Research Report - ualberta.ca › ~hcdc › Library › iCORE_RR5.pdfResearch Report Report on research programs April 2002 to March 2003 $28 million iCORE investment yields $223 million

Research Report

Report on research programs April 2002 to March 2003

$28 million iCORE investment yields $223 million in research activity46 faculty and 203 graduate

students active on research teams 49 partnerships with industry progress

Over 300 refereed papers published

ALBERTA INFORMATICS CIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCE

12-MONTH REVIEW

Networks and wirelessCOMMUNICATIONS

Nanoscale and quantumINFORMATICS

Intelligent softwareSYSTEMS

VOLUME 2

2 V O L U M E 2 F A L L 2 0 0 3 i C O R E R E S E A R C H R E P O R T

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Contents by Cluster

© 2003 Alberta InformaticsCircle of Research Excellence(iCORE) and the authorsAll rights reserved

For information or additionalcopies, please contact theiCORE secretariat at:

3608 33 Street NWCalgary, AlbertaCanada T2L 2A6

tel (403) 210-5335fax (403) [email protected]

PU B L I C A T I O N CR E D I T S

Volume editorsTerry CaelliBetty Ann Snyder

Production and designMary Anne MoserTara Richards

PrintingSundog Printing

INTRODUCTIONPreface 6Introduction: Building on Success 7

NETWORKS AND WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONSWireless Communications Laboratory 13Dr Norman C. Beaulieuhttp://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~iwcl/

High-Capacity Digital Communications Laboratory 32Dr Christian Schlegelhttp://www.ece.ualberta.ca/~hcdc/

Wireless Location Research Group (WLRG) 44Dr Gérard Lachapellehttp://plan.geomatics.ucalgary.ca

Broadband Wireless Networks, Protocols, 59Applications and PerformanceDr Carey Williamsonhttp://www.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~carey/

Advanced Technology Information Processing Systems 70(ATIPS) LaboratoryDr Graham Jullienhttp://www.atips.ca

TRLabs Wireless Science and Technology Initiative 88Dr James Haslettwww.atips.ca/groups/rfichttp://www.trlabs.ca

Algorithmic Number Theory and Cryptography 100Dr Hugh Williamshttp://www.cisac.math.ucalgary.ca/

NANOSCALE AND QUANTUM INFORMATICSNanoscale Engineering Physics Initiative (“Nanocore”) 116Dr Michael Brett and Dr Mark Freemanhttp://www.nanocore.ca

Nanoscale Information and Communications Technology 132Dr Robert Wolkowhttp://www.phys.ualberta.ca/~wolkow/

INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE SYSTEMSHigh-Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems 140Dr Jonathan Schaefferhttp://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~jonathan

Software Engineering Decision Support 154Dr Guenther Ruhehttp://sern.ucalgary.ca/


PREFACE

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iCORE was created to attract and support exceptional research leaders ininformation science and engineering. The premise is that exceptional people createexceptional results. This volume, our second annual Research Report, is a dramatictestament to that vision. The quality and quantity of research achievements reportedhere are truly remarkable.

The collective activity represented by this publication – this circle of researchexcellence – is producing internationally recognized results in several key areas

that are having a major impact on information and communication technology (ICT). iCORE researchershave been extremely successful at acquiring additional research funding, and there are already strongbeginnings in the commercialization of the new technology that has been created. In addition, our newjoint industry chairs have produced results with high economic value in their first year.

iCORE Chairs and Professors are not only exceptional at creating high-value intellectual property, theyare also attracting the highest quality junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students. Forexample, in 2002-03, Alberta universities attracted 24 percent of the best award-winning graduate studentsin computing science and computer engineering. This is more than double the numbers attracted prior tothe creation of iCORE. The University of Alberta computing science department is now first in Canadain its ability to attract the best Canadian students!

These achievements are intentionally focused in three key areas: (i) networks and wireless communications;(ii) nanoscale and quantum informatics; and (iii) intelligent software systems. The networks area is wellon its way towards becoming a strong, internationally recognized Alberta industry and research cluster.Alberta's nanotechnology and quantum researchers are emerging as one of the top two research groupsin these areas in Canada. The intelligent software area, including high performance intelligent systems,intelligent software for decision support, intelligent oil and gas mining, will also emerge as a globallyrecognized area of excellence within Alberta especially with the new Alberta Ingenuity Centre for MachineLearning, and iCORE’s key role in this Centre. The latter two areas are emergent areas of Albertaresearch excellence. In the future we expect that they will be the core around which dynamic new industryclusters will emerge.

I am thrilled to be a part of this growing Alberta success story.

Dr Brian UngerPresident and CEO

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INTRODUCTION: Building on Success

NETWORKS AND WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

Advanced Transmission Technologies for High-Capacity WirelessThis year, Dr Norman Beaulieu and his wirelesscommunications team have focused on thedevelopment of more efficient and robusttransmission technologies and more general digitalreceiver signal processing solutions. The team has:• brought $915,405 of additional funding to the

iCORE research program;• published 19 journal papers, had another 19

accepted, published one book, six book chapters,and 53 refereed conference papers;

• filed one Invention Report with the Universityof Alberta Industry Liaison Office;

•made contributions to the training of highlyqualified personnel. One PhD thesis and twoMSc theses were completed under Beaulieu’ssupervision in the reporting period. Currently,Dr Beaulieu is supervising six MSc candidates,ten PhD candidates and three postdoctoralfellows at the University of Alberta. Inaddition, he is supervising two PhD candidatesat Queen’s University;

• the team consists of 10 researchers and over35 graduate students supervised by researchteam members.

Dr Beaulieu received distinguished recognition bybeing elected a Fellow of the Royal Society ofCanada, and by being appointed to the Executive

This research report outlines the achievements of the iCORE Chairs, Professors and their associatedresearch teams over the past year, April 2002 through March 2003. As these programs unfold wesee the emergence of three clusters of research excellence. The first, and largest, cluster is in

“networks and wireless communications,” covering fundamental and applied research areas from signalprocessing (Beaulieu) and devices (Schlegel, Jullien, Haslett) through to wireless network design andmanagement (Williamson), cryptography (Williams) and applications in wireless location systems(Lachapelle). The second cluster, “nanoscale and quantum informatics,” includes research into the physicsof nanoscale materials and processes (Freeman, Wolkow), their applications to new materials (Brett), andwill encompass quantum computing (Sanders, arriving in September 2003). The third cluster is broadlytermed “intelligent software systems,” which includes fundamental research into new intelligent highperformance software systems and algorithms (Schaeffer), intelligent software for decision support (Ruhe),and, soon, machine learning (Sutton, arriving in August 2003). The networks cluster is part of a dynamic,relatively mature, Alberta industrial community while the latter two represent areas of high potential forindustrial growth in Alberta.

These three clusters have had an exceptionally productive year as outlined here.

Committee of the Royal Society. He continues toserve in the reporting period as Editor-in-Chief ofthe IEEE Transactions on Communications.

Data Links for High-Capacity WirelessDr Christian Schlegal’s primary focus is on high-capacity digital communications through real-worldcommunications channels, in particular, wirelessdata links. His team consists of 11 researchers andsix PhD students. This year his team has:• designed and constructed a prototype multiple-

input multiple-output channel measurementsystem;

• conducted initial channel measurements whichconfirm both theoretical expectations andresults obtained by other laboratories;

• enhanced this system for real-time operationsas well as full portability.

In analog decoder research, advances include:• the design of a medium-sized product code analog

sub-threshold CMOS decoder that will enter theproduction phase this summer and testing laterin the year; completed initial measurements andprojections based on simulations that confirmanalog technology has the potential to outperformdigital decoders by two orders of magnitude inpower consumption and space requirements, andthus can challenge current digital designs andpossibly displace them in the future.


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Current efforts of team members are to provefeasibility with real input and output circuitry. Hislaboratory has also generated over 30 refereedjournal and conference publications which arecurrently at various stages in the publication process.

Dr Schlegel has been appointed General Chairfor the IEEE Communication Theory Workshop2005, and Technical Program Chair for the 2005International Symposium on Information Theory.

Information Processing Devices and SystemsDr Graham Jullien’s laboratory conducts researchinto the hardware implementation of informationprocessing systems. A major achievement this yearhas been to assemble the Centre for InnovativeWireless Integrated Microsystems (CIWIMS), andto define a CIWIMS Laboratory Cluster. The Clusterprovides an environment in which research skills arebrought together from wireless-RF, wireless-locationfinding, bio-sensors, system-on-chip processors, thin-film and fabrication-integration, and health sciences.Current projects include wireless networks, embeddedsystems and fault tolerant systems, and the modelingand simulation of circuits and structures in advancedand emerging fabrication technologies.

Highlights include:• arithmetic techniques for applications as varied

as low-power hearing instruments, 400M samplesper second adaptive wireless base station filters,and extremely low noise digital processing circuits;

•machine vision techniques for analyzingdefects directly within the camera in real-time;

• several novel video coding architectures formulti-media streaming;

• publications include 18 refereed journal papers,32 refereed conference papers and a specialissue of a leading VLSI journal.

The Laboratory has a core personnel component ofabout 30 researchers and students, while workstationshost more than 50 graduate students performingresearch on all aspects of integrated circuit design.

Research is conducted with the support of majorCanadian industries, and the team is a member andlead client in the Canadian Microelectronics CorporationSystem-on-Chip Research Network, funded by a $40million Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grantthat is being used to bring the technology of system-on-chip design to all interested Canadian universities.

Dr Jullien was elected a Fellow of the IEEE thisyear in recognition of his outstanding contributionsto the area. Fellows of the IEEE constitute only0.1 percent of all current members.

Information Processing Circuit DesignDr Jim Haslett is an iCORE Industrial Research Chairfunded by iCORE, TRLabs, and NSERC. He and histeam are focused on developing, in conjunction withthe TRLabs Wireless Research Center in Calgary, anadvanced wireless RF integrated circuit design and testcapability. The research program began in May of 2002,and in the ensuing 11 months, a team of 12 graduatestudents and two postdoctoral fellows has beenassembled by Dr Haslett to carry out the chair mandate.Close collaboration with staff scientists at TRLabs, andextensive collaboration with other researchers andindustrial sponsors has resulted in majoraccomplishments for the first year of the chair program:• 23 new RF integrated circuits designed by the

research group were fabricated through theCanadian Microelectronics Corporation, andthe results published in a variety of conferencesand journals;

• two new patent applications were filed throughTRLabs;

• a number of new collaborative researchprojects were initiated with both industrypartners and university research groups;

• a team of 10 principal researchers, includingDr Haslett, is currently preparing a CFI grantapplication to provide additional infrastructureto support the research programs;

• publications include 10 refereed journal andconference papers.

Dr Haslett’s student team currently consists of fourPhD students, and eight MSc students. This team hasbeen successful in bringing significant external fundsto complement the $600,000 annual chair budget. Inthe past 11 months, an additional $244,368 has beenobtained by Dr Haslett as principal applicant tosupport the research program, plus an additional$209,000 of support in student scholarships per year.Other funding has been obtained with Dr GrahamJullien to support the Advanced TechnologyInformation Processing Systems (ATIPS) laboratory.

Wireless Location/Navigation DevicesDr Gérard Lachapelle’s research focuses on outdoorand indoor wireless location, high performancenavigation and positioning using satellite andground-based RF techniques, and fusion with self-contained sensors for personal navigation. Thisyear he has managed 10 major research projectsfocused on indoor and outdoor high precisionpositioning using satellite signals integrated withself-contained sensors and the development of a


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software Global Navigation Satellite Systemreceiver. These research projects resulted inpersonnel training, publications and intellectualproperty transfer:• completion of one MEng and four PhD

students directly supervised or co-supervisedby the chair, supervision and co-supervisionof 21 MSc and PhD candidates, including 10that began during the reporting period, andthe hiring of four senior research associates;

• publication of 31 refereed journal articles andconference papers and one book;

• licensing of software and in technologytransfer through external contracts and grantsvalued at $375,000;

• partnerships established with ARINC, U.S.A.;Tampere University of Technology, Finland;and the University of Carleton;

• invitations to speak at events across Canadaand abroad.

The success of the chairholder and his collaboratorsin securing external sponsors for the above researchactivities resulted in another $1.6 million in funding.Dr Lachapelle was elected Fellow of the Royal Societyof Canada, Fellow of the Canadian Academy ofEngineering, Fellow of the US-based Institute ofNavigation and was awarded the title of HonoraryProfessor from the University of Wuhan, China.

Wireless Internet Technologies and PerformanceDr Carey Williamson leads a research team of adozen members (graduate students and researchstaff), with interests in wireless networks, Internettechnologies, and network performance. Much ofthe research is experimental in nature, with anapplied focus on industrially relevant network andprotocol performance issues. The highlights of thisreporting year include:• building Phase 1 of the CFI-funded

Experimental Laboratory for Internet Systemsand Applications (ELISA);

• securing funding from Telus Mobility andiCORE for an Industrial Research Chair inWireless Internet Traffic Modeling;

• developing intellectual property on wireless Webservers;

• expanding the team to seven graduate students,three of whom hold major scholarships;

• authoring or co-authoring 16 refereed researchpapers (two journal, six conference, eightsubmitted);

• receiving an undergraduate teaching award.

SecurityDr Hugh William’s team in Algorithmic NumberTheory and Cryptography has the goal of creatinga recognized centre of excellence for education,research and industrial cooperation on informationsecurity, located at the University of Calgary.Mathematical modeling secure encoders,cryptographic codes, and algorithm development arekey interests for this team. At the end of March2003, a number of key milestones were achieved.

The team has also been successful in thedevelopment of infrastructure to support research.Highlights of the year include:• the establishment of the Centre for Information

Security and Cryptography which wasinaugurated July 17th, 2002;

• purchase and installation of the AdvancedCryptography Laboratory, supported by CFI,Alberta Innovation and Science, AlbertaIngenuity and the University of Calgary;

• Dr Williams, assisted by research team memberDr Renate Scheidler, also planned a publicoutreach event for the official launch of the Centrefor Information Security and Cryptography,attracting over 150 guests and receivingextensive regional and national media coverage;

• award of a Mathematics for InformationTechnology and Complex Systems (MITACS)grant;

• publications include 25 refereed journal papersand one book chapter;

• the team consists of nine affiliated faculty, threepostdoctoral fellows and eight graduate students.

This year, The Fields Institute for Research inMathematical Sciences held a Conference in NumberTheory in Honour of Professor H.C. Williams fromMay 24 to 30, 2003 at The Banff Centre.

In Poland they held a special meeting in honour ofmy birthday called, “Workshop in Honour of the60th Birthday of H.C. Williams,” at the MathematicalInstitute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw,May 12-14, 2003. This meeting was attended byover 40 invited, distinguished computational numbertheorists from among eight different Europeancountries: Poland, the Netherlands, Germany, France,UK, Russia, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. DrWilliams was also awarded the position of SeniorProfessor while was visiting the European UnionCentre of Excellence, Stephan Banach InternationalMathematical Center in Warsaw, as part of “Public-Key Cryptography and Computational NumberTheory” May 2-17.


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NANOSCALE AND QUANTUM INFORMATICSNanoscale physics engineeringDr Michael Brett and Dr Mark Freeman’s NanoscaleEngineering Physics Initiative has concluded its secondyear of operation. Major research accomplishmentsthis year included:• experimental demonstrations of spatial and

temporal control of magnetization dynamics inmesoscopic structures (and better understandingdeveloped through numerical simulations);

• highly controlled growth of large-scale squarespiral structures for photonic crystals.

Nanocore has also continued to play aninstrumental role in the growth of nanoscience andengineering research in Alberta:• efforts to attract Dr Bob Wolkow to Alberta

came to fruition, and he is now installed asan iCORE Chair targeted in the initial Brett/Freeman application, and cross-appointed asPrincipal Research Officer at NationalInstitute of Nanotechnology (NINT);

•Brett and Freeman have each been cross-appointed with the National Institute ofNanotechnology;

• the “uptake” of Nanocore trainees to Albertainitiatives has begun, with Marek Malac hiredby NINT, and Mirwais Aktary in negotiationwith Raith Gmbh about setting up a NorthAmerican office for their nanofabricationproduct line in Edmonton;

• $8.3 million in funding for nanofabricationtools from CFI and Innovation and Science;

• Industry funding included $112,000 in cash fromMicralyne, Read-Rite and Maxtor, and $232,000in-kind from Micralyne and JDS Uniphase;

•The commercialization of the method forcontrolling the formation of spiral spatial andtemporal control of magnetization dynamicsin mesoscopic structures is progressing;

•ChiralTF Devices Inc., the first Nanocorespinoff, is now formulating a business plan;

• 33 refereed journal, 16 conference publicationsand three book chapters;

• the team consists of 23 graduate students andthree postdoctoral fellows, in addition to Brettand Freeman.

Brett was recognized with a Canada Research Chairand Freeman received the University of Alberta AlumniHonour Award. Participation in the Canadian Institutefor Advanced Research effort in nanotechnologyincreased, with Brett, Freeman and Wolkow now allassociates of the nanoelectronics program.

Nanoscale ICTDr Robert Wolkow is principal research officer atNational Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT), andiCORE Chair of the Nanoscale Information andCommunication Technologies research group. Thisteam is in an initial start-up phase at the Universityof Alberta, and will be associated with NINT inEdmonton. Initial projects will includeinvestigations into nanoscale structure andmanipulation, instrument development, connectionsto nanostructures, directed growth, and theory.

Quantum information scienceDr Barry Sanders is an iCORE professor who startedin August 2003, after the reporting period of thisresearch report. Dr Sander’s team will explore thepieces of the puzzle at the quantum informatics levelrequired to realize quantum computing.

INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE SYSTEMS

High Performance Artificial IntelligenceDr Jonathan Schaeffer’s research team specializesin high-performance artificial intelligence,investigating new technologies for creating“intelligent” behaviour in a computer. The researchexplores search, machine learning, and heuristicknowledge, using games to demonstrate and testalgorithms and ideas. Fundamental problems inartificial intelligence are investigated in the contextof computer programs that play chess, checkers, Go,and poker. Many of the game-playing programshave achieved a high level of performance and havechallenged the best human players in the world.• the team now consists of three professors, four

affiliated professors, one postdoctoral fellow,nine PhD students, and 16 Masters students.In addition, there are four programmer/analysts (two part-time), and a half-timesecretary;

• in the past year the team strengthened ties withElectronic Arts of Vancouver (the largestgames company in the world) and BioWare ofEdmonton;

• Schaeffer and team members participate inresearch, infrastructure and operating grantawards valued at approximately $56 million;

• 38 refereed journal and conference papers werepublished.

Developments in intellectual property are continuallyexpanding. Schaeffer is the co-founder of BioTools Inc.


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(www.biotools.com), a bioinformatics company. BioToolshas three successful commercial products: PEPTOOL(protein analysis), GENETOOL (DNA analysis), andCHROMATOOL (DNA/protein assembly). Theseproducts are used in over 1,000 research laboratoriesaround the world. Chenomx is a spinoff from BioTools(www.chenomx.com). Chenomx has developed softwaretechnology to do fluid analysis, and has partnered withVarian and Breuker, the two largest NMRmanufacturers in the world. BioTools and Chenomxtogether employ over 20 people and have combinedrevenues of $1 million.

For over 15 years, the team has been buildingtools to simplify the task of parallel programming.

A third generation tool, CO2P3S, to simplify thetask of parallel programming, is now available onthe web and actively promoted at major parallelcomputing conferences.

Intelligent Software Decision SupportDr Guenther Ruhe’s team achievements over the lastyear have been the development of novel approachesand tools supporting early life-cycle decisions insoftware development. The most successful resultswere achieved in the area of software release planningunder resource and budget constraints.• computational efficient evolutionary algorithms

have been designed and implemented,providing a set of promising solutions. Thefinal decision maker can chose out of thosesolutions, taking into account further implicitand time-dependent constraints;

• first steps towards developing a commercialproduct out of these results have been conducted;

• a new approach called Soft RequirementsNegotiator has been developed that initiallyuses qualitative, and later quantitativeinformation to provide decision support. Thereported results are part of a broader effort todevelop an integrated decision support systemwith intelligent components for knowledgeretrieval, analysis and reasoning, multi-criteriadecision aid, simulation and negotiation;

• during the reporting period, further progress hasbeen achieved in creating a core team ofresearchers and in establishing or enhancingdynamic national and international collaborations;

• the team now consists of two researchassociates, four PhD, five MSc and threepostdoctoral fellows;

• publications consisted of eight refereed journaland conference papers.

The team has started to prepare the 16th

International Conference on Software Engineeringand Knowledge Engineering, taking place in Banffin June 2004, an excellent opportunity to presentresearch excellence to both academia and industry.

Reinforcement LearningDr Rich Sutton is an iCORE Chair who started inAugust 2003, after the reporting period of thisresearch report. Dr Sutton is a renowned researcherwho joins the world-class cluster of artificialintelligence and games research at the Universityof Alberta. His research on machine learning hasapplication in robotics and other areas.

CONCLUSIONAs of spring 2003, there were 13 teams in place,representing 46 faculty and 203 graduate studentsand postdoctoral fellows. For the $28 million in majorawards granted by iCORE, so far these awardrecipients have participated in acquiring $223 millionto support their research and development programs.

In the wireless cluster, there are now 28 professors,12 postdoctoral fellows, 22 research staff, 62 PhDand 63 MSc students. More than 250 refereed journaland conference papers were published or accepted in2002-03 in this cluster. Technology transfer is takingplace with Applanix, ARINC, AT&T Labs (wireless),Axia SuperNet, Dalsa Semiconductor, ElevenEngineering, Ericsson Wireless, Gennum, HarlowLaboratories, Hewlett Packard, Intel, iPROS, IQ SoftProf, L3 Communications, Nokia Mobil, Non-Elephant Encryption, Nortel Networks, NovAtel,Qinetiq, Samsung, SaskTel, SiRF Technology,SiWorks, Smart Technologies, Spirent Comm, SunMicrosystems, and Telus Mobility.

In the area of nanotechnology, there are now 12professors, six postdoctoral fellows, 19 research staff,13 PhD and eight MSc students, who havepublished an aggregate of 46 refereed papers in2002-03, and undertaken technology transferprojects with Hewlett Packard, Maxtor, Micralyne,Read-Rite, and the spinout ChiralTF Devices.

The intelligent software systems cluster, consistingof 10 professors, four postdoctoral fellows, sevenresearch staff, 14 PhD and 21 MSc students, havepublished 46 refereed papers in 2002-03. Companiessuch as Alterna Technologies, Bioware, Brycol, Corel,Electronic Arts, Nortel Networks, Motorola, and Relic,are also involved with the research teams in this area.

The cumulative impact of the research activityhere is nothing short of remarkable, as you will seein the research reports that follow.

NETWORKSAND WIRELESS

COMMUNICATIONS

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CANADA RESEARCH CHAIR

Norman C. BeaulieuiCORE - Canada Research Chair inBroadband Wireless CommunicationsUniversity of AlbertaTier 1 - January 1, 2001

Research Involves: Expanding the capacity and quality of service of wirelesscommunication systems

Research Relevance: Ensuring the ability of communications networks to meet growingdemands for wireless services and enabling new multimedia services

KEEPING UP WITH THE WIRELESS REVOLUTIONThe proliferation of wireless telecommunications devices has put an enormous strain on thephysical capabilities of this new technology. The number of cellular phone users has leaptfrom a mere 25,000 in 1984, to some 16 million a decade later. There were 30 million cordlessphones in use across North America in 1992, a number that has since doubled. And globalPCS services that were bringing in $2 billion in 1996, are estimated to have revenues ofabout $12 billion in 2001.

Norman Beaulieu is at the forefront of researchers responsible for ensuring that the capabilityof this technology will be able to keep pace with the demands of these dramatically expandingbusiness and consumer markets.

Beaulieu specializes in the most fundamental aspects of the science of broadband wirelesscommunications. He has also applied these theoretical insights to solving some of the mostpractical problems in the design of communications systems. And he has been successful.Beaulieu has overturned many of the traditional methods for handling this technology, revealingthem to be too expensive and inaccurate to be retained.

This work won Beaulieu the honour of being elected as a fellow of the Institute of Electricaland Electronics Engineers at a relatively early stage in his career. He recently became the onlyCanadian Editor-in-Chief that the organization’s influential research journal has ever had.

Beaulieu has made seminal contributions in several distinct aspects of the field, giving him awide perspective on strategies for overcoming the current limitations of wirelesstelecommunications. He suggests that no single improvement will be as effective as severalcomplementary improvements that address different features of the problem. As a recipientof a Canada Research Chair, he intends to investigate several such improvements, dealingwith how interference is handled, how signals are processed, and the ability to predict inadvance how much data will be travelling over a particular channel.

CHAIRHOLDER PROFILES

Reprinted courtesy Government ofCanada, Canada Research ChairsProgram

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NOTICE OF APPOINTMENTSIEEE FELLOW

Dr Beaulieu was elected anIEEE Fellow on January 1,1999, with the citation:

For contributions to theanalysis and modeling ofwireless data and digitalcommunication systems.

STEACIE

Norman Beaulieu was awardedthe NSERC E.W.R. SteacieMemorial Fellowship in 1990,the first electrical engineer tobe so honoured in fifteen years,with the citation:

Norman Beaulieu isa world authority in wirelesscommunication theory who hasdiscovered ingenious mathe-matical approaches to predictin advance how well newwireless and digitalcommunications systems willperform. His methods are ofkeen interest to those whodesign cell phone networks, forexample, who need to know ifsuch problems as channelfading and data loss will affectusers. In January, he waselected Fellow of the Institute

of Electrical and ElectronicsEngineers (IEEE).

IEEE TRANSACTIONS

Norman C. Beaulieu wasappointed Editor-in-Chief ofthe IEEE Transactions onCommu-nications in January2000.

Transactions on Comm-unications is the flagstaffpublication of the IEEECommunications Society,which has over 45,000members. Regarded as “thesource” for break throughcommunica-tions theories andpractical applications, thisworld-renowned, scholarlyjournal covers all aspectsof physical-layer commun-ications. At present, there areover 60 Area Editorsand Editors on the editorialstaff who process over 700submitted manuscripts peryear. The journal has over9000 subscribers.

Dr Beaulieu is thefirst individual in Canada tobe appointed editor- in-chiefof this journal.

FELLOWSHIP IN THE ROYAL SOCIETYOF CANADA

Dr Norman C Beaulieu waselected to the ranks of the RoyalSociety of Canada in 2002.

Fellowship in theRoyal Society of Canada isconsidered Canada's mostprestigious academic accolade towhich scholars and scientistsaspire. "These distinguishedindividuals have accomplishedwork of truly outstandingquality," said Howard Alper,President of the Royal Societyof Canada. "They add enormousvalue to the extraordinaryresource of talent andexperience that constitutes theSociety."

The citations for the awardsdescribe Dr Beaulieu as "a scientificleader in the analysis and modelingof wireless communicationssystems. He has discovered ingen-ious mathematical solutions andmodels for a wide range of digitalcommunications componentsand applications. Inter-nationalresearchers have widely used hismethods, models and results."

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WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONSLABORATORYiCORE ChairElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Alberta

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Professor Norman C. Beaulieu was awarded the first iCORE Research Chair, September 1, 2000, forminga team with existing University of Alberta Faculty Professor Witold A. Krzymieñ and Associate ProfessorIvan Fair. The establishment of the iCORE Chair in Broadband Wireless Communications at theUniversity of Alberta seeded the institution of the Wireless Communications Laboratory. AssistantProfessor Xiaodai Dong and Associate Professor Chinthananda Tellambura joined the team in February2002 and July 2002, respectively.

The Laboratory has collaborations with researchers at other institutions, with industry and with theiCORE High-Capacity Digital Communications (HCDC) Laboratory. There are research collaborationswith partners in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Missouri, Italy and Ontario.

Dr Beaulieu has brought $715,405 of other (not from iCORE) research funding to the research program.As co-investigator, Dr Beaulieu has secured an additional $200,000 in research grants.

Dr Beaulieu’s team had a total of 92 journal and conference papers published or accepted during thereporting period, a remarkable number. In addition, one Report of An Invention was filed with theUniversity of Alberta Industry Liaison Office.

The iCORE Chair has made strong contributions to the training of highly qualified personnel. OnePhD thesis and two MSc theses were completed under his supervision in the reporting period. One PhDqualifying examination was held. In addition, five PhD thesis proposals and two MSc thesis proposalswere completed. Currently, Dr Beaulieu is supervising six MSc candidates, ten PhD candidates and threepostdoctoral fellows (PDFs) at the University of Alberta. In addition, he is supervising two PhD candidatesat Queen’s University.

Dr Beaulieu received distinguished recognition by being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada,and by being appointed to the Executive Committee of the Royal Society. In addition, Dr Beaulieu continuedto serve in the reporting period as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications.

The iCORE Wireless Communications Laboratory sponsored ten external invited speakers and twenty-three internal speakers in two seminar series.

In consequence of the achievements, awards, recognition and growth of the first thirty-one months, theWireless Communications Laboratory is now well known in the international communications researchcommunity and is increasing international and national awareness of Alberta, iCORE and the Universityof Alberta.

Dr Norman C. Beaulieu is iCORE Chair of the Wireless Communications Laboratory. Two other researchers already at theUniversity of Alberta are part of the research team - Dr Witold Kryzmien and Dr Ivan Fair - both of the department ofelectrical and computer engineering. iCORE has committed $700,000 for five years for a total of $3.5 milion to establish thisresearch team.

DR NORMAN C. BEAULIEU


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RESEARCH GOALS ANDOBJECTIVES

Wireless communicationsresearch has been given greatimpetus by the advent of cellulartelephony, mobile satellite andportable personal communicationservices. The exponentiallygrowing user demand for servicestogether with the increasingdemands for higher speedtransmission of large amounts ofdata create the need for newtechnologies. In order to providehigher data transmission rates tomore users without sacrificing theintegrity of the receivedinformation, advances must be

made in the transmission systemcomponents and the transmissionsystem designs. In turn, achievingthe best advances in wirelesssystems and componentsrequires better modelling of thewireless channels, including thelong-term, long-range predictionof the fading channel.

The overall goal of theproposed research is highercapacity in broadband wirelesscommunication systems at lowercost. The primary thrust of thisresearch is investigation intofundamental properties, limitations,

and improvements in broadbandwireless systems. A secondarythrust is the application of theresearch results to present andfuture systems. This two-prongedapproach is consistent with theChair’s belief that strongfundamental research is vital tothe understanding andimprovement of technicallychallenging systems, whileapplication of the fundamentalresearch results is an importantstep in creating economicadvantages for the supportingcommunity.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The research conducted in theiCORE Wireless CommunicationsLaboratory is multifaceted; sometopics under investigation are listedin the Research Team section below.

Dr Beaulieu’s research andeditorial activity led to his electionas a Fellow of the Royal Society ofCanada (FRSC) where he was oneof eight of the 62 new Fellows ofthe Royal Society chosen to beprofiled in its media release. Inaddition, he was invited to serve asInvited Distinguished Speaker at aninternational conference, and invitedto write the introduction to theclassic reprint of the paper “LinearDiversity Combining Techniques”by D. G. Brennan.

Research activity of ProfessorKrzymieñ and his graduate studentssupported through the iCOREChair is currently focused onbroadband high-throughput packetdata access to the Internet for mobileand nomadic users, employingOFDM (orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing) and spreadspectrum signalling, and MIMO

(multiple-input multiple-output)antenna techniques. The workincludes physical link layer issuessuch as adaptive modulation andcoding, space-time coding, multipleaccess interference cancellation andlong range channel state prediction,as well as medium access control(MAC) and radio resourcemanagement questions, such as

hybrid ARQ (automatic repeatrequest) and packet transmissionscheduling algorithms. DrKrzymieñ has done collaborativeresearch with Nortel Networks andEricsson Wireless Communications.His professional service tothe communications researchcommunity includes being anAssociate Editor for the IEEETransactions on Communications, amember of the Editorial Board of

Wireless Personal Communications -An International Journal (Kluwer),the Area Editor for DigitalCommunications / Signal Proc-essing of the International Journalon Wireless & Optical Communications(World Scientific), and a member ofTechnical Program Committees forfive international conferences. Healso served as Session Chair for

several major internationalconferences. Professor Krzymieñ isthe principal investigator on anNSERC Strategic Grant “EnablingTechnologies for Future HighThroughput Packet Data Access”awarded in October 2002 for fiveyears at $200,000 per year. Thegrant’s team includes iCOREprofessors Beaulieu, Fair, Schlegeland Tellambura.

Professor Krzymieñ’s current

IN 2002, DR BEAULIEU’S RESEARCH ANDEDITORIAL ACTIVITY LED TO HIS ELECTION AS AFELLOW OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA (FRSC).


research activity encompasses thefollowing main projects:• “Enabling Technologies for

Future High ThroughputPacket Data Access,” anNSERC Strategic Grantsupported project

• “Techniques for EfficientDigital Wireless MultipleAccess,” an NSERCIndividual Research Grantproject

• “Space-Time Processingand Coding for WidebandCDMA and Future WirelessAccess,” a TRLabs supportedproject

• “Multiple-AccessInterference Cancellationfor Efficient CDMAWireless Communications,”a TRLabs supportedproject

• “High Bit Rate Packet DataWireless Access on Singleand Multi-CarrierForward Links,” a TRLabssupported project

• “Advanced Receivers forAdaptive MIMO andMulti-Carrier Packet DataAccess Systems,” a TRLabssupported project

Dr Fair and his graduatestudents are investigating efficientchannel coding techniquesfor wireless communicationsystems. The three main thrustsof their work supportedthrough the iCORE WirelessCommunications Laboratoryinclude development of efficientturbo decoding techniques, newcodes for MIMO systems, andcoding techniques to reduce thepeak-to-average power ratio inOFDM systems.

As associate chair forundergraduate studies and actingdirector of computer engineering

in the department of electricaland computer engineering (ECE)at the University of Alberta, DrFair has also played an active rolein the evolution of the ECEcurriculum and programs. DrFair was recently appointed anAssociate Editor for IEEECommunications Letters , andcontinues to serve on programcommittees of a number ofconferences and as a reviewer forseveral technical journals.

Research projects lead by DrFair that are currently beingsupported by the iCOREWireless Laboratory include thedevelopment of:• efficient turbo decoding

techniques;• error control codes for

multiple-input multiple-output wireless systems;

• techniques to limit thepeak-to-average powerratio in OFDM systems.

Professor Xiaodai Dong joinedthe department and iCOREWireless CommunicationsLaboratory in February 2002.Professor Dong serves as anassociate editor for modulationand signal design of theIEEE Transactions onCommunications, and a member ofthe Technical ProgramCommittee for the 2003 IEEEInternational Conference onCommunications (ICC’2003).She provides extensive paperreview services to a number ofjournals and conferences.

Professor Dong’s researchactivities focus on thedevelopment of theoryand applications that areessential to enabling highcapacity broadband wirelesscommunications systems. Specificinterests include communication

theory, adaptive modulation andcoding, fading channels, multipleantenna systems, multi-carriercommunications and ultra-wideband technology. To achievethis goal, research projectsfocusing on highly effectivechannel estimation schemes, linkadaptation technologies, andultra-wideband communicationtransceiver designs are currentlyunder investigation.

Dr C. Tellambura is associateprofessor and iCORE researchassociate in the department ofelectrical and computerengineering, University ofAlberta. He was recruited fromMonash University in Victoria,Australia and joined the iCOREWireless CommunicationsLaboratory in July 2002.Dr Tellambura is knowninternationally for his work incommunication theory andwireless systems. He is serving asassociate editor for multicarriersystems of the IEEE Transactionson Communications and associateeditor of the IEEE Transactionson Wireless Communications.

Dr Tellambura’s research aimsto develop coding techniques thatwill reduce the fluctuations of theOFDM signal amplitude and willreduce interference in OFDMsystems. Some of the potentialapplications and significance ofthis research are:• digital subscriber loops,

which use existingtelephone lines to carryvery high-speed data, usemulticarrier modulation.High peaks can contributeto out-of-band interferenceand this may also couple toadjacent subscriber linescausing unacceptableinterference;

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• if OFDM is to be used formobile telephony, theDoppler spread caused bythe movement of themobile creates afundamental limit toperformance. Improvedcoding techniques canalleviate this;

• other applications includewireless local areanetworks, digital videobroadcasting, digital audio

broadcasting and wirelessaccess for mobile satelliteservices and wireless datanetworks. New codingtechniques andtransmit-diversity forOFDM will enhanceperformance benefits.

Some topics currently underinvestigation are:• peak reduction in OFDM;• interference cancellation in

OFDM;

• hybrid selection/maximalratio diversity overcorrelated fading channels;

• novel suboptimal diversitycombining receivers;

• a new representation forcharacteristic function ofa lognormal randomvariable;

• adaptive modulation forOFDM;

• space-time codes overcorrelated fading channels.

RESEARCH TEAM

The laboratory consists of a team of professors, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows with two officesupport staff, three summer research assistants, two research engineers and one computer systems specialist.

TEAM LEADER

Norman Beaulieu

AWARDS

• Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada• Appointment to Executive Committee of the Royal

Society of Canada• NSERC E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellow• IEEE Fellow• Canada Research Chair in Broadband Wireless

Communications• Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC)

RESEARCH TEAM

Witold Krzymieñ

Ivan Fair

Chinthananda Tellambura

Xiaodai Dong

TITLE

Professor, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC)

Associate Professor

Associate Professor

Assistant Professor

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Qiong Xie

Robert Hang

RESEARCH TOPIC

Cellular Network Coverage

VHDL Design


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PDF - DR BEAULIEU

Julian Cheng

M. Oussama Damen

Seung Joon Lee

TOPIC

Exact Performance Analysis of DS-CDMA in Nakagami Fading

Space-Time Codes and Bandwidth Efficient Pulse Shaping

Multirate DS-CDMA for Multimedia Applications

PHD - DR BEAULIEU

Kevin Altman

Kareem Baddour

Yunfei Chen

Julian Cheng

Ethan Davis

Sasan Haghani

Bo Hu

Pavel Loskot

Amir Rabiei

Kathiravetpillai Sivansan

Peng Tan

Bohdan Tomiuk

TOPIC

Symbol Synchronization inSmall Signal-to-InterferenceRatio Environments

Autoregressive SimulationMethods for MIMO systems

Fading Channel State andModel Parameter Estimation

Exact Performance Analysisof DS-CDMA

Signal Classification andModulation Identification

Capacity of FadingWireless Channels

Performance Analysis ofUltra-Wideband Systems

Hybrid Maximal Ratio/S+N Selection Diversity

Non-Coherent MaximumLikelihood Estimation

Receiver Designs forMultiuser Detection

Interference Cancellation inOFDM

Channel Estimation Errorin Maximal Ratio DiversityCombining

AWARDS

NSERC PGS-B, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship

Alberta Ingenuity Scholarship





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David Young

Xiaodi Zhang

Novel Fading Models basedon Physical Channels

Performance Analysis of H-S/MRC Systems

MSC CANDIDATE - DR BEAULIEU

Lingzhi Cao

Xiaofei Dong

Sasan Haghani

Jeremiah Hu

Wenyu Li

Faruq Rajwani

Qiong Xie

Tim Poon

TOPIC

Pilot Symbol Assisted 16-QAM for High CapacityWireless Systems

Higher-Order StatisticalBehaviour of Fading Channels

Hybrid Selection/MaximalRatio Diversity for Two-Dimensional Signalling

Tractable Models for PhaseDistributions in Signal Fading

Optimal Pilot SymbolAssisted Modulation

Novel Closed-FormApproximations to LognormalSum Distributions

Minimax Approximation toLognormal SumDistributions

Optimal Receiver Designsfor Co-Channel InterferenceEnvironments

AWARDS

NSERC PGS-A, WH JohnsGrad Fellowship, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship

NSERC PGS-A, WH JohnsGrad Fellowship

NSERC PGS-A, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship,WH Johns Grad Fellowship

PHD CANDIDATE - DR KRZYMIEÑ

Jia Liu

TOPIC

Interference CancellationAlgorithms for LayeredSpace-time Wireless Links

AWARDS

TRLabs Scholarship


MSC CANDIDATES - DR KRZYMIEÑ

Shuying Shen

Robert Elliott

TOPIC

Long Term Prediction ofSmall Scale Fading and Multi-user Interference in Single-carrier Single-antenna PacketData Access Systems

Transmission SchedulingAlgorithms for CDMA PacketData Access Evolution

AWARDS

NSERC PGS-A, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship, TRLabsScholarship

PDF - DR FAIR

Yan Xin

TOPIC

PAPR Reduction in OFDM

AWARDS

Alberta IngenuityScholarship

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Shreeram Sigdel

Geoffrey Messier

David Mazzarese

Robert Novak

Kay Wee Ang

Efficient Receiver Algorithmsfor Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) WirelessLinks Employing AdaptiveMulti-Carrier Transmission

Techniques for ImprovedCDMA Forward LinkPerformance in RealisticPropagation Environments

High Throughput DownlinkCellular Packet Data Accesswith Multiple Antennas andMulti-user Diversity

Adaptive Multi-carrierSystems for High Bit RateDownlink Wireless PacketData Access

Improved Hybrid SubtractiveInterference CancellationSchemes

TRLabs Scholarship

PGS-A, iCORE GraduateStudent Scholarship, TRLabsScholarship

TRLabs Scholarship, FS ChiaScholarship

TRLabs Scholarship


PHD CANDIDATES - DR FAIR

Fengqin Zhai

Ge Li(Co-supervised withDr Krzymieñ)

Chunlong Bai(Co-supervised withDr Krzymieñ)

TOPIC

Integration of Error Controland Constrained SequenceCodes

Low Density Parity Check(LDPC) Codes for MIMOWireless Systems

Hybrid Automatic RepeatRequest (ARQ) Coding Schemesfor Adaptive High ThroughputWireless Data Links EmployingMultiple-input Multiple-output(MIMO) Antenna Systems

MSC CANDIDATES - DR FAIR

Aaron Hughes

TOPIC

Integration of Error Control and Constrained Sequence Codes

AWARDS

NSERC UndergraduateAward

AWARDS

CWTA (Canadian WirelessTelecommunications Assn)Scholarship

TRLabs Scholarship

Alberta IngenuityScholarship, TRLabsScholarship

SUMMER STUDENTS - DR FAIR

Vincent Sieben

TOPIC

Development ofConvolutional Codes withAdditional Spectrum Control

PDF CANDIDATES - DR DONG

Mohsen Eslami

TOPIC

Link Adaptation for Multiple Antenna Systems

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SUPPORT - DR FAIR

Mark Wells

Sharon Walker

Walt Howard

POSITION

Editorial Assistant to the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEETransactions on Communications

Administration

Computer Systems Specialist


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PHD CANDIDATE - DR TELLAMBURA

Luqing Wang

TOPIC

Reduction of High Peaks of OFDM Signals

MSC CANDIDATE - DR TELLAMBURA

Yunxia Chen

TOPIC

Performance of Diversity Systems in Correlated Fading Channels

SUMMER STUDENT - DR TELLAMBURA

Rees Machtemes

TOPIC

3rd and 4th Generation Wireless System Proposals

COLLABORATIONS

Research CollaborationDr Beaulieu’s nationaland international researchcollaborations include:1. Wireless Systems ResearchDepartment, AT&T Labs -Research, Middletown, NewJersey, US (Moe Win, Jack H.Winters); Shannon Laboratories,AT&T Labs - Research, FlorhamPark, New Jersey, US (BenjaminF. Logan); Department ofStatistics, Rutgers University,Piscataway, New Jersey, US(Lawrence A. Shepp): Researchon hybrid selection/maximal

ratio diversity combining digitalreceivers.2. Electrical EngineeringDepartment, University ofL’Aquila, L’Aquila, Italy(Fortunato Santucci and MarcoPratesi): Research on newmathematical modeling of sumsof lognormal random variablesand applications to outage in slowfrequency hopped time divisionmultiple access (TDMA) spreadspectrum (FHSS) cellularsystems.3. Department of EngineeringScience, University of Modena,

Modena, Italy (Maria LuisaMerani): Research on efficientgeneration of cross-correlatedfading amplitude sequences forsimulation of correlated branchdiversity systems.4. Department of Mathematicsand Statistics, Queen’s University,Kingston, Ontario, Canada (FadyAlajaji, Glen Takahara andHongyan Kuai): Research onsignal constellation mappings fornon-uniform sources.5. Department of ElectricalEngineering, University ofMissouri, Columbia, Missouri,

PHD CANDIDATES - DR DONG

Lei Xiao

TOPIC

Highly Effective Channel Estimation for Wireless Fading Channels

MSC CANDIDATES - DR DONG

Alfred Lee

TOPIC

Receiver Design of Ultra-Wideband Communication Systems


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US (Chengshan Xiao): Researchon higher-order statistics offading channel simulators andresearch on novel channel modelsand simulation techniques forline-of-sight fading channels.

