attended the International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium (IGARSS) last week along with 2000 other engineers. He won first place in the student paper contest, a very prestigious honor. The is the second time he has one first place at an IGARSS meeting. The first time was in 2008.

Professor Wynn C. Stirling's research interests include decision theory, multi-agent consectionol theory, detection and estimation theory and information theory. His new book ""Satisficing Games and Decision Making with Applications to Engineering and Computer Science"" is published by Cambridge University Press.

Michael Rice and Oluwasegun Tinubi won the "Best Paper" award at the International Telemetering Conference (ITC) this week. The paper, titled, "The Range Area Network: A New Approach to Aeronautical Telemetry" describes an application of sensor networks to test ranges. Oluwasegun who received his MS degree from BYU in August 2010, received is BSEE degree in his home country of Nigeria. After serving a mission, he enrolled in the ECE graduate program here at BYU.

Dr. Penry has been awarded a research grant from the National Science Foundation's Computing and Communication Foundations Division for research leading to Assisted Partitioning and Automated Synthesis of Hybrid Manycore Simulators.

A record-breaking 16 BYU students are headed into graduate programs with a big financial boost from the National Science Foundation. The NSF recently announced the 2010 winners of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program, which includes a three-year annual stipend of $30,000 plus $10,500 for tuition and fees, a one-time $1,000 travel allowance and access to the NSF's TeraGrid supercomputer for research.

Dr. Penry presented Exposing Parallelism and Locality in a Runtime

Dr. David G. Long and former Ph.D. student David Draper co-authored a paper selected for the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society Transaction Prize Paper Award. Their winning paper, "Simultaneous Wind and Rain Retrieval Using SeaWinds Data," discusses methods to improve SeaWinds scatterometer wind estimation in the presence of rain.

Come and join us for a ECE on diplay. It will be held on April 1, 2010 1:00 -5:00 p.m. in the Wilkinson Center Garden Court. Come look at this challenging, rewarding, and in-demand field!

J. Kelly Flanagan received the Outstanding Alumnus Award for 2012 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University. Some of the highlights from his distinguished career are summarized below.

Professor David Long recieved a NASA Group Achievement Award "for outstanding accomplishments in the Characterization of Arctic Sea Ice Experiment (CASIE), conducted in Svalbard, Norway, July 2009". He and his students operated a small synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system aboard the CASIE unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to collect radar images of sea ice.

The feature article in the April 2009 issue of the Matlab Digest - Academic Edition highlights our very own ECEn 485. The article, entitled, ""Teaching Digital Communication Theory with Simulink at Brigham Young University,"" describes how Simulink has been used to enhance learning in the laboratory portion of ECEn 485. Follow this link to the April 2009 issue of the Matlab Digest.

Professor David G. Long presented the Karl G. Maeser Distinguished Faculty Lecture on "Microwaves, Icebergs, and Global Warming" on 27 Jan 2009. The full lecture is available for viewing on the web at URL http://byubnew.byu.edu/talks/Talk.aspx?id=2994. In his talk he discussed the research he and his students have done in microwave remote sensing of land use, icebergs, sea ice, and Greenland. Describing the Earth's climate system in general terms he related sea ice formation to global circulation and climate. He showed how greenhouse gases affect energy absorption in the atmosphere and discussed how the recent increase in greenhouse gases is causing a rise in global temperature. He urged students to protect the environment, "Even with the doubt and uncertainty about climate change, things that reduce greenhouse gases generally have the effect of protecting and preserving the environment," he said. "By wise and efficient resource use, we can save both our money and the planet." He concluded by saying that ""It has been suggested that it is arrogant to think that humans could adversely affect the earth. I believe the reverse is true: my work in remote sensing has helped me realize that we are affecting the planet, including climate."