Major Research Areas
CONDITION MONITORING OF ELECTRICAL EQUIPMENT AND RELIABILITY ASPECTS
T Phung, TR Blackburn, R Morrow, RE James, R Stillman
Insulation monitoring of electrical equipment, lightning modelling, partial discharge monitoring, on-line assessment of cable condition, Reliability of equipment and risk analysis of equipment failure. Efficiency of transformers particularly with harmonics. Application of composite materials, SF6 insulation.
POWER ELECTRONICS AND MACHINE DRIVES
C Grantham, MF Rahman, B Karanyil, W Lachs
Development of variable frequency inverters for rotating machines and other power electronic applications. Power electronic filters for superconducting fault limiters. Rapid on-line parameter determination of rotating machines.
RENEWABLE ENERGY
HR Outhred, I MacGill, ED Spooner, M Watt, RJ Kaye
Renewable energy systems: economics and utility aspects. Integration of renewable sources into the grid: remote area power supply based on renewable systems.
ELECTRICITY INDUSTRY RESTRUCTURING
HR Outhred, I MacGill
Analysis and design of electricity restructuring processes, including the design of ancillary services and electricity spot and derivative markets, governance and the economic, environmental and social aspects of electricity industry regulation. This research takes place under the auspices of UNSW's interdisciplinary Centre for Energy and Environmental Markets.
COMPRESSION AND PROCESSING OF IMAGES, VIDEO, SPEECH AND AUDIO
D Taubman, E Ambikairajah, D Sen, S Marusic
The signal processing group concentrates on the processing, compression, analysis and robust communication of audio, image and video information. Genomic signal processing is also an area of active research within the group. The members contribute actively to standardisation processes and hold numerous patents in the areas of image compression, video compression, image enhancement and signal processing. This work has attracted significant funding from Government agencies and Industry. Sample Project: Highly Scalable Compression of Video - the aim of this project is to overcome fundamental obstacles which have hindered the development of efficient highly scalable video compression algorithms. The project also aims to develop appropriate client-server interaction models, network protocols and real-time error management strategies to facilitate the exploitation of highly scalable compression algorithms for the delivery of video over the internet and other networks.
MULTIPLE-INPUT-MULTIPLE-OUTPUT (MIMO) SYSTEMS, CDMA AND OFDM SYSTEMS, CHANNEL CODING, CHANNEL MODELING, PRECODING AND EQUALIZATION, MULTI-USER DETECTION, DESIGN AND ANALYSIS OF CELLULAR AND SATELLITE SYSTEM
J Choi, J Yuan, P Rapajic
The mobile communications group concentrates on coding, modulation and equalization mechanisms for wireless multiple access systems. Research activities include space-time codes, MIMO systems, blind equalization and sequence detection over time varying channels, turbo iterative processing and smart antennas. The work of the group has attracted significant Government funding and Industrial support. Sample Project: Information Capacity of the Space Division Multiple Access Mobile Communication System. In this project the expression for the Shannon capacity lower bound of the space division multiple access (SDMA) mobile communication channels with interference was found. The bound is tightly approaching the Shannon capacity of the orthogonal SDMA system over Gaussian channel with no interference. The information capacity of the SDMA system with adaptive MMSE receivers is found as well. It is found that the SDMA system with MMSE receivers achieves at least 50% of the orthogonal SDMA system capacity for the input signal to noise ratio of practical interest in cellular mobile communications (10-30dB). These findings show that the capacity of the cellular mobile network is not interference limited. The capacity depends on the number of sensors in the network and the capacity is linearly increasing with the number of sensors in the network.
PROVISION OF INTERNET SERVICES VIA CELLULAR AND SATELLITE SYSTEMS, MECHANISMS FOR QUALITY OF SERVICE (QOS) MANAGEMENT, WIRELESS LAN AND MOBILITY MANAGEMENT IN INTERNET ENVIRONMENTS, SECURE NETWORKING, LOCATION-BASED SERVICES FOR MOBILE TERMINALS
A Seneviratne, T Moors, R Malaney
The research work of the communication networks group focuses on new network technologies. Currently, there is a strong focus on wireless LAN, including services for QOS management, identity management and security management. Other work includes Programmable Networks, Sensor Networks, location-based services, and network dependability for end-users. The group's work is funded through Industrial research contracts and Government grants. Sample project: Mobile Aware Server Architectures -- The future telecommunication systems will provide ubiquitous access to information using a wide variety of networks. Users in turn will use a diverse range of equipment to access information. This project develops technologies for hiding the heterogeneity of the access networks and end devices, thus enabling users to roam seamlessly among the different networks, and swap the devices they use.