Dr Krzymieñ and his studentscollaborate with the Institute forCommunication Technology,German Aerospace Centre (DLR),Oberpfaffenhofen, Germany. Thecollaboration involves joint workin the area of spread-spectrummulti-carrier systems. The primecontact is Dr Stefan Kaiser. Avisiting postdoctoral researcherfrom DLR, Dr Erik Haas, joinedthe group from May to August2003. His visit was funded byDLR.

Professor Tellambura’sresearch collaborations include:

1. Electrical EngineeringDepartment, Virginia Tech, US(A. Annamalai): Research ondiversity systems and theirperformance in wirelessenvironments. Joint researchresults will be published in aforthcoming book as well.2. Electrical EngineeringDepartment, University ofBergen, Norway (M. Parker):Research on peak powerreduction for OFDM systems.

Other CollaborationsDr Beaulieu continued to serve inthe reporting period as editor-in-chief of the IEEE Transactionson Communications. ProfessorBeaulieu also served on theeditorial board of the Proceedingsof the IEEE and as associateeditor for communication theoryof the IEEE CommunicationsLetters. Complementing hisresearch journal activities, theiCORE Chair has been active inresearch conference organization.A highlight of this activity is the

hosting of the InternationalAssociation of Science andTechnology for Development(IASTED) Wireless and OpticalConference (WOC 2002), held inBanff, Alberta in July 2002. Theconference attracted 204registrants from 24 countriesincluding major participationfrom Canada, the United Statesand Korea. Under the leadershipof the iCORE Chair, the WOC2002 Conference grew 264percent in submissions, 262percent in registrations and 234percent in the number of paperpresentations over the WOC2001 conference. Other researchconference organization activityincludes service on the TechnicalProgram Committee of theconference WIRELESS 2002 andservice on the Technical ProgramCommittee of the GlobalTelecommunications ConferenceGLOBECOM 2003, service onthe Technical ProgramCommittee of the InternationalTelecommunications SymposiumITS 2002, service on the PrizePaper Committee of ITS 2002and service as Session Chair forthe International Conference onTelecommunications ICT’2003and the IEEE InternationalSymposium on Advances inWireless Communications.

Dr Beaulieu served on keypanels during the reportingperiod, including: the IEEEVehicular Technology SocietyFellow Evaluation Committee,the British Columbia AdvancedSystems Institute researchfunding proposal review panel,the NSERC Circle Forum, anNSERC Workshop on HighlyQualified Personnel (HQP), theCollege of Reviewers of theCanada Research ChairsProgram and an NSERCIndustrial Research Chair

Proposal Site Visit Committee.

Collaboration with IndustryDr Beaulieu continued as Directorof the Corporation of ElevenEngineering Incorporated,Edmonton, Alberta in thereporting period. He has beenactively involved in technologyand product planning as well asin the recruitment of highlyqualified personnel.

Dr Krzymieñ’s industrycollaborations include:1. Spatial Processing TechnologyGroup, Harlow Laboratories,Nortel Networks, Harlow, UK.Prime contact: Dr Chris Ward.The Harlow group is anindustrial partner on an NSERCStrategic Grant. The collaborationprimarily entails the spatialprocessing aspects of the strategicproject, but also includes linkadaptation and multi-carriertransmission techniques.2. CDMA Systems PerformanceEvaluation Group, NortelNetworks, Richardson, Texas, US.Prime contact: Dr DavidParanchych. The collaborationis focused on shorter-termevolution of 3rd generationcellular systems enabling highthroughput packet data access,and primarily involves designand evaluation of schedulingalgorithms for best-effort packetdata.3. Ericsson Wireless Commu-nications, San Diego, California, USand Boulder, Colorado, US. Primecontact: Dr Anthony Soong.Collaboration involves exchange oftechnical information concerningdesign and performance evaluationof high throughput single-carrierwireless packet data systemsemploying adaptive transmissiontechniques.


Collaboration with High-Capacity Digital Communications(HCDC) LaboratoryThe iCORE Wireless Commu-nications Laboratory has givenfunding to the iCORE High-Capacity Digital Commu-nications (HCDC) to provide aportion of the salary for a VHDLDesign engineer, Robert Hang,for the HCDC lab. Projectsinclude:• designing and simulating

a multi-channel frequencytracking algorithm for aMIMO receiver;

• designing and simulatinga timing synchronizationalgorithm for a MIMOreceiver;

• implementing a MIMOreceiver design in VHDLfor use in the FPGAdevelopment board of theHCDC MIMO testbed;

• assisting in ademonstration of theHCDC MIMO system to apotential industrial partner(L3 Communications, Inc.);

• planning the design of thenext phase of the MIMOproject: the development ofa joint packet comm-unication testbed.

The HCDC MIMO team willbe presenting research papersbased on measurements obtainedwith the HCDC MIMO testbedat two IEEE conferences thissummer and L3 Communicationsis now an industrial partner onthe HCDC MIMO team.

Professor Beaulieu is providingscientific input to the MIMOproject. In particular, he iscollaborating with ProfessorSchlegel and a PDF on theoreticalsolutions to the determination ofthe capacity of MIMO systems.

iCORE Wireless CommunicationsLaboratory SeminarsThe iCORE Wireless Commu-nications Laboratory has sponsoredten research seminars by invitedexternal speakers from Utah,Waterloo, Kingston, Minnesota,Sydney (Nova Scotia), Turkey,California, Tokyo, Victoria (BritishColumbia) and France. In additionto providing the usual forum forscientific exchange, the seminarseries was designed to introduce thespeakers to the University ofAlberta and iCORE.

Graduate Students’ Seminar SeriesThe iCORE Chair’s graduatestudents requested that theLaboratory agree to, and sponsor, aseminar series to be organized andpresented by the graduate students.This seminar series has beenvery well attended by graduatestudents and faculty from theentire department. In the reportingperiod, 23 seminars were sponsored.

FUNDINGNew Funds Acquired this year as Prime InvestigatorIn addition to iCORE funding of $700,000, the Chair received an Alberta Ingenuity FundInstitutional Establishment Grant of $180,000 over two years, an NSERC Research Grant inWireless Communications and Digital Transmission for $66,000 per year, and an NSERC E.W.R.Steacie Memorial Fellowship for $90,000, accompanied by a Research Grant Supplement for$144,405. In addition, Dr Beaulieu received $200,000 per year for his Canada Research Chair(CRC) in Broadband Wireless Communications Systems, with an infrastructure grant of $125,000from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI).

New Funds Acquired this year as Co-InvestigatorAn NSERC Strategic Grant was awarded in October 2002 in the amount of $200,000 per year forfive years. The award, entitled “Enabling Technologies for Future High Throughput Packet DataAccess,” provides funding for principal investigator Dr Krzymieñ and co-investigators Drs Beaulieu,Fair, Schlegel, and Tellambura.

OtherDr Tellambura received an NSERC Discovery Grant of $28,000 per year, titled “Orthogonal FrequencyDivision Multiplexing for Wireless Communications,” for the period June 2002 to March 2006.

Dr Dong received an NSERC Discovery Grant titled “Highly Spectral Efficient WirelessCommunication Systems,” at a funding level of $22,850 per year for the period April 2003 toMarch 2007.

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Activity this year, including revenueDr Beaulieu has filed a University of Alberta Report of an Invention: “ThreadedAlgebraic Space-Time Signal Constellations and Codes and Threaded Algebraic Space-Time Code Construction Methodology.”

Dr Krzymieñ was granted two patents this year:1. Q. Shen, W.A. Krzymieñ, “Closed-loop power control scheme for wireless

communication systems,” US Patent No. 6 529 709 (granted 4 March 2003;assigned to TRLabs).

2. W.A. Krzymieñ, S. Sun, “Spread spectrum time-division multiple accesscommunication scheme,” US Patent No. 6 493 334 (granted 10 Dec 2002; assignedto TRLabs).

Patents Received or Created over Lifetime1. N.C. Beaulieu, “Methods, Systems and Devices for Generating Pulse Shapes,” US

and Canadian Patent Application, filed March 28, 2002.2. A. Jalali, W.A. Krzymieñ, P. Mermelstein, “A medium access control scheme for

data transmission on code division multiple access wireless systems,” US PatentNo. 5,828,662 (granted 27 October 1998; assigned to Nortel).

3. G.G. Messier, W.A. Krzymieñ, “Channel code decoding for the CDMA forwardlink,” US (10/260,226; filed 27 September 2002) and Canadian (2,405,322;filed 26 September 2002) patent applications (assigned to TRLabs).

4. W.A. Krzymieñ, S. Sun, “Spread spectrum time-division multiple accesscommunication scheme,” Canadian patent application (no. 2,272,875; filed 26May 1999, assigned to TRLabs).

5. Q. Shen, W.A. Krzymieñ, “Power control scheme,” a Canadian patent application(no. 2,183,139; filed 12 August 1996, assigned to TRLabs).

Potential for Future Commercial ActivityThe iCORE Chair and his graduate students and PDFs are conducting research on anumber of topics that are of great relevance to practical wireless systems. There ispotential for intellectual property arising in work on space-time coding, orthogonalfrequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and diversity receiver designs.

Professor Krzymieñ’s research activity spans the full range from design andevaluation of novel wireless systems based on the foundation of communicationstheory to their potential commercial applications, facilitated through his activeindustrial contacts. The general direction of that activity, best characterized underthe general heading of “Enabling Technologies for Future High Throughput PacketData Access” is of high interest to his industrial partners. In addition to his iCOREaffiliation, Professor Krzymieñ is also very strongly linked with the activities ofTRLabs, with which he has been closely affiliated since 1986. The TRLabs affiliationfurther facilitates effective contacts with numerous industrial and other commercialpartners, and hence enhances the prospects for commercialization of his researchresults.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY


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PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Publications1. G. Takahara, F. Alajaji, N.C. Beaulieu, and H. Kuan, “Constellation Mappings for Two-Dimensional

Signalling of Non-Uniform Sources,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 51, Mar. 2003,pp. 400-408.

2. N.C. Beaulieu, “Introduction to ‘Linear Diversity Combining Techniques’,” Invited Paper, Proceedingsof the IEEE, vol. 91, Feb. 2003, pp. 328-330.

3. D.P. Weins, J. Cheng, and N.C. Beaulieu, “A Class of Method of Moments Estimators for the Two-Parameter Gamma Family,” Pakistan Journal of Statistics, vol. 19(1), 2003, pp. 129-141.

4. D.J. Young and N.C. Beaulieu, “Power Margin Quality Measures for Correlated Random VariatesDerived From the Normal Distribution,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 49, Jan.2003, pp. 241-252.

5. S. Haghani and N. C. Beaulieu, “Symbol Error Probability of Low-Order Orthogonal Signalings inRayleigh Fading with General Diversity Combining,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6, Dec.2002, pp. 520-522.

6. C. Xiao, Y.R. Zheng, and N.C. Beaulieu, “Second-Order Statistical Properties of the WSS Jakes’Fading Channel Simulator,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 50, June 2002, pp. 888-891.

7. J. Cheng and N.C. Beaulieu, “Generalized Moment Estimators for the Nakagami Fading Parameter,”IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6, Apr. 2002, pp. 144-146.

8. X. Dong and N.C. Beaulieu, “Average Level Crossing Rate and Average Fade Duration of LowOrder Maximal Ratio Diversity with Unbalanced Channels,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6,Apr. 2002, pp. 135-137.

9. S. J. Lee and J. Ahn, “Acquisition performance improvement by barker sequence repetition in apreamble for ds-cdma systems with symbol-length spreading codes,” IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol.,vol. 52, no. 1, Jan. 2003, pp. 127-131.

10. S. J. Lee, “A new non-data-aided feedforward symbol timing estimator using two samples per symbol,”IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6, no. 5, May 2002, pp. 205-207.

11. K.-D. Lee, Y.-H. Cho, S. J. Lee, and H.-J. Lee, “Optimal design of superframe pattern for DVB-RCSreturn link,” ETRI Journal, vol. 24, no. 3, June 2002, pp. 251-254.

12. M. O. Damen, A. Safavi, and K. Abed-Meraim, “On CDMA with space-time codes over multipathfading channels,’’ IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 2, Jan. 2003, pp. 11-19.

13. R. Hang, W.A. Krzymieñ, and C.L. Despins, “Improved MAC protocol for reverse link packet datatransmission in wideband DS-CDMA,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 2, no.1, January 2003, pp. 162-174.

14. S. Sun, W.A. Krzymieñ, Q. Shen, and B. Darian, “Rapid access protocols for discontinuous transmissionin DS-CDMA systems,” Wireless Personal Communications - An International Journal, vol. 21, no.2, May 2002, pp. 201-218.

15. A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, “A direct approach to performance evaluation of generalizedselection diversity systems over Nakagami-m fading channels,” Wireless Communications and MobileComputing, vol. 3, no. 1, Feb. 2003, pp. 99-116.

16. A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, “A moment-generating function (MGF) derivative based unifiedanalysis of incoherent diversity reception of M-ary orthogonal signals over independent andcorrelated fading channels,” International Journal of Wireless Information Networks, vol. 10, no. 1,Jan 2003, pp. 41-56.

17. K. Sathananthan and C. Tellambura, “Partial transmit sequence and selected mapping schemes toreduce ICI in OFDM systems,” IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6, issue 8, Aug. 2002, pp, 313-315.

18. K. Sathananthan and C. Tellambura, “Coding to reduce both PAR and PICR of an OFDM signal,”IEEE Communications Letters, vol. 6, issue 8 Aug. 2002, pp. 316-318.

19. A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, “Analysis of hybrid selection/maximal-ratio diversity combinerswith Gaussian errors,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, July 2002, pp. 498-511.


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Refereed Journal Publications Accepted1. M.O. Damen and N.C. Beaulieu, “On Two High Rate Algebraic Space-Time Codes,” IEEE

Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 49, April 2003, pp. 1059-1063.2. M.O. Damen and N.C. Beaulieu, “On Diagonal Algebraic Space-Time Block Codes,” to appear as a

full paper in IEEE Transactions on Communications.3. M.O. Damen, N.C. Beaulieu, and J.-C. Belfiore, “Bandwidth Efficient Linear Modulations for Multiple

Antenna Transmission,” to appear as a full paper in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory.4. M.O. Damen, H. El Gamal, and N.C. Beaulieu, “Linear TAST Constellations: Fundamental Limits

and Near Optimal Constructions,” accepted for publication as a full paper in IEEE Transactions onInformation Theory.

5. E. Davis, N.C. Beaulieu, and M. Rollins, “A MAP Blind Bit-Rate Detector for Variable Gain MultipleAccess Systems,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications.

6. C.C. Tan and N.C. Beaulieu, “Transmission Properties of Conjugate-Root Pulses,” accepted pendingrevisions for publication in IEEE Transactions on Communications.

7. X. Dong and N.C. Beaulieu, “New Analytical Probability of Error Expressions for Classes ofOrthogonal Signals in Rayleigh Fading,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications.

8. X. Dong and N.C. Beaulieu, “Level Crossing Rate and Fade Duration of MRC and EGC Diversityin Ricean Fading,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications, May 2003.

9. M.Z. Win, N.C. Beaulieu, L.A. Shepp, B.F. Logan, and J.H. Winters, “On the SNR Penalty of MPSKwith Hybrid Selection/Maximal Ratio Combining over LLD Rayleigh Fading Channels,” to appearas a full paper in IEEE Transactions on Communications.

10. J. Cheng and N.C. Beaulieu, “Precise Error Rate Analysis of Bandwidth Efficient BPSK in NakagamiFading and Cochannel Interference,” accepted pending revisions for publication as a full paper inIEEE Transactions on Communications.

11. N.C. Beaulieu and C. Cheng, “Efficient Nakagami-m Fading Channel Simulation,” accepted pendingrevisions for publication as a full paper in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

12. N.C. Beaulieu and M.L. Merani, “Generation of Multiple Rayleigh Fading Envelope Sequenceswith Specified Cross-Correlations,” accepted pending revisions for publication in EuropeanTransactions on Telecommunications.

13. W.W. Choy, N.C. Beaulieu, and M.O. Damen, “A New Technique for Estimating the Error Probabilityof Decision Feedback Equalization,” accepted pending revisions for publication as a full paper inIEEE Transactions on Communications.

14. Y. Song, S.D. Blostein, and J. Cheng, “Exact outage probability for equal gain combining withcochannel interference in Rayleigh fading,” accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on WirelessCommunications.

15. H. El Gamal and M. O. Damen, “Universal space-time coding,” IEEE Trans. Inform. Theory, vol.49, May 2003.

16. F. Zhai and I.J. Fair, “Techniques for Early Stopping and Error Detection in Turbo Decoding,”accepted March 18, 2003 for publication in IEEE Transactions on Communications, 25 manuscriptpages.

17. C. Tellambura, A. Annamalai, and V. K. Bhargava, “Closed-form and infinite series solutions for theMGF of a dual-diversity selection combiner output in bivariate Nakagami fading,” to appear inIEEE Transactions on Communications, 2002.

18. S. Loyka, C. Tellambura, A. Kouki, A. Annamalai, and F. Gagnon, “Comments on New method ofperformance analysis for diversity reception with correlated Rayleigh-fading channels,” to appearin IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology.

19. A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, “MGF-based mathematical framework for analysis of generalizedselection diversity systems in wireless channels,” to appear in IEEE Transactions on VehicularTechnology.


Refereed Conference Publications1. S. Haghani, N.C. Beaulieu, and M.Z. Win, “Bounds to the Error Probability of Hybrid Diversity

Two-Dimensional Signalling,” IEEE GLOBECOM, Taipei, Nov. 17-21, 2002, pp. 1408-1414.2. K.E. Baddour and N.C. Beaulieu, “Robust Doppler Spread Estimation in Nonisotropic Scattering

Environments,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC2002-Fall, Vancouver, Canada, Sept.24-28, 2002 pp. 2459-2464.

3. S. Haghani and N.C. Beaulieu, “SEP of Low-Order Orthogonal Signalings with General DiversityCombining,” IEEE International Symposium on Advances in Wireless Communications: VTC’02-Fall, Victoria, Canada, Sept. 23-24, 2002, pp. 133-134.

4. S. Haghani, N.C. Beaulieu, and M.Z. Win, “The Penalty of Hybrid Diversity with LLD RayleighFading,” IEEE International Symposium on Advances in Wireless Communications: VTC’02-Fall,Victoria, Canada, Sept. 23-24, 2002, pp. 87-88.

5. N.C. Beaulieu, “Modelling and Simulation of Wireless Channels,” SIU Signal Processing andCommunications Conference: SIU 2002, Pamukkale, Denizli, Turkey, June 13, 2002, p. 3. InvitedDistinguished Speaker Seminar.

6. M.O. Damen and N.C. Beaulieu, “Concatenated Block Error Control Codes and Bandwidth EfficientAlgebraic Space-Time Codes,” Proc. 3G Wireless: 3Gwireless’2002, San Francisco, May 28-31,2002, pp. 181-186.

7. J. Cheng and N.C. Beaulieu, “Error Rate of BPSK in Generalized Fading Channels with Co-ChannelInterference,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC Spring 2002, Birmingham, Ala., May6-10, 2002, pp. 1786-1790.

8. C. Xiao, Y.R. Zheng, and N.C. Beaulieu, “Second-Order Statistics of an Improved Jakes’ FadingSimulator,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC Spring 2002, Birmingham, Ala., May 6-10, 2002, pp. 6-10.

9. M.F. Pop and N.C. Beaulieu, “Design of Wide-Sense Stationary Sum-of-Sinusoids Fading ChannelSimulators,” IEEE International Conference on Communications: ICC 2002, New York, Apr. 28-May 2, 2002, pp. 709-716.

10. K.E. Baddour and N.C. Beaulieu, “Accurate Simulation of Multiple Cross-correlated Fading Channels,”IEEE International Conference on Communications: ICC 2002, New York, Apr. 28-May 2, 2002,pp. 267-271.

11. H. El Gamal and M.O. Damen, “Threaded algebraic space-time signals,” in Proc. IEEE InformationTheory Workshop, Bangalore, India, Oct. 20-25, 2002, pp. 65-68.

12. H. El Gamal and M.O. Damen, “SISO codes for MIMO channels,” in Proc. 40-th Allerton Conferenceon Communications, Control, Computing, Urbana, Oct. 2-4, 2002, pp. 916-925.

13. H. El Gamal and M.O. Damen, “Threaded algebraic space-time codes,” in Proc. IEEE InternationalSymposium on Advances in Wireless Communications, Victoria, BC, Canada, Sept. 23-24, 2002,pp. 81-82.

14. H. El Gamal and M. O. Damen, “An algebraic number theoretic framework for space-time coding,”in Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Lausanne, Switzerland, June 29-July 6, 2002, p. 132.

15. K.W. Ang and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Performance of the multi-stage variable group hybrid interferencecancellation scheme with timing and phase errors,” in the Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual VehicularTechnology Conference (VTC2002-Spring), Jeju, Korea, April 2003, paper S08C_04, 5 IEEEformatted pages.

16. D. Mazzarese and W.A. Krzymieñ, “High throughput downlink cellular packet data access withmultiple antennas and multiuser diversity,” Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular TechnologyConference (VTC2002-Spring), paper S05B_03, 5 IEEE formatted pages.

17. G.G. Messie and W.A. Krzymieñ, “A coloured Gaussian model for CDMA forward link in-cellinterference,” Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2002-Spring),paper P080_04, 5 IEEE formatted pages.

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18. R. Novak and W.A. Krzymieñ, “SS-OFDM-F/TA system packet size and structure for high mobilitycellular environments,” Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2002-Spring), paper S06F_05, 7 IEEE formatted pages.

19. G.G. Messier and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improved forward link error correction for CDMA systems withspace time transmit diversity,” in the Proc. IEEE Globecom’02, Taipei, Taiwan, November 2002,paper BWS-12-4, 5 IEEE formatted pages.

20. R. Novak and W.A. Krzymieñ, “An adaptive spread spectrum OFDM packet data system with twodimensional radio resource allocation: Performance in low-mobility environments,” in the Proc. IEEEWPMC’02, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, October 2002, pp. 163-167.

21. R.C. Elliott and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Scheduling algorithms for the cdma2000 packet data evolution,”in the Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2002-Fall), Sept.2002, Vancouver, BC, Canada, paper S13-2, 7 IEEE formatted pages.

22. G.G. Messier and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improving convolutional and turbo code performance on theCDMA forward link,” in the Proc. IEEE Intl. Symp. on Spread Spectrum Techniques & Applications,Prague, Czech Rep., Sept. 2002, pp. 29-33.

23. R. Tanner and W.A. Krzymieñ, “A comparison of fading channel state prediction techniques,” in theProc. Intl. Conf. on Wireless Comm. (Wireless ’02), Calgary, AB, Canada, July 2002, pp. 312-317.

24. G. Li, I.J. Fair, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Low density parity check codes for space-time wirelesstransmission,” Proc. Intl. Conf. on Wireless Comm. (Wireless ’02), pp. 76-82.

25. G.G. Messier and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improving convolutional code performance on the CDMA forwardlink,” in the Proc. Virginia Tech. Symp. on Wireless Personal Comm., Blacksburg, Virginia, USA,June 2002, pp. 163-167.

26. C. H. Rentel, W. A. Krzymieñ, B. Darian, V. Vanghi, and R. Elliott, “Comparative forward link datachannel performance evaluation of HDR and 1XREME systems,” in the Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2002-Spring), Birmingham, Alabama, USA, May2002, pp. 160-164.

27. G. Li, I.J. Fair, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Analysis of Nonbinary LDPC Codes Using GaussianApproximation.” Accepted for presentation at the 2003 IEEE International Symposium onInformation Theory.

28. F. Zhai, Y. Xin, and I.J. Fair, “DC-Free Multimode Error Control Block Codes.” Accepted forpresentation at the 2003 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory.

29. Y. Xin and I.J. Fair, “Factors Affecting the Low-Frequency Performance of DC-Free MultimodeCodes.” Accepted for presentation at the 2003 Canadian Workshop on Information Theory.

30. Y. Xin and I.J. Fair, “Interpretation of Coding for Peak-to-Average Power Ratio Reduction in OFDMas Constrained Sequence Coding and the Application of Guided Scrambling,” 2002 IEEEInternational Symposium on Wireless Communications, pp. 121 - 122.

31. F. Zhai and I.J. Fair, “Efficient Cyclic Redundancy Checks for Turbo Coding,” 2002 Wireless andOptical Communications Conference, pp. 102 - 107.

32. G. Li, I.J. Fair, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “LDPC Codes for Space-Time Transmission,” Wireless 2002, 2,pp. 76 - 82.

33. Y. Xin and I.J. Fair, “Spectral-Null Bimode Codes with Dynamic Look-Ahead Encoding,” 2002IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, Recent Results Session.

34. I.J. Fair and D.R. Bull, “DC-Free Error Control Coding through Guided Convolutional Coding,”2002 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, p. 297.

35. Y. Xin and I.J. Fair, “Low-Frequency Suppression in Codes with a Spectral Null at Zero Frequency,”2002 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory, p. 299.

36. Luqing Wang, C. Tellambura, and Behrouz Nowrouzian, “A Simplified Interpolation EqualizationTechnique for Filterbank-Based DMT Systems,” to appear in the Canadian Conference on Electricaland Computer Engineering (CCECE’2003), Montreal, Quebec, Canada, May 4 - 7, 2003.


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37. Luqing Wang and C. Tellambura, “A Novel PAR reduction Technique for OFDM systems UsingAdaptive Mapping,” to appear in the 15th International Conference on Wireless Communications,Calgary, Alberta, Canada, July 7-9, 2003.

38. Luqing Wang and C. Tellambura. “A PAR Reduction Technique for OFDM Systems Using AdaptiveMapping and Recursive Partial Sequence Method,” to appear in The IASTED InternationalConference on Communications Systems And Applications (CSA 2003), Banff, Alberta, Canada,July 14-16, 2003.

39. Luqing Wang and C. Tellambura, “A Novel ICI Cancellation Technique for OFDM systems UsingAdaptive Mapping Signal Constellation,” to appear in 2003 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference onCommunications, Computers and Signal Processing (PACRIM’03), Victoria, B.C., Canada, August28-30, 2003.

40. Yunxia Chen and C. Tellambura, “Equal Gain Combiner Performance in Equally Correlated RayleighFading Channels,” to appear in 2003 IEEE Pacific Rim Conference on Communications, Computersand Signal Processing (PACRIM’03), Victoria, B.C., Canada, August 28-30, 2003.

41. Yunxia Chen and C. Tellambura, “Performance Analysis of Selection Combining over Equally-Correlated Rayleigh Fading Channels,” to appear in the 15th International Conference on WirelessCommunications, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, July 7-9, 2003

42. A. Annamalai and C. Tellambura, “Unified Analysis of Generalized Selection Diversity withNormalized Threshold Test Per Branch,” IEEE Wireless Communications and NetworkingConference, New Orleans, USA, March 2003.

43. C. Tellambura and A. Annamalai, “Unified performance bounds for generalized selection diversityin fading channels,” IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference, New Orleans,USA, March 2003.

44. A. Jayalath and C. Tellambura, “A Blind Detection Algorithm for PTS,” IEEE InternationalSymposium on advances in wireless communications, Victoria, BC, Canada, Sep. 2002, pp. 125-126.

45. A. Jayalath and C. Tellambura, “A Blind SLM Receiver for PAR Reduced OFDM,” IEEE VehicularTechnology Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 2002.

46. K. Sathananthan and C. Tellambura, “Peak-to-Average Power Ratio Analysis in Multicode CDMA,”IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Vancouver, Canada, 2002.

47. A. Annamalai, G. Deora and C. Tellambura “Unified Error Probability Analysis for GeneralizedSelection Diversity in Rician Fading Channels,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference,Bermingham, USA, May 2002, pp. 2042-2046.

48. A. Annamalai, V. Ramanathan and C. Tellambura “Analysis of Equal-Gain Diversity Receiver inCorrelated Fading Channels,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Bermingham, USA, May2002, pp. 2038-2041.

49. Byoung-Jo Choi, C. Tellambura and Lajos Hanzo, “Crest Factors of Shapiro-Rudin Sequence BasedMulti-Code MC-CDMA Signals,” IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Bermingham, USA, May2002, pp. 1472-1476.

50. C. Tellambura and M.G. Parker, “Relationship between Hamming weight and Peak-to-mean envelopepower ratio of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing,” International Symposium on InformationTheory, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2002, pp. 245.

51. M.G. Parker and C. Tellambura, A Construction for Binary Sequence Sets with Low Peak-to-AveragePower Ratio, International Symposium on Information Theory, Lausanne, Switzerland, July 2002,pp. 239.

52. X. Dong and N.C. Beaulieu, “SER of Two-Dimensional Signalings in Rayleigh Fading with ChannelEstimation Error,” accepted for publication in IEEE International Conference on Communications(ICC’2003), Alaska, USA, May 2003.

53. X. Dong and L. Xiao, “Two-Dimensional Signalings in Ricean Fading with Imperfect ChannelEstimation,” submitted to IEEE Global Telecommunication Conference (GLOBECOM’2003), 2003.


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54. X. Dong and N.C. Beaulieu, “Two-Dimensional Signallings in Rayleigh Fading with ChannelEstimation Error,” IEEE International Symposium on Advances in Wireless Communications(ISWC’2002), Victoria, Canada, Sep. 2002, pp. 91-92.

Books1. V.K. Bhargava, I.J. Fair, “Forward Error Correction Coding,” The Communications Handbook, Second

Edition, J.D. Gibson, Editor-in-Chief, Section 13, pp. 13-1 - 13.17, CRC and IEEE Press, USA,2002.

Book Chapters1. C. Tellambura and M.G. Parker, “Peak-to-average power ratio of orthogonal frequency division

multiplexing,” Encyclopedia of Telecommunications, John G. Proakis ed., John Wiley, 2002.2. C. Tellambura and A. Annamalai, “Wireless Communication System Design,” Encyclopedia of

Telecommunications, John G. Proakis ed., John Wiley, 2002.3. M. G. Parker, K. Patterson and C. Tellambura, “Golay complementary sequences,” Encyclopedia of

Telecommunications, John G. Proakis ed., John Wiley, 2002.4. A. D. S. Jayalath and C. Tellambura, “Peak-to-average power ratio of IEEE802.11a PHY layer

signals,” Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems, T. Wysocki, M. Darnell and B.Honary, eds., Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.

5. A. D. S. Jayalath and C. Tellambura, “Interleaved PC-OFDM to reduce peak-to-average powerratio,” Advanced Signal Processing for Communication Systems, T. Wysocki, M. Darnell and B. Honary,eds, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.

6. K. Sathananthan and C. Tellambura, “Reducing PAR and PICR of an OFDM signal,” AdvancedSignal Processing for Communication Systems, T. Wysocki, M. Darnell and B. Honary, eds., KluwerAcademic Publishers, 2002.

Published Abstracts1. M.Z. Win, N.C. Beaulieu, L.A. Shepp, B.F. Logan and J.H. Winters, “On the SNR Penalty of MPSK

with Hybrid Selection/Maximal Ratio Combining over LLD Rayleigh Fading Channels,” IEEETransactions on Communications, vol. 51, Mar. 2003, pp. 517-518.

2. G. Takahara, F. Alajaji, N.C. Beaulieu and H. Kuan, “Constellation Mappings for Two-DimensionalSignaling of Non-Uniform Sources,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 51, Feb. 2003, p.310.




Christian B. SchlegelCanada Research Chair in High-CapacityDigital CommunicationsUniversity of AlbertaTier 2 - January 1, 2002

Achievements:Published close to 100 research papers, a popular research book entitled Trellis Coding (1997),and an invited chapter contribution to the Encyclopedia in Telecommunications; two more researchbooks in production; has given many invited research seminars and Institute of Electrical andElectronic Engineers (IEEE) workshops; senior member of the IEEE Information Theoryand Communication Societies.

Research Involves: Study of fundamental limits of communication systems, high-capacity, limit-achieving algorithms, and their implementations inhardware

Research Relevance: Findings will help build intellectual talent in Canada that is neededto develop new and innovative wireless technologies, and assistCanadian industries to adopt the new high-capacity capabilities bydeveloping them in a manner which is readily transferable out ofthe lab

Coming to Canada from: University of Utah, U.S.

ACHIEVING HIGH-CAPACITY WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONSThe growth of wireless communications over the past two decades has been nothing less thanastounding. Furthermore, it is expected that wireless technology will continue to grow at thisphenomenal rate. New and unexpected applications, such as wireless full-immersion virtualreality, may only be a few years away. With the gigantic data rates that such applicationsrequire, it will be essential to build digital data links which fully harness a channel’s capacity.

Sophisticated theories prove that the capacity of wireless networks is essentially unlimited,but that very complex signal encoding and decoding methods, combined with complextransmitter and receiver systems, are required to harness this capacity. The success of futurehigh-data rate information systems depends on a number of emerging core technologies at thefrontier of digital communications research and development.

Dr Christian B. Schlegel is an internationally recognized expert in the theory and practice ofdigital communications systems design, analysis and implementation. The central focus of his


V O L U M E 2 F A L L 2 0 0 3 iC O R E R E S E A R C H R E P O R T 3 3

research as Canada Research Chair in High-Capacity Reliable Digital Communications will beon highly advanced, digital modulation, demodulation, coding and decoding methods, with theultimate aim to build higher capacity wireless networks. He will work on error control codingtechnology (which renders an unreliable channel useable by avoiding transmission errorsthrough the introduction of controlled redundancy), multiple antenna systems (required toincrease data rates beyond current limits), interference control and mitigation technologies(addressing the serious problems of interference), high-speed, low complexity VLSIimplementations (required to operate a data link), and analog circuit implementation of digitalerror control decoders.

Dr Schlegel’s Chair will establish a High-Capacity Digital Communications Centre at theUniversity of Alberta. The centre will provide a flexible and rapid design, prototyping andtesting capability for new ideas in wireless communications research, and will benefit local andnational industry through research results, highly trained human resources and access toexperimentation facilities.


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HIGH-CAPACITY DIGITALCOMMUNICATIONS LABORATORYiCORE ProfessorElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Alberta

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The primary focus of the High-Capacity Digital Communications (HCDC) Laboratory is the efficienttransmission of digital data through real-world communications channels, in particular, wireless datalinks. Each such link has an inherent capacity, which forms a limit on the maximum rate at which digitaldata can be transmitted reliably over the link. Achieving these limits, and thus optimally harnessing achannel’s inherent information carrying potential, is the goal of the projects of the HCDC Laboratory.

The channel to which most attention is presently given is the multiple antenna, a special form of amultiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel, which consists of antenna arrays at both the transmitterand the receiver instead of single antennas. It is known that this channel can, under favorable conditions,increase the capacity of a data link by a factor equal to the minimum number of antenna elements at thereceiver or the transmitter.

During the 2002/2003 fiscal year the HCDC team designed and constructed a prototype MIMO channelmeasurement system and conducted initial channel measurements which confirm theoretical expectationsas well as results obtained by other laboratories. This system is currently being enhanced for real-timeoperations as well as full portability.

On the analog decoder research side, the design of a medium-sized product code analog subthresholdCMOS decoder has been completed and will enter the production phase this summer and testing later inthe year. Initial measurements and projections based on simulations confirm that analog technology hasthe potential to outperform digital decoders by two orders of magnitude in power consumption and spacerequirements, and thus can challenge current digital designs and possible displace them in the future.Current efforts of HCDC members are to prove feasibility with real input and output circuitry. TheHCDC laboratory has also generated 30 technical publications which are currently at various stages inthe publication process. Most of these publications target capacity approaching communications systemsfor multiple access communications, MIMO channels, or random access packet networking.

During this phase the HCDC laboratory has expanded its team by hiring seven new students and aVHDL design engineer, Mr. Robert Hang. Furthermore a new University of Alberta faculty member, DrStephen Bates, will join the department this fall and will be an associate member of the HCDC laboratory.Dr Bates specializes in packet traffic theory and has also extensive industry experience, where he wasinvolved in building 10 Gigabit Ethernet prototypes. Professor Schlegel has been appointed GeneralChair for the IEEE Communication Theory Workshop 2005, and Technical Program Chair for the 2005International Symposium on Information Theory.

Dr Christian Schlegel is an iCORE Professor of High-Capacity Digital Communications, a position he holds in the departmentof electrical and computer engineering at the University of Alberta. iCORE has committed $350,000 per year for five years fora total of $1.75 million dollars to develop this research group at the University of Alberta.

DR CHRISTIAN SCHLEGEL


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RESEARCH PROGRAMOVERVIEW

The focus of activities of theHigh-Capacity Digital Commu-nications (HCDC) Laboratory,created by iCORE ProfessorSchlegel under iCORE funding,is the efficient transmission ofdigital data through a variety ofcurrently popular transmissionchannels, most notably wirelesschannels. The goal is to transmitdigital data with the leastamount of resources, in terms ofenergy and bandwidth, and withthe maximum amount ofreliability. The laboratory’s name,“high capacity,” pertains to thecapacity limits which weretheoretically established byClaude Shannon in 1948, andwhich give each channel amaximum rate at which reliablecommunication is theoreticallypossible. Achieving this rate hasbeen the research anddevelopment focus of manyscientists and engineers over thepast half century.

Among a large number ofmodern signal processingmethods, error control coding isthe single most importanttechnique which allowscommunications engineers toapproach this elusive limit. Themain focus of our projects isconsequently the efficient andjudicious application of errorcontrol coding and supportingsignal processing techniques toachieve a channel’s inherent datacarrying potential, that is,approach or achieve the capacitylimit.

This question arises in a senseanew with each new channel thatis being considered. The HCDCfocuses on some novel channels

as well as on more traditionaltransmission channels. Mostimportant among those is themultiple antenna channel, whichuses several transmit and receiveantennas, also generically termeda multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO) channel. The promise ofusing multiple antennas is that ofmultiplying the channel’sinformation carrying capacity bythe numbers of antennasemployed, without any additionalrequirement of bandwidth orpower. This MIMO channel iscurrently a hot research topic forfuture ultra high-data rateapplications as diverse as wirelesslocalarea networks, cellularsystems, ad-hoc wireless packetnetworks and even satellitesystems.

Last year, the laboratoryembarked on the design andconstruction of a hardware testplatform which allows theresearchers to measure thechannel, evaluate its capacitypotential, and test and implementtransmission technologies offuture applications. This effort isled by Professor Schlegel with thehelp of a hardware engineer, PaulGoud, who acts as the laboratorydirector and coordinates thedesign efforts of the variousmembers of the laboratory. A firstprototype implementationbecame operational in early 2003,and initial test channelmeasurements have beenconducted which confirmtheoretical results, as well asmeasurements conducted by aresearch team at Brigham YoungUniversity. This system iscurrently being enhanced to

enable it to operate in real-timeon a portable platform.Demonstrations to industry areplanned for July in Calgary, andfor August in Salt Lake City, Utah,to the first industrial partner, L3Communications.

Research into efficient iterativereceiver structures for code-division multiple access (CDMA)channels and MIMO channelshas led to a number of academicpublications, and the currenttheory and system designs havematured to a point wherepotential implementations arebeing discussed. Two newgraduate students whoconcentrated on efficient packetcommunication at a number ofresearch levels, have started tostudy packet traffic and systemimpacts of wireless networksequipped with future highlyefficient joint receivers. Researchwork on turbo coding also formsa considerable portion of HCDCactivities and Professor Schlegel’sresearch monograph, Trellis andTurbo Coding, is nearingcompletion and a first draft hasbeen handed into the publisher,IEEE/Wiley. Future extensionsof these activities will includeissues of channel acquisition andtracking and its efficientintegration into iterativereceivers. A concerted effort isunder way together withextended team members toaddress each major aspect ofcomplete high-capacity digitalcommunications systems andnetworks.

Research efforts in the area ofimplementation of digital signalprocessing in analog VLSI


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technology have gained speedwith the completion of the designof a subthreshold CMOS analogmessage passing decoder for amedium-size product code. Thedesign is currently submittedto Canadian MicroelectronicsCorporation (CMC) for fabri-cation in 0.25µm CMOStechnology. Successful demon-stration that this decoder operatesclose to the theoretically expectedperformance would demon-strate that analog processingtechnology has the potential todisplace digital technology withcircuits which are two orders ofmagnitude more power and spaceefficient. Prior to this chip, smallanalog decoders have beendemonstrated to functionaccording to expectations. Ifthis larger chip also meetsexpectations, the viability ofanalog circuits to implement thelarge error control decodersrequired by future high-capacitycommunication systems will bedemonstrated, and the team willthen focus on the efficient designof interfacing circuitry, whichcurrently consumes over 95percent of the power of the chip.

An invention disclosure for theimplementation of low-voltagealternate circuit for thecomputations modules of suchanalog processors has been filedwith the university patent office.This contribution would allowdesigners to lower the supplyvoltage of chip to below one voltand thus achieve further powerefficiency and other design gains.

Achievements over Past YearThe following is a list ofachievements over the past 12months.1. Completion of the hardware

MIMO channel measurementprototype and successful initialMIMO channel measurementswhich confirm expectationsof both the MIMO channelpotential as well as the systemperformance. A second projectengineer has been hired tosupervise and conduct the VHDLdesign for the measurementsystem as well as the futurecommunications system testbed.The radio frequency (RF) designsfor up/down conversion havebeen completed by the Calgarybased RF company SignalCraft.The completed RF designs havebeen thoroughly tested and foundto be of very high quality.

2. Special dual-polarized patchantennas have been designed bythe North Carolina StateUniversity partners and arecurrently being used to study theeffects on MIMO capacityof polarization diversity ina highly scattered indoortransmission environment. Twoinitial conference publications onthese measurements have beensubmitted and are accepted forpublication and presentation.

Electro-magnetics professor C.Furse from the University ofUtah has been invited for a visitand a potential link is beingexplored to feed our results intothe design of future antennas formobile handsets using MIMOtechnology.

3. Theoretical research in theareas of joint detection for CDMAchannels, joint detection andintegrated channel estimation forMIMO systems, and signalingstrategies in random accesswireless packet communicationsystems have been investigated

on the theoretical plain, and anumber of publications havebeen generated by Dr Schlegeland his graduate studentsdispersing these results. Majorcontributions include the designof a novel random access packetsystem, use of a joint detector atthe receiver, and the completeanalysis of iterative receivers forCDMA with low-complexityinterference cancellation front-ends. While some major questionsstill remain unsolved, iterativereceivers using linear front-endprocessing are now completelyunderstood.

4. The design and thoroughanalysis of an analog productcode decoder in CMOStechnology has been completedand pipelined for implementationand later testing. Several researchpapers on the design, novelanalysis techniques basedon importance sampling, andinterface issues with decoder havebeen submitted and are in variousstages of publication. Thiscosupervised project withProfessor V. Gaudet has expandedthrough the hire of three newgraduate students focusing onthis new technology.

The HCDC webpage has beencompletely redesigned and iscurrently undergoing testing forcompleteness and ease of use.It is located at the Universityof Alberta web addresswww.ualberta.ca/hcdc.

Dr Schlegel has been appointedGeneral Chair of the 2005Communication Theory Work-shop to be held in June 2005 inPark City, Utah, and as TechnicalProgram Director of theprestigious International


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Symposium on InformationTheory, to be held in the fall of2005 in Adelaide, Australia.

Objectives for Next YearThe objectives for next year areas follows.

1. Expansion of the currentmeasurement testbed into thereal-time version supervisedby Mr Robert Hang, anddemonstration thereof to localand US industry. To our bestknowledge, such real-timeMIMO measurement equipmentis currently not available at anyacademic institution, wheremeasurements are usuallyperformed with off-line equipmentafter data collection.

The key innovation in thisproject is a novel low signal-to-noise ratio timing acquisition andtracking algorithm, which formsa vital function for future high-capacity communicationssystems.

2. Simulation, theoreticalanalysis, and implementation ofa novel frequency compensationalgorithm developed by HCDCmembers. This is a criticalcomponent for robust packettransmission systems.

3. Expansion of the hardwaretest-platform to make it readyfor the implementation ofnovel communications systemsand testing with real datacommunications in circuit andpacket switched mode. The exactformulation of next year’s goalswill be debated at a late Maybrainstorming session withparticipation of Utah teammembers. The current hardwaretestbed effort will be channeled

into two parallel research efforts:i) dealing with the issue ofmultiple joint access usingconcurrent but completelyasynchronous transmissionsof data packets, and, ii)the expansion of the MIMOchannel measurement testbedinto a MIMO communicationsprototype testbed using layeringtechniques.

4. Complete characterization ofthe analog product decoder,construction of an adequatemeasurment setup, and disse-mination of results. If theprocessing core behaves asexpected, the design focus willshift towards the efficientinterface design. Industrycontacts will be pursued and MrChristopher Winstead, the seniorPhD student on this project, isexpected to graduate with theseresults. A new PhD student, MrGolam Mostafa, has been hiredand will pursue the question ofefficient interface technologies,possibly in conjunction with theiCORE group of ProfessorHaslett in Calgary, who specializein analog RF technology.

5. On the MIMO channel side itis planned to study variousacquisition and channel trackingmethods, primarily using iterativedecoding methods, for theirsuitability to achieve thechannel capacity and theirimplementability in hardware. Aparticular focus will be given tomobile channels with rapidlytime-varying characteristics in aneffort to prove viability ofMIMO technology for mobileapplications. A primary directionof thrust will be the spread pilotembedding method pioneered by

our extended team member DrFarhang. After theoretical studiesconcerning channel estimationand tracking in conjunction withour colleagues at the Universityof Utah have come to acompletion, the implementationof a pilot embedded channelestimation system will beconsidered. Embedded pilotchannel estimation essentiallyforms a direct and logicalextension of our current MIMOchannel measurement signaling.

6. Completion of the team’stheoretical studies on near-capacity communications overmultiple access channels usingCDMA and the effective use oferror control codes in suchsystems is expected during thisand possibly the next phase. Thiswill then open the possibility toimplement such receiverstructures in future testbedimplementations.

7. Recently initiated studies in thearea of efficient packettransmission systems usingadvanced joint receivers isexpected to generate guidelinesand results for highly efficientpacket structures as well ascommunications protocols.Future implementations of high-density packet test networks iscurrently being discussed amongthe different team members.

8. With the arrival of Dr Batesas new member of the HCDC, theteam will have one more FPGAhardware expert on board, andpotential new directions that arebeing contemplated are theextension of high-capacitytransmission systems to wirelinechannels, such as Ethernet.


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RESEARCH TEAM

As of May 2003, the following are the team members of the HCDC Laboratory, which represents twogroups: leadership team which comprises the permanent members of the research team and the extendedteam, which comprises members with limited-time association such as graduate students and academicvisitors.

TEAM LEADER

Christian Schlegel

AWARDS

Canada Research Chair in High-Capacity Digital Communications

ASSOCIATE MEMBER

Witold Kryzmieñ

Vincent Gaudet50% with Dr Beaulieu

Robert Hang

TITLE

Professor, supervision of lab engineers, advisory role, jointsupervison of PhDs

Professor, Specialty in Analog VSLI and Signal Processing

VHDL Design Director

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Lance Perez

Alex Grant

Gianluca Lazzi

Behrouz Farhang

Zhenning Shi

Zachary Bagley

Shayne Messerly

TITLE/TOPIC

Academic Visitor, University of Nebraska; FPGA TurboCoding Algorithms

Academic Visitor, University of South Australia; MultipleUser Communications

Joint Project, North Carolina State University; Dual-polarizedPatch Antenna

Joint Project, University of Utah; Efficient ChannelEstimation Procedures

Joint Project, University of Utah; Joint Detection for LinearMultiple Access Channels

Partner; Principal Engineer, L3 Communications, Utah;Iterative Filters for Receivers

Joint Project (p/t); Hardware Design of the MIMO Receiver


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PHD STUDENTS

Sheryl Howard

Christopher Winstead

Sumeeth Nagarai

Roland Kempter

Vishwa Rajaman

Golam Mostafa

TOPIC

Efficient Coded Modulation using Iterative Receiver Principles

Analog Decoder Implementations; First CMOS Analog ErrorControl Decoder

Wireless MAC Protocols

Capacity Limits of Random Packet Multiple Access, JointDetection at the Receiver

High-efficiency Hardware Implementations of Digital DataProcessing Algorithms

Analog Processing

UNDERGRADUATES

Mimi Yiu

Nicholas Lauzon

TOPIC

FPGA Test Setup, Analog Hamming Decoder Implementation

Channel Measurements of Multiple Antenna Transmission

COLLABORATIONS

The HCDC maintains strongacademic partnerships as well asliaisons to industry. Currently, thefollowing partners are activelycontributing to the program:

L3 Communications, Salt LakeCity, UtahThis company has had a long-standing liaison with Dr Schlegeland is currently supportinghardware-oriented researchefforts by funding Mr ZackBagley and Mr Shayne Messerly.Both engineers have developedVLSI systems for thetransmission and receptionstages of our hardware testbed.This cooperation is expected tocontinue next year. Mrs Bagleyand Messerly will continue with

their work of implementing aniterative layering processor inFPGA to be used to separatethe data streams in ourMIMO systems testbed. L3communications will contribute tothis project by purchasing anadditional FPGA hardware testplatform for $US 16,500 to beused by the Utah group.

North Carolina State University(NCSU)Joint US NSF funding withNCSU is currently in place withthe principal investigators, DrBrian Hughes and Dr GianluccaLazzi. The topic of this jointresearch work is efficient space-time coding systems. The fundingcurrently supports students at

NCSU and Utah. Cooperation onthe hardware testbed byduplicating the setup at NCSUhave been discussed, but arecurrently on hold.

University of UtahA cooperative link exists with theUniversity of Utah where DrSchlegel works with Dr BehrouzFarhang on the design of efficientand rapid equalization methodsfor multiple antenna systems. DrsFarhang and Schlegel jointlysupervise two Utah PhD studentsand a postdoctoral research fellowin this project. Additionally, theteam is talking to the Utahelectromagnetics group aboutantenna designs for future hand-held terminals which couldexploit MIMO capacities.


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FUNDING

The University of Alberta provided $75,000 in start-up funding and $469,000 in kind forconstruction of the laboratory. Alberta Science and Research Authority (ASRA) contributed$125,000 as a separate research and infrastructure grant, in addition to the $329,400 fromiCORE funding.

Federal funding included $100,000 from Dr Schlegel’s five-year CRC, accompanied by$125,000 as the CFI component of the CRC chair. An NSERC strategic grant, held jointly withDr Krzymieñ, who is a member of TRLabs, and Drs Beaulieu, Tellambura, and Fair, providesHCDC with a further $40,000. A four year NSERC Discovery Grant has an annual installmentof $31,100 and is held by the Chair.

Cooperation with L3 Communications is continuing with potential funding in the future.Currently L3 Communications funds a partner laboratory in Utah at $150,000/annum.

A patent on the low-voltage implementation of analog processing nodes has been filed with theuniversity patent office and is currently under consideration for patent application. Thetechnology of analog processing can gain around two orders of magnitude in both size andpower efficiency, and thus could become fairly important in future portable communicationsdevices.

Negotiations are currently held to clear IP issues regarding our cooperation with L3communications in anticipation of intellectual property resulting from our joint work on MIMOreceiver technology.

Patents1. Q. Shen, W.A. Krzymieñ, “Closed-loop power control scheme for wireless communication

systems,” US Patent No. 6 529 709 granted 4 March 2003 (assigned to TRLabs).2. W.A. Krzymieñ, S. Sun, “Spread spectrum time-division multiple access communication

scheme,” US Patent No. 6 493 334 granted 10 Dec 2002 (assigned to TRLabs).



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PUBLICATIONS

Journal Publications1. C. Winstead, J. Dai, S. Yu, C. Myers, R. Harrison, and C. Schlegel, ‘’CMOS Analog MAP Decoder for

(8,4) Hamming Code,” IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits. (In Press).2. C. Schlegel and A. Grant, ‘’Differential Space-Time Turbo Codes,” IEEE Transactions on Information

Theory (In Press).3. V. Gaudet and G. Gulak, “A 13.3Mbps 0.35um CMOS Analog Turbo Decoder IC with a Configurable

Interleaver,” (In Press).4. V. Gaudet and A. Rapley, “Iterative Decoding Using Stochastic Computation,” Electronics Letters, vol.

39, no. 3, February 2003, pp. 299-301.5. R. Hang, W.A. Krzymieñ, C.L. Despins, “Improved MAC Protocol for Reverse Link Packet Data

Transmission in Wideband DS-CDMAÓ,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 2, no.1, January 2003, pp. 162-174.

6. Z. Shi and C. Schlegel, “Spreading Code Construction for CDMA,” IEEE Communications Letters,January 2003, pp. 4-6.

7. H. Zhu, B. Farhang-Boroujeny, and C. Schlegel, “Pilot Embedding forJoint Channel Estimation andData Detection in MIMO Communication Systems,” IEEE Communications Letters, January 2003,pp. 30-32.

8. V. Gaudet, R. Gaudet, and G. Gulak, “Programmable Interleaver Design for Analog IterativeDecoders,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II - Analog and Digital Signal Processing, vol. 49,no. 7, July 2002, pp. 457-464.

9. S. Sun, W.A. Krzymieñ, Q. Shen, and B. Darian, “Rapid Access Protocols for DiscontinuousTransmission in DS-CDMA Systems,” Wireless Personal Communications - An International Journal,vol. 21, no. 2, May 2002, pp. 201-218.

Conference Papers1. D. Haley, C. Winstead, A. Grant, and C. Schlegel, ‘’An Analog LDPC Codec Core,” International

Symposium on Turbo Codes, Brest, France, September, 2003. (In Press)2. A. Rapley, C. Winstead, V. C. Gaudet, and C. Schlegel, ‘’Stochastic Circuits for Iterative Decoding,”

International Symposium on Turbo Codes, Brest, France, September 2003. (In Press).3. C. Winstead, N. Nguyen, C. Schlegel, and V.C. Gaudet, ‘’Low-voltage CMOS Circuits for Analog

Decoders,” International Symposium on Turbo Codes, Brest, France, September 2003. (In Press).4. C. Schlegel and Z. Shi, “Turbo Performance of a Low-Complexity CDMA Iterative Multiuser

Detector,” International Symposium on Turbo Codes, Brest, France, September 2003. (In Press).5. P. Goud Jr, C. Schlegel, R. Hang, W. Krzymieñ, Z. Bagley, S. Messerly, M. Nham, W. Rajamani,

‘’Indoor MIMO Channel Measurements Using Dual Polarized Patch Antennas,” IEEE PACRIM’03, August 28-30, Victoria, BC, Canada. (In Press).

6. P. Goud Jr, C. Schlegel, R. Hang, W. Krzymieñ, Z. Bagley, S. Messerly, P. Watkins, V. Rajamani,‘’MIMO Channel Measurements for an Indoor Office Environment,” IEEE Wireless Conference2003, July 7-9, Calgary, AB, Canada. (In Press).

7. C. Winstead and C. Schlegel, “Importance Sampling for SPICE-level Verification of Analog Decoders,”ISIT 2003, Yokohama, June 2003, p.103

8. C. Winstead, C. Schlegel, and V. C. Gaudet, “Analog Iterative Decoding of Error Control Codes,”Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, Montreal, QC, Canada, May 2003,pp.1539-1542

9. B. Farhang-Boroujeny and C. Schlegel, “Efficient Multicarrier Realization of Full-Rate Space-Timeorthogonal block-coded systems,” Proc. ICC’03, May 11-15, Anchorage, AK, USA, pp. 2267 -2271.

10. P. Kota and C. Schlegel, “A Wireless Packet Multiple Access Method Exploiting Joint Detection,”Proc. ICC’03, May 11-15, Anchorage, AK, USA.


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11. C. Schlegel and Z. Shi, “Performance and Complexity of CDMA Iterative Multiuser Detection,”Proc. of ITW 2003, Paris, France, pp. 111-114.

12. C. Winstead and C. Schlegel, “Analog Decoding of Product Codes,” ISIT 2002, June 30-July 5,Lausanne, Switzerland.

13. Z. Shi and C. Schlegel, “Asymptotic Iterative Multiuser Detection of Random Coded CDMA,” ISIT2002, June 30-July 5, Lausanne, Switzerland.

14. S. Howard, C. Schlegel, L. Perez, F. Jiang, “Differential Turbo Coded Modulation Over UnsychronizedChannels,” Proc. of International Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications (WOC 2002),July 17-19, Banff, AB, Canada, pp. 96-101.

15. C. Schlegel and Z. Bagley, “MIMO Channel and Space-Time Coding,” invited Tutorial, IASTEDInternational Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications (WOC 2002), July 17-19, Banff,AB, Canada.

16. H. Zhu, Z. Shi, B. Farhang-Boroujeny, and C. Schlegel, “An Efficient Statistical Approach forCalculation of MIMO Channels,” IASTED International Conference on Wireless and OpticalCommunications (WOC 2002), July 17-19, Banff, AB, Canada.

17. J. Dai et. al., “Cell Library for Automatic Synthesis of Analog Error Control Decoders,” ISCAS2002, May 26-29, Scottsdale, Arizona.

18. Yu et. al, “An Analog Decoder for (8,4) Hamming Code with Serial Input Interface,” submitted toISCAS 2002 May 26-29, Scottsdale, Arizona.13.

19. C. Schlegel and L. Perez, “Turbo Coding: Principles and Applications,” invited Tutorial, ICC 2002,April 28-May 2, New York, NY, USA.

20. Z. Shi and C. Schlegel, “Design of Serially Concatenated Coded CDMA System,” ICC 2002, April28-May 2, New York, NY, USA.

21. Y. Saouter, V. Gaudet, and C. Berrou, “Degenerated Turbo Codes for High Rate and ThroughputConcatenated Schemes,” accepted for the 3rd International Symposium on Turbo Codes and RelatedTopics, Brest, France, September 2003.

22. D. Gnaedig, E. Boutillon, M. Jezequel, V. Gaudet, and G. Gulak, “On Multiple Slice Turbo Codes,”accepted for the 3rd International Symposium on Turbo Codes and Related Topics, Brest, France,September 2003.(In Press).

23. D. Gnaedig, E. Boutillon, M. Jezequel, G. Gulak, and V. Gaudet, “Turbo Codes Roulettes,” acceptedfor the 19e Colloque GRETSI sur le traitement du signal et des images, Paris, France, September2003.(In Press).

24. D. Mazzarese, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “High Throughput Downlink Cellular Packet Data Access withMultiple Antennas and Multiuser Diversity,” VTC 2003. The 57th IEEE Semiannual, vol. 2, April22-25, pp. 1079 -1083.

25. G.G. Messier, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “A Coloured Gaussian Model for CDMA Forward Link In-CellInterference,” VTC 2003-Spring, The 57th IEEE Semiannual, Jeju, Korea, vol. 3, April 22-25, pp.2052 -2056.

26. R.Novak, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “SS-OFDM-F/TA system packet size and structure for high mobilitycellular environments,” VTC 2003-Spring. The 57th IEEE Semiannual, Jeju, Korea, vol. 2, April 22- 25, pp. 1438 -1444.

27. K.W. Ang, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Performance of the Multi-Stage Variable Group Hybrid InterferenceCancellation Scheme with Timing and Phase Errors,” in the Proc. of VTC2003-Spring, Jeju, Korea,April 22 - 25, paper S08C_04, 5 IEEE formatted pages.

28. V. Gaudet and G. Gulak, “A 13.3Mbps 0.35um CMOS Analog Turbo Decoder IC with a ConfigurableInterleaver,” 2003 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference Digest of Technical Papers,484, February 2003, pp. 148-149.

29. G.G. Messier, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improved Forward Link Error Correction for CDMA Systemswith Space Time Transmit Diversity,” in the Proc. IEEE Globecom’02, Taipei, Taiwan, vol. 1, no.17-21, pp. 992 -996.


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30. R. Novak, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “An adaptive spread spectrum OFDM packet data system with twodimensional radio resource allocation: Performance in low-mobility environments,” in the Proc. IEEEWPMC’02, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, October 2002, pp. 163-167.

31. R.C. Elliott, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Scheduling algorithms for the cdma2000 packet data evolution,”in the Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference, Sept. 2002, Vancouver, BC,Canada, VTC 2002-Fall, 2002 IEEE 56th, vol. 1, no. 24-28 Sept. 2002, pp. 304 -310.

32. G.G. Messier, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improving convolutional and turbo code performance on theCDMA forward link,” in the Proc. IEEE International Symposium on Spread Spectrum Techniques& Applications, Prague, Czech Republic, September 2002, pp. 29-33.

33. R. Tanner, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “A comparison of fading channel state prediction techniques,” in theProc. International Conferrence on Wireless Communications (Wireless’02), Calgary, AB, Canada,July 2002, pp. 312-317.

34. G. Li, I.J. Fair, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Low density parity check codes for space-time wirelesstransmission,” ibid., pp. 76-82.

35. G.G. Messier, and W.A. Krzymieñ, “Improving convolutional code performance on the CDMA forwardlink,” in the Proc. of Virginia Tech. Symp. on Wireless Personal Comm., Blacksburg, Virginia, USA,June 2002, pp. 163-167.

36. C. H. Rentel, W.A. Krzymieñ, B. Darian, V. Vanghi, and R. Elliott, “Comparative forward link datachannel performance evaluation of HDR and 1XREME systems,” in the Proc. 2002 IEEE Semi-Annual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2002-Spring), Birmingham, Alabama, USA, May2002, pp. 160-164.

Workshops1. D. Haley, C. Winstead, C. Schlegel, and A. Grant, “Architectures for error control in analog

subthreshold CMOS,” Australian Communication Theory Workshop, 2003.2. V. Gaudet, “Towards 1Gbps: analog iterative decoding,” Analog Decoding Workshop, Munich,

Germany, June 2002.3. C. Winstead, J. Die, S. Yu, R. Harrison, C.J. Myers, and C. Schlegel, “Interfacing and Mixed-Signal

Design for Analog Decoders,” Proc. of Analog Decoding Workshop, Munich, June 2002.




Gérard LachapelleCanada Research Chair in Wireless LocationThe University of CalgaryTier 1 - April 1, 2001

Achievements: Johannes Kepler Award – The U.S. Institute of Navigation’s highesthonour, reserved for exceptional achievement

Research Involves: Establishing a new research group to develop super-accurate wirelesslocation systems

Research Relevance: Provides new navigation tools and emergency services to cellulartelephone users and the transportation industry

LOCATION IS EVERYTHINGLocation. Location. Location. They’re the three most important words in real estate – and nowin wireless communication.

The cellular phone of the future will be expected to go beyond providing communication andInternet service. It will have to serve as a location beacon for the user. Developing super-accurate location technology is the objective of the newly created Wireless Location ResearchGroup (WLRG) at the University of Calgary.

It’s estimated that by 2003, there will be 800 million cellular phones in use worldwide. Concernsfor public safety have resulted in a U.S. regulation requiring emergency 911 services for mobiletelephone customers. The regulation calls for an accuracy of 100 metres, but that will beinadequate for those living in high-rises or working in office towers. These future services willrequire far more accurate location methods than are currently available.Other demands for wireless location services include, precision control of agricultural plantingequipment, structure monitoring and the need for 3-D marine navigation in constrictedwaterways. And trucking firms are demanding more accurate ways to keep track of theirfleets.

The Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system cannot adequately meet the needs of thesefuture location-based services. (Signals from the satellite-based system frequently cannot easilypenetrate treetops and buildings, and are only accurate to within 20 metres.) New super-accurate systems will soon be under development and testing thanks to funding provided bythe Canada Research Chair in Wireless Communication.



The recipient of the Chair, Gérard Lachapelle is an internationally respected and awardedauthority in the navigation community. During a career that has spanned 30 years, he hascontinually improved navigational methods and inspired students working with him to developtheir own breakthroughs. Under his direction, the WLRG will embrace a multidisciplinaryapproach to discovering new wireless location systems.

The group will be looking at ways to enhance existing systems by augmenting them in anumber of ways. GPS systems may one day be augmented by other satellite-based systemsand by ground-based transmitters in high-density areas. The signals they transmit oftenbounce off buildings and other structures causing errors.

The research program is expected to attract great interest and support from thetelecommunications industry. Surveys indicate that 70 percent of current Internet userswant to go mobile and will demand services requiring the accurate wireless location technology.


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WIRELESS LOCATIONRESEARCH GROUP (WLRG) iCORE ChairGeomatics EngineeringUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARYThis iCORE grant, which began in January 2001, focuses on research related to outdoor and indoorwireless location, high performance navigation and positioning using satellite and ground-based radiofrequency (RF) techniques, and fusion with self-contained sensors for personal navigation. The majorperformance parameters that are the focus of the research are availability, accuracy and reliability.

Strong collaboration with four faculty members at the University of Calgary and one at the University ofAlberta, in addition to a wide range of external partnerships and sponsorships from outside organizationscontributed much to the progress that was achieved on 10 major research projects ranging from indoorlocation using satellites to high precision positioning using satellite signals integrated with self-containedsensors and the development of a software Global Navigation Satellite System receiver. These researchprojects resulted in personnel training, publications and intellectual property transfer. Personnel trainingconsisted in the completion of one MEng and four PhD students directly supervised or co-supervised by thechair, the hiring of four senior research associates and the supervision and co-supervision of 21 MSc andPhD candidates, including 10 that began during the reporting period. Eleven papers were published andfive were accepted for publication in refereed journals, and 15 were presented at conferences. The chairholdermade numerous invited oral presentations in Canada and abroad. Intellectual property transfer consistedof licensing of software and in technology transfer through external contracts and grants valued at $350,000.New partnerships were established with Aeronautical Radio Inc. (ARINC), US, Tampere University ofTechnology, Finland, and the University of Carleton. In recognition of their efforts, numerous membersof the team and collaborators received awards.

Thanks to the success of the chairholder and his collaborators in securing external sponsors for theabove research activities, another $1.6 million was raised in funding, in addition to the iCORE grant of$0.5 million. The objective to use the iCORE grant to leverage additional funds was exceeded.

Challenges in the first year of the grant included the search for specialized and high quality seniorresearch personnel and the management of the team spread over five different areas during the start-upphase. The chairholder’s group now occupies contiguous space in the Calgary Centre for InnovativeTechnology (CCIT) where they have had access to a modern navigation laboratory and antenna rangesince October 2002.

Dr Gérard Lachapelle holds an iCORE Research Grant in Wireless Location at the University of Calgary. iCORE hascommitted $500,000 per year for five years for a total of $2.5 million dollars to develop this research group.

DR GÉRARD LACHAPELLE


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The specific research objectives forthis reporting period were as follows:• study the propagation

properties of radiofrequency (RF) waves at1.5 GHz through variousmaterials for outdoor-to-indoor ranging purposes;

• study the feasibility ofintegrating self-containedMEMS sensors with RFtechniques for personallocation and navigation inurban canyons and indoors;

• continue the developmentof the multiple referencestation techniqueMultiRef TM for GPS real-time kinematic positioningand proceed with thedeployment of a 16-stationtest and demonstrationnetwork in southernAlberta;

• continue investigations ofground-based cellulartelephone CDMA locationtechniques;

• continue performanceanalyses of Galileo andcombined GPS/Galileosystems, now that theEuropean Union has madea firm decision to proceedwith the deployment of thatsystem;

• continue investigationsrelated to the use of highsensitivity GPS receiversunder outdoor and indoorsignal masking conditionsand design new applications;

• continue investigationsrelated to various aspects ofGPS, including receiverperformance testing,development of reliabilitymethods for GPS-based

attitude determination andRTK methods;

• seek and exploit newopportunities related tolocation, positioning andnavigation as they arise, e.g.,participation in the U.S.DoD Joint PrecisionApproach and LandingProject (JPALS).

These objectives were achievedpartly as a result of effectivecollaborations with other facultymembers in the department ofgeomatics engineering at theUniversity of Calgary andoutside collaborators andpartners, and partly as a resultof substantial additional externalfinancing.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The following 10 major projectswere the focus of the chair-holder’s team during thereporting period:

a) RF PropagationThe effects of building materials onUHF ranging signals wereinvestigated to assess signalbehavior as a function of materials,carrier modulation technique andsignal strength. Signal behavioranalysis included carrier andamplitude attenuation, relatedincreased measurement noise, signalreflection and refraction, and effectof Fresnel zones. This fundamentalresearch is necessary in order tounderstand the full potential andlimitations of RF indoor location.

This work was done incollaboration with ProfessorsCannon and Klukas, in thedepartment of geomatics engin-eering. The project, supported bythe Department of NationalDefence (DND), is part of alarger DND effort to assessthe feasibility of performinghigh accuracy (2 m) personalpositioning and guidance indoorusing an integrated system. Atechnical report was submitted toDND and a paper submitted to arefereed journal.

b) Indoor GPS locationThis research activity is centralto the activities of the researchgroup. Investigations into the

performance of high sensitivityequipment were continued. Highsensitivity equipment uses longersignal integration time to increasethe signal to noise ratio.Theinvestigations were divided intotwo tasks, namely in-situ testingand hardware simulations. Thein-situ testing consisted ofperforming static and kine-matic measurements in selectedenvironments to assess signalfade and noise, carrier phase,range and Doppler measurementquality, and related locationavailability and accuracy. Fieldtesting under a wide range offorest environments wasconducted outside Calgary, inVictoria, British Columbia, and


Montréal, Québec, partly shadedsignal testing was conducted indowntown Calgary and on theUniversity of Calgary campus,and indoor testing was conductedinside light residential andagricultural buildings inthe Calgary area. These measure-ments were used to characterizethe GPS signal channel and itsstochastic properties under theenviron-ments tested. The secondtask consisted in investigatingthe possibility of reproducing, ina stochastic sense, the above fieldenvironments using a newlyavailable hardware simulator.The latter, developed by SpirentCommunications, U.K., in theearly 2002 partly using GPSsignal propagation channelcharacteristics developed in 2001by the chairholder’s researchgroup, allows for a variety ofsignal characteristics to bemodeled. Early results obtainedin late 2002 and early 2003indicate that such a method isindeed feasible. This result is veryimportant, as it will allowhigh sensitivity GPS receivermanufacturers and cellulartelephone service providers toconduct performance analysisand compliance testing underknown and controlled conditions.Such compliance testing isrequired by the U.S. FCC and willlikely be required by otherregulatory agencies. GPS receiverdeployment in cellular telephonesis occurring at an estimated rateof 2M units per month in 2003.

This work was conducted incooperation with ProfessorsCannon and Klukas, departmentof geomatics engineering at theUniversity of Calgary, SpirentCommunications, U.K., andwith the assistance of SiRF

Technology Inc., CA. A paperpresented by the University ofCalgary/Spirent team at the GPS2002 international conferencereceived an award.

c) Outdoor/indoor vehicularand personal location andnavigation using GPSintegrated with self-containedsensorsThis activity focused oninvestigating self-containedMEMS sensor performance forvehicular and personal locationand navigation and in designingnovel methods and algorithms tointegrate these together and withGPS. Investigations into theintegration of high sensitivityGPS with a low cost rate gyro forvehicular navigation resulted in a50 percent increase in availabilityin urban canyons. This system is,in turn, being used to develop anadvanced traveller informationsystem while ultimately increasingthe road network capacity.Analysis into the performance andcombination of various miniaturelow cost sensors for personal useresulted in numerous promisingfindings. For instance, a systemconsisting of an array ofaccelerometers and magneto-resistive sensors mounted on theuser’s footware was designed andtested to improve the relativelocation of the user movingoutdoor or indoor. Thermal effectson accelerometers and gyros wereinvestigated. Design work on theintegration of GPS with thesesensor types was initiated. Aportable test multi-purpose systemthat includes a high performanceintegrated inertial navigationsystem/GPS to provide referencetrajectories was designed. Limitedtesting in the field under variousenvironments was conducted.

This work was conducted incooperation with Professor El-Sheimy, department of geomaticsengineering at the University ofCalgary, Professor K. Fyfe,department of mechanicalengineering at the University ofAlberta, and with some financialsupport from the industry, theAuto 21 National Centre ofExcellence and the Department ofNational Defence.

d) High performance GPS andGPS/INS integrationMethods to improve differentialcarrier phase GPS navigationand guidance accuracy andreliability performance wereinvestigated, with emphasis onaugmentation with a tacticalgrade inertial system. Statisticalreliability theory was used toderive reliability measures for theintegrated GPS/INS system. Themethods and algorithms thatresulted from this research wereembedded in software packageSAINTTM (Satellite And InertialNavigation Technology).

This work was conducted incooperation with ProfessorCannon, department of geomaticsengineering at the University ofCalgary. Financial assistance wasreceived from the US Navythrough a contract withAeronautical Radio Inc. (ARINC)to test algorithms and methodsduring the latter part of theproject.

e) Assessment of GPS/GalileoperformanceResearch into the accuracy,availability and reliabilityperformance of the forthcomingEuropean Union’s Galileo systemversus those of GPS andcombined GPS/Galileo focusedon the use of multiple-frequency

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range and carrier phaseobservables. A method tosimulate GPS and Galileomeasurements in software withcontrolled error levels wascompleted. This methodologyand algorithms developed wereembedded into two softwarepackages, namely SIMGNSS1TM

and the SIMGNSS2TM. Theabove simu-lated measurementswere then used in other softwaredeveloped by the researchteam to comparatively assessperformance. This work will beuseful to the research team in theyears ahead to upgrade its GPSsoftware to Galileo and GPS/Galileo.

This work was conducted incooperation with ProfessorCannon, department of geomaticsengineering at the University ofCalgary. Financial assistance wasreceived from the Canadian SpaceAgency as the work formed partof Canada’s contribution to theoverall Galileo effort.

f) High precision multiplereference station GPS real-time kinematic positioning andGPS meteorologyResearch on the use of a GPSreference network to improvereal-time kinematic carrier phasepositioning for users located inthe network coverage area waspursued. Enhanced algorithmswere embedded in MultiRef TM,a software package developedduring the past four years by theresearch team. A small scale, four-station test network deployednorth of the University ofCalgary was used to test thealgorithms and software in real-time. Deployment of a mediumscale (200 km x 200 km), 16-station network in Southern

Alberta was initiated. Themethod was also tested on a 12-station GPS network located inthe Campania region of Italy.Smoothing algorithms for a post-mission version of MultiRefTM,namely MultiRefPMTM, were alsodeveloped and tested. The post-mission version of this method isexpected to be of interestto numerous private sectororganizations. Investigations intousing the above medium scalenetwork to estimate atmosphericwater vapour variations in real-time were initiated. This effort isexpected to contribute tometeorological research in thelong term.

The above research wasconducted in cooperation withProfessors Cannon and Skone,department of geomaticsengineering at the University ofCalgary, the Universita’ DegliStudi di Napoli Parthenope, Italy,and with the assistance of theApplanix Corporation, Toronto,and NovAtel, Calgary.

g) Wireless location usingground based systemsInvestigations into the use ofcellular telephone networks toprovide outdoor and indoorlocation were continued incooperation with Dr Klukas,geomatics engineering, andfocused on a IS-95 pilot signalhearability analysis, and non line-of-sight error mitigations for thetime difference of arrival (TDOA)and angle of arrival (AOA)methods. Parameters such as thecellular channel propagationmodel and detection thresholdwere taken into account.Integration of these ground-based methods with differentialbarometry to deal with cell/userheight differences and with GPS

pseudorange measurements wasalso researched.

h) Initial development of aGNSS software receiverInitial research was started into thedevelopment of a GNSS softwarereceiver capable of operating withthe current GPS and theforthcoming Galileo system, GPSII and III. The fundamental designof the receiver was laid out andsub-divided into tasks that can beundertaken by different researchers.This project, which also includesthe development of a softwaretransmitter, is expected to last threeyears and will require some15 person-years to complete.Components to become availablethroughout the next three yearswill be usable for a variety ofresearch projects. The advantage ofa GNSS software receiver will bethe ability to develop and assess thebehavior of advanced signalprocessing techniques to improveperformance. This is the moreimportant given that actual Galileoand GPS II and III signals will notbe available for several years. Thisproject is being conductedcooperation with Professor Cannonand is funded by the chair holder’siCORE grant and NSERCdiscovery grants at this time.However additional fundingsources are being investigated.

i) Integration of a multipleGPS receiver system and selfcontained sensors for attitudedeterminationSuch a system is used not only todetermine position but also todetermine the attitude parameters(roll, pitch and yaw) of the mobileor stationary platform on which theintegrated system is rigidlymounted. Low cost GPS receivers,antennas and rate gyros were


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integrated in software using aninnovate series of algorithms tooptimize availability and reliability.The effect of antenna phase centreinstabilities and GPS data gapswere quantified, together with theadvantages of the rate gyros.

j) Ship multipath and receiverreliabilityGPS receiver reliability is of greatconcern to marine organizations

when GPS is used for preciseapplications such as shipping inconstricted waterways and buoytendering. A significant errorsource is multipath, caused bysignal reflection from the shipinfrastructure and surroundingwater. Receiver response to thiseffect and other errors is a functionof the receiver internal firmware.Ship multipath occurrence wasmeasured during a four-day

observation campaign on a shipand receiver response wasanalysed using a GPS simulator.This research was conducted withthe support of the Canadian CoastGuard.