MICROSYSTEMS (MEMS)
CY Kwok, G Peng, N Lovell
Microsystems (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) technology and design covers a range of inter-disciplinary areas using the resources in the Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility. It is an enabling technology for many other disciplines to achieve sensing and actuation functions at a micro-scale level. Research projects undertaken include optical cross switch for planar silica waveguides, MEMS based optical interconnects between chips for Systems in a Package, VLSI chip cooling using synthetic jets, electrodes for intra-ocular implant, physical inertia sensors (optical accelerometer, gyroscope). Other research interests include the development of new microfabrication techniques and investigation of new materials for micromachining.
SILICON QUANTUM COMPUTING AND NANOELECTRONICS
A Dzurak,
The Center of Excellence for Quantum Computing Technology is actively engaged in many research areas related to quantum computing and nanotechnology. Research projects include the top-down nanofabrication of single atom Si:P and exploring self-aligned single-ion phosphorus implantation, silicon nanoelectronic devices including an all silicon single-electron-transistor, and Quantum Cellular Automata.
LOW VOLTAGE AND LOW POWER MOS CIRCUIT DESIGN
T Lehmann, CY Kwok,
Design of mixed analogue/digital CMOS microelectronics circuits and systems for biomedical applications, in particular cochlear implants and vision implants. Investigation of simultaneous electrical stimulation for use in cochlear and retinal implants. CMOS circuit design for very low temperature operation. CMOS circuit design for very low power operation.
VLSI IMPLEMENTATION FOR SIGNAL AND IMAGE PROCESSING
S Nooshabadi, D Taubman
Research projects are in the area of hardware realization of signal & image processing as well as telecommunication algorithms in VLSI integrated circuits. Theses research activities into hardware design are concerned with efficient and cost effective VLSI implementation of variety of signal, image processing and telecommunications systems covering a wide range of applications requiring high-speed and low power implementation. The underlying philosophy of the work is a focus on the development of novel hardware techniques.
RF AND MICROWAVE DEVICES, FERROELECTRICS AND HIGH TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTORS
R Ramer
Research projects include High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) Technology and Superconducting Devices, RF MEMS, Ferrimagentic-Ferroelectric based Tunable Microwave and Millileter-wave devices, Radio Propagation and Information Transmission.
Single Photon Sources and Holographic Bragg Reflectors(HBR)
F Ladouceur
Projects include the development of efficient methods for designing and optimising densely integrated HBRs; optimise techniques for fabricating densely overlayed HBRs; identify and fabricate novel devices incorporating HBRs, develop methodology to embed single nitrogen containing N-V nano-diamonds into the core of an optical fibre for producing single photon source which requires the precise placement and manipulation of the single diamond particles in the required position on the fibre core. In the longer term these will be integrated with silicon-based planar waveguide structures.
POLYMER OPTICAL FIBRES AND DEVICES
GD Peng
In taking advantage of the flexibility in synthesising functional organic materials, we develop polymer optical fibres for various applications meeting specific design requirements. In this area, one of our main efforts is to investigate and to improve the photosensitivity of polymer optical fibres and to develop techniques for polymer fibre Bragg gratings. We have been working on laser-dye doped and rare-earth doped for fibre amplifiers and lasers. We have also been developing polymer optical fibre with high electro-optic effect for optical switching and modulation applications. Electrical poling facilities for introducing (2) to POF and relevant (2) measurement and characterisation systems are developed.
PLANAR OPTICAL WAVEGUIDE DEVICES
GD Peng, CY Kwok
Using HC-PECVD and HC-RIE techniques, we develop low loss planar optical waveguides meeting specific design requirements for photonic and biomedical applications.
SILICA OPTICAL FIBRES AND DEVICES
GD Peng, I Skinner
Using MCVD technology, we develop silica optical fibres and devices for various applications. We have developed a well-established capability in making polarisation fibres, composite and multicore fibres as well as D-shaped fibres for many specific applications. We develop various passive fibre-optic devices --- fibre Bragg gratings, fibre couplers, wavelength-division multiplexers, etc. Also we develop active fibre-optic devices --- fibre amplifiers, fibre lasers, optical switches, logic elements etc.