RESEARCH TEAM

TEAM LEADER

Gérard Lachapelle

AWARDS

Fellow, Royal Society of CanadaCanada Research Chair, Wireless LocationHonorary Professorship, University of Wuhan, China

TEAM MEMBER/COLLABORATOR

Richard Klukas

Elizabeth Cannon

Susan Skone

Naser El-Sheimy

TITLE

Assistant Professor

Professor, NSERC Steacie Fellowship 2002-2004

Assistant Professor, NSERC UFA, 1999-2004

Associate Professor

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Ken Fyfe, U of A

Jong-Uk Park, KoreaAstronomical Observatory

Bruno Scherzinger

Mark Petovello

Aaron Morton

Glenn MacGougan

RESEARCH TOPIC

Self-contained Pedestrian Navigation Systems

GNSS High Precision Navigation

Applanix Corporation, Adjunct Professor

GNSS and Integrated GNSS/INS

RF Propagation, Interference, and Digital Signal Processing

System Testing, Indoor Location, Navigation Laboratory


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POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS

U. Dogan

TOPIC

Visiting NATO scholar, until August 2002

PHD CANDIDATES

Samuel Ryan

Edvaldo Fonseca (external -Brazil)

Giovanni Pugliano (external- Italy)

Kyle O’Keefe

Paul Alves

Changlin Ma

Chaminda Basnayke

Bo Zheng

Oleg Mezentsev

Olivier Julien

Jussi Collin (external-Finland)

TOPIC

Augmentation of GPS forReliable Marine Navigation

Ionospheric Effects on GPSTransmission

Multiple Reference StationGNSS RTK

Design of a Satellite-basedNavigation System for Mars

High Performance MultipleReference Station GNSSRTK

Advanced Ground-basedTechniques to ImproveWireless Location

GPS-based Transit ProbeSystem

GNSS Multipath Modelingand Software Receiver

GPS and Inertial NavigationSystems for PersonalOutdoor/indoor Navigation

Software GNSS receiverdevelopment

GPS and MEMS Sensors forPersonal Outdoor/indoorNavigation

AWARDS

Killam

PGS-B, iCORE Graduate Student Scholarship

PGS-B


MSC CANDIDATES

Yan Lu

Glenn MacGougan

Chaochao Wang

Lei Dong

R. Stirling

Joseph Angelo

Rob Watson

Dhar Karunanayake

Diep Dao

Zhi Jiang

Ping Lian

TOPIC

Electrical Engineering

Indoor Location with GPS

Attitude Determination withMultiple-antenna GPSSystems

GNSS RF SoftwareTransmitter

Personal Outdoor/indoorNavigation using MEMSSensors

GNSS Interference

Indoor Location

GNSS

Integration of GPS andMEMS Sensors for PersonalOutdoor/indoor Navigation

GNSS Software ReceiverDevelopment

Indoor Location

MEMS-based INS/GPS forVehicular Positioning andNavigation

Digital Terrain ModelDerivation from SatelliteImagery

GPS Interference

High Performance MultipleReference Station GNSS RTK

Walid Abdel-Hamid

Mohammad Rajabi

Roger Edwards (external -Univ. of Carleton)

Yong Ahn

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AWARDS

PGS-A, iCORE GraduateStudent Scholarship

PGS-A


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UNDERGRADUATES

Kees Lap Siu

Doug Langen

Lance De Groot

TOPIC

Internship Student

Internship Student

Internship Student

COLLABORATIONS

Active collaboration in the form of joint research projects and/or funded research projects took placewith a variety of organizations. These include:

INSTITUTION

Department of GeomaticsEng, Univ. of Calgary

Department of MechanicalEng, Univ. of Alberta

Department of Civil Eng,Univ. of Calgary

Department of Electronics,Carleton University

Dept of Electrical andInformatics Eng, Universityof Sherbrooke

Universita’ Degli Studi diNapoli Parthenope, Italy

Tampere University ofTechnology, Finland

Dept of National Defence,Defence ResearchDevelopment Canada

RESEARCHERS

R. Klukas, M. E. Cannon, N.El-Sheimy and S. Skone

K. Fyfe, R. Stirling

A. MacIver

R. Edwards, J. Wight

J. de Lafontaine, F. Michaud

G. Pugliano

J. Takala, J. Collin

J. Bird, N. Brousseau,M. Vinnins

NATURE OF COLLABORATION

GNSS and MEMS sensors

Personal location using self-contained sensors

Collaboration on use of GPSfor vehicular traffic modeling

GPS interference analysis

NCE Auto 21 collaborativevehicular driving systemsand integrated systems

Multiple reference stationGPS RTK positioning

Personal location andnavigation

Financial support for TacticalIndoor Positioning Systemand groud-based IS-95wireless location development


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INSTITUTION

Canadian Coast Guard

Dominion Radio AstrophysicalObservatory, Penticton B.C.

Nokia Mobile TelephoneCompany, Finland

SiRF Technology Inc, U.S.A.

Spirent Communications, U.K.

Univ. of Sao PauloPolytechnical School

ARINC/U.S. Navy, U.S.A.

NovAtel, Calgary

Applanix Corporation

Canadian Space Agency

RESEARCHERS

S. Ryan

P. Dewdney

S. Turunen, J. Syrjarinne

G. Turetzky

P. Boulton, A. Read

D. Blitzkow, R. Bueno

F. Allen, M. Lage

P. Fenton. T. Murfin

B. Scherzinger

n/a

NATURE OF COLLABORATION

Ship GPS multipathassessment and receiverreliability

Precise positioning for largeadaptive reflector to be usedin radio astronomy

Wireless location of cellulartelephones

Collaborative technicalsupport, high sensitivityGPS receiver assessment

Common research on indoorlocation simulationenhancements

Collaboration on the use ofprecise GPS for bridgemotion monitoring

Financial support, JointPrecision Approach andLanding System

Technical support - Internet/Modem capable GPSreceivers for SouthernAlberta RTK Network,Galileo assessment

MultiRefPM(tm)development and testing

Financial support, GPS/Galileo performanceassessment


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FUNDING

The amounts reported below have been pro-rated for the 12-month reporting period, even if thegrant or contract is multi-year and has a total higher value.

The amount in external R&D grants and contracts raised by the grant holder as primeinvestigator was $1.2 million. In addition to iCORE funding of $500,000, Dr Lachapelle received$200,000 from his Tier 1 Canada Research Chair, $65,000 from his NSERC Discovery Grant,$60,000 from the telecom industry, $150,000 from his CFI ISRIP, and $40,000 from the NationalCentres of Excellence Auto 21 project. Revenue from the Canadian Coast Guard is $23,000,plus $12,000 from a CFI project at the University of Victoria, $60,000 from ARINC and theUS Navy, $98,000 from the Department of National Defense, and $5,000 from ATS.

Research teams involving the grant holder raised another $0.6 million revenue as a co-investigator includes $43,000 (with Dr Cannon, from the Canadian Space Agency), NSERCStrategic Grants of $114,000 with Dr El-sheimy et al and $90,000 with Dr Cannon et al,$10,000 with Dr Cannon from NRCan, $300,000 with Dr Cannon et al from the CFI/CCITequipment grant, $32,000 from Shell Canada with Dr Tait et al, and $7,000 with Dr. Cannon etal from other industrial sources.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTYDuring Reporting PeriodSome of the processes and algorithms developed during the reporting period and, in some cases,initiated previously, were embedded in software that were disclosed to University TechnologiesInternational (UTI). These new software packages consist of SAINTTM (Satellite And InertialNavigation Technology), NDLTM (Navigation Development Laboratory), SimGNSS1TM (SoftwareSimulator for Global Navigation Satellite Systems One), and SimGNSS2TM (Software Simulatorfor Global Navigation Satellite Systems 2). In addition, the following software packages, developedpreviously, were maintained and enhanced: C3NAVG2TM, FLYKIN+TM, HEADRT+TM andMULTIREFTM. The revenue generated by UTI during the reporting period was $75,000, downfrom $550,000 for the previous reporting period, due to a slowdown in the IT industry. Theoutlook for the next 12-month however looks better.In addition to the above, somae of the intellectual property developed by the grantholder wastransferred to third parties (industry and Canadian and foreign government agencies throughgrants and contracts. The value of this activity during the reporting period was in excess of$300,000.

The total value of the IP transfer during the reporting period was therefore $375,000.

Potential for Future Commercial ActivityThe chair holder and his colleagues continue to seek commercial opportunities for their existingand forthcoming intellectual property on an on-going basis, in the form of industrial researchgrants and contracts, licenses, and equity position in new commercial ventures. They will builton their past success and expertise to achieve this objective. UTI will continue to serve as theuniversity licensing arm for these activities. Given the chairholder’s extensive contacts with abroad range of organizations interested in his team’s work, this type of commercial activity isexpected to grow substantially during the next three years.


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PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journals1. M.E. Cannon, G. Lachapelle, G. MacGougan, R. Klukas, P. Boulton, and A. Read, “Weak Signal

Environment Testing of a High Sensitivity GPS Receiver in the Laboratory,” GPS World, vol. 14,no. 3 (March), 2003, pp. 24-32.

2. C. Wang, and G. Lachapelle, “GPS Attitude Determination Reliability Performance ImprovementUsing Low Cost Receivers,” Journal of Global Positioning Systems, vol. 1, no. 2, 2002, pp. 85-95.

3. G. MacGougan, G. Lachapelle, R. Klukas, K. Siu, L. Garin, J. Shewfelt, and G. Cox, “PerformanceAnalysis of A Stand-Alone High Sensitivity Receiver,” GPS Solutions, Springer Verlag, vol. 6, no. 3,2002, pp. 179-195.

4. M. Olynik, M.G. Petovello, M.E. Cannon, and G. Lachapelle, “Temporal Impact of Selected GPSErrors on Relative Point Positioning,” GPS Solutions, vol. 6, no. 1-2, 2002, pp. 47-57.

5. G. Lachapelle and G. Pugliano, “Posizionamento GPS Network RTK: il metodo MultiRefä,” Bollettinodella SIFET, N° 3, 2002, pp. 5-15.

6. G. Lachapelle, M.E. Cannon, K. O’Keefe and P. Alves, “How will Galileo Improve PositioningPerformance?” GPS World, vol. 13, no. 9 (September Issue), 2002, pp. 38-48.

7. K. O’Keefe, S. Ryan, and G. Lachapelle, “Global Availability and Reliability Assessment of the GPSand Galileo Global Navigation Satellite Systems,” Canadian Aeronautics and Space Journal, CanadianAeronautics and Space Institute, vol. 48, no. 2, 2002, pp. 123-132.

8. S. Ryan and G. Lachapelle, “Augmentation of DGNSS With Dynamic Constraints For MarineNavigation,” Lighthouse, Canadian Hydrographic Association, Ottawa, No. 61, 2002, pp. 17-25.

9. L.P. Fortes, M.E. Cannon, S. Skone, and G. Lachapelle, “Improving a Multi-Reference GPS StationNetwork Method for OTF Positioning in the St. Lawrence Seaway,” Lighthouse, CanadianHydrographic Association, No. 61, 2002, pp. 4-11.

10. G. Lachapelle and S. Ryan, “Future Trends in Marine Navigation and Positioning Technology,”Lighthouse, Canadian Hydrographic Association, No. 60, 2002, pp. 15-22.

11. G. Lachapelle and P. Alves, “Multiple Reference Station Approach: Overview and Current Research,”Invited Contribution, Expert Forum on VRS, Journal of Global Positioning Systems, vol. 1, no. 2,2002, pp. 133-136.

12. Liu, J., M.E. Cannon, Pl. Alves, M.G. Petovello, G. Lachapelle, G. MacGougan and L. DeGroot(2003) A Performance Comparison of Single and Dual Frequency GPS Ambiguity ResolutionStrategies. GPS Solutions, 7, 2, 87-100.

Accepted Publications by Refereed Journals1. U. Dogan, G. Lachapelle, L. Fortes, and S. Ergintav, “A Study of the Tectonically Active Marmara

Region, Turkey, Using GPS,” Can. Journal of Earth Sciences, 2003, in press.2. R. Klukas, G. Lachapelle, C. Ma, and G. Jee, “A GPS Signal Fading Model for Urban Centres,” IEE

Proceedings of Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, 2003, in press.3. N. Luo and G. Lachapelle, “Precise Relative Positioning of Multiple Platforms Using GPS Carrier

Phase Ambiguity Constraints,” IEEE on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, 2003, in press.4. L. Fortes, L., M.E. Cannon, G. Lachapelle, and S. Skone, “Optimizing a Network-Based RTK Method

for OTF Positioning,” GPS Solutions, 2003, in press.5. U. Dogan, P. Alves, G. Lachapelle, and S. Ergintav, “Testing a Multiple Reference Station GPS

Network for Real-Time Carrier Phase-Based Positioning in the Marmara Region, Turkey,” SurveyReview, 2003, accepted for publication.

Conferences1. W. Abdel-Hamid, N. El-Sheimy, and G. Lachapelle, “Thermal and Noise Characteristics of MEMS

Sensors,” Proceedings of NTM03, The Institute of Navigation, 2003, pp. 641-648.


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2. M. Petovello, M.E. Cannon, and G. Lachapelle, “Quantifying Improvements from the Integration ofGPS and a Tactical Grade INS in High Accuracy Navigation Applications,” Proceedings of NTM03,The Institute of Navigation, 2003, pp. 454-465.

3. G. Lachapelle, J. Clark, and R. Breslau, “Real Time Measurement of GPS Antenna Motion ForJPALS,” NATO RTO-SET Fall 2002 Symposium on Emerging Military Capabilities Enabled byAdvances in Navigation Sensors, Istanbul, 14-16 October, 2002, CR-ROM.

4. G. Lachapelle, “Global Navigation Satellite Systems: Emerging Capabilities and ResearchOpportunities,” Invited Paper, Veikko A. Heiskanen Symposium- A look to the future, Ohio StateUniversity, Columbus, OH, 2-4 October, 2002, Contribution 10.2, CD-ROM.

5. O. Mezentsev, Y. Lu, G. Lachapelle, and R. Klukas, “Vehicular Navigation in Urban Canyons Usinga High Sensitivity Receiver Augmented with a Low Cost Sensor,” Proceedings of GPS2002 (SessionE1, Portland, OR, 24-27 September), The Institute of Navigation, 2002, pp. 363-369.

6. P. Boulton, A. Read, G. MacGougan, R. Klukas, M.E. Cannon, and G. Lachapelle, “Proposed Modelsand Methodologies for Verification Testing of AGPS-equipped Cellular Mobile Phones in theLaboratory,” Proceedings of GPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, 2002, pp. 200-212. (Best PaperPresentation Award)

7. G. MacGougan, and J. Liu, “Fault Detection Methods and Testing,” Proceedings of GPS2002, TheInstitute of Navigation, 2002, pp. 2668-2678. (Best Student Paper Award)

8. C. Wang and G. Lachapelle, “GPS Attitude Determination Reliability Performance ImprovementUsing Low Cost Receivers,” Proceedings of GPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, 2002, pp. 1064-1074.

9. P. Alves, G. Lachapelle, M.E. Cannon, J. Park. And P. Park, “Use of Self-Contained IonosphericModelling to Enhance Long Baseline Multiple Reference Station RTK Positioning,” Proceedings ofGPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, Alexandria, VA, 2002, pp. 1388-1399.

10. J. Liu, P. Alves, M. Peetovello, G. MacGougan, L. de Groot, M.E. Cannon, and G. Lachapelle,“Development and Testing of an Optimal Cascading Scheme to Resolve Multi-Frequency CarrierPhase Ambiguities,” Proceedings of GPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, Alexandria, VA, 2002,pp. 933-944.

11. M.E. Cannon, S. Skone, Y. Gao, Y. Moon, K. Chen, S. Crawford, and G. Lachapelle, “PerformanceEvaluation of Several Wide-Area GPS Services,” Proceedings of GPS2002, The Institute ofNavigation, 2002, pp. 1716-1726. (Best Paper Presentation Award)

12. J.U. Park, J.H. Joh, H.C. Lim, P.H. Park, B.H. Choi, S.W. Lee, B. Townsend, M.E. Cannon, and G.Lachapelle, “Multi-Reference GPS Network for the Nationwide RTK Service in Korea,” Proceedingsof GPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, 2002, pp. 2334-2341.

13. J. Collin, G. Lachapelle, and J. Käppi, “MEMS-IMU for Personal Positioning in a Vehicle - A Gyro-Free Approach,” Proceedings of GPS2002, The Institute of Navigation, Alexandria, VA, 2002, pp.1153-1161.

14. C. Ma. R. Klukas, and G. Lachapelle, “An Efficient NLOS Error Mitigation Method for WirelessLocation,” Proceedings of TRLab Wireless 2002 Conference, Calgary, July 8-10, 2002, pp. 160-167.

15. W. Abdel-Hamid, A Noureldin, N. El-Sheimy and G. Lachapelle, “Performance Analysis of MEMS-based Inertial Sensors for Positioning Applications,” Proceedings of International Workshop onSystem-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications, Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 440-450.

Books1. C.D. De Jong, G. Lachapelle, S. Skone, and I.A. Elema, Hydrography, Series on Mathematical Geodesy

and Positioning, Delft University Press, 2002, 353 pp. (ISBN 90-407-2359-1).


Technical Reports1. M.E. Cannon, G. Lachapelle, O. Julien, W. Zhang, V. Kuback, K. O’Keefe, and P. Alves, Galileo System

Analysis Report for the Canadian Region A. Galilei Phase. Prepared for Canadian Space Agency{CSA Report No. CSA-ST-CR-2002-0070 (Volume 2 of 2)}, 120 pp.

2. G. Lachapelle, G. MacGougan, K. O’Keefe, and M. Petovello, Testing of the Force 22 GPS Receiver.Report prepared for Defence Research Establishment Ottawa, Department of National Defence,2002, 95 pp.

3. G. Lachapelle, M.E. Cannon, R. Klukas, O. Julien and L. Dong, Performance Testing of UHF/CDMA Technologies for A Tactical Indoor Positioning System. Report prepared for Defence ResearchEstablishment Ottawa, Department of National Defence, 2002, 90 pp.

4. M.E. Cannon, G. Lachapelle, and T. Murfin, Establishment of a Canadian Centre of Innovation inGlobal Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) at the University of Calgary, Final Contract Reportto the Canadian Space Agency, 2002, 47 pp.

5. D. Langen, D. MacDonald, D. Langen, and D. Sereda, Investigation into the performance of highsensitivity GPS receivers in the signal degraded environment of a coniferous forest. ENGO 500report, 2003, 110 pp.

6. K. O’Keefe, G. Lachapelle, and M.E. Cannon, Real-Time Kinematic Positioning System for the LargeReflector Array. Final Report Prepared for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, Penticton,B.C., 2003, 17 pp.

7. K. O’Keefe, G. Lachapelle, and M.E. Cannon, Large Adaptive Reflector Real Time Kinematic (LARTK)GPS Positioning Software. Final Report Prepared for the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory,Penticton, B.C., 2003, 25 pp.

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The Experimental Laboratory for InternetSystems and Applications (ELISA) is a state-of-the-art laboratory for researching Internetsystems. It will be used to build the componentsof the “next-generation Internet” and alleviate thelimitations that are appearing on today’s Internet.The research facility is a geographically distributedInternet testbed, with workstations, laptops, PDAs,wireless access points, routers, and specializednetwork measurement equipment that can beflexibly configured for “hands-on” Internetexperiments and network performance studies. Oneendpoint of the laboratory is housed in theDepartment of Computer Science at the Universityof Saskatchewan. The other endpoint is part ofthe Broadband Wireless Networks Laboratory inthe Information and Communications Technologybuilding at the University of Calgary.

Phase One of the ELISA project is now complete,with initial equipment at the two endpointsinstalled.

EXPERIMENTAL LABORATORYFOR INTERNET SYSTEMS ANDAPPLICATIONS (ELISA)

Carey WilliamsonProfessor, University of Calgary

Rick BuntAssociate Vice-President, Info &Comm Technology,University of Saskatchewan

Derek EagerProfessor, University ofSaskatchewan

ELISA Principal investigators

Photo by King Chung HuangStudent Developer, University of Calgary Learning Commons


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BROADBAND WIRELESS NETWORKS,PROTOCOLS, APPLICATIONS AND PERFORMANCEiCORE Professor and Telus - iCORE Industrial ChairComputer ScienceUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Dr Carey Williamson leads a team of seven graduate students and five research staff, with interests inwireless networks, Internet technologies, and network performance. Much of the research is experimentalin nature, with an applied focus on industrially relevant network and protocol performance issues. Thegeneral goals of the research program are to identify and research solutions to problems and bottlenecksin the design and operation of protocols in wireless/web-based communication systems, and to researchlarger-scale deployment of wireless Internet/web infrastructure. Intellectual property rights have beennegotiated for research projects on network monitoring software and wireless Web servers.

Wireless web servers are required where short-lived, sometimes ad-hoc wireless networks are implemented, insituations such as sporting events, disaster recovery sites, press conferences, conventions, trade shows, or entertainmentapplications such as media streaming, home networking, or multi-player gaming. The research focuses on thetransaction rate and end-to-end throughput achievable in an ad-hoc wireless network, and the impact of thenumber of clients, web object size, persistent connections, transmit power, and wireless channel error rate.

The team has also conducted an industrial research project, focused on developing a network monitoringtool for measuring Internet traffic on the backbone link in SaskTel's provincial network, to characterizethe web traffic generated by residential customers on the network and to provide recommendations forenhancing the effectiveness of SaskTel's existing web caching infrastructure. A new research front, to beaddressed in the coming months, involves the characterization of peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing traffic.

The research group continues to work on CATNIP (Context-Aware Transport/Network Internet Protocol),which was designed to reduce the delay for web page downloads by indicating which web packets are crucialin the user-perceived response time. The interaction between CATNIP, DiffServ, and RED (Random EarlyDetection) is currently being studied, using a comprehensive set of additional experiments.

Additional experiments will be facilitated in late 2003 now that construction of Phase 1 of the CFI-funded Experimental Laboratory for Internet Systems and Applications (ELISA) has been completed.

The research team acquired additional resources in September 2002, when Dr Williamson received $100,000per year in funding from each of Telus Mobility and iCORE for an Industrial Research Chair in WirelessInternet Traffic Modeling. The initial stage of the project involved the assignment of a dedicated research teammember, and the application for an NSERC Industrial Research Chair (IRC), one of the conditions of the award.

In addition to the above projects, Dr Williamson received an undergraduate teaching award, and was involvedin the authoring or co-authoring of 16 research papers (two journal, six conference, and eight submitted).

Dr Carey Williamson is an iCORE Professor in Broadband Wireless Networks, Protocols, Applications, and Performance.iCORE has committed $350,000 per year for five years, for a total of $1.75 million dollars for this program at the University ofCalgary. Dr Williamson also holds an iCORE-Telus Industrial Research Chair in the area of Wireless Internet TrafficModeling at the University of Calgary, for which he receives $100,000 per year from both Telus and iCORE for two years ormore if matched with NSERC funding.

DR CAREY WILLIAMSON


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RESEARCH PROJECTS

This section describes selectedprojects underway in the researchgroup in 2002-2003. The numberof projects discussed is limited,for space reasons. The chosenprojects are intended to reflectthe variety of the networkperformance research carried outin the group, and complement thelarger set of projects described inlast year’s annual report.

Wireless Web ServersA natural step in the wirelessInternet evolution is theconvergence of technologies toform the “wireless Web”: thewireless classroom, the wirelesscampus, the wireless office, andthe wireless home. In fact, thesame technology that allows Webclients to be mobile (i.e., wirelessnetwork interfaces) also enablesthe deployment of wireless Webservers.

While the market for mobileWeb servers may not be obvious,they can play a useful rolein short-lived networks. Ashort-lived network is createdspontaneously, in an ad hocfashion, at a particular location inresponse to some event (scheduled

or unscheduled). The networkoperates for some short timeperiod (typically minutes tohours), before being dis-assembled, moved, and recon-stituted elsewhere.

There are several distinguishingcharacteristics of a short-lived

network. Often, the location of theneeded network is not known apriori. There may not be anyexisting network infrastructure,either wired or wireless, at theneeded location. In addition, thetime at which the network isneeded may not be known.Deployment may need to bespontaneous, with unknown (butoften bounded) operatingduration. The number of users forthe network is typically small(perhaps tens to hundreds),bandwidth requirements aremoderate, and the geographiccoverage area for the network islimited. More importantly, thereis often a need for either datacollection or data disseminationat the site of the network. In mostcases, the data access requirementis for a “closed” set of specializedcontent, rather than generalInternet content. Examples of

A NATURAL STEP IN THE WIRELESSINTERNET EVOLUTION IS THECONVERGENCE OF TECHNOLOGIESTO FORM THE “WIRELESS WEB.”


Two of the most excitingand fastest-growing Internettechnologies in recent years arethe World Wide Web and wirelessnetworks. The Web has made theInternet available to the masses,through its TCP/IP protocolstack and the principle oflayering: Web users do not needto know the details of theunderlying communicationprotocols in order to usenetwork applications. Wirelesstechnologies have revolutionalizedthe way people think aboutnetworks, by offering usersfreedom from the constraints ofphysical wires. These technologies

are available today, in laptop orhandheld form, at relativelymodest cost. Mobile users areinterested in exploiting the fullfunctionality of the technology attheir fingertips, as wirelessnetworks bring closer the“anything, anytime, anywhere”promise of mobile networking.

The research program focuseson unifying wireless technologiesand the Web, exploiting the fullbenefits of each. Necessarily, theresearch program is applied innature, with a strong focus onexperimental computer systemsperformance research.

The general goals of the

research program, as stated in theoriginal proposal to iCORE, are:• to identify performance

problems and bottlenecksin the design and operationof protocols in wireless/Web-based communicationssystems;

• to propose and evaluatecreative solutions to theseperformance problems;

• to promote larger-scaledeployment of wirelessInternet/Webinfrastructure at theUniversity of Calgary.


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deployment scenarios for short-lived networks are sportingevents, disaster recovery sites,press conferences, conventionsand trade shows, and classroomarea networks. The potentialfor entertainment applications(e.g., media streaming, homenetworking, multi-player gaming)is also high. In many of thesecontexts, an ad hoc wirelessnetwork (with a wireless Webserver as an informationrepository) provides a suitablesolution.

In this project to date, the teamhas explored the feasibility ofwireless Web server deploymentin the context of classroomarea networks. While themeasurement experience to datewith wireless Web servers in the“legacy classroom” environmenthas been modest (i.e., onegraduate class with 13 students),the experiments in the WirelessInternet Performance Laboratoryat the University of Calgary havemore rigorously determined anupper bound on the practicalachievable performance. Inparticular, the research wasfocused on the performancecapabilities of an Apache Webserver running on a laptopcomputer with an IEEE 802.11bwireless LAN interface. The teamstudied in-room and in-buildingWeb performance for a smallnumber of Web client machines,also with wireless networkinterfaces. All mobile computersare configured to operate in ad hocmode, since no existing networkinfrastructure is assumed. Theclients download content from thewireless Web server. A wirelessnetwork analyzer collects and

analyzes traces from theexperiments, with traffic analysisspanning from the MediumAccess Control (MAC) layer toHTTP at the application layer.

The experiments focused on theHTTP transaction rate and end-to-end throughput achievable inan ad hoc wireless networkenvironment, and the impacts offactors such as number of clients,Web object size, persistentconnections, transmit power, andwireless channel error rate. Ingeneral, the experimental resultsindicate that off-the-shelfhardware and software forwireless Web servers canprovide tolerable user-level Webperformance. However, thewireless bottleneck, networkefficiency problems, and serverpower consumption issues maylimit the performance androbustness of wireless Webservers in short-lived networks,at least with current technology.

This work has been carried outprimarily by research associateGuangwei Bai and MSc studentKenny Oladosu. Technicalassistance, when needed, has beenprovided by Martin Arlitt, NaydenMarkatchev, and Tianbo Kuang.

Ongoing work targets thedeployment of wireless Webservers at indoor University ofCalgary home sporting events(e.g., volleyball, basketball) nextwinter. The challenges includenot just Web content delivery,but also request scheduling,wireless media streaming,quality of service, TCP protocolperformance, caching, security,and ad hoc routing. This singleproject unifies many of the topicson which the graduate students

and research staff are currentlyworking. An intellectual propertyagreement for the Wireless WebServers project was signed withUTI at the University of Calgarythis past year.

A paper describing researchresults to date has been submittedfor possible external publication.It is still in the review process.

Web Traffic CharacterizationIn this past year, the team did asix-month industrial researchcontract with SaskTel (Sask-atchewan Telecommunications) inRegina. SaskTel is the primarytelecommunications provider inthe Province of Saskatchewan,and one of many Internet ServiceProviders in the province as well.The objectives of the project were:• to develop a network

monitoring tool formeasuring Internet trafficon the 1 Gbps backbonelink in SaskTel’s provincialnetwork;

• to characterize the Webtraffic generated byresidential customers onSaskTel’s network;

• to providerecommendations forenhancing the effectivenessof SaskTel’s existing Webcaching infrastructure

This project was carri.ed outprimarily by Martin Arlitt, asenior research associate on theiCORE research team. He wasassisted by colleague RobSimmonds in the development,testing, and debugging ofthe multi-threaded networkmonitoring software.

Since the project work wascarried out under a non-


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disclosure agreement, the resultsof the project cannot be includedhere. However, the project wasstill extremely valuable, for threereasons. First, the lab maintainedintellectual property rights to thenetwork monitoring softwarethat was developed for thisproject. The team is currentlyusing the very same software ina (voluntary) project withInformation Technologies at theUniversity of Calgary, tohelp characterize campus-wideInternet traffic. With thissoftware, the team is wellprepared to do similar projectswith any other telco or ISP thatexpresses interest in our tool.Second, the SaskTel networkprovided a very challengingenvironment for the testing anddebugging of the networkmonitoring software. Severalanomalies were noted (forexample, improperly encapsulatedIP packets, TCP port numbercollisions at Web cachingproxies), so the software had tobe fixed to detect and handle theseproperly. As a result, the softwaretool is more robust now than itwould have been if developedonly within our pristinetest environment. Third, theproprietary data sets that werecollected provided a currentsnapshot of “typical” Internetusage. The biggest surprise wasthe sheer volume and variety ofpeer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharingtraffic seen on the network.

The latter observation haslaunched a new research front onpeer-to-peer networking issues.Team member Martin Arlittattended a CANARIE NetworkingWorkshop in Ottawa this past

year to learn more about P2P, andwill play a lead role in ourongoing research on this topic.

CATNIP TCPOne of the experimental protocolsdeveloped in the research grouplast year was called CATNIP(Context-Aware Transport/Network Internet Protocol). TheCATNIP protocol provides a“smarter” way for a Web serverto send Web pages to a Webclient, by indicating which TCPpackets are the crucial ones thataffect the user-perceived responsetime for Web page downloads.Network simulation and networkemulation experiments withCATNIP TCP demonstrated itseffectiveness in reducing both themean and the variance of delaysfor Web page downloads.

The primary challenge tackledthis year was to find the “path ofleast resistance” for possibledeployment of CATNIP TCP onthe Internet. In its originalversion, CATNIP TCP requiresa one-bit “packet priority” field ina reserved portion of the TCPpacket header. Needless to say, thisis an obstacle to its deploymenton the Internet because of theneed to modify all the routers tointerpret this bit properly.

The compromise approachproposed is to leverage DiffServ(Differentiated Services), astateless paradigm for providingQuality of Service (QoS) ontoday’s Internet. The DiffServtraffic classes are supported bymany of today’s router vendors.

The CATNIP DiffServ(CATNIP-DS) project was undertaken byteam member Qian Wu, withsome initial assistance from

TeleSim team member RogerCurry. Qian has developed ascheme for mapping CATNIPpacket priorities into DiffServ“codepoints” at the network edge.The approach then relies onnetwork routers supportingDiffServ to make use of thiscodepoint information whenhandling packets.

Experiments to date havebeen carried out with networksimulation, using ns-2. Simulationresults have actually been quitedisappointing, showing little orno benefits for CATNIP TCP onDiffServ. One reason is RED(Random Early Detection), aprobabilistic packet discardalgorithm used for active queuemanagement in DiffServ routers.The probabilistic nature ofRED is likely nullifying theeffectiveness of intelligent packetmarking at the edges of thenetwork. The team is currentlydeveloping a much more compre-hensive set of simulationexperiments to fully understandthis phenomenon, before movingon to network emulation and liveInternet experiments withCATNIP-DS.


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MSC CANDIDATES

Mingwei Gong

Abhinav Gupta

Andreas Hirt

Gwen Houtzager

Yujian (Peter) Li

Kehinde (Kenny) Oladosu

Fang (Shelly) Xiao

TOPIC

Request Scheduling in InternetWeb Servers

Location-Aware Ad HocRouting

Wireless Network Security

Optimizing Web Proxy CachePlacement

Modeling Web/TCP TransferTime

Wireless Web ServerPerformance

Fairness Issues for Wireless TCP

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Martin Arlitt

Guangwei Bai

Tianbo Kuang

Qian Wu

Nayden Markatchev

TITLE/TOPIC

Web Performance, Network Traffic Measurement, WorkloadCharacterization

Internet Traffic Modeling, Wireless Web Measurement

Wireless Traffic Measurement, Media Streaming

Network Simulation, TCP/IP

Network Simulation, Media Streaming, Mobile Computing

RESEARCH TEAM

The research team consists of five full-time research staff, and seven graduate students (one of whom isco-supervised).

TEAM LEADER

Carey Williamson

AWARDS

Teaching Excellence-Honorable Mention

AWARDS

Alberta Ingenuity, iCOREGraduate Student Scholarship

NSERC PGS-B, iCOREGraduate Student Scholarship

NSERC PGS-B, iCOREGraduate Student Scholarship


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COLLABORATIONS

At the University of Calgary, theresearch team continues to interactwith the TeleSim research groupcoordinated by Rob Simmondsand Brian Unger. Collaborationwith Rob Simmonds was crucialfor a joint paper on Web serverbenchmarking using the IP-TNE(Internet Protocol Traffic andNetwork Emulator) for parallelWAN emulation. Collaborationwith PhD candidate Cam Kiddlehas resulted in a co-authoredpaper (Kiddle, Simmonds,Williamson, Unger) on fluid-flow approaches to networksimulation.

Also at the University ofCalgary, the chair has volunteeredto assist with a CFI proposal toupgrade the general campusnetworking infrastructure andincrease the deployment ofwireless infrastructure on campus.Information Technologies is thelead on this application.

COLLABORATION WITH INDUSTRYTelus MobilityIn Summer 2002, the teamsubmitted a brief researchproposal to iCORE regarding apossible industrial research chairon Wireless Internet TrafficModeling, to be jointly funded byiCORE, NSERC, and TelusMobility. In Fall 2002, fundingwas awarded from Telus Mobility($100,000 per year, for two years),with matching funds from iCORE($100,000 per year, for two years).

The conditions of the awardindicated that an application foran NSERC Industrial ResearchChair (IRC) should be submittedwithin the first year of the award,to obtain additional matchingfunds and to extend the chairposition to five years. Over the

past six months, the team hasbeen preparing an NSERC/Telus/iCORE Industrial ResearchChair application to be submittedto NSERC. The bulk of theresearch proposal is finished,though the budget section and theuniversity portion of the proposalare still in a state of flux. The fullproposal should be submitted toNSERC in Summer 2003.

Two meetings with TelusMobility took place during thepast quarter. On an interim basis,research team member Qian Wuhas been assigned to the “WirelessNetwork Capacity Planning”part of this project until asuitable new research associatecan be recruited. Preliminarysimulation results are expected inSummer 2003.

SaskTelIn this past year, the team did asix-month industrial researchcontract with SaskTel in Regina.The collaborative research projecton Web Traffic Measurement wascompleted in December 2002,with the final report submitted inJanuary 2003.

Sun MicrosystemsOn behalf of Dr Dennis Salahub(VP Research) and the Universityof Calgary, Professor Ron Johnston(Department of Electrical andComputer Engineering) CareyWilliamson drafted a proposal fora Sun Microsystems Center ofExcellence (COE) on WirelessInternet Technologies, to besituated in the ICT building at theUniversity of Calgary. A meetingwas held on campus with Sunrepresentatives in 2002, but as yetno further information is known

about the status of this proposal.

IntelThe local Intel representativeMonty Ghitter was engaged todiscuss a possible research projectrelated to wireless Internettechnologies. A project proposalwas developed and submitted toIntel, with feedback anticipated inApril 2003.

TRLabsSeveral meetings have been heldwith John McRory at TRLabsregarding mutual researchinterests, including being a partof their upcoming CFI proposalon Home Networking Technologies,joining TRLabs as an adjunctscientist in spring 2003, andhaving a TRLabs-sponsoredgraduate student (or two) inSeptember 2003. The chair willoffer a tutorial (Wireless Internet:Protocols and Performance) atthe TRLabs Wireless 2003conference in July.

MULTIDISCIPLINE OR MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIPSPrimary multi-institutionalpartnership is with respectto the CFI-funded ExperimentalLaboratory for Internet Systemsand Applications (ELISA), beingconstructed jointly between theUniversity of Calgary and theUniversity of Saskatchewan. Whilethe official decision regarding thematching funds from the Provinceof Saskatchewan is still pending(anticipated in April 2003), theUniversity of Saskatchewan hasadvanced “bridge funding” forPhase 1 of the ELISA lab on aninterim basis.

Significant progress was made


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FUNDING

The initial iCORE research program budget assumes $350,000 per year from iCORE forfive years. These funds are complemented by support from the university (faculty positions,startup funds, graduate student support, lab space, in-kind contributions), research grants(NSERC, CFI), external scholarship support (NSERC, Alberta Ingenuity, iCORE), andindustrial support. The total budget in the initial proposal averages $750,000 per year.

New Funds Acquired This Year as Prime InvestigatorIn September 2002, funding was awarded from Telus Mobility for an Industrial ResearchChair in Wireless Internet Traffic Modeling. This funding ($100,000 per year for twoyears) was matched by iCORE, bringing the total to $200,000 per year for two years. Anapplication for an NSERC Industrial Research Chair is in preparation, to furthercomplement this funding (an additional $100,000 per year) and extend it to five years.

The SaskTel research project generated $30,000 in external contract revenue, of which30 percent was retained by the university for research overhead.

The chair’s individual NSERC research grant was up for renewal this year, and wasrenewed in March 2003. The new Discovery Grant amount is $33,000 per year, for fouryears.

The Province of Alberta matching funds for the ELISA CFI lab were received this year.The amount awarded by ASRIP was $605,000. These funds are awaiting the go-aheadfrom the Province of Saskatchewan, and must be spent by the end of March 2004.

New Funds Acquired This Year as Co-InvestigatorWhile the CFI award for the ELISA lab was officially announced in January 2002, theCFI award ($1.2 million) shows in this year’s budget, to be consistent with the originaliCORE proposal. The co-investigators on the CFI proposal are Derek Eager and RickBunt from the University of Saskatchewan. The University of Saskatchewan is the leadinstitution on this proposal, because the iCORE Chair was the principal investigator,writing most of the proposal prior to his move to the University of Calgary.

this year on the ELISA lab at theUniversity of Calgary. First, therenovations for the ELISA serverroom in ICT 718A are nowcomplete. These plans, coordinatedby Brian Scowcroft, involved extrawiring (electrical power, networkconnections), plumbing (airconditioning), and equipmentprotection (Universal PowerSupply, emergency shutoff).Second, network connectivity for

the lab has been arranged. Thenetwork connection for the lab is a1 Gbps Ethernet (copper) to thecampus router. From there, Neterawill provide the externalconnectivity to CA*net 4, and thusto the University of Saskatchewan.Third, the interim funding from theUniversity of Saskatchewan wasused to purchase some initialequipment for the ELISA lab. Thisequipment included laptops,

wireless access points, rack-mounted PCs, a router/switch, anda data storage server. Thisequipment arrived in March, andis now operational in the lab.

Completion of the ELISA labis expected in Fall 2003, once theProvince of Saskatchewanmatching monies are secured(anticipated April 2003) and allCFI funds released.


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A primary research theme this year has been on wireless Web servers, to evaluate their feasibilityand performance. We contacted Richard May from InnoCentres and Geoff Moon from UTIregarding this innovation at a very early stage of the research, to evaluate commercial potentialand protect intellectual property (IP) rights. The IP agreements clearly state that iCOREfunding was the primary enabler behind this research idea.UTI has completed the “due diligence” process with respect to this IP, and Richard May hashad preliminary discussions with several parties regarding commercial potential for the idea.No revenue has accrued from this IP yet.

The other intellectual property item of interest is the network monitoring software developedby Rob Simmonds and Martin Arlitt for the SaskTel project. In many respects, this software issimilar to the public-domain tool tcpdump, though our tool has been carefully designed andimplemented for one Gbps Ethernet environments.

Three particular innovations in this software tool are the multi-threaded architecture developedby Simmonds (allowing the software to run effectively on a dual-processor network monitoringmachine, reading packets at one Gbps) the customized statistical summaries developed byArlitt (allowing it to run for long periods of time, while summarizing traffic for Web, peer-to-peer, and other networking applications), and the HTTP parsing code developed by Arlitt andSimmonds (allowing it to parse HTTP/1.0 and HTTP/1.1 headers in TCP packet payloads,revealing information about request sizes, response sizes, browser types, persistent connections,and Web object cacheability).

The tool also supports the capture of packet headers or full packet payloads, just like tcpdump.This software has been shared with SaskTel on a non-exclusive basis for their ongoing use. Wehave retained intellectual property rights for this software, allowing further development anduse for our own research purposes.


PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Publications1. C. Williamson, R. Simmonds, and M. Arlitt, “A Case Study of Web Server Benchmarking Using

Parallel WAN Emulation,” Performance Evaluation, vol. 49, no.1-4, Sept. 2002, pp. 111-127.2. M. Busari and C. Williamson, “ProWGen: A Synthetic Workload Generation Tool for Simulation

Evaluation of Web Proxy Caches,” Computer Networks, vol. 38, no.6, June 2002, pp. 779-794.

Conferences1. C. Kiddle, R. Simmonds, C. Williamson, and B. Unger, “Hybrid Packet/Fluid Flow Network

Simulation,” 17th ACM International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Simulation (PADS),San Diego, CA, June 2003, pp.143-152.

2. G. Bai and C. Williamson, “Workload Characterization in Web Caching Hierarchies,” Proc. IEEE/ACM Intl. Symp. Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunications Systems(MASCOTS), Fort Worth, TX, Oct. 2002, pp. 13-22.

3. N. Markatchev and C. Williamson, “WebTraff: A GUI for Web Proxy Cache Workload Modelingand Analysis,” Proc. IEEE/ACM MASCOTS Conference, Fort Worth, TX, Oct. 2002, pp.356-363.

4. T. Kuang and C. Williamson, “A Measurement Study of RealMedia Audio/Video streaming Traffic,”Proc. SPIE ITCOM 2002, Boston, MA, July 2002, pp. 68-79.


5. T. Kuang and C. Williamson, “RealMedia Streaming Performance on an IEEE 802.11b WirelessLAN,” Proc. IASTED Wireless and Optical Communications Conference (WOC 2002), Banff, AB,July 2002, pp. 306-311.

6. G. Bai and C. Williamson, “Time-Domain Analysis of Web Cache Filter Effects,” Proc. SCS Intl.Symp. Perf. Eval. of Comp. and Telecomm. Systems (SPECTS’02), San Diego, CA, July 2002, pp.195-205.

7. C. Williamson and Q. Wu, “Context-Aware TCP/IP,” Proc. ACM SIGMETRICS Conference, Marinadel Rey, CA, June 2002, pp. 262-263. (abstract only)

8. R. Simmonds, C. Williamson, M. Arlitt, R. Bradford, and B. Unger, “Web Server BenchmarkingUsing Parallel WAN Emulation,” Proc. ACM SIGMETRICS Conference, Marina del Rey, CA, June2002, pp. 286-287. (abstract only)

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Nayden Markatchev and CareyWilliamson stand behind the Calgaryendpoint equipment for ELISA.

Photo by King Chung HuangStudent Developer, University of Calgary Learning Commons


FATIPS is an acronym for Advanced Technology InformationProcessing Systems. It’s a name intended to convey the fact thatour research spans a diverse field ofinterests, not limited only to analog or digitalVLSI design. While the old VLSI group is nowan integral part of the ATIPS group, ourresearch continues to branch out in newdirections – not the least of which are thepursuits of the Biomedical MicrosystemsGroup (BMMG).

Our mission is to build a world-classresearch laboratory in the application ofadvanced fabrication technologies toproblems in information processing systems.We provide the link between these emergingtechnologies and their various applicationareas, thus facilitating their rapidexploitation. More than simply building withwhat is available, we look for exciting newways to integrate existing technology intocutting edge solutions.

Primary areas of concentration are VLSI technology, RFintegrated circuits, MEMS and sensors, communicationapplications, signal processing applications, information securityand computing systems. Within these areas, team memberscollaborate with industry innovators and leaders such as TRLabs,DALSA and Gennum.

The University of Calgary ATIPS Laboratory is supported by iCOREand is a member of the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation andMicronet.

Adapted and reprinted courtesy ATIPS

Fresh THINKING

AdvancedTechnologyInformationProcessingSystems

Photo courtesy "courtesy of InnovationAlberta with Cheryl Croucher


ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY INFORMATIONPROCESSING SYSTEMS (ATIPS) LABORATORYiCORE ChairElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The ATIPS Laboratory conducts research into the implementation of information processing systemsusing advanced and emerging technologies. The ATIPS laboratory provides a knowledge link betweenthese technologies and the chosen application areas in order to both facilitate their rapid exploitation andto uncover new linkages. Our long-term goal is to apply advanced and emerging technologies to targetedapplications by being knowledgeable and innovative at all steps in the process. To achieve this requires agroup of multidisciplinary researchers who are prepared to interact at levels of knowledge beyond theirown immediate expertise.

A major achievement this year has been to assemble such a group, the Centre for Innovative WirelessIntegrated Microsystems (CIWIMS), and to define a CIWIMS Laboratory Cluster. The Cluster willprovide a stimulating environment in which the researchers will interact to work on projects that requirea much wider set of skills than are normally required for working in one specific research area. Wecurrently have a group of 10 principal researchers from a wide range of areas including: wireless-RF;wireless-location finding; bio-sensors; System-on-Chip processors; thin-film and fabrication-integration;health sciences. The ATIPS Laboratory provides skill-sets in the general area of System-on-Chip processors,but our projects are collectively quite wide-ranging in scope, and oriented towards the targeted areas ofwireless devices for the health sciences.

Our current projects include: wireless networks; embedded systems and fault tolerant systems; and themodeling and simulation of circuits and structures in advanced and emerging fabrication technologies.Highlights include: arithmetic techniques for applications as varied as low-power hearing instruments,400M samples per second adaptive wireless base station filters, and extremely low noise digital processingcircuits; machine vision techniques for analyzing defects directly within the camera in real-time; severalnovel video coding architectures for multi-media streaming.

Established research projects in the area of wireless networks include novel high signal rate filters forbase stations and wireless “platforms” from which a variety of low-power mobile wireless devices may bequickly developed. We have also explored the areas of embedded and fault tolerant systems. This is afruitful area for our group and we have conducted wide-ranging research into: machine vision; hearinginstruments; arithmetic techniques; video processors and circuit techniques; along with novel methodsthat apply fault tolerance to computational systems with relatively low overhead. Finally we have linkedthis work with the advanced and emerging fabrication technologies with which we currently constructour microelectronic circuits.

Dr Graham Jullien holds an iCORE Chair in Advanced Technology Information Processing Systems at the University ofCalgary. iCORE has committed $800,000 per year for the first three years, then $600,000 per year for two years, for a total of $3.6million dollars to establish this research team.

DR GRAHAM A. JULLIEN

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RESEARCH GOALS ANDOBJECTIVESThe mission of the ATIPSlaboratory is to investigate theuse of advanced and emergingfabrication technologies toiCORE targeted applications inselected areas of informationprocessing. The ATIPS laboratoryprovides a knowledge linkbetween these technologies andthe chosen application areas inorder to both facilitate their rapidexploitation andto uncover newlinkages.

The originaltargeted areas,based on theinitial interestsof iCORE,were: a) wirelessnetworks;b) embeddedsystems includingfault tolerantprocessors; c) computing withnanotechnology. We havecontributed to each of these areasin a variety of ways, but havealso targeted biotechnology andhealth sciences as majorapplication areas. We formed aconsortium, the BioMedicalMicrosystems Group (BMMG),at the University of Calgary, andthis interaction has led to theestablishment of the Centre forInnovative Wireless Integrated

Microsystems (CIWIMS) andthe assembly of the CIWIMSLaboratory Cluster in the newCCIT (Calgary Centre forInnovative Technology) buildingon campus. CIWIMS includes,among its principals, threeiCORE Chairs (Dr Jullien, DrHaslett, Dr Lachapelle), a SteacieFellow (Dr Cannon), and a CRCChair (Dr Okoniewski). In

addition the group includes DrKaler, the Director of the CalgaryInstitute for Nanotechnology(CINT), with strong ties tothe National Institute forNanotechnology (NINT) at theUniversity of Alberta, and twovery promising young facultymembers (Dr Badawy, an ATIPSLaboratory member, and DrBudiman, a thin film specialistfrom the mechanical andmanufacturing engineering

department). The health sciencesare represented by twooutstanding scholars (Dr Sheldonand Dr Pilarski) from the MedicalFaculties at, respectively, theUniversity of Calgary and theUniversity of Alberta. TheATIPS Laboratory also has closeties with the mathematicsdepartment at the University ofCalgary; in particular the

cryptography group led byiCORE Chair, Dr Hugh Williams.Dr V.S. Dimitrov (ATIPS iCOREAssociate) and Dr G. Jullien aremembers of the Centre forInformation Security andCryptography (CISAC), foundedby Dr Williams; Dr Dimitrov hasbeen elected to the board ofCISaC as the Faculty ofEngineering board member.

OUR LONG-TERM GOAL IS TO APPLY ADVANCED ANDEMERGING TECHNOLOGIES TO TARGETED APPLICATIONSBY BEING KNOWLEDGEABLE AND INNOVATIVE AT ALLSTEPS IN THE PROCESS. TO ACHIEVE THIS REQUIRES AGROUP OF MULTIDISCIPLINARY RESEARCHERS WHOARE PREPARED TO INTERACT AT LEVELS OF KNOWLEDGEBEYOND THEIR OWN IMMEDIATE EXPERTISE.

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Our research is conducted with the support of major Canadian industries, and we are a member andlead client in the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation System-on-Chip Research Network, funded bya $40 million CFI grant, that is being used to bring the technology of System-on-Chip design to allinterested Canadian universities.

The ATIPS Laboratory has a core personnel component of about 30 researchers and students. Thelaboratory workstations are host to approximately 100 graduate students and other users performingresearch on all aspects of microsystem design.


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RESEARCH PROJECTS

Wireless NetworksA research project on adaptivefilters is being conducted incooperation with TRLabs, Calgary.The application is an experimental1.2Gbps wireless LAN (local areanetwork) operating at a frequencyof 17Ghz. The system isasymmetrical, which means thatmost of the processing power iscontained in the fixed base-stationwith very little (mostly analog)circuitry contained in the mobileunits. This project is involved withthe application of special numbertheoretic techniques to theimplementation of high-speedquadrature signal adaptive filters.A novel processor design has beenbeen tested on a custom FPGA(field-programmable gate array)simulator, developed by TRLabs(Calgary), at somewhat lowerspeeds than required for the finaldesign. An IP Core (proprietaryprocessor block) in 0.18µ CMOSis being designed to operate at theplanned throughput of 400Msamples per second.

A new research project onSystem-on-Chip low-power wirelessplatforms was started in 2002. Thework involves developing versatilewireless enabled integrated circuitdesign structures (platforms) towhich custom functionality can beadded. This research is beingconducted as part of the Universityof Calgary lead-client status for theBluetooth IP core and IP coreauthoring threads associated withthe CMC SoC Research Network(SOCRN). This work also formedpart of a tutorial presented at the2003 International Symposium onCircuits and Systems by W. Badawy(Calgary), Y. Savaria (École Poly.)and G. Jullien (Calgary).

Machine VisionWe have conducted a long-termproject on multiple camera defectdetection on rolling conveyorprocesses. The systems usemultiple synchronized cameras inorder to cover large widthconveyors with pixel sizes in thetens of microns. Our current workinvolves the use of line-scan TDI(time delay and integration) CCD(charge-coupled device) sensors,with video stream FPGAs, Wehave recently demonstrated theability to self-synchronize theCCD sensors with the imagevelocity using only the output ofthe sensor (prior to thisdevelopment it was necessary touse optical shaft encodersconnected to the conveyor). Thecontrol of the synchronization hasbeen coupled with defect detectionalgorithms implemented in the on-line FPGAs, to produce a veryversatile set of techniques fordefect detection in heavilytextured backgrounds. This workinvolves close interaction with anindustrial sponsor (DALSA Inc.).

As part of our work onmachine vision we have recentlyinvestigated the use of plenopticcameras for single cameradepth recovery. A customizableplenoptic camera simulator,using backward ray tracingwith stochastic sampling, wasdeveloped in 2002. This simulatorwill enable our researchgroup to test any plenopticcamera configuration for depthrecovery purposes. The simulatorhas been successfully testedagainst standard camera-lensconfigurations and we are nowlooking at potential plenopticconfigurations for building acustom test camera system.

Hearing InstrumentsThis work is sponsored by ourindustrial partner, GennumCorporation, and is related tothe application of specialarchitecture, arithmetic and circuittechniques to producing very low-power programmable digitalimplementations. Completelyin the Canal (CIC) hearinginstrument devices are particularlychallenging to digitize because ofthe extremely small size and powerdissipation required. Our goal isto continue and extend this workto embrace our wider interests inmicroconvergent systems.

In 2002 a hearing instrumentfilterbank processor was designed,fabricated in 0.18µ CMOS, andtested. The processor usesa 2-D 2-digit multi-dimensionallogarithmic number system(MDLNS) to implement thefilterbank. A binary to MDLNSconverter, using a completely newconversion technique, was alsoimplemented on the chip. The chiphas been successfully tested andthe technique is now beingexamined by our sponsor forpotential commercialization.

We have also recentlycommenced a project ondeveloping an asynchronousMDLNS processor architecturein order to further lower thepower dissipation, and to reducethe effects of switching noisedue to clocking. A completeasynchronous architecture forthe MDLNS processor hasbeen developed, including anasynchronous control system forrealizing handshaking protocols.Full-custom integrated circuitcells have also been developed forfuture fabrication of a test chip.

Next-generation hearing


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instruments will be based on thedirectivity obtainable withmicrophone arrays. In a jointproject with the University ofWindsor and Gennum Corp. wehave developed designs forMEMS microphone arrays,special MEMS sockets forintegrating the MEMS arrayswith integrated circuit processors,and techniques for using them inacoustic beam steering. We arecurrently converting the originaldesigns into process steps forimplementing at the Universityof Alberta NanoFab. This workwill be among the first ofour microconvergent researchprojects.

Arithmetic techniquesOne of our long-term strengthsis the investigation of alter-native techniques for numberrepresentation in order to reducethe complexity and improve theperformance of real-time digitalsignal processing systems. Wedefine performance in terms of costfunctions containing: time delay;resource utilization (e.g., silicon areaor FPGA logic blocks); powerdissipation; system noise(particularly with mixed-signaldesigns that use noise sensitiveanalog circuitry); and design time(with particular emphasis on SoCdesign reuse using parameterizableprocessor blocks).

In a direct link betweenarithmetic architectures and deep-submicron (DSM) technologies,we have been working on avariety of multiplier structures interms of the effect of interconnectwiring on their performance. Wehave recently establishedoptimum multiplier architecturesfor a variety of DSM technologies.

We are currently investigatingthe application of a multi-

dimensional logarithmic numbersystem that has been indevelopment by our group for thepast three years. It is based onearlier work on a double-baserepresentation, pioneered byiCORE Research Associate, DrVassil Dimitrov, and our researchgroup at the University ofWindsor. We have developed acomplete theory for this newnumber representation and haveapplied it to several applicationareas.

Many digital signal-processingcomputations are based oncoefficients that are irrational(particularly transforms such asDFT, DCT and also somewavelets). In implementing thesecomputations, we invariablyintroduce errors because of theneed to represent the coefficientswith finite precision. Our grouphas recently investigatedmapping techniques, based on theuse of algebraic integers, whichallow the manipulation of suchcoefficients without any error. Sofar, we have applied ourtechnique to DCTs and wavelets,with applications to videocompression.

An increasing concern in DSMtechnologies is the noisegenerated by the very shortswitching transients in digitalcircuitry. In systems that combinesensitive analog circuitry (forexample circuitry associated withsensors), this switching noise canbe a major problem. We havetaken a completely differentapproach to this problem bydefining arithmetic systems thatcompute with digital precisionbut only use standard analogcircuits. We have recentlydeveloped two such systems; oneis based on cellular neuralnetworks (non-linear analog

circuits in a 2-D array); the other,in collaboration with the RCIMresearch group at the Universityof Windsor, is based on a naturalanalog representation of multi-digit numbers – continuousvalued digits. We are currentlydeveloping test circuitry to furtherevaluate these arithmetic systems.

Video ProcessorsStreaming video has becomeubiquitous on the Internet. Giventypical Internet bandwidths tothe consumer, there is a need togreatly compress the video datain order to provide streamingcapabilities without interruption(current techniques compress byabout 2-orders of magnitude).Our interests are in the efficientimplementation of currentcompression standards, includingdiscrete cosine transforms (DCTs)and discrete wavelet transforms(DWTs), and the development ofnew standards. iCORE ResearchAssociate, Dr W. Badawy, is aCanadian representative on theMPEG4 standards committee.

We have used the algebraicinteger work from our arithmeticinvestigations to implementerror-free DCTs and haveextended this concept ofmultidimensional algebraicintegers Daubechies DWTs. ADCT chip is currently undergoingtesting in order to verify thesimulated performance.

Dr W. Badawy, iCORE ResearchAssociate, has also explorednovel video and image codingarchitectures, for the MPEG4 andJPEG2000 standards, usingmore conventional arithmetictechniques. For these architectureswe have implemented bothDWTs and DCTs. One of theDWT designs was submitted tothe MPEG4 (Part 9) Committee,


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and another design, based ondistributed arithmetic (DA), wasproposed in which theperformance improved on thebest existing architectures by 40percent. A new DCT timedistributed architecture wasproposed and successfullyimplemented using FPGAs. Thisdesign was also submitted to theMPEG (Part 9) committee andwas accepted as a referencearchitecture and code for anMPEG4 hardware profile.

Circuit TechniquesWhere necessary we look atdesigns at the transistor level. Inthe past this has included specialdynamic logic circuitry andminimized transistor treestructures. Our current interestsare in the use of non-linear analogcircuits implementing cellularneural network (CNN) arrayarchitectures. CNN arrays allowdigital computation with verylow system and cross-talk noise(three orders of magnitude belowCMOS) because of thecontinuous dynamics of theinterconnected non-linear analogcells. We are exploring a varietyof number representationsincluding standard binary, signeddigit (using bi-directional currentcircuits) and DBNS. Dr J. Haslett,T R L a b s / i C O R E / N S E R CIndustrial Research Chair inWireless RF Integrated CircuitDesign, is co-supervising astudent in this work and ourresults are being prepared forpublication.

Fault Tolerant SystemsFault tolerance is important forsystems that have to operatereliably over long periods of time.Fault tolerance may also becomeimportant as fabrication densities

increase to the point where thepotential of soft faults increases.We have recently developed lowoverhead (about 30 percent) faulttolerant computational arraysbased on the MRRNS system; thisrepresentation is also used toimplement the adaptive filter forthe TRLabs experimental LAN,and we plan to add fault toleranceto the base station adaptive filterduring the next year.

Advanced Technologies andComputing with NanotechnologyOur interests in advanced CMOStechnologies are in thedevelopment of novel designs,from system level to transistorlevel. With this vertical approachwe encounter a variety of designchallenges. As technologiesadvance, device densities increaseand each level in the designhierarchy brings its ownproblems and requires differentsolutions. The amalgamation ofthese design solutions andadvanced technology modelingconstitute System-on-Chipdesign. In the past few months wehave set up a design laboratory,with both physical and electronicsecurity, to enable our team toexplore and develop SoC designswith third party IP blocks andadvanced tools from the CanadianMicroelectronics Corporation. Wehave also started to look at designreuse as a powerful tool for ourown novel and custom designs.

The technology that has broughtus advanced integrated circuits isalso responsible for othermicrostructure-based technologies,including MEMS, microfluidics,RF-wireless components, andphotonic devices. These technologiesare, in the main, disparate but veryuseful microsystems can be builtusing the microconvergence of

these technologies. We haveassembled a consortium ofresearchers to examine theapplication of wireless enabledmicroconvergent systems, withparticular applications inbiotechnology and the healthsciences. We have already startedto develop several bio-MEMSblocks, including starting work ona low-power bio-platform. The firstapplication of this platform will beto implement a novel "lexel" array,in conjunction with the bio-electriclaboratory, directed by Dr. K.I.V.S.Kaler, that is to be used as adielectrophoretic cell analysistechnique.

Computing with NanotechnologyOur interests in the use ofnanotechnology for computingare somewhat different to theburgeoning research intoquantum computing. We areinterested in exploringnanotechnologies that willprovide a fairly smooth designspace transition from designtechniques used for conventionalFET-based circuitry. We haveinitially targeted quantumcellular automata (QCA)technology for our studies, sinceit has been rated by severalresearch organizations in thetop six of nanocomputingtechnologies that have the mostpromise for commercialfabrication. The arrays ofquantum dots that make up eachQCA cell can also operate in a 2-state mode, which provides asmooth design transition from thelow/high impedance states ofFET channels that are used toimplement 2-state logic inconventional designs. Wehave had considerable initialsuccess with a unique CAD tool(QCADesigner) for quantum


RESEARCH TEAM

Part of the ATIPS research program is being conducted by students at Dr Jullien’s previous institution,the University of Windsor. These students are funded from Micronet grants.

TEAM LEADER

Graham Jullien

AWARDS

Elected IEEE Fellow

TEAM MEMBERS

Vassil Dimitrov

Wael Badawy

TITLE

iCORE Research Associate; Number representations, Digitalsignal processing

iCORE Research Associate, VLSI Architectures, SoC, Imagerecognition, Low-power design

LABORATORY MANAGERS

Jonathan Eskritt

Paul Hobal

POSITION

ATIPS Lab Manager

ATIPS Webmaster and Publicity Manager


Peiyu Zhang

Wenjing Zhang

TOPIC

Bio MEMS, Optical MEMS, MEMS Processes, Clean Roomprocedures

Data Stream SoC Architectures, VLSI Design, IntegratedCircuit Test, Neural Networks

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cellular automata (QCA)architectures. The tool is unusualin that, although the technologyis rather speculative at themoment, we have sufficientmodeling information with whichwe can develop and simulatearchitectural blocks that wetypically find in processorarchitectures built with standard

integrated circuit fabricationtechnology. We have built the toolusing a simulator jointlydeveloped with the researchgroup at the University ofNotre Dame in Indiana – thegroup that initially proposedQCA technology. QCADesignerreceived the Micralyne Micro-systems Design Award at the

2002 CMC Workshop. The toolhas been used, by our group andmany other researchers, to designnew structures for potential QCAarchitectures. Springer hasinvited our group to write atextbook on the technology,QCADesigner and our newstructures.


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PHD CANDIDATES

Ibrahim Baykal

Jonathan Eskritt

Minyi Fu

Youssef Ibrahim

A. Makki

Roberto Muscedere

Konrad Walus

TOPIC

Defect Detection using in-Camera Video StreamProcessing

Applications of programmablecomplex base MDLNSrepresentations

Applications of AlgebraicIntegers in New Architecturesfor Video Codecs

Analog Cellular NeuralNetworks for RedundantArithmetic Ultra Low-NoiseProcessors

Beam-Steered HearingInstruments

Difficult Operations inDouble-Base Number Systems

Quantum Cellular Automata

AWARDS

Ontario GraduateScholarship

NSERC PGS-A, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship

MSC CANDIDATES

Mehboob Alam

Mohamed Amtoun

James Doherty

Ryan Glabb

Paul Horbal

TOPIC

SoC Implementation of VideoCodecs

Depth Recovery in PlenopticCameras

Transcutaneous Powering ofan Implantable Stimulator

Low-power System-on-ChipPlatforms

Adiabatic logic for ROM-Based Architectures

AWARDS

Alberta Ingenuity


Jeffrey Keilman

Jennifer Li

Pedram Mokrian

Arash Razavi

Mohammed Sayed

Gabriel Schulhoff

Jeff Tracey

Jiansong Wu

Jonathan Yeboah

Lexel Arrays for CellManipulation usingDielectrophoresis

An MDLNS Filter-bank for aLow-power Digital HearingInstrument

Multiplier Design in DeepSub-micron Technologies

Plenoptic Camera OpticalPath Simulation usingStochastic SamplingTechniques

Embedded MemoryArchitectures for MPEG4Motion Estimation

Modeling Quantum Dots ona Computer Cluster

Optimized Arithmetic Cellsfor SoC IP Blocks

Asynchronous HearingInstrument MDLNSProcessors

CNN Analog Circuits forUltra Low-Noise DigitalAdder Design


UNDERGRADUATES

Ian Steiner

Adesh Garg

TOPIC

MRRNS Complex ArithmeticAdaptive Filter: QuantizedPolynomial NumberRepresentation

MRRNS Complex ArithmeticAdaptive Filter: Simulationand Evaluation

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COLLABORATIONSRESEARCH COLLABORATIONUniversity of Windsor, Ontario. G.A.Jullien has a formal associationwith the Research Centre forIntegrated Microsystems. Researchcolleagues are M. Ahmadi and W.C.Miller and we are co-applicantson a $53,000 Micronet grant(principal applicant M. Ahmadi -S.1.WI). M. Ahmadi is also a co-applicant on a $213,000 MicronetGrant (S.2.CAL - G.A. Jullienprincipal applicant). G. Julliencurrently supervises or co-supervises six graduate students(three other graduate studentssupervised or co-supervised in2002 have since graduated). Ourarea of research is in hearinginstruments, MEMS, and signalprocessors.

Laboratoire d’Informatique, deRobotique et de Microélectronique deMontpellier, France. G.A. Jullienand V.S. Dimitrov, have a strongresearch association with Dr L.Imbert (CNRS Researcher) andDr J-C. Bajard (Director of theDept. Fundamental and AppliedInformatics). Dr Imbert wasemployed as a postdoctoral fellowin both Windsor and Calgary,and G. Jullien has visited DrBajard at Montpellier and also hisprevious laboratory in Marseilles.We currently have a jointFrench-Canadian research grantapplication under review(applicant V.S. Dimitrov). Ourareas of research are computerarithmetic, cryptography, andfault tolerance. A joint paper hasbeen accepted for publication thisyear.

Helsinki University of Technology.Dr V.S. Dimitrov has strong tieswith GETA (Graduate School inElectronics, Telecommunicationand Automation). He was a

consultant there from 1997-2000and has taught short courses atGETA from 1998 to the present.G. Jullien has also taken part inone of the earlier short courses.(http://wooster.hut.fi/geta/courses/graham/index.html).The areas of research are DSP,number theoretic techniques andcryptography.

The Queen’s University, Belfast. G.Jullien has had ties with twocolleagues in the Department ofElectrical and ElectronicsEngineering at Queen’s forseveral years. Dr J. McCannyCBE, FRS, FIEEE, interacts withDr Jullien in the area of systolicarrays and IP cores for signalprocessing. Recent discussionshave taken place regardingthe acquisition of IP coresfrom Amphion Inc, whereDr McCanny is CTO. Thesediscussions have involved CMCand the SOC Research Network.Dr McCanny was one of theplenary speakers at the IWSOCworkshop at Banff, where G.Jullien was the general chair. Healso acted as a consultant to theATIPS Lab. in 2002. The othercolleague is Dr J. Woods in thearea of rapid prototyping andFPGAs. Dr Jullien was invited toQueen’s as a distinguishedscholar in 1999, and Dr Woodsis being invited as a consultantto the ATIPS Laboratory inOctober, 2003.

The University of Lousiana atLafayette. Dr Jullien has had tieswith the Centre for AdvancedComputer Studies (CACS) sincethe late 1980s. The chair of boththe departments of electrical andcomputer engineering andcomputer science, Dr M.

Bayoumi, is a former student ofDr Jullien, and Dr Badawyreceived his PhD under DrBayoumi’s supervision. Dr Jullienhas acted as both consultant anddistinguished lecturer at CACSand Dr Bayoumi will be visitingthe ATIPS Lab this year as aconsultant. The research area ofinterest is in digital videoprocessing and integrated circuitdesign.

The University of Texas atAustin. Dr Earl Swartzlander, ofthe department of electrical andcomputer engineering, has hadstrong ties with DrJullien’sresearch group over the past 17years. Dr Swartzlander and DrJullien have been involved in theorganization of severalconferences in the area of arrayprocessing and computerarithmetic, and Dr Swartzlanderwas a plenary speaker at theIWSOC in 2002. They have hadprevious joint papers together inthe area of transistor level circuitsfor computer arithmetic.

The University of Grenoble,Spain. Dr Antonio Garcia, ECE.Dr Garcia was a researchassociate in G. Jullien’s laboratoryin the late 1990s, and they havecontinued to work together onparallel processors using modulararithmetic. A joint paper waspresented this year.

The University of Wisconsin,Madison. Dr Jullien hascollaborated on conferenceorganization and a special journalissue with Dr M. Schulte, in thedepartment of electrical andcomputer engineering. The specialissue was based on the 2001ASAP conference, and Dr Schulteis the technical chair for the 2003Asilomar Conference on Signals,


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Systems and Computers, forwhich Dr Jullien is the generalchair.

Other collaborations. For brevity welist other university collaborationstogether in this section withcontacts and research areas. Allcollaborations have either resultedin visits to discuss research projects,or the organization of specialsessions at conferences.•University of Newcastle,

UK - Dr N. Coleman(logarithmic processors).

•University of Cardiff, Wales- Prof. N. Burgess (residuenumber systems).

•Penn State, US - Prof.W.K. Jenkins, Chair ECE(computer arithmetic).

•UCLA, Dept. ComputerScience - Prof. M. Ercogovac,Chair (computer arithmetic).

•University of Florida,Gainesville - Dr F. Taylor,ECE (real-time architectures).

•Edith Cowan University,Perth, Australia - Dr K.Eshraghian, Head of Schooland Foundation Professor ofComputer, Communicationand Electronic Engineering(VLSI design, processorarchitectures).

•Universita’ degli Studidi Trento - Dr AndreasCaranti, Dept. Math.(number representations,cryptography).

•Notre Dame University,Indiana - Dr CraigLent, Microsystem Group(Quantum Cellular Auto-mata).

COLLABORATION WITH INDUSTRYDALSA Inc.Dr Jullien and his research teamhave had a long-term researchinteraction with DALSA Inc. Dr

Jullien helped pioneer the conceptof in-camera defect detectionwith DALSA engineers, and thiswork has led to significant salesin the area of defect detection inweb manufacturing processes.The concept was transferred to auniversity project supported byMicronet with industrial fundingfrom DALSA (approximately$500,000 over the past decadeincluding matching funds).

Gennum Corp.Dr Jullien’s laboratory at theUniversity of Windsor, and nowextended to the University ofCalgary, has been working withGennum Corp. since 1994. Theinitial work, which is still on-going, was in the area of videosignal processing (for broadcastquality TV signal processing).Since 1998 our group has workedwith Gennum Corp. on hearinginstrument processors. Since1994, Gennum has contributedover $700,000 (includingmatching funds) to our research.

TRLabsWe have included TRLabs in thissection since part of its fundingcomes from industry. TRLabs hassponsored the ATIPS Laboratorysince its inception. Currently,an intern student is partiallysupported from TRLabs funding(see the Research Projectssection).

City of CalgaryDr Badawy has been applying hisnovel work on vision systems tothe development of an ActiveCamera Tracking Systemfor Traffic Analysis. The Cityof Calgary is contributing$120,000/year and also allowing

special access to traffic lights andinfrastructure.

IPROSThis start-up company inToronto invited Dr Dimitrov tobe on its advisory board. Thecompany is working on buildingSoC cores for the efficientimplementation of complexarithmetic processors, forapplications in smart antennasfor the communications market.

We have several otherindustrial contacts as follows:Qinetiq, UK, this used to be a UKGovernment institution (theRoyal Signals and RadarEstablishment), but has now beenprivatized. We have connectionswith Dr J. McWhirter, FRS, DrI. Proudler and Dr R. Walke inthe area of array processors forDSP. Dr McWhirter will be theplenary speaker at the 2003Asilomar Conference, and willalso act as a consultant to theATIPS Lab in October 2003. Wehave recently made contacts withthe following local industries:Smart Technologies Inc., SiWorks,and Non-Elephant EncryptionSystems. We are also interactingwith the Innocentre and organizean annual Lunch’n Learnmeeting to introduce localindustry to the projects andcapabilities of the ATIPSLaboratory.

MULTIDISCIPLINE OR MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIPSMicronet R&D (NCE)Dr Jullien was one of thefounding members of Micronet,one of the first 14 Networks ofCentres of Excellence, and one ofonly five to be funded through thefull 14 year life-span of networks


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FUNDINGOur work is supported, in addition to iCORE, by NSERC, the Canadian MicroelectronicsCorporation, Micronet R&D (NCE), and several prominent microelectronic industries.

In addition to the iCORE funding of $800,000, the budget includes grants at $149,000NSERC and $213,000 from the Micronet NCE project (includes Micronet base funding,industrial contributions and NSERC eMPOWR funding).

New funds acquired as co-investigator include $53,000 from Micronet NCE, with M. Ahmadias principal investigator Canadian Microelectronics Centre for the SoC Research Network..Dr Jullien is one of 10 principle researchers in the $40 million four-year System-on-ChipResearch Network.

in the NCE program. Dr Julliensits on the Board of Directors, theSteering Committee, and theCoordinating Committee ofMicronet. Micronet R&D iscomprised of 17 universities, 44companies and two federalorganizations, all in Canada. Theresearch personnel contributed bythe universities includes 71faculty members and 363graduate students and otherresearch personnel. For 2001-2002, the total income of thenetwork was $4,306,000 withapproximately 32 percent beingcontributed by industry. DrJullien leads a project which wasfunded at $213,000 in 2002(made up from Micronet basefunding, industrial contributionsand funding from the NSERCeMPOWR Innovation platform).This is one of the largest of themore than 50 projects funded byMicronet. In addition, Dr Jullienis a co-applicant in a secondproject from the University ofWindsor, funded last year at

$53,000. Until 1998, DrJullien was also the principalinvestigator in this secondproject.

Canadian MicroelectronicsCorp. (CMC)CMC provides microsystemdesign tools, and fabrication andinformation services to 44Canadian universities, andcolleges. It has 25 Canadiancompanies as members and isstrongly linked to industryorganizations and has asenior government official onthe Board. Dr Jullien hasbeen a member of CMCsince 1985 (less than a year afterit was founded). He served asMember Representative for theUniversity of Windsor until2000. He was on the Board ofDirectors from 1989-93 (vice-chairman of the Board in 1993)and rejoined the Board in 2001.He is one of 10 principalresearchers in the System-on-Chip Research network, funded

by a $40M CFI grant. DrsBadawy and Jullien are leadclients for the IP blocks that werepurchased from the CFI funds,and the IP block authoring suitebeing developed by a sub-committee of the TechnicalAdvisory Committee. A securelaboratory has been set up in theCCIT building to handlecommercial IP blocks in thedevelopment of SoC platforms.

The Centre for InformationSecurity and Cryptography(CiSAC)Prof. Hugh Williams, iCOREChair in Cryptography,Department of Mathematics atthe University of Calgary hasestablished CiSAC to bringtogether a multidisciplinaryinterest group in the area ofcryptography and quantumcomputing. Drs. Dimitrov andJullien are members of this centreand Dr Dimitrov also sits on theboard of CiSAC as theEngineering Representative.



Since the ATIPS Laboratory became operational in mid-2001, we have been in close contactwith University Technologies International, wholly owned by the University of Calgary, andhave been encouraged to protect any substantial IP that is developed as part of researchprojects undertaken in the ATIPS laboratory. ATIPS accepts this encouragement in the caseof substantive intellectual property opportunities.

Activity this year, including revenueThere has been no revenue from intellectual property this year since we have only just startedIP protection procedures. ATIPS is recording the following activities connected with IPprotection and development:i) Optimal base 2-D logarithms for very efficient FIR filter implementations – submitted

to UTI for patent consideration. (Dimitrov-Jullien)ii) Double-base sparse representations for applications in Cryptography – submitted to

UTI for patent consideration (Dimitrov-Jullien)iii) Self-synchronization algorithms for time-delay and integration (TDI) line-scan cameras

for machine vision applications – submitted to UTI for patent consideration (Jullien)iv) Lexel arrays for arbitrary electric field generation with applications to cell motion and

identification using dielectrophoresis – submitted to UTI for patent consideration (Jullien-Kaler)

v) Trade Names LEXEL and PLEXEL submitted to UTI for registration (Jullien-Kaler)vi) Two other trade names have been registered with UTI; GrApp and WebConcorde. These

are associated with a software package developed for hosting technical conferences andpaper/review submissions on the web (Badawy)

vii) A potential startup company on Vision Systems has been registered with InnoCentrefor the purpose of attracting venture funding (Badawy)

PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Publications1. V.S Dimitrov and G.A. Jullien, “Multidimensional Algebraic-Integer Encoding for High Performance

Implementation of the DCT and IDCT,” Electronics Lett., vol.39, no. 7, 2003, pp. 602-603.2. W. Badawy, M. Talley, G. Zhang, M. Weeks, and M. A. Bayoumi, “Low power very large scale

integration prototype for three-dimensional discrete wavelet transform processor with medicalapplications,” The SPIE Journal on Electronic Imaging, Vol. 12, No. 2, April 2003, pp. 270-277.

3. K. Wahid, V.S. Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, and W. Badawy, “Error-free computation of Daubechies Waveletsfor Image Compression Applications,” Electronics Lett., vol.39, no. 5, 2003, pp. 428-429

4. Arash Shoarinejad, Sue Ann Ung, and W. Badawy, “Low power single-bit full adder cells,” TheCanadian Journal on Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vol. 28, No. 1, January 2003 pp. 3 - 9.

5. Wael Badawy and Magdy Bayoumi, “A Parallel Multiplication-Free Algorithm and Architecture forAffine-based Motion Compensation,” The SPIE Journal on Optical Engineering, Vol. 42 No. 1, January2003 pp. 255 - 264.

6. A. Saed, M. Ahmadi, and G.A. Jullien, “A Number System with Continuous Value Digits and ModularArithmetic,” IEEE Trans. on Computers, vol. 51, no. 11, 2002, pp. 1294-1305.

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7. J.M.A.Tanskanen, and V.S. Dimitrov, “Round-off Error-Free Fixed-Point Design of PolynomialFIR Predictors and Predictive FIR Differentiators,” Digital Signal Processing, vol. 13, 2002, pp. 42-57.

8. Hesham Ahmed, Walied Moussa, Wael Badawy, Medhat Moussa, “Applying FEA to Investigatethe performance of Electrostatic Comb-Drive Actuators Utilized by on-a-chip systems”, The CanadianJournal on Electrical and Computer Engineering, Vol. 27, No. 4, October 2002, pp. 195 - 200.

9. A. Garg, G.A. Jullien, G.H. McGibney, and J.W. Haslett, “A Modulus Replication Complex AdaptiveFilter IP Core,” Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 27, no. 4, 2002, pp.177-181.

10. M. Sayed and W. Badawy, “A Novel Low Power Embedded Memory Architecture for MPEG-4Applications with Mobile Devices,” Canadian Journal on Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 27,no. 4, 2002, pp. 171-175.

11. W. Badawy, “System on Chip: the future of System Integration,” Canadian Journal on Electrical andComputer Engineering, vol. 27, no. 4, 2002, pp. 149-154.

12. H. Safiri, M. Ahmadi, G.A. Jullien, and W. C. Miller, “A New Algorithm for the Elimination ofCommon Subexpressions in Hardware Implementation of Digital Filters by Using GeneticProgramming,” Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, vol. 31, no. 2, 2002, pp. 91-100.

13. W. Badawy and M. Bayoumi, “A Low Power VLSI Architecture for Mesh-based Video MotionTracking,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II, vol 49, July 2002, pp. 488-504.

14. W. Badawy and M. Bayoumi, A Multiplication-Free Algorithm and A Parallel Architecture forAffine Transformation,” The Journal of VLSI Signal Processing-Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers,Vol 31, No 2, May 2002, pp. 173-184.

15. W. Badawy and M. Bayoumi, “Algorithm-Based Low Power VLSI Architecture For 2d-Mesh VideoObject Motion Tracking”, IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, Vol 12, No.4, April 2002, pp. 227-237

Accepted publications by refereed journals1. L. Imbert, V.S. Dimitrov, and G.A. Jullien, “Fault-tolerant Computations over Finite Rings with

Applications in Digital Signal Processing,” IEEE Trans. on Circuits and Systems (paper TCAS1-0171, 2003, in press - 11 journal pages).

2. V.S. Dimitrov and G.A. Jullien, “Loading the Bases: A New Number Representation with Applications,”invited article for IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine, No. 2, July 2003 (in press).Alfred C. H. Yuand Wael Badawy, “A Novel Video Object Extraction Algorithm for Real-time Mesh based MotionTracking Applications,” IEEE Transaction on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology (in press).

3. W. Badawy and M. Bayoumi, “A Low Power VLSI Architecture for Mesh-based Video MotionTracking,” The Journal of VLSI Signal Processing-Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers (in press -invited).

Refereed Conferences1. A. Vetteth, K. Walus, G.A. Jullien, and V.S Dimitrov, “RAM Design Using Quantum-Dot Cellular

Automata,” Proc. 2003 NanoTechnology Conference, San Francisco, February 23-27, 2003, pp.160-163.

2. P. Zhang and G.A. Jullien, “MEMS-based Micro-needle Structures for Biomedical Applications,”Proc. 2003 NanoTechnology Conference, San Francisco, February 23-27.

3. K.A.Wahid, V.S Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien and W. Badawy, “An Analysis of Daubechies Discrete WaveletTransform Based on an Algebraic Integer Encoding Scheme,” IEEE Workshop on Digital andComputational Video, Clearwater, November 2002, (in press).

4. K.A. Wahid, V.S Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, and W. Badawy, “An Algebraic Integer Based EncodingScheme for Implementing Daubechies Discrete Wavelet Transforms,” Proc. Asilomar Conference onSignals, Systems and Computers, (2002, in press - 5 pages).


5. A. Vetteth, K. Walus, V.S. Dimitrov, and G.A. Jullien, “Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata Carry-Look-Ahead Adder and Barrel Shifter,” IEEE Emerging Telecommunication Technologies Conference,Dallas, September 23-24 2002, CD-ROM paper 2-I-4 (5 pages).

6. D. Gonzalez, A. Garcia, G.A. Jullien, J. Ramirez, L. Parrilla, and A. Lloris, “A New Methodology forEfficient Synchronization of RNS-based VLSI Systems,” 12th IEEE International Workshop onPower And Timing Modeling, Optimization and Simulation, Spain, September, 2002.

7. I.C. Baykal and G.A. Jullien,”Detection of Defects in Textures with Alignment Error for Real-TimeLine-Scan Web Inspection Systems,” Proc. IEEE Mid-West Symposium on Circuits and Systems,August 2002, vol. 3, pp. 292-295.

8. V.S. Dimitrov and J.M.A Tanskanen,”Probabilistic design of long error-free fixed-point polynomialpredictors and differentiators,” IASTED International Conference on Signal and Image Processing,Kauai, August 2002, pp. 394-398.

9. G.A. Jullien, H. Li, R. Muscedere, and V.S. Dimitrov, “The application of 2-D logarithms to low-power hearing-aid processors,” IEEE Mid-West Symposium on Circuits and Systems, vol. 3, 2002,pp. 13-16.

10. V.S Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, and K. Walus, “Digital filtering using the multidimensional logarithmicnumber system,” Proc. 47th Annual SPIE conference, Seattle, July 2002, (invited).

11. R. Muscedere, V.S Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “Efficient Conversion From Binary toMulti-Digit Multi-Dimensional Logarithmic Number Systems using Arrays of Range AddressableLook-Up Tables,” International Workshop on Application Specific Array Processors, San Jose, July17-19, 2002, pp. 130-138.