OPTICAL FIBRE SENSING AND SIGNAL PROCESSING
GD Peng, I Skinner
We develop optical fibre sensors for various industrial applications. In one particular area, we develop fibre Bragg grating based sensor systems for health monitoring of civil engineering structure. We also develop optical fibre hydrophone systems for seismic applications. We also developed optical signal processing and digital signal processing (DSP) techniques for sensor applications
HEALTH INFORMATICS AND TELE-MONITORING
BG Celler
This project involves all aspects of setting up the necessary infrastructure for monitoring the health of people in the home environment and communicating this to appropriate agencies.
ROBUST NONLINEAR CONTROL AND FILTERING
A Savkin, DJ Clements, R Eaton
The work of this group concentrates the design of nonlinear, robust controllers. The methods include backstepping designs, minimax designs and switched controller designs.
FACTORISATION ALGORITHMS
DJ Clements
This work investigates algorithms for the factorisation of rational matrices into a product of two rational matrices. Such factorisation algorithms are central to a number of linear controller design methods. The algorithms should be implementable accurately and quickly.
ADAPTIVE CONTROL
V Solo, A Savkin, PD Neilson, T Hesketh
Adaption, for both control and filtering, is an essential element of a number of the projects of the group. The applications of adaption vary from signal processing, to biomedical engineering, to neuro engineering, to telecommmunicatons.
COMMUNICATIONS AND CONTROL
V Solo, A Savkin
This work includes communication in the presence of time varying, fading channels as well as limits to control performance due to communication bandwidth limitations.
SYSTEM IDENTIFICATION
V Solo, A Savkin, DJ Clements
System identification covers a range of areas including group interest in spatio-temporal systems, biomedical and chemical systems.
COMPUTER VISION AND CONTROL
V Solo, A Savkin
The work here concerns motion estimation from image sequences with application to autonomous vehicle navigation and control.
MODEL PREDICTIVE CONTROL AND MULTI-RATE SYSTEMS
J Sheng, T Hesketh
Such controllers support a variety of control applications for laboratory and industrial implementation.
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Description of Laboratory Facilities
High Voltage Laboratory
This laboratory has facilities for high voltage testing (AC, DC and Impulse voltages) and condition monitoring of electrical equipment, with partial discharge detection equipment, transformer ratio arm bridges, recovery voltage testing, thermal testing and variable frequency testing of insulation.
Power Electronics and Drives Laboratory
This facility has extensive power electronic inverter/converter systems for operation with a range of motor drives and other applications such as superconducting fault limiting devices. There are also available sophisticated data acquisition systems able to be used for fast on-line parameter determination of rotating machines. The laboratory also has available finite element analysis software for magnetic, thermal and electric field modelling and analysis.
Renewable Energy Systems Laboratory
The renewable energy laboratory can provide power quality assessment equipment for monitoring the characteristics of power electronic inverters supplied by renewable sources such as photovoltaic systems.
Signal Processing Laboratories
The Signal Processing group manages a large acoustically isolated space for multi-channel acoustic reproduction and modelling experiments. Signal processing laboratories also include facilities for image and video capture and PCs equipped with signal processing hardware and standard software packages.
Mobile Communication Laboratories
The mobile communications laboratories contain some of the most advanced measurement, and simulation equipment for communication systems. This includes facilities for testing GSM, IS-95, 3G, PCS RF and Antenna design.
Communication Networks Laboratories
The Communication Network laboratories are equipped with a state of the art experimental environment specifically aimed at carrying out traffic analysis, design and testing of protocols at all levels, performance analysis of end terminals and servers and large-scale simulation of networked systems. The experimental network consists of commercial ATM Switches, low and high-end routers and numerous LAN switches. In addition to this, the network consists of a vast array of Linux and FreeBSD based PC routers, wireless LAN, and Infrared access points. The experimental network is fully instrumented with specialist measurement devices both commercial and those based on public domain package which allow real-time and non real time analysis of network traffic and protocol performance.
Semiconductor Nanofabrication Facility (SNF)
This is a joint facility between the School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications and the School of Physics for conducting research in microfabrication and nanofabrication technologies including silicon quantum computing, MEMS and Photonics. Amongst Australian universities, the SNF is one of the most comprehensively equipped facilities with 400-m2 multi-levels clean room. The facility provide capabilities for oxidation and diffusion, state of the art nanolithography system (15nm capability), optical photolithography, deep UV mask aligners, wet processing, several PECVD deposition systems, reactive ion etching systems, MEMS related processes, E-beam evaporator, STM and device characterisation equipment. It closely supports the work of the Center for Quantum Computing Technology which itself has additional advanced processing equipment.
CAD Facilities
A network of SUN workstations supporting software for computer aided design of integrated circuits, VHDL design, and MEMS devices. CAD packages include Cadence, Mentor Graphics, H-Spice, and ANSYS.