12. M. Alam, W. Badawy, and G.A. Jullien, “A novel pipelined threads architecture for AES encryptionalgorithm,” IEEE International Conference on Application-Specific Systems, Architectures andProcessors, 2002, pp. 296 -302.

13. S. Chowdhury, M. Ahmadi, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “MEMS Socket Interface For SocConnectivity,” 2nd IEEE Workshop on System-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications, Banff, July2002, pp. 309-318.

14. A. Garg, G.A. Jullien, G.H. McGibney,* and J.W. Haslett, “Modulus Replication Complex AdaptiveFilter IP Core,” 2nd IEEE Workshop on System-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications, Banff, July2002, pp. 430-437.

15. M. Alam, D. Onen, W. Badawy, and G.A. Jullien, “VLSI Prototyping of low-complexity wavelettransform on FPGA,” IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 1,2002, pp. 412-415.

16. M. Alam and W. Badawy, “VLSI Architecture Prototyping of Pipelined IIR Digital Filter” IEEECanadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 1031-1035.

17. H. Li, G.A. Jullien, V.S Dimitrov, M. Ahmadi, and W.C. Miller, “A 2-Digit MultidimensionalLogarithmic Number System Filterbank for a Digital Hearing Aid Architecture,” Proc. IEEE Int.Symp. on Circuits and Systems, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 760-763.

18. R. Muscedere, I.C. Baykal, and G.A. Jullien, “On the use of Hash Functions for Defect Detection inTextures for In-Camera Web Inspection Systems,” Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. on Circuits and Systems,vol. 5, 2002, pp. 665-668.

19. S. Chowdhury, M. Ahmadi, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “A MEMS Socket System for High DensitySOC Interconnection,” Proc. IEEE Int. Symposium on Circuits and Systems, vol. 1, 2002, pp. 657-660.

Accepted papers at Refereed Conferences1. A. Garg, I. Steiner, G.A. Jullien, J.W. Haslett, and G.H. McGibney, “A High Speed Complex Adaptive

Filter for an Asymmetrical Wireless LAN Using a New Quantized Polynomial Representation,” tobe presented at the IEEE Int. Symp. on Circuits and Systems, Bangkok, May 2003.

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2. Y. Wei, W. Badawy, “A NEW Moving Object Contour Detection Approach”, to be presented at the2003 IEEE international workshop on Computer Architectures for Machine Perceptions, May 12-14, 2003, New Orleans, USA.

3. Y. Wei and W. Badawy, “A Novel Zoom Invariant Video Object Tracking Algorithm (ZIVOTA),” tobe presented at the 2003 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering,Montréal, Canada, May 4-7, 2003.

4. X. Liu and W. Badawy, “A Novel Error Control Scheme For Video Streaming Over IEEE802.11Network,” to be presented at the 2003 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electrical and ComputerEngineering, Montréal, Canada, May 4-7, 2003.

5. P. Aggarwal, K. V. I. S. Kaler and W. Badawy, “Design and Implementation Of MEMS Based Micro-Needles For Biomedical Applications,” to be presented at the 2003 IEEE Canadian Conference onElectrical and Computer Engineering, Montréal, Canada, May 4-7, 2003.

6. Alfred Yu and Wael Badawy, “On Reducing The Size Of Structured Meshes With A Novel VideoObject Extraction Algorithm,” to be presented at the 2003 IEEE Canadian Conference on Electricaland Computer Engineering, Montréal, Canada, May 4-7, 2003.

7. W. Khan, V.S Dimitrov, and G.A. Jullien, “Error-Free Arithmetic for Discrete Wavelet Transformsusing Algebraic Integers,” to be presented at the 16th IEEE Symposium on Computer Arithmetic(ARITH16), Spain, June 15-18, 2003.

8. M. Alam, C. A. Rahman, W. Badawy, and G.A. Jullien, “ Efficient Distributed Arithmetic BasedDWT Architecture for Multimedia Applications,” to be presented at the 3rd IEEE Int. Workshopon System-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications, Calgary, June 30 - July 2, 2003.

9. Mohammed Sayed and Wael Badawy, “A New Class of Computational RAM Architectures for Real-Time MPEG-4 Applications,” to be presented at the 3rd IEEE Int.l Workshop on System-on-Chipfor Real-Time Applications, Calgary, June 30 - July 2, 2003.

10. J.R. Keilman, G.A. Jullien, and K.I.V.S. Kaler, “A SoC Bio-analysis Platform for Real-time BiologicalCell Analysis-on-a-Chip,” to be presented at the 3rd IEEE Int.l Workshop on System-on-Chip forReal-Time Applications, Calgary, June 30 - July 2, 2003.

11. M. Alam, W. Badawy, and G.A. Jullien, “Time Distributed DCT Architecture for MultimediaApplications,” to be presented at the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics (ICCE),Los Angeles, California, June 17-19, 2003.

12. P. Mokrian, G.A. Jullien, and M. Ahmadi, “Interconnect effects in deep submicron implementationof high performance arithmetic architectures,” Advanced Signal Processing Algorithms, Architectures,and Implementations XIII, SPIE Annual Conference, August 2003.

13. K. Walus, G.A. Jullien, V.S Dimitrov, and A. Budiman, “Computer Arithmetic Structures for QuantumCellular Automata,” invited paper to be presented at the 2003 Asilomar Conference on Signals,Systems and Computers, Pacific Grove, CA, Nov. 9-12, 2003.

Books1. W. Badawy, and G.A. Jullien, (eds.), System-on-Chip for Real-Time Applications: Concepts, Architectures

and Implementations, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002, ISBN: 1-4020-7254-6.

OtherSpecial Issues1. G.A. Jullien, G.A. and M. Schulte (Guest Editors), “Special Issue on Application-specific Systems,

Architectures, and Processors,” Journal of VLSI Signal Processing, vol. 32, no. 2, 2002, pp. 75-184.

National Workshops1. K. Walus, V. Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “QCADesigner: A CAD Tool for an Emerging

Nano-Technology,” to be presented at the 2003 Micronet Annual Workshop, Toronto.


2. M. Amtoun, A. Razavi, M. Ahmadi, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “Analysis and Simulation of aSingle-lens Plenoptic Camera for Depth Extraction,” to be presented at the 2003 Micronet AnnualWorkshop, Toronto.

3. J. Doherty, G.A. Jullien, and M.P. Mintchev, “Transcutaneous Powering of an Implantable Stimulatorfor Re-creation of Impaired Gastrointestinal Motility,” Biomedical Engineering Workshop, Banff,November 2002.

4. J. Keilman, G.A. Jullien, and K.V.I.S. Kaler, “Design of an Arbitrary Electric Field Generator for usewith a Dielectrophoretic Based Laboratory-on-a-Chip,” Biomedical Engineering Workshop, Banff,November 2002.

5. K. Walus, R.A. Budiman, and G.A. Jullien, “Effects of morphological variations of self-assemblednanostructures on quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) circuits,” Frontiers of Integration, AnInternational Workshop on Integrating Nanotechnologies, Edmonton, October 28, 2002.

6. K. Walus, A. Vetteth, G.A. Jullien, and V.S. Dimitrov, “Design and Simulation of Quantum DotCellular Automata,” CMC Symposium On Microelectronics Research & Development In Canada,(This demonstration won the Micralyne award.) June, 2002.

7. S. Chowdhury, M. Ahmadi, G.A. Jullien, and W.C. Miller, “MEMS Based Connectivity for SystemIntegration and Testing,” Micronet Workshop, April, 2002.

8. R. Muscedere, J. Li, V.S Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, M. Ahmadi, and W.C. Miller, “Multi-DimensionalLogarithmic Number Systems and Applications to Hearing Instrument Processors,” MicronetWorkshop, April, 2002.

9. M. Fu, V.S. Dimitrov, G.A. Jullien, M. Ahmadi, and W.C. Miller, “Implementation of an Error-FreeDCT using Algebraic Integers,” Micronet Workshop, April, 2002.

Contribution to Standards (2002-2003)1. M. Alam, W. Badawy and G.A. Jullien. “Implementation & Hardware Reference Code for AMBA Bus

Interface - Decoder (MPEG-4) IP Cores,” ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG2002/M85642. M. Alam, W. Badawy and G.A. Jullien. “MPEG-4 Video Hardware Reference Code for DCT & its

Specifications for MPEG-4 Decoder,” ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG2002/M85653. M. Alam, W. Badawy and G.A. Jullien. “Integer DWT Reference Code and Specifications for MPEG-

4,” ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG2002/M85824. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 N4965, Wael Badawy, Marco Mattavelli, and Robert Turney, Current

development status of the MPEG4: Part 9 Reference Hardware Description.5. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG2002/ M8562, Wael Badawy and Mohammed Sayed,

“Embedded Memory Architecture For Motion Compensation in MPEG-4 Simple Profile”6. ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 MPEG2002/ M8563, Wael Badawy and Mohammed Sayed,

“Motion Estimation Architecture for MPEG-4 Simple Profile”

Tutorials1. W. Badawy, Y. Savaria, and G.A. Jullien, “System-On-Chip (SoC) Technology: The Future of VLSI

Design,” to be presented at the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems, Bangkok,May 2003.

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We are entering a new age ofubiquitous wireless connectivity.Cellphone usage is targeted tohit hundreds of millions ofusers by 2002. New wirelessnetworks like Bluetooth andWiFi - 802.11 seek to connectnot only our cellphones, butalso our laptops, PDAs, andeven our home appliances.Inside each of these deviceswill be a wireless transceiverin integrated circuit form, aRadio Frequency IntegratedCircuit (RFIC).

There are many challengesinvolved in creating RFICs. Atthe transistor level, variouscompeting technologies (GaAs,Si, SiGe, and CMOS) eachprovide different benefits anddrawbacks. Aside from thetransistors, the creation ofpassive devices such asinductors, capacitors, andresistors also poses uniquechallenges to the IC designer.To create the amplifiers,mixers, and oscillatorsrequired in all wirelesstransceivers, RFIC designersmust use clever circuit

RFIC DESIGN GROUPtechniques to boost performance.These wireless “buildingblocks” can then be connectedin different system archi-tectures to achieve the requiredperformance. The goal is tohave a single radio-on-a-chipthat need only to be connectedto an antenna, output device,and a battery.

The ATIPS - RFIC researchgroup is investigating solutionsto many of the challengespresented above. Our researchgroup is lead by IEEE FellowDr J.W. Haslett. The teamcurrently consists of one PhDcandidate, nine MSc candidates,one MEng candidate and twoundergraduate research assis-tants. We also work with Dr J.McRory who is both anAdjunct Professor with theUniversity of Calgary and theChief RF Scientist at TRLabs.Some of our past and presentwork includes:

•Developing solutions instate-of-the-art GaAs,CMOS, and SiGetechnologies

•Creating innovative newstructures for integratedcapacitors and inductors

•A Tuneable, ActiveInductor in both GaAs andCMOS implementations

•Analog signal processingcircuits for smart antennasystems

•Circuit techniques forimproved passive deviceperformance

•A 4GHz logarithmicamplifier for fiber-opticapplications

•High performance variablegain amplifiers for DSLwireline communications

• SiGe RFIC circuits for 4thgeneration wirelessnetworks

•Novel Voltage ControlledOscillators with improvedphase noise

The ATIPS - RFIC researchgroup has access to design andtest equipment within thedepartment, and at TRLabs inthe research park adjacent tocampus.

COLLABORATION WITH ATIPS


They are self-professed analog ‘range riders’ - asdesigners of the physical, transistor layer of thewireless system of the future. Seemingly at oddsto the uninitiated versed in the belief that ‘digital isbetter’, analog wireless design is a cost and powerefficient contribution to novel circuit designsevolving to a point in the future where entirewireless systems will be present on single ‘chips’.

“To do wireless economically, many types of ‘radioson a chip’ are needed,” says TRLabs AdjunctScientist Dr. Jim Haslett. “In a world whereswitches, filters,amplifiers and the like tend to beoff-chip and therefore more expensive and lessreliable, getting high performance [> 10 GHz, low power,programmable] wireless building blocks onto a single chip andspeaking the same language [i.e. analog/digital conversion] is asizeable technological challenge – but is a key to low cost systems.”

Haslett notes that the integrated circuit designs (RFIC) of the futurewill remove the technological barriers that have constrained wirelessubiquity. “If we can unite systems and functions onto single chips athigher frequencies that achieve higher bandwidth, we open the doorto an era of cheap, small and fast products of virtually any form orfunction. Taken to its extreme, we may even see a day where wedrop ‘smart dust’ to locate someone lost in the wilderness – hundredsof thousands of tiny wireless system sensor communicators thatsend messages back to trackers.”

An NSERC, iCORE, University of Calgary, and TRLabs $3.42 millioninvestment partnership has created an Industrial Chair for Dr. Haslett,and the establishment of the Wireless Science and TechnologyInitiative to explore RFIC design. System on Chip design is a strategicgoal; incremental innovation will involve the design of novel circuitsthat provide efficiency and better performance, RF System on Chipdesign, and ultimately integrated System on Chip design incorporatingcomputer, digital, and RF systems on a single chip. Along the wayinnovation will take place in the form of design of leading edgecomponents, from low noise amplifiers to frequency synthesizers.

THE Network-Stepping stones

The Wireless Cowboys at Home on the Frequency Range


WIRELESS SCIENCE ANDTECHNOLOGY INITIATIVETRLabs/iCORE/NSERC Industrial Research ChairElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This five-year Industrial Research Chair program, funded by TRLabs, iCORE and NSERC, is focused ondeveloping, in conjunction with the TRLabs Wireless Research Center in Calgary, a sophisticated wirelessradio frequency (RF) Integrated Circuit design and test capability, with Dr Jim Haslett as the groupleader. The main intention of the research program is to develop the expertise required to design novelnew devices, circuits and systems for 3rd and 4th generation wireless products of interest to the industrialsponsors of TRLabs, and to the wireless community in general.

The research program began in May of 2002, and in the ensuing 11 months, a team of four PhD’s, eightMSc’s and two postdoctoral fellows has been assembled by Dr Haslett to carry out the chair mandate. Closecollaboration with staff scientists at TRLabs, and extensive collaboration with other researchers and industrialsponsors has resulted in an excellent list of accomplishments for the first year of the chair program.

The student team currently consists of four PhD students, three holding NSERC/iCORE scholarships;and eight MSc students, three holding NSERC/iCORE scholarships, and a fourth holding an NSERCIndustrial Scholarship. Two of the students have direct industrial RF design experience, and all havebecome proficient in RF Integrated Circuit design in a variety of fabrication technologies, includingCMOS and Silicon Germanium BiCMOS.

The RFIC Design laboratory uses state-of-the-art design, simulation and layout software tools, and asophisticated test laboratory is in use at TRLabs. Excellent infrastructure resources provided by theCanadian Microelectronics Corporation (CMC) are complemented by an expanded Very Large ScaleIntegration laboratory, a new RF laboratory, a new secure System-on-Chip laboratory and a Clean RoomFacility, house in the new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and Calgary Centre forInnovative Technology (CCIT) buildings on the University of Calgary campus.

Dr Haslett and the research team have been successful in bringing in significant external funds tocomplement the $600,000 annual chair budget. In the past 11 months, an additional $244,368 has beenobtained by Dr Haslett as principal applicant, to support the research program, excluding the studentscholarships which amount to an additional $209,000 per year. Other funding has been obtained with DrGraham Jullien, as outlined in the report.

During the year, 23 new RFICs designed by the research group were fabricated through the CMC, andthe results published in a variety of conferences and journals. Two new patent applications were filedthrough TRLabs. A national award and a local award were received by the students for some of the work.A number of new collaborative research projects were initiated, and a team of 10 principal researchers,including Dr Haslett, prepared a Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) grant application to provideadditional infrastructure to support the research programs.

Dr Jim Haslett leads a research program called the Wireless Science and Technology Initiative. To develop the research team,Dr Haslett has received an iCORE Industrial Chair Establishment (ICE) grant from iCORE of $200,000 per year for five yearsfor a total of $1 million dollars.

DR JAMES HASLETT



This Industrial Chair Program inWireless Science and Technology(WISTI) was initiated on May 1st,2002, for a five-year period. Themain research goals and objectivesoutlined in the chair proposalfocused on developing, inconjunction with the TRLabsWireless Research Center inCalgary, a state-of-the-art wirelessRF devices, circuits and systemsdesign and test capability, with DrJim Haslett as the group leader. Themain thrust of the new researchprogram was to develop new andnovel techniques for providingoperational flexibility, low noise,and low power devices for the nextgenerations of wireless products, ofinterest to the industrial sponsorsof TRLabs, and to the wirelesscommunity in general.

WISTI Strategy:The WISTI initiative was targetedto contribute to the developmentof a critical mass of RFresearchers in Alberta with aprimary focus on the device andcircuit aspects, in cooperation withresearchers working on overallsystem aspects at the Universityof Calgary, in the TRLabsWireless Research Centre in theDiscovery Place Research Parkadjacent to campus, and at theUniversity of Alberta. It wasenvisaged that the enhancedwireless RF research activitywould provide a focal point for thetraining of highly qualifiedpersonnel that the industry needsas it moves into the nextgeneration of wireless systems.

WISTI was intended to providea capability to address theproblems faced by Alberta andCanadian industry in generating

new products using newtechnologies for the wire-less marketplace. The TRLabsindustrial sponsor consortiumincludes many of the major playersin the wireless communicationsindustry, providing an excellentopportunity to transfer thetechnology directly to the industry

in a timely fashion. The criticalmass was also expected to attractexcellent graduate students, visitorsand postdoctoral fellows fromaround the world.

To enhance the chair researchprogram, an additional academicstaff member was to be hired intoelectrical engineering fromsupporting fields such asintegrated optics, nanoscalefabrication technology, quantumelectronics, multimedia, or lowpower systems.

Accomplishments to Date:The program has had a very goodstart, and after the first 12 months,a research team of four PhDs,eight MScs and two postdoctoralfellows is in place. Several of thestudents have won local, nationaland international awards andscholarships. A large number ofRF integrated circuits have beendesigned, with a number of thesefabricated and tested. The resultshave been disseminated to theindustrial sponsor, and several

journal and conference papershave been published. Two patentshave been filed, and other papersare under preparation, underreview or accepted for presentationat conferences in 2003.

Dr Haslett has also beensuccessful in attracting additionalfunds from external agencies to

support the research. Thisincludes, with Dr Haslett asprincipal applicant, $67,700 fromthe Canadian MicroelectronicsCorporation (CMC) for integratedcircuit design workstations andserver, over $100,000 in chipfabrication grants from the CMCto support the RFIC designgroup in 2002-3, $39,383 fromNSERC in the form of anequipment grant in March of2003, and a $55,000 portion ofMicronet funding with GrahamJullien as principal investigator in2002-3. An additional softwaredonation was received by DrHaslett from Applied WaveResearch in the US, to provideMicrowave Office software to 20students, valued at a commercialvalue of $28,800 US per copy, tosupport the graduate teachingand research.

In addition, $300,000 wasallocated to Drs Haslett andJullien from the Calgary Centrefor Innovative Technology(CCIT). Research Group budget

THE TRLABS INDUSTRIAL SPONSOR CONSORTIUM INCLUDES MANY OFTHE MAJOR PLAYERS IN THE WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY,PROVIDING AN EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO TRANSFER THE TECHNOLOGYDIRECTLY TO THE INDUSTRY IN A TIMELY FASHION.

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RESEARCH PROJECTS

Quite a number of researchprojects are currently under away,most targeted at developingbuilding blocks for wirelesstransceiver systems, withapplications in wireless localarea networks, optical comm-unications, biomedical monitoring,home technologies, and wirelesslocation as examples.

Development of General RFIntegrated Circuit DesignExpertiseDuring the past year, Dr Haslett’sresearch group has beendeveloping expertise in the design,fabrication and testing of RFwireless circuit building blocks, ina variety of state-of-the-artfabrication technologies, for RFtransceiver applications in the oneto 20 GHz frequency range. Sincemany of the team members arenew, and since the successfuldesign, fabrication and testing ofstate-of-the-art RF integratedcircuits is very challenging, thefirst year has involved a steeplearning curve for many of the

team members. The group isbecoming proficient in the designof low noise amplifiers, mixers,voltage controlled oscillators,phase locked loop frequencysynthesizers, filters, and othertransceiver building blocksin silicon-germanium (SiGe)BiCMOS and deep submicronCMOS technologies, and thisexpertise can now be applied toseveral research projects asoutlined below.

Realizing Fully MonolithicTransceivers in CMOSFabrication TechnologyThe major challenge facing thewireless industry at present is toeconomically realize all requiredtransceiver circuit functions onone silicon substrate (a monolithicrealization), and to provideprogrammability to accom-modate the various transmissionstandards encountered. This willreduce the cost of productionvery significantly, as well asminiaturizing the circuitry.Miniature low power circuits will

open up the possibility of manynew applications in the biomedicaland other areas.

In order to achieve fullymonolithic BiCMOS and CMOScircuits in the five to 20 GHzrange, and to achieve maximumfunctional flexibility, the researchgroup is working in several areas.

High Frequency Modeling ofRF CMOS and BipolarTransistorsDr Haslett has published anumber of papers in the area ofthe high frequency modeling ofMOS devices, using tractablemodels suitable for hand analysisof small circuits such as thoseencountered in the RF buildingblock research. With thewidespread use of silicon-germanium bipolar highfrequency transistors, similar RFcharacterization needs to becarried out. A great deal ofactivity is currently ongoingin the industry to providesophisticated computer-aideddesign models for these devices.

(Gérard Lachapelle, GroupDirector) to establish new RFLab and Clean Room Facilities,in July of 2002. Dr Haslett iscurrently in the process ofsupervising the construction of anew RF design and test lab in theCCIT facility. A new RF shieldedenclosure was constructed inMarch and April of 2003, and hasjust been certified. Drs Haslettand Jullien have also beenworking toward a majorexpansion of the VLSI designfacilities in the new Informationand Communications Technology

(ICT) building, and in CCIT. Asecond VLSI lab has beenconstructed in ICT, and a secureSystem-on-Chip (SOC) facilityand Integrated Circuit DesignLab have been constructed inCCIT and are now operational.A Canada Foundation forInnovation (CFI) grantapplication has been submitted toprovide additional equipment forthese labs, with Dr Jullien asprincipal applicant, and with 15other researchers involved. DrHaslett is one of 10 principalresearchers on that application.

At TRLabs, a new wide rangingcollaborative research program inhome technologies has beeninitiated, with financial supportfrom new industrial sponsors, andfrom Western Diversification. DrJohn McRory is leading a CFIgrant application to support theresearch, and Dr Haslett is aprincipal researcher on thatapplication as well.

In summary, the chair programis off to an excellent start, theteam is largely in place, andinfrastructure is being establishedto support the research program.


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Dr Haslett’s group has developedapproximate analytic models forhand analysis of analog RFcircuits, along with thedevelopment of a detailedunderstanding of current state-of-the-art computer-aided modelssuch as the Berkley BSIM4Model, and the RF Bipolartransistor model high frequencyscattering parameters. DrHaslett’s research group hasported CMOS 0.18 microntechnology models from theCadence Spectre RF modelingprogram to Cadence’s newPSPICE modeling program thatruns on PC platforms. Thisenables graduate students andothers to use PCs for modeling thesophisticated processes ratherthan requiring a high level Unixworkstation and several millionsof dollars (one complete seat ofCadence software costs US $3.5million) to perform basic circuitsimulations.

Quality Factor Enhancementof Passive on-chip SpiralInductorsOne of the major impediments toachieving fully monolithic lowcost transceivers in the industrytoday relates to the poor qualityof on-chip passive components,and the worst of these is thespiral inductor. Researchersthroughout the world have trieda myriad of solutions, but no realsuccess has been achievedwithout expensive additionalfabrication steps in themanufacturing process. Initialwork by our group involved thedevelopment of a detailedunderstanding of the modelingand design issues involved, andmore recently a technique tooptimize the design of these

inductors using the acceptedapproach to fabrication wasdeveloped and published.However, only marginalimprovements are achievablewith this approach, and a moredramatic solution is needed.

A possible solution for certainapplications is being explored bythe team, involving the use ofa flux compensating secondinductor mutually coupled to themain component, and driven insuch a way as to enhance thequality factor electronically. Asimple CMOS solution has beendemonstrated experimentally,and a patent application has beenfiled through TRLabs. Detailednoise, distortion and stabilityanalyses are under way.The circuit has interestingapplications in filtering, andpreliminary designs lookpromising in simulation.

The Gigabit Radio RFICProjectThe experience gained in thefundamental research is beingapplied to a new large integratedcircuit design project that wehave initiated at TRLabs. Thehostility of the widebandradio channel imposes severemultipath and intersymbolinterference (ISI) that must beovercome in order to senddata successfully. A novel newarchitecture for a very high-speedwireless local area network (LAN)system has been designed by DrGrant McGibney, a TRLabsStaff Scientist, over the past threeyears. Mitigation of these effectsis accomplished by usingdigital signal processing (DSP)techniques to predistort/equalizetransmitted data before/afterpassing through the wireless

channel. To minimize the powerconsumption and complexityof the terminals, the DSPfunctionality is placed solely in thebasestations of the network. Theremote terminals are leftas relatively simple devicesconsisting of a direct conversionreceiver and simple comparatorsfor analog/digital conversion.

The goal of this project is toproduce a Radio FrequencyIntegrated Circuit (RFIC) whichimplements the functionality ofa Gigabit Radio simple terminal.Initial research has concentratedon designing the RF low noiseamplifier LNA), direct downconversion mixer, and voltagecontrolled oscillator (VCO) thatwill form part of the receiverfrequency synthesizer. Theseprojects push the technology rightto the limits, and so far we havehad partial success.

Integrated Optics and OpticalFiber Communication SystemsThis project uses an RFlogarithmic compression amplifier,along with a Hilbert Transformerand several other components, toreduce chromatic dispersion inoptical fiber networks bygenerating a single-sidebandmodulated optical carrier. A firstgeneration compression amplifierwith a four GHz bandwidth hasbeen successfully designed,fabricated and tested incollaboration with Nortel Ottawausing the NT 25 bipolarfabrication process, and the nextgeneration logarithmic amplifiershave been designed andfabricated in silicon-germanium,through a new process madeavailable to us by the CanadianMicroelectronics Corporation,MOSIS and IBM Corporation.


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RESEARCH TEAM

TEAM LEADER

Jim Haslett

AWARDS

President’s Circle Award, Teaching Excellence

COLLABORATORS

Graham Jullien

Michal Okoniewski

TITLE

iCORE Chair in Advanced Technology Information ProcessingSystems

CRC Chair in Electromagnetics

We are currently waiting for thesechips to be returned for testing.The initial design has won aNational Award in June of 2002,and the details have beenpublished in the IEEE Journal ofSolid State Circuits and elsewhere.A patent application has also beenfiled.

The next major challenge is toproduce a monolithic HilbertTransformer, and this project iscurrently under way.

Self-Configuring RF Antennasand Millimeter Wave SystemsThe lab has initiated acollaborative project with DrMichal Okoniewski and Dr RonJohnston, relating to the use ofRF switches to electronicallyreconfigure antennas and othermicrostripline elements. Initialresults are promising, and thisresearch is ongoing, with applic-ations in wireless navigation andlocation as well as in spatially

selective communications.These collaborative projects

involve the application ofRF wireless systems andnanotechnologies to biomedicaland other applications, where we,along with a number of otherUniversity of Calgary researchersin electrical engineering, geomatics,mechanical engineering andmedicine, are uniquely poisedin Canada to make significantbreakthroughs. Areas include anew generation of lab-on-a-chipdiagnostic systems for a varietyof detection applications.

System-on-Chip (SoC) ResearchThese projects involve theintegration of wireless RFcores for use in the newlyestablished SOC (System-on-a-Chip) laboratory, to allow therapid design of sophisticatedsystems in monolithic form for avariety of applications. Our VLSIgroup is one of three Canadian

lead clients for CMC on theBluetooth SoC platform that willeventually be distributed to 21Canadian universities. Our role isto take the Bluetooth digitalIP core through the designcycle. Our RF group is alsoinvestigating a variety ofproducts for the RF transceiverportion that would provide acomplete and reconfigurableBluetooth wireless transceiversystem.

RF MicroElectroMechanicalSystems (MEMS)We are collaborating with DrGraham Jullien, Dr MichalOkoniewski and TRLabs tocombine RF MEMS devicesdesigned by their research groupswith RF integrated circuitsdesigned by our group, to buildunique new devices for severalnew applications ranging fromwireless navigation and locationto health related devices.


OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

John McRory

Bob Davies

RESEARCH TOPICS

TRLabs

TRLabs


Hua Yan

Vijay Devabaktuni

TOPIC

RF Board Level Systems,Self-Configuring Antennas

RF CAD Systems andModeling

PHD STUDENTS

Chris Holdenried

Holly Pekau

Bogdan Georgescu

Rob Randall

Ahmed Youssef

TOPIC

Optical Data TransmissionCircuits and Systems

SubSampling Mixers forNext Generation WirelessTransceivers

Transformer Based OnChip Spiral Inductor QEnhancement

CMOS Monolithic PowerAmplifier LinearizationSchemes

Analog RF Front EndCircuits for Wireless LAN

AWARDS

NSERC PostdoctoralFellowship

AWARDS

NSERC PGS-B, iCOREGraduate StudentScholarship, JB HyneResearch Innovation



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MSC/MENG STUDENTS

Josh Nakaska

Jim Kulyk

Damon Holmes

Ken Townsend

Cavell Li (part time)

James Quan (part time)

Jonathan Yeboah

Stephen Tseng

AWARDS

NSERC IndustrialScholarship



TOPIC

Wireless LAN FrequencySynthesizers

Monolithic Q-EnhancedFilters

RF Power Amplifiers

Wireless LAN VectorModulator

Active Inductors

High Linearity ProgrammableGain Amplifiers for BasebandApplications

Cellular Neural Networks

Coursework MEng.

COLLABORATIONSRESEARCH COLLABORATIONS:Research collaborations arecurrently being carried out withthe following individuals:

Dr Graham JullienElectrical and ComputerEngineering, University of CalgaryDr Jullien and Dr Haslett arecollaborating on several projects,including a high data ratewireless LAN with TRLabs, andon analog computational schemeswith Micronet.

Dr Michal OkoniewskiElectrical and ComputerEngineering, University of CalgaryDr Okoniewski and Dr Haslett arecollaborating on several projects,

including self-configuring antennaand other micostripline devices,plus RF MEMS devices for thoseapplications.

Dr Wael BadawyElectrical and Computer Engineering,University of CalgaryDr Badawy and Dr Haslett arecollaborating on the Bluetooth RFSoC platform from the CanadianMicroelectronics Corporation.

Dr John McRoryTRLabsDr McRory and Dr Haslett arecollaborating on several projects,including RF Power AmplifierDesign, Spiral Inductor Q-Enhancement Techniques, andHome Technologies.

Dr Bob DaviesTRLabsDr Davies and Dr Haslett arecollaborating on several projects,including Optical Data trans-mission systems, and hometechnologies.

Collaboration discussions havebeen initiated with the followingindividuals:

Dr Christian SchlegelUniversity of AlbertaDr Schlegel and Dr Haslett areare planning on initiatingresearch into analog circuitinterfaces for signal processingsystems.


COLLABORATIONS WITH INDUSTRYTRLabs and its IndustrialSponsors (Samsung, Nortel)TRLabs is the industrial sponsorof the research chair, and, assuch, most of the researchprojects that we are pursuing willbe of interest to their industrialsponsors. Our research projectsare vetted and reviewed each yearby a committee made up ofsponsor representatives andTRLabs staff. We also have directcollaboration with some of thesponsors, as indicated below.

A. J. Bergsma, and R.D. BeardsNortel OttawaChris Holdenried, a PhD candidateunder Dr Haslett’s supervision, hasbeen working with researchers atNortel to design a widebandtrue logarithmic compressionamplifier for optical fibercommunications applications. Thedesigns are successful, and the nextproject involves the designof an accompanying HilbertTransformer.

SiWorksCalgaryDr Ivars Finvers, a former PhDstudent of Dr Haslett’s, is now oneof the members of this semicustomintegrated circuit design houselocated adjacent to the universityin the research park. He currentlyco-supervises one of Dr Haslett’sPhD students. Another SiWorksemployee, James Quan, is an MEngthesis-route student under DrHaslett’s supervision.

Dalsa SemiconductorOntarioDrs Jullien, Okoniewski and DrHaslett are collaborating on thedevelopment of an RF MEMSprocess that is of interest toDalsa, a chip manufacturingcompany in Ontario.

Multidiscipline or Multi-Institutional Partnerships:Canadian Light SourceUniversity of SaskatchewanDr Haslett is a potential user ofthe Canadian Light Source CFIInitiative.

Dr Gérard Lachapelle, and DrElizabeth CannonGeomatics, University of CalgaryDrs Cannon and Lachapelle arecollaborators on the CFI grantapplication currently being led byDr Jullien. We plan to work onself-configuring antennas, withapplications to wireless location.At a later time, it is anticipatedthat custom integrated circuitswill be designed by our group forthese applications.

Dr Arief BudimannMechanical Engineering, Universityof CalgaryDr Budimann is another memberof the multidisciplinary teamthat is putting together the CFIgrant application. His specialtyis thin films, and nanotechnology.He has just received funding fora sputtering system, which willallow us to try out some of ournew ideas with antennas andstripline devices.

FUNDING

The iCORE funding of $200,000 per year is leveraged by $120,000 per year from the TRLabschair program and $120,000 per year from NSERC. The University of Calgary contributes$164,000 to the chair program.

New Funds Acquired as Prime InvestigatorFunding secured this year includes $39,348 from an NSERC Equipment Grant for a LaserCutting Facility for the RF Wafer Prober, an NSERC Discovery Grant for $37,320, $67,700from the Canadian Microelectronics Corporation (CMC) for the IC design Server andWorkstations, $100,00 for Integrated Circuit Fabrication Grants from CMC, and $40,000 inMicrowave Office Software donation from Applied Wave Research in the US.

New Funds Acquired as Co-InvestigatorThese funds include $55,000 from Micronet (Graham Jullien, PI, $225,000 total), and $300,000from the CCIT Intelligent Technologies budget to construct an RF Shielded Room and a CleanRoom Facility (Graham Jullien and Dr Haslett).

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Patent Activity this year:

1. M. L.Holbert, J.W. Haslett, R.E. Smallwood and F.N. Trofimenkoff, Subsurface SignalTransmitting Apparatus, US Patent # 6,405,795, Issued June 18th, 2002, Canadian Patent#2151525 issued December 31, 2002.

2. J.W. Haslett, B. A. Georgescu, H. Pekau and J. McRory, Monolithic Transformer CompensatedCircuit, full US and Canadian Patents filed January 2003.

3. C. D. Holdenried, J.W. Haslett, J.G. McRory, and R.J. Davies, Branch Logarithmic Amplifierand Logarithmic Amplifier Delay Circuitry, US and Canadian Patents Filed, US file # 10/156,731, April 2002.

PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Publications1. A. Garg, G.A Jullien, G. McGibney, and J.W. Haslett, “A Modulus Replication Adaptive Filter IP

Core,” Canadian Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering, vol.27, no. 4, October 2002, pp.177-181.

2. C.D. Holdenried, J.W. Haslett, J.G. McRory, R.D. Beards, and A.J. Bergsma, “A DC-4 GHz TrueLogarithmic Amplifier: Theory and Implementation,” IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits, vol. 37,no. 10, October 2002, pp.1290-1299.

Conference Papers1. C. D. Holdenried and J.W. Haslett, “Two Baseband Logarithmic Amplifiers Using Parallel Feedback

Amplifier Cells,” Proc. of Wireless 2002, Calgary, Alberta, July 2002, pp. 181-189.2. B. A. Georgescu, J.W. Haslett, and J. McRory, “ Practical Synthesis of Optimized Inductor Circuits,”

Proc. of Wireless 2002, Calgary, Alberta, July 2002, pp. 206-209.3. M. Lynch and J.W. Haslett, “The Design of a 17.35 GHz LNA and Mixer,” Proc. of Wireless 2002,

Calgary, Alberta, July 2002, pp. 505-514.4. M. Lynch, J.W. Haslett, G. McGibney, and A. Garg, “A Novel Gigabit Radio Transceiver for System-

on-Chip Wireless LAN,” Paper and Poster Presentation, International Workshop on System-on-Chip, Banff, Alberta, July 2002, pp. 420-429.

5. A. Garg, G.A.Jullien, G. McGibney, and J.W. Haslett, “A Modulus Replication Complex AdaptiveFilter IP Core,” Paper and Poster Presentation, International Workshop on System-on-Chip, Banff,Alberta, July 2002, pp. 430-437.

6. C. D. Holdenried and J.W. Haslett, “Two Baseband Logarithmic Amplifiers Using Parallel FeedbackAmplifier Cells,” Poster Presentation, Canadian Microelectronics Corporation Texpo 2002, Ottawa,Ontario, June 18, 2002. This poster won the CMC Componentware/CAD Award, one of threenational awards presented at the workshop.

7. M.W. Lynch, C. Holdenried, and J.W. Haslett, “A 17-GHz Direct Down-Conversion Mixer in a 47-GHz SiGe BiCMOS Process,” accepted for presentation at the Radio Frequency Integrated CircuitsSymposium, Philadelphia PA, June 2003, pp. 461-464.

8. A. Garg, I. Steiner, G.A. Jullien, J.W. Haslett, and G.H. McGibney, “A High Speed Complex AdaptiveFilter for an Asymmetric Wireless LAN Using a New Quantized Polynomial Representation,” acceptedfor presentation at the IEEE International Circuits and Systems Conference, (ISCAS), Bangkok,Thailand, May 2003.


C I S A C M E M B E R SCISaC Management Board

Dr Hugh Williams

CISaC Management BoardDr Vassil DimitrovDr Michael J. Jacobson, Jr.Dr Renate Scheidler

Support StaffSusan SchuckBetty TeareMarc Wrubleski

Graduate Students in Mathematics andComputer Science

Richard CanningsKell ChengChris FosterBrendan OseenReg SawillaKjell WoodingAndreas Hirt

Welcome to the University of Calgary’s Centre for Information Security and Cryptography(CISaC), an academic research centre housed within the Department of Mathematics &Statistics, and supported and administered by the Faculty of Science.

We are a multidisciplinary centre that focuses on research in cryptography andinformation security. Together, our team of researchers and students in mathematics,computer science and electrical and computer engineering is collaborating on projects toimprove computer security and protect information in every facet of daily life.

Partners and Sponsors

Affiliated FacultyDr Richard CleveDr Clifton CunninghamDr Behrouz Homayoun FarDr Graham JullienDr Thomas KeenanDr Richard MollinDr John Watrous

Post-Doctoral Fellows in MathematicsDr Filip SaidakDr Safuat HamdyDr Siguna Mueller

Dr Hugh Williams, iCORE Chair, Information Security anc Cryptography


ALGORITHMIC NUMBER THEORYAND CRYPTOGRAPHYiCORE ChairMathematics and StatisticsUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The iCORE Chair in Algorithmic Number Theory and Cryptography (ICANTC) has the goal of creatinga recognized centre of excellence for education, research and industrial cooperation on computer securityat the University of Calgary. As the ICANTC team completes its second year of operation, it is well ontrack to reaching that goal. At the end of March 2003, a number of key milestones have been achieved.

One significant milestone was the establishment of the Centre for Information Security and Cryptography(CISaC), which was inaugurated July 17th, 2002. In the past year, ICANTC has seen CISaC begin tomove from a concept to reality. The development and launch of a Web site and a mission statement helpedestablish an infrastructure for CISaC, two critical elements to building a membership base and attractingprivate industry participation. An official launch for CISaC is planned in fall 2003.

Other highlights of ICANTC’s activities include further progress toward getting the AdvancedCryptography Laboratory up and running, and successfully applying for a Mathematics for InformationTechnology and Complex Systems (MITACS) grant. ICANTC team members have continued theirresearch, submitting numerous papers and presentations to various journals and publications. They arealso actively recruiting graduate and post-doctoral students and faculty. As a result, two new masters’students and one PhD student began in September 2002. They are expecting a new masters’ student inSeptember 2003, Paul Sheridan. They also hope to have three more PhD students. Peter Anderson andKjell Wooding are confirmed, while the third could be confirmed by the end of April.

As a new fiscal year begins, the team will continue to build on achievements in 2002-2003, makingsteady progress to reaching goals for 2003-2004. Plans include an official launch of CISaC, cultivationof industrial partnerships, the realization of the cryptographic laboratory, and recruiting an additionalassistant professor to the team. In addition, the team continues to work with other institutions in Canada,the United States and abroad. The movement and exchange of students with other universities shouldbecome even easier as research progresses. As partnerships are forged with business and industry, it ishoped that student internships in the province will follow.

The group is focused on building the program and cultivating partnerships with other universities aswell as industry and government. The strength and commitment to these goals demonstrated by theteam, along with the support and enthusiasm of iCORE, should make these objectives a reality in 2003-2004.

Dr Hugh Williams was awarded $600,000 dollars per year for five years to establish the iCORE Chair in AlgorithmicNumber Theory and Cryptography at the University of Calgary for a total of $3 million in funding.

DR HUGH WILLIAMS

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In the past year, ICANTC hascontinued to build uponachievements from 2001-2002.Each accomplishment brings thegroup closer to our goal ofmaking the University ofCalgary a recognized centre ofexcellence for education, researchand industrial cooperation oncomputer security issues inCanada.

The most significantaccomplishment is theprogress toward esta-blishing a Centre forInformation Security andCryptography (CISaC) atthe University of Calgary.CISaC is a multidisciplinarycentre that focuses on research incryptography and informationsecurity. Together, CISaC’s teamof researchers and students inmathematics, computer scienceand electrical and computerengineering is collaborating onprojects to improve computersecurity and protect informationin every facet of daily life.

By employing a broad depth ofskills and knowledge, the teammembers are testing andestablishing protocols toensure secure communications,with a particular focus onmathematically based crypto-systems. This includes all aspectsof work from abstract theory tothe fabrication of special-purposecryptographic and computinghardware devices.

The security of almostall commercially available crypto-systems is based on the presumeddifficulty of certain mathematicalproblems. It is important toemphasize that no rigorous

mathematical proof of securityhas ever been given for any ofthese systems. The difficulty ofthese problems is usuallyestablished anecdotally throughfrequent and unsuccessfulattempts by specialists to solvethem.

One particular part of mathe-matics, the study of quadratic

fields, has not been used verymuch to produce cryptosystems.One major research project is toconduct a full investigation intothe development and testing ofefficient encryption techniquesbased on the difficulty ofperforming certain operations inquadratic fields.

CISaC is creating a foundationthat will allow further develop-ment of the research. Activitiesto expand the research teaminclude:• Maintaining an active

Distinguished Visitors’Program to bring topresearchers to theUniversity of Calgary;

• Recruiting top students atall levels – undergraduate,masters, PhD and post-doctorate – to be part ofthe program;

• Offering newundergraduate courses aspart of an area ofconcentration incryptography;

• Working on a sequence ofgraduate courses incryptography that could beaccessed by students inmathematics, computerscience and engineering;

• Cultivating partnershipswith other universities aswell as industry andgovernment.

The goal is to broaden CISaC’smembership beyond theuniversity, and evolve it into anestablished centre with links tolocal businesses and nationalindustry partners.

Other milestones related toCISaC this past year include:• Building an infrastructure

– business cards havebeen printed and the groupis currently developingbrochures to promote bothacademic and businesscontacts;

• Crafting a missionstatement, which capturesthe centre’s goals andobjectives;

• Developing a Web site,which provides aninformation source forstudents, faculty and otherinterested parties. Seehttp://cisac.math.ucalgary.ca;

• A management board wasappointed to oversee andprovide guidance andinput on running CISaC’s

ONE SIGNIFICANT MILESTONE WAS THEESTABLISHMENT OF THE CENTRE FOR INFORMATIONSECURITY AND CRYPTOGRAPHY (CISAC), WHICHWAS INAUGURATED JULY 17th, 2002.

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activities. Currently adirector and threemembers make up theboard, but this will expandas the centre grows. Theterm of office for boardmembers is three years.The management boardincludes: Renate Scheidlerfrom mathematics andcomputer science; MichaelJacobson from computerscience; and, VassilDimitrov from electricaland computerengineering;

• CISaC is also consideringsetting up a TechnicalAdvisory Panel to provideexpertise on specificprojects as needed. Theinitial panel would becomprised of managementboard members, threeresearchers from theUniversity of Calgary andthree from the industrialsector. The make-up of thepanel will be relative to theneed that it is required tofulfill.

Other ICANTC accomplishmentsinclude:• Continuing to develop

undergraduate andgraduate courses incryptography. RenateScheidler developed andtaught a new fourth yearspecial topics course incryptography, which wasoffered in winter 2003.Hugh Williams alsodeveloped and taught agraduate course PMAT603.40: Topics inComputational NumberTheory;

• A concentration incryptography will come on

line in September 2003.Renate Scheidler will teachPMAT 329. RichardMollin will teach PMAT429 in winter 2003. Thesecourses will run yearly.PMAT 529 will comeonline in fall 2004 and isthe third course in ourPMAT 329/429/529sequence. Teachingassignments have not yetbeen made for this course;

• Coordinating our graduateand undergraduate courseswith Michael Jacobson incomputer science. HughWilliams will teach PMAT603.38. Michael Jacobsonhas already taught itunder the course descriptorCPSC 699. MichaelJacobson is also developinga follow-up course toPMAT 329 for computerscience students that hewill offer in winter 2003,at the same time as themath follow-up coursePMAT 429 is beingoffered. This course doesnot yet have a number, andwill focus on computersecurity. The idea is thatmath students will takePMAT 329/429/529,while computer sciencestudents will take PMAT329 and MichaelJacobson’s new course;

• The DistinguishedVisitors’ Program, pilotedlast year by RenateScheidler, began again inSeptember 2002. Theprogram continues tobring internationallyregarded experts to theUniversity of Calgary.Jerzy Urbanowicz from the

Polish Academy ofSciences was here August18th to September 12th;Jonathan Borwein ofSimon Fraser Universitywas here on October 18th;and, Stéphane Louboutin,from Institut deMathématiques de Luminyin Marseilles, France, washere November 15th toDecember 15th. The teamwelcomed Roger Pattersonin September to October2002, and CatherineWebster from theUniversity of BritishColumbia in March 2003;

• ICANTC continued thecampaign to recruitgraduate students, post-doctoral students andfaculty. Three new studentsbegan in fall 2002. Theyare Christopher Foster(MSc), Reginald Sawilla(MSc), and Kell Cheng(PhD). One new masters’student is confirmed forSeptember 2003. Twomore PhD students havealso been confirmed, withthe potential for a third tobe confirmed by the end ofApril. The group iscurrently developing twonew brochures, onetargeted at potentialstudents, and the other atpotential corporatemembers; also they havecompleted a display boardfor the Faculty of Sciencethat will sit in the case inthe corridor outside theDean’s office;

• Alfred Menezes at theUniversity of Waterlooand Hugh Williams havebeen jointly awarded

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$120,000 from MITACS.Dr Williams’ half of thefunds is already committedto: developing a Web sitefor the MITACS project,holding a major conferenceon privacy in Alberta, andfunding a post-doctoralfellow who will conductresearch in thedevelopment of very lowpower consumingcryptographic protocolsfor use in wireless medicalmonitoring systems. Thesefunds should be availabletoward the end of April2003. This grant is for oneyear with the possibilityof a second year extensionif the year-end report isacceptable;

• ICANTC has receivedpermission to hire anassociate professor with acryptography background.The closing date forapplications was March15th, and the proposedstarting date is July 1st,2003. The interviewingprocess for this position iscomplete, and an offer hasbeen made.

The Advanced CryptographyLaboratory is now up andrunning. Work on the lab beganin February 2003. In a shorttime, a space agreement wasdrafted, appropriate renovationswere done and the necessaryequipment was ordered. Preli-minary tests began in mid-March,and were completed at the end ofthe month. This laboratory wasmade possible through themerging of Hugh Williams’Alberta Ingenuity Fund grantwith Michael Jacobson’sCFI grant. The Advanced

Cryptography Laboratoryconsists of an extensive, powerfuland dedicated system of high-speed computing devices used totest and benchmark cryptographicsystems. The hardware in thelaboratory is configured onthe Beowulf cluster design,where many commodity-gradeprocessors are interconnectedusing commodity hardware. Thehead node monitors these manyprocessors and controls what jobsare running on the system. Thiscluster consists of 129 computersinterconnected using Ethernet(100Mbps). Each computer hasDual 2.4 Ghz Pentium 4processors, 2 GB memory, and a40 GB hard disk. The head nodehas a 2.4 Ghz processor, 1.5 GBmemory, and 40 GB of usabledisk space. This system has atheoretical maximal processingpower of 1.2 Teraflops. IBMsupplied the innovative BladeCenter solution to enable thesystem to fit in less than half thespace of conventional systems.This solution was easier to build,and is easier to maintain thanconventional systems. The systemis configured to allow us to buildand run computer programsutilizing the Message PassingInterface (MPI). MPI is an add-on to programming languagesthat enable programs to run onmany systems at a time and totake advantage of the processingpower of the entire system.

Other Advances:•Together with Lynn Batten

of Deakin University inMelbourne, Australia, thegroup applied to theAustralian NationalUniversity Centre forMathematics and itsApplication National

Research SymposiaCommittee to hold aworkshop on PolynomialAspects of Cryptography.The application wassuccessful with the awardof AUD$7,500 to helpdefray some of the costs inholding this meeting, likelyin July 2004. Theconference will bringtogether 30 experts acrossthe fields of algebra,cryptography andalgorithm implementationin an Oberwolfach-stylemeeting. Half of the peoplewill be from Australia andthe other half from NorthAmerica and Europe. Theresults of this workshopwill have a major impacton the direction of thisarea of cryptography forthe next five to 10 years.

•The team continues tomove forward in building apartnership with theIllinois Center forCryptography andInformation Protection atthe University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign.

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RESEARCH PROJECTS

As indicated earlier, one of theprinciple foci of our research isinvestigating the use of quadraticfields in cryptography. Resultsfrom many different areas ofmathematics have been applied tothe development of cryptographicsystems. One reason for this is thatit is always sound cryptographicpractice to have access to as manydifferent systems as possible. Thisensures that the sender has achoice of possible schemes, a veryuseful feature if one or more ofthem is compromised.

One area of mathematics thathas not received much attentionfrom cryptographers is algebraicnumber theory. The simplestnumber fields are the quadraticfields. Performing arithmetic inthese structures is relativelyefficient and simple compared todoing this in other algebraicnumber fields. Nevertheless, theystill possess many of thecomplicating features that makethem resistant to methods thathave proved to be successful inother structures such as finitefields. The group has developedmethods of performing certainfundamental cryptographicprotocols, but as yet, these are tooslow for commercial use.

There are two main long-termobjectives for this project. One isto develop a set of efficient, easilyapplicable and mathematicallyrigorous techniques forperforming arithmetic inquadratic number fields andfunction fields. The second (andprimary) objective is to use theseideas to develop and testcryptosystems whose security isbased upon the presumeddifficulty of solving certain

problems in these structures. Themathematical results of theresearch are expected to be usefulin developing methods forperforming arithmetic efficiently inthe structures under investigation.Furthermore, the results areexpected to add to the growingnumber of techniques for ensuringsecure communication.

Improved ImplementationIn the case of our protocolinvolving real quadratic fields, wedeveloped a new representationfor the objects (called ideals)on which we must perform ouroperations. This has allowedus to lower considerablythe numerical precision neededat the expense of increasingthe complexity of a secondcommunication round. It turnsout that in practice this secondround proved to be no realproblem as it is rarely needed andexecutes rapidly in those caseswhere it is required. We have alsosucceeded in integrating aparticular technique, calledNUCOMP, into our protocol.This is significant because wemust make frequent use of aparticular operation, involvingmultiplication and reductionof ideals, which takes over97 percent of the time requiredto execute the protocol.Implementing NUCOMP hasallowed us to cut the amount oftime required by the protocol bya factor of more than half. RenateScheidler recently received aUniversity of Calgary URGCresearch grant for further workon NUCOMP and relatedquestions, including its extensionto hyperelliptic function fields.

Determination of OptimalDiscriminantsOne advantage to using numberfields for cryptographic purposesis that we have some freedom inselecting a certain parameter, thediscriminant. However, thisparameter needs to be chosenoptimally with respect to bothsecurity and efficiency ofimplementation. We have developeda low cost, high-speed specialcomputing device (CASSIE),called a number sieve, to helpdetermine optimal selections. Inthe case of real quadratic fields,attempts by adversaries to breakthe corresponding cryptographicscheme can be thwarted byselecting discriminants that arequadratic nonresidues for manyof the smallest primes. Previously,we were able to use the fastestnumber sieve then in existence,constructed in 1995 at theUniversity of Manitoba, to showthat finding such discriminantscan be done very quickly. Wehave used more modern fieldprogrammable gate array (FPGA)technology to build a faster andmore flexible number sieve thatcan be tailored to a specific sieveproblem instance. The projectwas a collaborative effortinvolving Hugh Williams,masters’ student Kjell Woodingand Dr C. Patterson of Xilinx(Boulder, Colorado). Our newdevice can sieve at an effectiverate of 2·1015 numbers persecond. This is 1000 times fasterthan the 1995 sieve speed.

BenchmarkingThere is no rigorous mathematicalproof of the security of our (oralmost any other) cryptosystem.


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The only way to certify securityand effectiveness is to test itextensively. We need to conductvery large-scale numericalexperiments to acquire the dataneeded to accurately determine thesecurity of our cryptographicschemes. We have assembled aBeowulf cluster built of IBMcomponents as the hardwareconfiguration for the testing. ABeowulf cluster is a collection ofindividual stand-alone processorsconnected together so they cancommunicate. The cluster, which isscalable, currently consists of129 2.4GHz Pentium 4 dualprocessors, each with 2 GBof RAM and 40 GB of harddisk space. The servers areinterconnected with standard fastEthernet connections and providethe required computer power. Allsoftware required for the cluster,including the operating systemLinux, is free of charge when usedfor research purposes. The clusteris sufficiently flexible that it can beused to test the effectiveness ofmany other cryptosystems and canbe used well beyond the lifetime ofthis project. This facility becameoperable on March 21st, 2003.

Unconditional Determinationof the RegulatorOne way to test the effectiveness oftechniques is to compute aparticular object associated with ourquadratic field, called the regulator.Unfortunately, the fastest algorithmcurrently available to determine theregulator is conditional on anunproved hypothesis. It is of greatinterest to find the regulatorunconditionally. The conditionalalgorithm can at least be used tocompute what should be an integralmultiple of the regulator, and thisis something that can be checked

very quickly. Having made thisdetermination, the next problem isto establish that the integralmultiplier of the regulator in theconditional regulator is exactly one.There are two phases in doing this.The first is to establish that theregulator must exceed somepredetermined bound. The next isto prove that for no integer less thana certain amount can we have theregulator being the conditional onedivided by that integer. It isinteresting that both of these phasescan be parallelized. Furthermore, thetechnique can, with an appropriaterepresentation of the ideals involved,be completely integral. That is, wedo not at any point have to workwith any numbers but integers. Thismeans that we do not have to dealwith approximations to irrationalnumbers and the concomitant lossof rigour that often occurs as aresult. Michael Jacobson and HughWilliams are collaborating on thisproblem and already have somepreliminary results. Recentlythey were able to computeunconditionally a regulator for aquadratic field with a fifty-five-digitdiscriminant. This was done withonly eight processors; thus, whenfully parallelized and running on thenew Beowulf cluster, the newalgorithm should allow us tocompute regulators for fieldsof perhaps 60 or 65 digitdiscriminants.

Verifying the Cohen-LenstraHeuristicsThe security of certain crypto-graphic schemes depends upon thenumber of reduced principal idealsin the quadratic number field (orfunction field) and the difficulty ofsolving the discrete logarithmproblem in the field. The first ofthese problems is easily handled

using Cohen-Lenstra heuristics onthe distribution of the odd part ofthe class number. However, as theCohen-Lenstra heuristics are notrigorously established, it isessential that they be thoroughlytested numerically. Recently, incollaborative work between Dr H.te Riele of CWI, Amsterdam, andHugh Williams, it was possible forthe first time to compute all the classnumbers for all real quadratic fieldsof prime discriminant less than200,000,000,000. The resultsobtained agreed with what theCohen-Lenstra heuristics predicted,and a paper describing this workwas recently accepted forpublication by ExperimentalMathematics.

Invariants in Function FieldsRenate Scheidler’s research focusesprimarily on developing andimplementing algorithms forcomputing invariants of cubicfunction fields as well as exploringthese fields for cryptographicapplications. Jointly with DrYoonjin Lee of the University ofDelaware (USA), she has developedan algorithm for computing thefundamental units and theregulator of a purely cubic functionfield of unit rank two. This researchis to appear in the journalExperimental Mathematics. It isexpected that this summer, one ortwo research students will continuework on the implementation of thisand other algorithms, a project thatundergraduate student Eric Nosalbegan last summer. Work ondeveloping fast arithmetic inarbitrary cubic function fields andon fast algorithms for computingthe Jacobian of a purely cubicfunction field (jointly with ProfessorA. Stein of the University of Illinoisat Urbana-Champaign) is ongoing.


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TEAM LEADER

Dr Hugh Williams

TITLE

Professor, Department ofMathematics and Statistics,iCORE Chair in AlgorithmicNumber Theory andCryptography, and CISaCDirector

TEAM MEMBERS

Dr Michael J. Jacobson, Jr.

Dr Richard Mollin

Dr Renate Scheidler

TITLE

Assistant Professor,Department of ComputerScience and CISaCManagement Board Member

Professor, Department ofMathematics & Statistics

iCORE Research Associateand Associate Professorjointly appointed to theDepartment of Mathematicsand Statistics and theDepartment of ComputerScience; CISaC ManagementBoard Member

RESEARCH TEAM

RESEARCH

Computational number theory,cryptography, and the designand development of special-purpose hardware devices,secure key exchange systemsthat make use of the propertiesof quadratic number fields orfunction fields.

RESEARCH

Computational number theoryand public-key cryptography,invariant computation inquadratic fields, parallelimplementations of index-calculus algorithms.

Number theory, algebra andcomputation, includingapplications to cryptography,continued fraction expansions,Diophantine analysis andcryptographic applications, onthe theory of quadratics.

Algorithmic number theoryand its applications tocryptology, design andanalysis of securecommunication schemes whoseunderlying mathematicalstructure is associated with analgebraic number field orfunction field.


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AFFILIATED FACULTY

Dr Richard Cleve

Dr Clifton Cunningham

Dr Vassil Dimitrov

Dr Behrouz Homayoun Far

Dr Graham Jullien

Dr Thomas Keenan

Dr John Watrous

TITLE

Professor, Department ofComputer Science

Assistant Professor,Department of Mathematicsand Statistics

Associate Professor,Department of Electrical andComputer Engineering andCISaC Management BoardMember

Associate Professor,Department of Electrical &Computer Engineering

Professor, Department ofElectrical and ComputerEngineering and iCOREResearch Chair in AdvancedTechnology InformationProcessing Systems

Director, e-SecurityInnovation Centre and Dean,Faculty of ContinuingEducation

Assistant Professor,Department of ComputerScience and Canada ResearchChair

RESEARCH

Computational complexitytheory and cryptography,quantum information processing,quantum algorithms andquantum information theory.

Langlands Programme as itrelates to the interplay betweennumber theory, analysis andalgebraic geometry.

Efficient algorithms andarchitectures for digital signalprocessing, information securityand image compressionapplications, applying methodsfrom number theory andalgebraic geometry aimed atspeeding up the performance ofvery complex real-time digitalsignal processing andinformation security systems.

Engineering of intelligent,distributed and heterogeneousnetworked systems, specifically indesigning and implementingagent-oriented software systemsand support tools and techniquesfor groupware systems.

Integrated circuit design (fromarchitectures to transistors),digital signal processing for real-time (data stream) applications,and microsystem integration ofthe disparate technologies of ICs,MEMS and microfluidics for bio-medical applications.

Computer security, cybercrime,society for policing in cyberspace.

Quantum computationalcomplexity theory and quantumalgorithms, quantum variantsof interactive proof systemsand quantum algorithms forgroup-theoretic problems.


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PHD STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS

Kell Cheng

TOPIC

Simple Continued Fraction Expansions of Quadratics

MCS STUDENTS IN MATHEMATICS

Richard Cannings

Chris Foster

Brendan Oseen

Reginald Sawilla

Kjell Wooding

TOPIC

Quantum Computation andCryptography

Diophantine Equations

Isogenies of Elliptic Curves

Algorithms in QuadraticFields

Development of a High-speed Numerical SievingDevice

AWARDS

Alberta Ingenuity

Andreas Hirt Collaborative Caching in Ad hoc Networks

GRADUATE STUDENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE

NEW STUDENT VISITORS INMATHEMATICS

Daniel Weimer

Robbert de Haan

Roger Patterson

INSTITUTION/PERIOD OF VISIT

Technical University of Darmstadt, June 2nd, 2003 to May31st, 2004

University of Amsterdam, April 29th to October 31st, 2003

Macquarie University, May 13th to July 10th, 2003

POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWS INMATHEMATICS

Filip Saidak

Safuat Hamdy

Siguna Müller

TOPIC

Analytic and Probabilistic Number Theory

Number Field Cryptography

Public-key Cryptography and Primality Testing


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COLLABORATIONSICANTC’s goal is to positionAlberta as a centre of excellencein cryptography that attractsestablished research leaders,young academics beginning theircareers, and graduate studentsseeking the best educationopportunities. As well asattracting top talent, we arecommitted to seeing resultsemerging from our research. Wecannot achieve these results alone,so we are focused on buildingstrong partnerships withother academic institutions,government and industry.

Now that the Centre forInformation Security andCryptography (CISaC) is areality, our plan is to developpartnerships with other suchcentres around the world. We arecurrently completing a formalpartnership agreement with theIllinois Center for Cryptographyand Information Protection(ICCIP) at the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign.

We are also beginning tonegotiate with Professor HansDobbertin of Ruhr-UniversitätBochum for a partnership withhis cryptographic group. We alsohope to initiate a program ofacquiring further partnershipswith groups at the Universityof Waterloo, the TechnicalUniversity of Darmstadt, SimonFraser University and severalothers.

Alfred Menezes of theUniversity of Waterloo andHugh Williams have beeninformed that, as co-investigators,they have been jointly awarded$120,000 from MITACS. HughWilliams’ half of the funds isalready committed to thedevelopment of a Web site for the

MITACS project, hosting a majorAlberta conference on privacy,and funding a postdoctoral fellowwho will be conducting researchin the development of very lowpower consuming cryptographicprotocols for use in wirelessmedical monitoring systems.These funds should be availabletoward the end of April 2003.This grant is for one year, withthe possibility to extend it asecond year.

We had an exchange agreementwith Macquarie University inAustralia that provided fundingfor students and facultyexchanges. This agreement endedDecember 31st, 2002.

We are collaborating withGraham Jullien’s group inthe University of Calgary’sdepartment of electrical andcomputer engineering to developa small, wireless device that canbe implanted in patients and usedto transmit data over very shortdistances. Such devices willundoubtedly become importantover the next few years for thelow-cost, widespread monitoringof patients for a variety ofmedical conditions. The misuse ofsuch data could have disastrousconsequences to the individual;therefore, such devices must beequipped with appropriatesafeguards capable of encrypting

sensitive medical data to protectit from unauthorized access. Suchencryption must be performedquickly and reliably, and at thesame time consume very lowpower.

We are currently working withGraham Jullien on puttingtogether an NSERC StrategicProject Grant to help support ourwork in this regard. In doing this,it will also be necessary to involvesome local industries. We have

already contacted SiWorks Inc.and found them to be veryinterested in participating,and will soon be talking toNon-Elephant EncryptionSystems, Inc. (NE2) about theirparticipation.

We have also begun consultingwork with another local industry:IQ Soft Professionals, Inc.(IQSP).

These collaborations areforming the base from which wewill continue to build. Our futureplans are to broaden ourpartnerships to include moregovernment and industry.

A hiring freeze at the Universityof Calgary has prevented fillingan additional academic positionthat was proposed in the originalbudget.

AS WELL AS ATTRACTING TOP TALENT, WE ARE COMMITTED TOSEEING RESULTS EMERGING FROM OUR RESEARCH. WECANNOT ACHIEVE THESE RESULTS ALONE, SO WE AREFOCUSED ON BUILDING STRONG PARTNERSHIPS WITH OTHERACADEMIC INSTITUTIONS, GOVERNMENT AND INDUSTRY.


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FUNDINGThe Alberta Government has invested $131,000 in the current year in addition to the iCOREfunding of $600,000 per year over five years. University investment totals over the next yearare $33,900 cash and $136,300 in-kind. CFI funding for the current year is $58,000; NSERCfunding is $95,000. Other government income for the current year is $48,500. Contracts withthe US National Security Agency and the US. National Science Foundation are for $17,000and $3,600 respectively.

In the two years since iCORE created ICANTC, the team has focused on establishing theprogram and reaching some early goals. One of the most significant accomplishments hasbeen the establishment of CISaC as an interdisciplinary centre dedicated to research incryptography and information security.

Now that the centre is established, the team is confident more partnerships will developbetween academia and the private sector. There is potential for joint projects with ProfessorsJullien, Dimitrov, and Far of the University of Calgary’s electrical and computer engineeringdepartment. As these partnerships mature, there will be advancement in terms of intellectualproperty and commercial results.


PUBLICATIONS

Refereed Journal Contributions1. F. Saidak, “An Elementary Proof of a Theorem of Delange,” Comptes Rendus (Canada), vol. 6, to

appear in December 2002 (or March 2003).2. F. Lemmermeyer and R. Mollin, “On the Tate-Shafarevich groups of y2=x(x2-k2),” to appear Acta

Math. Universitatis Comenianae.3. H. te Riele and H.C. Williams, ‘New Computations Concerning the Cohen-Lenstra Heuristics,” to

appear in Experimental Mathematics.4. J.D. Hühnlein, M.J. Jacobson, Jr., and D. Weber, “Towards Practical Non-interactive Public-key

Cryptosystems Using Non-maximal Imaginary Quadratic Orders,” to appear in Designs, Codes, andCryptography, 2003.

5. M.J. Jacobson, Jr., Á. Pintér, and P.G. Walsh, “A Computational Approach for Solving y2 = 1k + 2k

+...+ xk,” to appear in Math. Comp., 2003.6. M.J. Jacobson, Jr. and H.C. Williams, “New Quadratic Polynomials with High Densities of Prime

Values,” Math. Comp., vol. 72, 2002, pp. 499-519.7. M.J. Jacobson, Jr. and H.C. Williams, “Modular Arithmetic on Elements of Small Norm in Quadratic

Orders,” Designs, Codes and Cryptography, vol. 27, 2002, pp. 93-110.8. R.A. Mollin, “Criteria for Simultaneous Solutions of X2-DY2=c and x2-Dy2=-c,” Canadian Math.

Bulletin, vol. 43, 2002, pp. 428-435.9. R.A. Mollin, “Ideal Criteria for Both X2-DY2 = m1 and X2-DY2=m2 to have Primitive Solutions for

any Integers m1, m2 prime to D>0,” Serdica Math. Journal, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, vol. 28,2002, pp. 175-188.


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10. R.A. Mollin, “A Brief History of Factoring and Primality Testing B.C. (Before Computers),” Math.Magazine, February 2002.

11. R.A. Mollin, “The Diophantine Equation AX2-BY2=C and Simple Continued Fractions,” InternationalMath. Journal, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 1-6.

12. R.A. Mollin, K. Cheng, and B. Goddard, “Pellian Polynomials and Period Lengths of ContinuedFractions,” JP Journal Alg., Number Theory and Applications, vol. 2, 2002, pp. 47-60.

13. R.A. Mollin and K. Cheng, “Continued Fraction Beepers and Fibonacci Numbers,” Math. Rep. Acad.Sci. Canada, vol. 24, 2002, pp. 102-108.

14. R.A. Mollin, “Period Lengths of Continued Fractions Involving Fibonacci Numbers,” to appear inFibonacci Quarterly.

15. R.A. Mollin, “Sums of Squares Revisited,” to appear Inter. Math Journal.16. R.A. Mollin, “Infinite Families of Pellian Polynomials and Their Continued Fraction Expansions,”

to appear in Results in Mathematics.17. R.A. Mollin and K. Cheng, “Beepers, Creepers, and Sleepers,” Intern. Math. Journal, vol. 2, 2002, pp.

951-956.18. R.A. Mollin, “New Prime-producing Polynomials Related to Class Number One or Two,” New York

Journal Math, vol. 8, 2002, pp. 161-168.19. R.A. Mollin, B. Goddard, and K. Cheng, “The Diophantine Equation AX2-BY2=C Solved Via

Continued Fractions,” to appear in Acta Mathematica Universitatis Comenianae.20. R.A. Mollin and K. Cheng, “Matrices and Continued Fractions,” Intern. Math. Journal, vol. 3, 2003,

pp. 41-58.21. R.A. Mollin, “Cryptography - A Brief History,” to appear in CUBO, Journal of Universidad de la

Frontera, Temuco, Chile.22. S. Müller, “On the Computation of Square Roots in Finite Fields,” to appear in Designs, Codes, and

Cryptography (DESI1165-01).23. S. Müller, “A Probable Prime Test with Very High Confidence for n=3 mod 4,” Journal Cryptology,

vol. 16, no. 2, 2003, pp. 117-139.24. S. Müller, “On the Computation of Cube Roots Modulo p,” to appear in Fields Institute Communications

Series.25. Y. Lee, R. Scheidler and C. Yarrish, “Computation of the Fundamental Units and the Regulator of

a Cyclic Cubic Function Field,” to appear in Experimental Mathematics.

Books and Book Chapters1. R.A. Mollin, RSA and Public-Key Cryptography, Chapman and Hall/CRC Press, Boca Raton, New

York, London, Tokyo, 2003. ISBN # 1-58438-338-3


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TTTTThe Centre for Information Security and Cryptography Centre for Information Security and Cryptography Centre for Information Security and Cryptography Centre for Information Security and Cryptography Centre for Information Security and Cryptography is anacademic research centre housed within the Department of Mathematicsand Statistics, and supported and administered by the Faculty of Science atthe University of Calgary. It works on the mathematical building blocks ofencryption systems that keep private information private.

The launch of the Centreincludes the opening ofCanada’s premiere AdvancedAdvancedAdvancedAdvancedAdvancedCryptography LaboratoryCryptography LaboratoryCryptography LaboratoryCryptography LaboratoryCryptography Laboratory,located at the Universityof Calgary.

10:30 - 11:00 am10:30 - 11:00 am10:30 - 11:00 am10:30 - 11:00 am10:30 - 11:00 am LaunchLaunchLaunchLaunchLaunch11:00 - 11:30 am11:00 - 11:30 am11:00 - 11:30 am11:00 - 11:30 am11:00 - 11:30 am Book signingBook signingBook signingBook signingBook signing11:30 - 12:30 pm11:30 - 12:30 pm11:30 - 12:30 pm11:30 - 12:30 pm11:30 - 12:30 pm Public lecturePublic lecturePublic lecturePublic lecturePublic lecture

Friday October 1010:30 am – 12:30 pm

Rozsa Centre Great HallUniversity of Calgary

Are yoursecretssafe?

CALGARY KICK-OFF EVENTSCIENCE & TECHNOLOGYWEEK 2003OCTOBER 10-19

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Please join usfor the launch of theCentre for InformationSecurity and Cryptography

NANOSCALE ANDQUANTUM

INFORMATICS




Mark R. FreemanCanada Research Chair in Condensed Matter PhysicsThe University of AlbertaTier 1 - July 1, 2001

Achievements: E.W.R. Steacie Memorial Fellowship; Invention Achievement Award (IBM).Patent-holder

Involves: Nanoscience and nanotechnology – the study and application ofminuscule structures, with linear dimensions of tens of atoms

Research Relevance: Magnetic science; read-write devices for information storage andretrieval; applications for the computer and recording industry

MANIPULATING THE ATOMMiniaturization has already revolutionized technology in our world. What if science coulddevelop ways to manipulate material at the next level – the level of a single atom?

In fact, nanoscience – the ability to study and manipulate tiny molecules that measure one-billionth of a metre – is already the topic of cutting edge discoveries and applications inphysics. Mark Freeman is at the forefront of that science, where physicists are trying tounderstand and manipulate complex materials at the atomic level.

Nanotechnology has sweeping applications in the information technology field involving, amongother things, the interaction between magnets and superconductors. Already, Freeman hasworked with IBM on some of their advanced disk drive products.

Awarding Freeman this chair will enable him to continue to set the agenda in applyingnanoscience and nanotechnology to applications that will be fundamental to the computer andcommunications industries of the future. Nanotechnology will fuel the continuing trend ofsmaller, faster, more capable devices and products, becoming the engine of the information andcomputer technology economy at the hardware level.

Freeman is already attracting top-calibre graduate students and colleagues to work with him.These researchers will be sought-after by the information technology, materials science, andengineering sectors in Canada. Already a global force in telecommunications, Canada can onlybenefit from developing greater expertise in nanoscience. Mark Freeman’s Web site address ishttp://laser.phys.ualberta.ca/~freeman/.





Michael J. BrettCanada Research Chair in Nanoengineered FilmsThe University of AlbertaTier 1 - October 1, 2002

Achievements: Published over 130 refereed papers and gave numerous talks at majorinternational conferences; awarded the Arthur G. McCalla ResearchProfessorship and the Killam Annual Professorship; three patents issuedand three patents pending on a process developed by his group

Research: Further development of a new materialsInvolves: process, and study of the application of the material in various devicesResearch Relevance: Potential applications in nanobiotechnology and nanoelectromechanical

systems

THIN FILMS BY GLADAn innovative process was recently invented for fabricating porous, nanostructured thin filmswith a geometry and porosity that can be engineered to specific needs. The new process, calledGlancing Angle Deposition (GLAD), does not require complex lithographic processing; rather,it utilizes computer-controlled substrate motion in conjunction with glancing incidence fluxfrom physical vapour deposition to precisely tailor the columnar structure in thin films. Thisexciting process was discovered by Dr Michael Brett and his team.

These porous nanostructured thin films form a new base materials technology that haspotentially broad use across many application areas, such as optics, nanobiotechnology, sensing,and nanoelectromechanical or microelectromechanical systems. Three U.S. patents have beenissued for this technology, and others are pending.

As Canada Research Chair in Nanoengineered Films, Dr Brett will further develop this newmaterials process, dividing the work into various projects. These include periodicnanostrucutures and photonic crystals; nanostructured electrochemical devices; nanoengineeredinorganic/liquid crystal devices; nanoelectromechanical systems; nanobiotechnologyapplications; modelling; sensor devices; and speculative and other research.

To cover such broad application areas, Dr Brett has already established effective collaborationswith leading researchers and organizations, including an industry sponsor (Micralyne). He hasalso formed a company, ChiralTF Devices Inc., which is the primary vehicle for commercializingof GLAD. The ultimate goal of the research is not simply to license the technology, but also toestablish a manufacturing facility in Alberta. This technology could have applications in opticaldevices for photonic and communications firms, the fuel cell industry, materials for nanosystemsdevices and for improved sensor devices, and optical systems such as flat panel displays.



NANOSCALE ENGINEERING PHYSICSINITIATIVE (“NANOCORE”)Dr Michael BrettiCORE ProfessorElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Alberta

Dr Mark FreemaniCORE ProfessorPhysicsUniversity of Alberta

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The iCORE Nanoscale Engineering Physics Initiative has concluded its second year of operation. Majorresearch accomplishments this year included experimental demonstrations of spatial and temporal controlof magnetization dynamics in mesoscopic structures (and better understanding developed throughnumerical simulations) and highly controlled growth of large-scale square spiral GLAD structures forphotonic crystals.

Nanocore has also continued to play an instrumental role in the growth of nanoscience and engineeringresearch in Alberta. Our efforts to attract Dr Bob Wolkow to Alberta came to fruition, and he is nowinstalled as the senior chair targeted in our original application, and also cross-appointed as a PrincipalResearch Officer at National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT), a significant bonus we would not havedared predict at the time of the proposal. The “uptake” of Nanocore trainees to Alberta initiatives hasbegun, with Marek Malac hired by NINT, and Mirwais Aktary in negotiation with Raith Gmbh aboutsetting up a North American office for their nanofabrication product line in Edmonton.

In granting, $8.3 million in funding for nanofabrication tools was secured from Canada Foundation forInnovation and matched by the Alberta Science and Research Investments Program. The commercializationprocess of GLAD is progressing with ChiralTF Devices Inc., the first Nanocore spin-off, now formulatingbusiness plans.

Within the scientific community, Brett and Freeman each made several prestigious appearances atinternational conferences. In professional service, a number of new appointments to national and internationalcommittees were accepted. Brett was recognized with a Canada Research Chair and Freeman received theUniversity of Alberta Alumni Honour Award. Participation in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Researcheffort in nanotechnology increased, with Brett, Freeman and Wolkow now all associates of the nanoelectronicsprogram. Brett and Freeman have each been announced as cross-appointments to the National Institute ofNanotechnology, an affiliation that should provide for future research collaboration opportunities.

DR MICHAEL BRETT ANDDR MARK FREEMAN

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Dr Mark Freeman and Dr Michael Brett are both iCORE Professors of the iCORE Nanoscale Engineering Physics Initiative,jointly leading a project at the University of Alberta. iCORE has committed $500,000 per year for five years for a total of $2.5million dollars to develop this research group.


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The principle mission of Nanocoreis to build upon existing strengthsin nanoscale engineeringphysics to develop world-classexpertise in selected areas ofnanotechnology. Specifically, theareas can be summarized asnanofabrication methods relatedto thin film technology, andadvanced characterization ofnonequilibrium physical propertiesof nanosystems relevant to futureICT. The goals are accomplished inparallel with the training of a largenumber of personnel developing atthe forefront of nanoscience andengineering, some of who continueupon graduation to expand thepresence of this field in Alberta.

During this second year, the

research groups of Nanocoreprincipals Brett and Freemanreached steady-state size, withturnover into Alberta and othernano-initiatives already occurring.After helping to attract the NationalInstitute for Nanotechnology in ourfirst year, we took advantage of theconfluence of iCORE, NINT, andthe priority on nanotechnologywithin the University of Albertato nucleate the recruitment of aniCORE Chair in nano-ICT.

As Nanocore unfolds, it is proving(as expected) instrumental incontinuing the evolution of U of Acapabilities in nanotechnology.Nearly one-third of Nanocore fundssupport personnel developingadvanced nanofabrication methods

in support of the other researchers.As a result, our NanofabricationFacility is the best in Canada andcompetes in its specialties with anythe world. The remainder ofNanocore funding largely supportspostdoctoral fellows, graduatestudents, and undergraduateresearch associates workingon applications in nano-science and engineering enabledby the foundational methodsof nanofabrication. Continuousupgrading of infrastructure is alsoessential, a spectacular example ofwhich is the showpiece $2M Raithelectron beam writing tool arrivinglater in the year to complement theexisting modified scanning electronmicroscope.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The team continues to explore thepotential of nanomagneticsystems. The almost unbelievablesuccess of conventional magneticdata storage systems shows thatmagnetic devices miniaturizebeautifully to smaller and fasterscales, in many respects evenbetter than the semiconductordevices more commonlyassociated with the ICT revolutionof the second half of the twentiethcentury. The nanomagneticuniverse is remarkably rich,however, and many possibilitiesfor future devices remain to beexplored. Our favourite stems fromthe fact that ferromagneticmaterials support wave-likeexcitations (called spin waves or“magnons”) of very shortwavelengths, down to range ofsingle-digit nanometers. Theemerging area of “magnonics”

aims to control the generation andpropagation of these waves bymeans analogous to the control oflight in photonic crystals. Thechallenge is very great owing tothe exceedingly small scales, butthe potential is intriguing. There

is significant exploratory work tobe done because the intrinsicnonlinear coupling of magneticexcitations adds an additionalrichness not present in thephotonic system.

Miro Belov has begun studies ofspatial control of magneticoscillations by examining the

influence of individual nanoscalepinholes patterned within amesostructure. He is able to controlthe spatial pattern of oscillationand understand the nature of itsdamping. Sasha Krichevsky isexploring the temporal control ofmagnetic switching by applyingtwo orthogonal and independentlytimed switching pulses in acrossed-wire magnetic randomaccess memory geometry. Hismeasurements add temporaland spatial dimensions tothe famous Stoner-Wohlforthmagnetic “switching astroid.”Kristen Buchanan has discovereda very exciting giant Faradayrotation with ultrafast responsein nanocrystalline magneticcomposites. The mechanism is notyet understood, but appears to alsobe magnetic field tunable.

Advanced nanofabrication is

NANOCORE HAS ALSO CONTINUED TOPLAY AN INSTRUMENTAL ROLE IN THEGROWTH OF NANOSCIENCE ANDENGINEERING RESEARCH IN ALBERTA.


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being pursued on a variety offronts. Marek Malac has developedelectron beam patterning on thesub-10 nm length scale in thetransmission electron microscope.This is particularly promisingbecause the TEM also allowsregistration to the crystallinity ofthe starting material in the caseof a subtractive pattern transferprocess. Mirwais Aktary has madegreat progress in sub-50 nmpatterning with novel electronbeam resists in the Nabity-SEMsystem at the Nanofab. AllanMacDairmid and Rhyan Arthurhave succeeded in synthesizingprotein/inorganic nanocrystalcomposite nanowires driven by theself-assembly of tubulin driversinto microtubules. The wireshave been characterized bytransmission electron andfluorescence microscopy, butelectrical measurements haveyet to be performed. AllanMacDairmid, Dave Fortin, andJason Blackstock have constructeda conductive AFM add-on for amicroscope of Professor Green,Chemistry.

Jason Blackstock has succeededin developing very flat platinumnanoelectrodes for molecularelectronics by template stripping offilms deposited through porousmembranes. In the area of advancedcharacterization, Marke Malac andcolleagues at Brookhaven haveaccomplished qualitative map-ping of magnetic fields fromsmall magnetic elements, anddemonstrated correspondence withsimulation by Zhigang Liu.