Silica Optical Fibre Fabrication Facility
This optical fibre facility is for fabricating special silica-based optical fibres and fibre devices. It consists of a MCVD preform fabrication system and a fibre drawing system; preform index profile measurement and fibre characterisation systems. It has the capacity to produce rare-earth doped fibres for fibre amplifiers and lasers, photosensitive fibres for fibre Bragg gratings, as well as polarisation maintained fibres, single polarisation fibres, multi-core fibres, D-shaped fibres, etc for many specific applications. It also includes various facilities for characterisation and measurement of fibre preforms and optical fibres. This facility supports the discipline's extensive research activity in optical fibre communication technology.
Polymer Optical Fibre Fabrication Facility
This optical fibre facility is for fabricating special polymer-based optical fibres and related devices. It consists of facilities of material processing, preform fabrication and fibre drawing. It has the capacity to develop electro-optic fibres for optical switches and modulators, laser-dye doped, rare-earth doped for fibre amplifiers and lasers, single-mode polymer optical fibres for fibre Bragg gratings and sensing. This facility supports the discipline's extensive research in novel optical fibre technology.
Optical Waveguide Fabrication Facility
The optical waveguide fabrication facility includes a Hollow Cathode Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapour Deposition (HC-PECVD), a Hollow Cathode Plasma Enhanced Reactive Ion Etch (HC-RIE) and related equipment in association with the SNF. This facility supports research on photonic waveguide circuitry technology.
Photonics Facility
The discipline has a comprehensive range of photonic facilities to underpin its research activities. It has a great combination of light sources, including a very expensive solid-state laser system that is capable of tuning from 200nm to 2000nm. It has various conventional laser sources including YAG, Argon, He-Ne and diode lasers, as well as amplified spontaneous emission and fibre laser sources.
The discipline has a wide variety of equipment - an optical autocorrelator for measuring femtosecond pulses, a low coherence reflectometer for micron resolution device characterisation, a fibre tapering facility for coupler manufacture, a Carl-Zeiss Yena interference microscope for phase measurement, plus various tunable lasers, optical spectrum analysers, polarisation maintaining fibre splicers, OTDRs, a fibre recoater, etc.
FBG Fabrication Facility
The FBG fabrication facility consists of two state-of-the-art FBG writing systems. The first is a commercial scale FBG fabrication system capable of producing a range of high quality custom-designed fibre gratings, including apodized, chirped, blazed and phase-shifted gratings. The system consists of high power argon laser system, air-bearing stage, optical mounts, UV optics, fibre clamps, optical table, cover, control rack, Beam control system, Pneumatics & controllers; PCs and DAQ cards, Control software, plus phase masks. This system is completed with a swept wavelength measurement system and a dispersion measurement for grating characterisation. The second is a FBG fabrication system built upon a high power and broadband tunable MOPO laser. This system is designated for making polymer optical fibre gratings.
Industrial and Process Control
These laboratories emphasise problem-based learning and research using pilot plants. Personal computer based workstations are utilised. Each control workstation comprises a computer equipped with data acquisition equipment and pilot plant. The pilot plants may be motor sets simulating electromechanical systems, interacting tanks whose levels are to be controlled or air heater processes representing process control plants.
Standard software packages such as Matlab and Simnon for control design and analysis are routinely used. The department is also equipped with Boeing's EASY5 nonlinear simulation package such as MAPLE software for use in nonlinear control systems design.
A variety of software packages have also resulted from the department's research. A modular simulation shell SSIM has been developed for a SUN workstation and allows the user to build up complex simulation from component modules. Another byproduct of the department's research is a real time kernel for adaptive tuning and control.
Systems Neuroscience and Biomedical Engineering
The laboratory is equipped to study human movement control systems. Electrical activity from muscles, nerves and brain as well as joint angles and forces are measured and logged. Response characteristics of reflex and voluntary muscle control systems can be assessed.
A systems Physiology Laboratory is equipped to study cardiovascular control systems. This laboratory has a number of medical workstations, which meet all the requirements of standard medical practice.
Vision and Control Laboratory
The laboratory is under continual development. Activities underway include; visual serving experiments; autonomous vehicle control of a model hovercraft; autonomous control of a model crane.
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Further Information
Postgraduate Research Coordinator
School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications
Professor Chee Yee Kwok
Tel: +61 2 9385 5300
Fax: +61 2 9385 5993
Email: eet@unsw.edu.au
Web site: http://www.eet.unsw.edu.au