The Marsiglio group has madeadvances in the study of effects oflow dimensionality and surface/impurities/geometries relevantto nanoscale superconductivity.Hegmann’s group, with Slepkov,Barker and Tykwinski continued

their work on the nonlinear opticalproperties of organic materials, andbegan the examination oftransient photoconductivityof functionalized molecularcrystals. The measurementsare helping to elucidate thenature of photoscitations andphotoconductivity in organicmaterials. Meldrum’s group is makerapid progress in the synthesis andcharacterization of light-emittingsilicon nanocrystal, intended forintegrated silicon optoelectronics.Michael Brett’s team continues toexplore the fabrication andapplications of nanoengineeredstructures in thin films. Thepatented glancing angle deposition(GLAD) process is used to fabricatenanostructures with a porous chiral,post, or chevron morphology. Thesenovel coatings are providingopportunities for team researchersto explore device applicationswhere the structure and surfacearea provide advantages overconventional materials. Some of theprojects are listed below.

In photonics applications, ScottKennedy and Martin Jensen arefabricating and studying a newgeometry of 3D photonic crystal,the square spiral array, which wasrecently proposed by collaboratorDr Sajeev John. This architectureof photonic crystal may be morereadily manufactured and moreamenable to intentional defectincorporation than othercompeting photonic crystaltechnologies. In related work,graduate student Andy VanPopta, with co-supervisor DrJeremy Sit and collaborator DrDick Broer of Philips ResearchLabs, is studying the infiltrationof arrays of helical structureswith optically active liquidcrystals. This combinationprovides for an electrically

switchable chiral optic medium,which has potential applications topower-efficient flat panel displays.Peter Hurdey is developingluminescent chiral materials,which are also a potentialcomponent for flat panel displays.

In a project that applies ICTtechnology to the energy field, JimBroughton is utilizing the GLADfabrication processes to developporous electrode structures forapplication in supercapacitors.Such supercapacitors have beenproposed as devices to provideenergy load-levelling in tech-nologies such electric cars.Graduate student Barb Djurfors,co-supervised with Dr Doug Ivey,is studying microstructuralproperties of the GLAD coatingsin an effort to understand andoptimize the charge storagemechanism.

Ken Harris and Anastasia Eliasare developing new formsof nanostructured materials,specifically helically perforatedmembranes and films. These arefabricated by a template and castingprocess in a variety of materials, andHarris and Elias have demonstratedthat chiral perforated thin films (orPTFs) may have superior opticalproperties when compared to theoriginal chiral structures.

Research affiliates with Nanocorehave been working in otherexciting areas. These include:integrating tunnel diodes and otherdevices to fabricated remotely andradio frequency detectable tags formonitoring purposes (Jay Sulimaand Dr Chris Backhouse), studyingultrafast femtosecond dynamicsin semiconductors (MichaelCummings and Dr AbdulElezzabi), and simulatingand studying ion beam nano-structuring of surfaces (MariaStepanova and Dr Steven Dew).


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TEAM LEADER

Michael Brett

Mark Freeman

AWARDS

Canada Research Chair in Nanoengineered Thin Films,NSERC/Micralyne Senior NSERC Industrial Research Chair

Canada Research Chair in Condensed Matter Physics, AlumniHonour Award

FACULTY TEAM MEMBERS

Chris Backhouse

Steven Dew

Ray Egerton

Abdul Elezzabi

Frank Hegmann

Frank Marsiglio

Al Meldrum

Jeremy Sit

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Affiliated Researcher








OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Marek Malac

Mirwais Aktary

Jim Broughton

Gregory Kiema

Dr Maria Stepanova

Dr Doug Vick

RESEARCH TOPIC

Patterning of Permalloy Structures in Transmission ElectronMicroscope

Nanolithographic Process Development

Porous Electrodes for Supercapacitors

Microfluidic Devices, Carbon Electrodes

Ion Beam Nanostructuring

Nanostructure Growth and Modeling

RESEARCH TEAM


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Won Kee Kim

Mark Roseman

Xiaobin Zhu

TOPIC

Theory of NanoscaleSuperconductivity andMagnetism

Dynamics in LowTemperature Mesostructures

Current-driven Dynamicsand Relaxation inMultilayers

AWARDS

NSERC PostdoctoralFellowship

PHD CANDIDATES

Greg Ballentine

Miroslav Belov

Jason Blackstock

Kristen Buchanan

Brian Dick

Barb Djurfors

James Gospodyn

Ken Harris

Martin Jensen

Scott Kennedy

Sacha Krichevsky

Allan MacDairmid

Mary Seto

TOPIC

Numerical Simulation ofMagnetic Dynamics

Spatial Control of ModalOscillations

Molecular Electronics

Nanocrystalline MagneticComposites

Fabrication of PeriodicNanostructures

Nanostructure Characterization

Spectroscopic Ellipsometry ofChiral Materials

Perforated Thin Films

Photonic Crystal Devices

Photonic Crystal Fabrication

Dynamic Switching “Astroids

Bio-inspired MacromolecularNanowires

Mechanical Properties ofMicrosprings

AWARDS

JDS Uniphase Scholar

Julie Payette Award

Steinhauer, Killam MemorialScholar and Graduate Awards

NSERC PGS-B

NSERC PGS-B

NSERC PGS-B

Alberta Ingenuity

AIXTRON Young ScientistAward, NSERC PGS-B

NSERC PGS-B


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MSC CANDIDATES

Grey Arnup

Zhigang Liu

Mike Colgan

Michael Cummings

Anastasia Elias

Peter Hrudey

Jay Sulima

Andy Van Popta

TOPIC

Single-shot UltrafastMicroimaging

Numerical Simulation ofEquilibrium Magnetization

Graetzel Solar Cells

Ultrafast Carrier Dynamicsin Semiconductors

Perforated Thin Films

Chiral Luminescent Coatings

Tunnel Diodes for WirelessApplications

Liquid Crystal HybridDevices

AWARDS

NSERC PGS-A

Alberta Ingenuity, NSERCPGS-A

NSERC PGS-A

NSERC PGS-A, SteinhauerAward

UNDERGRADUATES

Rhyan Arthur

Timmy Le

Lindsay Leblanc

Graham Nelson

Daniel Salamon

TOPIC

(Physics Industrial Internship) Biochemical Synthesis andConfocal Microscopy

(Engineering Co-op student) Anodic Aluminum OxideMembrane Fabrication

Digital In-line Holography

Magnetic Switching from Nonequilibrium Initial State

Glass Microfabrication


AFFILIATED STUDENTSSUPPORTED BY NANOCORE

Lloyd Barker

Lucian Covaci

Aaron Hryciw

Peng Li

Colm Ryan

Aaron Slepkov

Simona Verga

TOPIC

Time-resolvedPhotoconductivity ofPentacene

Numerical Simulations ofSurfaces, NanoscaleSuperconducting Devices

Light-emittingNanocrystalline Silicon

Radiation Damage toOrganic Compounds

Whispering Gallery Modesin Spherical Cavities

Nonlinear Optical Propertiesof Organics

Researching NanoscaleSuperconductivity Issues

AWARDS

Steinhauer Award

COLLABORATIONS

Research CollaborationStrong collaborations existwithin the Nanocore program.Brett and Freeman co-supervisepostdoc Mirwais Aktary in hiswork on sub-50 nm resolutionelectron beam lithography andpattern transfer. Freeman andMeldrum co-supervise PhDstudent Kristen Buchanan in herwork on nanocrystallinecomposite magnetic materialsexhibiting giant and ultrafastmagneto-optical response.Freeman and Hegmann co-supervise MSc student GreyArnup at work on single-shot

imaging of ultrafast phenomena.Freeman is co-supportingpostdoc Won Kim with Marsiglio,working on theory of nanoscalesuperconductivity and magnetism.Brett and Sit co-supervise AndyVan Popta who is studying chiralphotonic materials.

Collaboration with IndustryBrett ended his first five-yearterm working with Micralyneunder the Micralyne/NSERCIndustrial Research Chair, andhas applied (with Micralyne’ssupport) for a further five yearsof funding. This research concerns

device development of GLADnanostructured materials.

Freeman and Krichevskycontinued to work with Maxtorand Read-Rite on high datarate magnetic recording headcharacterization.

Jason Blackstock took aninternship in molecular electronicsat Hewlett Packard Laboratories,with the group of Stan Williamsthat has become famous for itswork on prototype molecularrandom access memories in thecrossbar configuration.

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Multidiscipline or Multi-Institutional PartnershipsImportant multidisciplinary andmulti-institutional collaborationshave arisen as a result of theCIAR program. One of the mostcompelling discoveries inmagnetism in recent years hasbeen the “spin-transfer torque”phenomenon, in which a spin-polarized electrical current athigh current density carries withit a capability to re-orientmagnetization via relaxation ofthe spin polarization thatcompetes with or even exceeds theinfluence of the conventional“Oersted field” associated with thecurrent itself. A corollary of thiseffect is a novel mechanism ofdamping (or amplification) ofmagnetic excitations via thepassage of currents through“multilayer” geometries (in whichferromagnetic layers areseparated by thin non-magneticspacers). We are working withSimon Fraser University onmagnetodynamics in multilayers.Bret Heinrich and colleagues havethe ability to grow the most nearlyperfect films in the world, andour time-resolved microscopymethods are suited to the studyof current-driven and nonlinearresponse of the multilayers andof mesoscopic devices patternedfrom them. Within the CIAR, wealso collaborate with leadingtheoretician Dr Sajeev John, whohas highly innovative proposalsfor photonic crystal materials anddevices.

A strong collaboration has beenestablished with organic chemistsDr Dick Broer of PhilipsResearch Laboratories (TheNetherlands) and Dr KeesBastiaansen of the Technical

University of Eindhoven in thefield of making hybrid materialscomposed of organic liquids orpolymers and inorganic GLADnanostructured coatings. Thisresearch is studying methods tobetter tailor the orientation andperformance of liquid crystals indisplays, and of methods to makeuniquely structured polymers.

The Brett group continues towork closely with Dr TomSmy of Carleton University,who is able to perform full three -dimensionals i m u l a -tions of thei n t r i c a t es t ructuresengineeredby GlancingAngleDep-osition. This simu-lation insight isessential to optimizing the GLADstructures in various applications,particularly photonics. TheGLAD films also provide a goodexperimental verification for the3D simulator, which mayultimately be released as acommercial product similar to theSIMBAD simulator developed bySmy, Brett and Dr Steven Dew.

We have begun work onbiomaterials, inspired by thetheoretical work of physicsprofessor Jack Tuszynski onmicrotubules, and experimentalresults of (and assistance from)his colleagues Silke Behrensand Eberhard Unger ofForschungszentrum Karlsruhe.The work is further motivated bythe view that wet nanotechnologyis quite important, for instance itis perhaps the only way that the“wiring problem” will beconquered in a cost-effectivemanner. Graduate student Allan

MacDairmid and internshipstudent Rhyan Arthur areworking on polymerization anddepolymerization of tubulin,decoration with inorganicnanocrystals, and electricalcharacterization interfacing withmicrofluidics techniques. Valuableassistance has been received fromU of A chemist Jed Harrison(microfluidics) and John-BruceGreen (atomic force microscopy).Frank Hegmann and RikTykwinski (Chemistry) maintain

a strong collaboration on opticalproperties of organic materials.

Brett and Research Associateand chemist Dr Gregory Kiema,are studying the incorporation ofGLAD nanostructures intomicrofluidic devices. These highlytailorable structures may haveadvantages over current packedbead systems used for micro--chromatography and other on-chip processes.

IMPORTANT MULTIDISCIPLINARY AND MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL COLLABORATIONS HAVE ARISEN AS ARESULT OF THE CIAR PROGRAM.


In addition to the iCORE funding of $500,000, the Nanocore project received $966,000 fromWestern Diversification, $8,247,533 (includes ASRIP and matching funds) from the CFIInnovation fund, and successful leveraging of iCORE funds with CIPI. As part of the CanadaResearch Chair appointment, Michael Brett was awarded $312,500 for an advanced PhysicalVapour Deposition System. Canada Research Chair funding was $358,000, and $279,500was received from NSERC.

Industry funding included $112,000 in cash from Micralyne, Read-Rite and Maxtor, and$232,000 in-kind from Micralyne and JDS Uniphase. Michael Brett was also awarded $237,000from the Micralyne/NSERC Senior Industrial Research Chair.

FUNDING


Received or created over lifetime1. M.R. Freeman, Method for measuring current distribution in an integrated circuit by

detecting magneto-optic polarization rotation in an adjacent magneto-optic film, US Patent#5,663,652 (1997).

2. M.R. Freeman, Fiber optic probe with a magneto-optic film on an end surface for detectinga current in an integrated circuit, US Patent #5,451,863 (1995).

3. Spin-off company, Picomagnetics Inc., 1996 - 2003 (phasing out in favour of simple directinvoicing by the Department of Physics).

4. K.J. Robbie, D.J. Broer, M.J. Brett, J.C. Sit, “Optical Device,” US Patent #6,549,253 (2003).5. K.J. Robbie and M.J. Brett, “Shadow sculpted thin films,” US Patent #6,248,422 (2001).6. K.J. Robbie and M.J. Brett, “Glancing angle deposition of thin films,” U.S. Patent #6,206,065,

(2001).7. K.J. Robbie and M.J. Brett, “Method of Depositing Shadow sculpted thin films,” U.S. Patent

#5,866,204 (1999).8. R.R. Parsons and M.J. Brett, “Transparent, Heat Reflective, Metal Oxide Films,” Canadian

Patent #1,216,821 (1987).

Potential for future commercial activityThe University of Alberta Industry Liaison Office, in a partnership with Micralyne, led thecreation of a new spin-off company, ChiralTF Devices Inc., which was established tocommercialize the Glancing Angle Deposition (GLAD) Technology invented in Brett’s lab. Thecompany is in a business development and concept planning stage.

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Refereed Journal Publications1. W.K. Hiebert, G.E. Ballentine, and M.R. Freeman, “Correspondence of Experimental and Numerical

Micromagnetic Dynamics in Coherent Precessional Switching and Modal Oscillations,” PhysicalReview B (Rapid Communications), vol. 65, 2002, pp. 140404-140408.

2. G.M. Steeves and M.R. Freeman, “Ultrafast Scanning Tunneling Microscopy,” Advances in Imagingand Electron Physics, vol. 125, 2002, p. 195-229.

3. S. Zelakiewicz, et al., “Time-Resolved Kerr Measurements of Magnetization Switching in Crossed-Wire Ferromagnetic Memory,” Journal Applied Physics, vol. 91, 2002, pp. 7331-7333.

4. W.K. Hiebert et al., “Ultrafast Imaging of Incoherent Rotation Magnetic Switching with Experimentaland Numerical Micromagnetic Dynamics,” Journal Applied Physics, vol. 92, 2002, p. 392.

5. J.N. Broughton and M.J. Brett, “Electrochemical Capacitance in Manganese Thin Films with ChevronMicrostructure,” Electrochemical and Solid State Letters, vol. 5, 2002, pp. A279-282.

6. K.D. Harris, A. Huizinga, and M.J. Brett, “High Speed Porous Thin Film Humidity Sensors,”Electrochem. Solid State Letters, vol. 5, no. 11, 2002, H27-H29.

7. M. Seto, K. Westra, and M.J. Brett, “Arrays of Self-Sealed Micro-Chambers and Channels,” JournalMaterials Chemistry, vol. 12, 2002, pp. 2348-2351.

8. K.D. Harris, A. Huizinga, and M.J. Brett, “A Simple and Inexpensive Humidity Control Chamber,”Measurement Science and Technology, vol. 13, 2002, pp. N10-N11.

9. D. Vick, M.J. Brett, and K. Westra, “Porous Thin Films for the Characterization of AFM TipMorphology,” Thin Solid Films, vol. 408, 2002, pp. 79-86.

10. S.R. Kennedy et al., “Fabrication of Tetragonal Square Spiral Photonic Crystals,” Nano Letters, vol.2, 2002, pp. 59-62.

11. M.D. Cummings, J.F. Holzman, and A.Y. Elezzabi, “Carrier Transport Dynamics in an Edge-Illuminated Photoconductive Switch,” Journal Vacuum Science Technology A, vol. 20, 2002, p. 1057.

12. M. Stepanova and S.K. Dew, “Discrete-Path Theory of Physical Sputtering,” Journal Applied Physics,vol. 92, 2002, pp. 1699-1708.

13. M. Stepanova, S.K.Dew, and I.P. Soshnikov, “Sputtering from Ion-Beam Roughened Cu Surfaces,”Physical Review B, vol. 66, 2002, p. 125407.

14. R. Egerton and M. Malac, “Improved Background-fitting Algorithms for Ionization Edges in ElectronEnergy-Loss Spectroscopy,” Ultramicroscopy, vol. 92, no. 2, July 2002, pp. 47-56.

15. R.F. Egerton, “The Future of EELS,” Microscopic Microanalysis, vol. 8 (Suppl. 2), 2002, pp. 464-465.16. R.F. Egerton, “Application of Electron Energy-loss Spectroscopy to the Study of Solid Catalysts,”

Topics in Catalysts, vol. 21, 2002, pp. 185-190.17. M. Malac et al., “Exposure Characteristics of Cobalt Fluoride (CoF2) Self-Developing Electron-

Beam Resist on a Sub-100nm Scale,” Journal Applied Physics, vol. 92, 2002, pp. 1112-1122.18. Y. S. Yang et al., “Spin Wave Response in the Dilute Quasi-one Dimensional Ising-Like

Antiferromagnet CsCo{0.83} Mg{0.17} Br3,” Physical Review B, vol. 65, pp. 212408-1-4.ss.19. L. Deakin et al., “Superconductivity in Ba2 Sn3 Sb6 and SrSn 3Sb4,” Journal of Alloys and Compounds,

vol. 388, 2002, pp. 69-72.20. K. Tanaka and F. Marsiglio, “Microscopic Study of Inhomogeneous Superconductors,” Journal Phys.

Chem. of Solids, vol. 63, 2002, pp. 2287-2293.21. K. Tanaka and F. Marsiglio, “S-wave Superconductivity Near a Surface,” Physica C, vol. 384, 2003,

pp. 356-368.22. S. Verga, A. Knigavko, and F. Marsiglio, “Inversion of ARPES Measurements in High Tc Cuprates,”

Physical Review B, vol. 67, 2003, pp. 054503-1-5.23. F.A. Hegmann et al., “Picosecond Transient Photoconductivity in Functionalized Pentacene Molecular

Crystals Probed by Terahertz Pulse Spectroscopy,” Physical Review Letters, vol. 89, 2002, p. 227403.


24. A.D. Slepkov et al., “Optical Properties of Cross-Conjugated Iso-Polydiacetylene Oligomers asMeasured by UV-vis Spectroscopy and the Optical Kerr Effect,” Journal Optics. A: Pure AppliedOptics, vol. 4, 2002, pp. S207-S211.

25. R.R. Tykwinski et al., “Nonlinear Optical Properties of Thienyl and Bithienyl Iodonium Salts asMeasured by the Z-Scan Technique,” Journal Optics. A: Pure Applied Optics, vol. 4, 2002, pp. S202-S206.

26. A.D. Slepkov et al., “Ultrafast Optical Kerr Effect Measurements of Third-Order Nonlinearities inCross-Conjugated Iso-Polydiacetylene Oligomers,” Journal Chem. Phys., vol. 116, 2002, pp. 3834-3840.

Accepted publications by refereed journals1. B. Dick, M.J. Brett, and T. Smy, “Controlled growth of periodic pillars by glancing angle deposition,”

to be published in Journal Vacuum Science and Technology B, Jan/Feb 2003.2. K.D. Harris, J.C. Sit, and M.J. Brett, “Fabrication and Optical Characterization of Template-

Constructed Thin Films with Chiral Nanostructure” to be published in IEEE Trans. Nanotechnology.3. K.D. Harris, et al., “Column Angle Variations in Porous Chevron Thin Films” to be published in

Journal Vacuum Science Technology A.4. D. Vick, T.J. Smy, and M.J. Brett, “Growth Behavior of Evaporated Porous Thin Films,” to be

published in Journal Materials Research.5. S.R. Kennedy and M.J. Brett “Porous Broadband Antireflection Coating by Glancing Angle

Deposition,” to be published in Applied Optics.

Proceedings1. B.C. Choi, A. Krichevsky, and M.R. Freeman, Ultrafast Magnetization Imaging, to be published in

Proceedings of the IEEE, June 2003.2. A. Hryciw et al., “Luminescence of Silicon Nanocrystals in SiO2: Effects of Excitation Spectrum,” to

be published in Mater. Res. Soc Symp. Proc. vol. 777.3. M.O. Jensen, S.R. Kennedy, and M.J. Brett, “Fabrication of periodic arrays of nanoscale square

helices” Materials Research Society Symposium, April 2002, San Francisco. Accepted (July 30, 2002)for publication in the proceedings.

4. S. R. Kennedy et al., “Fabrication of Square Spiral Photonic Crystals by Glancing Angle Deposition,”SPIE Proc. of the 10th International Symposium on Nanostructures: Physics and Technology, St. Petersburg,Russia, in press (2002).

5. A.L. Elias, K.D. Harris, and M.J. Brett, “Fabrication of perforated film nanostructures,” MaterialsResearch Society Fall Meeting, December 2002, Boston, MA., Accepted for publication (January/03) in Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc.

6. B. Djurfors, M.J. Brett, and D.G. Ivey, “Microstructural Characterization of Porous Films,” MaterialsResearch Society Fall Meeting, December 2002, Boston, MA., Accepted for publication (February/03) in Mat. Res. Soc. Symp. Proc.

Conferences1. Mark Freeman, Intermag Europe opening conference talk, Amsterdam, May 2002.2. Mark Freeman, American Physical Society Northwest Section meeting plenary talk, Banff May

2002.3. B.C. Choi, “Dynamic Domain Configurations in Mesoscopic Thin Film Elements with Various Aspect

Ratios,” Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference, Tampa.4. A. Krichevsky, “The Effect of Pole-tip Geometry on the Flux Rise Time of Write Heads,” Magnetism

and Magnetic Materials Conference, Tampa.5. M. Belov, “Magnetization Dynamics of Internally Patterned Thin Film Microstructures: a

Spatiotemporal Study,” Magnetism and Magnetic Materials Conference, Tampa.

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6. M.J. Brett, “Fabrication and Optical Behaviour of Chiral Thin Film Materials,” Invited talk at theSociety of Vacuum Coaters Annual Convention, Orlando, April 16, 2002. With invited paper in:SVC 45th Ann. Technical Conf. Proc., 2002, pp. 238-244.

7. J.C. Sit, D.J. Broer and M.J. Brett, “Control of Liquid Crystal Orientation in Optical Devices UsingPorous Engineered Thin Films Grown by Glancing Angle Deposition,” 19th International LiquidCrystals Conference, Glasgow, July 2002.

8. M. Malac, “Electron Beam Patterning with Carboneous Contamination Resists Below 10 nmLinewidth,” 49th International Symposium of American Vacuum Society in Denver (CO).

9. M.J. Colgan, G.K. Kiema, and M.J. Brett, “Application of Nanocrystalline Structures to PhotovoltaicCells,” Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, December 2002, Boston, MA.

10. B. Dick, M.J. Brett, and T.J. Smy, “Growth Studies of Periodic and Aperiodic Arrays of Posts andHelices,” Materials Research Society Fall Meeting, December 2002, Boston, MA.

11. S.R. Kennedy, M.O. Jensen, M.J. Brett, O. Toader, and S. John, “Three-Dimensional Square SpiralPhotonic Crystals,” Photonic Nanostructures 2002, San Diego, October 25, 2002.

12. M.O. Jensen, S.R. Kennedy, and M.J. Brett, “Thin Film Chiral Nanostructures for PhotonicApplications,” Photonic Nanostructures 2002, San Diego, October 25, 2002.

13. B. Dick, M.J. Brett, and T.J. Smy, “Sculptured Thin Films Grown by Glancing Angle Deposition,”NRC Frontiers of Integration Meeting, Edmonton, October 28, 2002.

14. M.O. Jensen, S.R. Kennedy, and M.J. Brett, “Thin Film Chiral Nanostructures for PhotonicApplications,” NRC Frontiers of Integration Meeting, Edmonton, October 28, 2002.

15. J.N. Broughton and M.J. Brett, “Performance of Nanostructured Thin Films in ElectrochemicalCapacitors,” NRC Frontiers of Integration Meeting, Edmonton, October 28, 2002.

16. M.D. Cummings and A. Y. Elezzabi, “Photo-Excitation of Coherent Acoustic Phonons in InSb,”13th International Conference on Ultrafast Phenomena, Vancouver, B.C., May 2002.

Books and Chapters1. B. Dick and M.J. Brett, Nanofabrication by Glancing Angle Deposition, Accepted (December 17,

2002) by the Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ed. H.S. Nalwa, American ScientificPublishers).

2. D. Vick, J.C. Sit, and M.J. Brett, “Glancing Angle Deposition of Thin Films,” Book chapter accepted(August 20, 2002) for publication in Research Signpost.

3. B.C. Choi and M.R. Freeman, “Time Domain Optical Imaging of Ferromagnetodynamics” in MagneticMicroscopies of Nanostructures, H. Hopster and H.P. Oepen, eds. (Springer, Heidelberg, in press, 2003).

4. M.D. Cummings and A.Y. Elezzabi, “Photo-Excitation of Coherent Acoustic Phonons in InSb,”Ultrafast Phenomena XIII, ed. R.D. Miller, M.M. Murnane, N.F. Scherer, and A.M. Weiner, SpringerSeries in Chemical Physics, 2002, p. 383.

5. F. Marsiglio and J.P. Carbotte, “Electron-Phonon Superconductivity,” in The Physics of Conventionaland Unconventional Superconductors, (Springer-Verlag), pp. 233-345, (also cond-mat/0106143).


Mini-brute Oxidation Furnace

Atomic Force Microscope

Ion Mill Aisle 3 Fume Hood

Electron Beam Lithography

Wentworth Prober Station

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High Pressure Washer

Lesker Sputter System 'Bob' Electron Beam Evaporator Gomez

Trion Technologies PECVD

Spectroscopic Elipsometer (VASE)


When nanotechnology became abuzzword about a decade ago, noone was quite sure what it was.Just how the field will develop isstill unclear, but the past year hasseen a transformation in its abilityto attract public investment. TheUS federal government willalmost double its spending onnanotech next year, to more than$400 million. Japan is planning abudget hike of more than 40percent, and several Europeancountries have made nano-scale research a priority.Nanotechnology looks poised toshed its science-fiction image anddon the mantle of respectability.

But what opportunities should weexpect to see the new funds create?The highlights of the past 12months give some pointers. Oneof these is nanotechnology’spotential to reinvent andrevitalize chemistry. For example,chemists should have fun withnanotech’s party piece, themanipulation of individual atomsusing the scanning tunnellingmicroscope (STM).

In September, a team at the FreeUniversity of Berlin synthesizeda biphenyl molecule from twobenzene radicals using the STM1.Such piece-by-piece molecule-building, although impressive, isunlikely to replace standard

NANOTECHNOLOGY:MOLECULAR MOVERS

AND SHAKERSAdapted and reprinted courtesy Nature

chemical synthesis. Butthe combination of nano-scale manipulation andspontaneous chemicalprocesses has huge potential.

This was shown in July byresearchers at the SteacieInstitute for MolecularSciences in Ottawa, Canada2.Robert Wolkow and hiscolleagues used the STM toremove individual hydrogenatoms from a hydrogen-covered silicon surface. Thisallowed a styrene molecule tobind to the silicon, setting offa chain reaction in which aneighbouring hydrogen wasdisplaced, another styrene boundto the silicon, and so on –resulting in rows of molecules upto 13 nanometres long.

In a similar vein, StanleyWilliams and colleagues at theHewlett-Packard ResearchLaboratories in Palo Alto,California, reported in June thatthey had made grid-like arrays ofself-assembling erbium disilicidenanowires on a silicon substrate3.They anticipate using such gridsin a memory-rich architecture fora nanoscale computer. AndWilliams’s collaborator JamesHeath and his team at theUniversity of California at LosAngeles have developed another

of the building blocks for such adevice: molecular switches thatwork at room temperature4.

The connections in nanoscalecircuits could well be made ofconducting carbon nanotubes.And the discovery of a simplemethod for fashioning them into‘Y’ shapes broadens their scopefor use in electronic circuitry5.Conducting organic materialsmight open the way to a genuinemolecular electronics – as wasacknowledged by this year’schemistry Nobel.

The cell, meanwhile, is a ready-made toolbox of molecularmachines, and biomolecular

Nature 408, 904 (2000)


science is sure to be a big part of nanotechnology. By coupling the ability of specific biomolecules torecognize one another with manipulation using laser beams as optical tweezers, chemist George Whitesidesand his colleagues at Harvard University this year explored the frontier with biology, making sculpturesfrom red blood cells tagged with polymer microspheres6.

In June, a paper from Angela Belcher and colleagues at the University of Texas at Austin united proteinchemistry with semiconductor technology. They created peptides that can recognize and bind to thesurfaces of different semiconductors7. This points to the possibility of devices based on biological molecules,such as the motor proteins that power cell movement, that can assemble electronic or other inorganicstructures. The exciting beginnings of such a hybrid technology were heralded in November, with thereport of a nanoscale metal rotor powered by the enzyme ATP synthase8.

Practical applications remain years away. “Nanotechnology doesn’t yet exist,” says Don Eigler of IBM’sAlmaden Research Center in San Jose. But there is one concrete sign that nanoscale research will eventuallydeliver working technologies: the spin-off companies launched by some of the field’s academic pioneers.In the past year, Richard Smalley of Rice University in Houston formed Carbon Nanotechnologies, whichaims to commercialize the use of carbon nanotubes; and Chad Mirkin and co-workers at NorthwesternUniversity in Illinois have launched Nanosphere. This company seeks to use a system based on tiny goldparticles to develop diagnostic tests that recognize particular sequences of DNA.

References1. Hla, S.-W, Bartels, L., Meyer, G. & Rieder, K.-H Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 2777-2780 (2000). | Article |

PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |2. Lopinski, G. P., Wayner, D. D. M. & Wolkow, R. A. Nature 406, 48-51 (2000). | Article | PubMed

| ISI | ChemPort |3. Chen, Y., Ohlberg, D. A. A., Medeiros-Ribiero, G., Chang, Y. A. & Williams, R. S. Appl. Phys. Lett.

76, 4004-4006 (2000). | Article | ISI | ChemPort |4. Collier, C. P. et al. Science 289, 1172-1175 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |5. Satishkumar, B. C., Thomas, P. J., Govindaraj, A. & Rao, C. N. R. Appl. Phys. Lett. 77, 2530-2532

(2000). | Article | ISI | ChemPort |6. Holmlin, R. E. et al. Angew. Chem. Int. Edn 39, 3503-3506 (2000). | Article | ISI | ChemPort |7. Whaley, S. R. et al. Nature 405, 665-668 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |8. Soong, R. K. et al. Science 290, 1555-1558 (2000). | Article | PubMed | ISI | ChemPort |


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NANOSCALE INFORMATION ANDCOMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGYiCORE ChairPhysicsUniversity of Alberta

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Nanoscale Information and Communications Technology group is in an initial start up phase at theUniversity of Alberta, and will be associated with the new National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT)in Edmonton. Initial projects will include investigations into nanoscale structure and manipulation,instrument development, connections to nanostructures, directed growth, and theory.

DR ROBERT WOLKOW


The research team will continueto create and analyze complexhybrid silicon-organic structuresin the near future in order tocreate a robust base on which tobuild hybrid silicon-organicdevices. Some key projects:

Nanoscale structure•Determining Structure.

With spectroscopy,scanning tunnelingmicroscopy and theory wewill resolve the electronicstructure of surface-molecule complexes. Onegoal is to control localband bending (in thesubstrate) via subtle but

controlled adsorptionprocesses. We see con-nections to switching,hybrid transistors, memoryelements, and sensors.

•Self-directed growth. Asubstantial advance hasbeen made in automaticallygrowing well-definedmolecular structures on asurface. We showed for thefirst time that arduousatom-by-atom craftingtechniques are not the onlyway to build on the tiniestscale. Many extensions aresoon to be published andunderway including newmechanisms, new

functionality and theoryadvances. Further elementsof control are beingsought. We aim for aparallel (simultaneous)molecular fabrication toolthat provides atom-levelcontrol by merely turningvalves. A patent is pending.

•Understanding dynamics ofadsorption. This is asimportant as structuraldeterminations insearching for phenomenainherent to the nanoscalethat might underpin newtechnologies. Several yearsago we capped 60 years ofstudy, showing definitively

Dr Robert Wolkow is leading a $10 million research program called Nanoscale Information and Communication Technologies,through his appointment as an iCORE Chair, affiliated with the Department of Physics at the University of Alberta and theNational Research Council’s National Institute for Nanotechnology. As the project is in a start-up phase, this brief reportsummarizes program goals and current research staff.


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that molecules hover andsearch over a surface beforesettling in to form achemical bond. Thatphenomenon is of generalimportance – it dailyaffects our thinking aboutbuilding molecularstructures.

Nanoscale manipulation•Spatially defined attachment

points. Further methods toalter substrate structure inorder to create spatiallydefined attachment pointsfor molecules will bepursued.

•All in-vacuum nano-lithography. This is beingdeveloped, at this point forone-off structures, to allowconnection and testing ofnanostructures.

Instrument development•Technique development is

always ongoing. We wish tobe thought of as thepremiere centre in theworld for innovation inscanned probe and relatednanoscience techniques.Today, scanned probeexperiments are notoriouslydifficult. A machine will bebuilt that is substantiallymore productive. Tips (theactual scanned probe) areintolerably unreliable. Weare undertaking a programto create superior tips andinstruments. We havecredentials in this area,having created the world’sfirst tunable temperaturecryogenic STM, a machinethat greatly expanded thescope of accessible nano-scale phenomena.

Connections to nanostructuresIn order to use nanostructureswe must find means to addressthem. The focus is on self-formingand well-defined connections.Connections must be defined inabsolute position and in terms ofinternal structure. Most work todate has created structurallyill-defined connections. Ourmolecule-silicon studies havesolved the most complex siliconinterface problems approached todate and as a result we are ideallypositioned to lead in this area.

“Connected STM” At this stage, we need a machinethat facilitates connection tosingle nanoscale entities –thereby avoiding the need forextensive (or, at this point,impossible) lithographic steps.

Growing contacts to siliconWe will extend our work on well-defined TiSi2 contacts. These areattractive as they withstandharsh thermal and chemicalconditions and present a verysmall Schottky barrier. Methodsfor defining very closely spacedcontacts on silicon are beingdeveloped. These will allowultra-small, functionalizedsilicon surface regions to beprobed. Early applications willinclude measurements of chemi-electric-field control of near-surface conductive channelstructures.

Local doping controlLocal doped regions will provideanother attractive method forcreating silicon surface contacts. Inaddition to conventional dopants(defined lithographically and withfocused ion beam) we aim to createa new class of surface bound (as

opposed to substitutional/bulk)dopants which can act withouthigh temperature annealing/activation and which will berestricted to a plane. This techniquecould find near term application (tobe patented if warranted).

Directed growthA variety of schemes for efficient,controlled growth of nano-structures will be explored. Thisis a centrally important issue. Self-assembly will be key to nano/molecular technologies.•Field directed growth. Field

controlled approaches mayprovide one way toefficiently control nano-structure growth. A patentapplication has beenprepared.

•Chemically directed growth. Wewill attempt to havemolecules find their intendeddocking points by employingchemical “lock and key”methods.

•Assisting assembly. Many ofthe components we wish tomanipulate are too large tomigrate freely, hamperingassembly. We are devisingnovel methods for assistingmotion.

TheoryTheory has and will continue to bean essential part of our work.Theory doesn’t stand apart asperhaps suggested by this section;it is integrated with all of the above.• Structure of molecular-

substrate complexes1. as determined by

strong chemical bonds2. and as determined by

relatively weakphysical interactions

•Dynamics of structures


1. barriers which controlgrowth processes

2.fluctuations in existingstructures that can embodythe function of thenanostructure (for examplea field-induced structuralchange that allows acharge (electron or hole) tobe stored)

•Tunneling transmissionthrough well-definedstructures will likely proveuseful in molecular devices.

•Electrostatic calculationslike those used for presentsemiconductor devices, willbe used to predict andunderstand the control ofchannel conduction as a

function of theconfiguration of surfacemounted nanostructures.

Exploratory DevicesThese will be fabricated to testand develop ideas. These projectswill be broadly collaborative andinterdisciplinary.•Molecular computation

devices will be made as soonas possible. Knowing how toachieve connection/addressing will likely be bestexplored with sensingdevices first.

• Molecular sensing1. Earliest designs will

make a kind of pressuresensor-the adsorption of

molecules will bedetected. This will serveto test the viability ofour scheme and then as avehicle for assessingand extending sensitivity.Engineers must beengaged as partners.

2. Biological moleculesprovide an endlesslyvaried and lucrativetarget for detectiontechnology. The challengeis an order of magnitudegreater than the pressuresensor above. Tightcollaboration with(bio)chemical/medicalexperts will be engaged.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

The team for Nanoscale Information and Communications Technology is still in transition, as the projecthas just recently started. Arrangements are underway for moving staff and equipment to the Universityof Alberta and NINT.

TEAM LEADER

Bob Wolkow

TITLE

iCORE Chair in Nanoscale Information andCommunications Technology

OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Jason Pitters

Gino DiLabio

Doug Moffatt

Carmen Remenda

TITLE/TOPIC

Staff Scientist/Ultra High Vacuum Scanned ProbeMicroscopes

Staff Scientist/Quantum Chemistry Theorist

Technician

Administrative Assistant

RESEARCH TEAM

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POSTDOCTORAL RESEARCHERS

Mohamed Rezeq

Paul Piva

Adam Dickie

Lin Wu

TOPIC

Field Ion Microscopy

Hybrid Molecular-silicon Structures

Silicon Nanostructures

Engineering Nanoscale Machinery

COLLABORATIONS

Dr Werner Hofer, who collaborateswith Paul Piva, is a new lecturerat Liverpool and an expertin solid-state density func-tional calculations. ProfessorAlain Rochefort, Départementde génie physique, École Poly-technique de Montréal and Centrede Recherche enCalcul Appliqué(CERCA), is atheorist with expertisemolecular interac-tions related toelectrical transport,also working on thePiva project.

Dr Yuh-Lin Wangof Academia Sinica in Taiwan(Chemical Physics) is an expertin focused ion beam instruments,nanostructures and scannedprobe microscopy. He has workedwith Dr Wolkow for two years ona project that aims to connectsmall numbers of molecules to

macroscopic electrodes, allowingdirect electrical characterizationof hybrid silicon-molecularstructures. In conjunction with DrWang, the team is fabricating (inTaiwan) and making ultra highvacuum measurements (inCanada) of the small structures

described above.Dr ChiiDong Chen of

Academia Sinica in Taiwan(Physics) is an expert in lowtemperature characterizationof solid-state semiconductorstructures and in lithography,including ebeam. In conjunction

THE NANOSCALE INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONTECHNOLOGIES RESEARCH PROGRAM AIMS TO BE THOUGHT OF ASTHE PREMIERE CENTRE IN THE WORLD FOR INNOVATION IN SCANNEDPROBE AND RELATED NANOSCIENCE TECHNIQUES.

with Dr Wang, the teamfabricating (in Taiwan) andstudying (in Canada) the smallstructures described above.

Professor Andrew Fisher ofUniversity College Londonhas worked with Dr Wolkowfor several years on joint

experimental-theoretical studiesof molecules on silicon. The teamplans a unique, exciting jointeffort that will address ways togain a new level of controlover semiconductor electronicproperties via surface chemicalcontrol.

INTELLIGENTSOFTWARESYSTEMS




Jonathan SchaefferCanada Research Chair in Artificial IntelligenceThe University of AlbertaTier 1 - January 1, 2002

Achievements: Inventor of Chinook, the world checkers champion. Chinook is the first computerprogram to win a human world championship, a feat recognized by the Guinness Book ofWorld Records. Author of four books and more than one hundred articles and papers onartificial intelligence, parallel computing, and bioinformatics; holder of Informatics Circle ofResearch Excellence (iCORE) Chair; American Institute of Artificial Intelligence Fellow; recipientof E.W.R. Steacie Award from NSERC; co-founder of BioTools Inc.; consultant to ElectronicArts Canada and BioWare.

Research Involves: Development of high-performance, real-time artificial intelligenceapplications

Research Relevance: Development of high-performance, real-time artificial intelligenceapplications

GAMES THAT IMITATE LIFEDr Jonathan Schaeffer is one adult who knows that computer games represent much morethan just a way of killing time. One of the world’s leading authorities on artificial intelligence,Dr Schaeffer believes that games are ideal domains for exploring the capabilities ofcomputational intelligence. Because, unlike life, the rules are fixed, the scope of the problem isconstrained and the interactions of the players are well defined; games can act as perfect“control” situations. Games can also be a microcosm of the real world, and successfully achievinghigh computer performance in a non-trivial game can be a stepping stone toward solvingmore challenging real-world problems.

Dr Schaeffer’s program as Canada Research Chair in Artificial Intelligence will use games asexperimental test beds for artificial intelligence research. His intent is to achieve a betterunderstanding of what it takes to build high-performance systems that operate in real time,where high-performance is defined as achieving a performance level comparable to, or betterthan, that of the best humans. Rather than seeking small incremental advances that are inisolation of the domain in which the ideas could be applied, Dr Schaeffer plans to take anapplication and solve all the problems necessary to achieve high performance. His research isdriven by the requirements of the application, with the intent that, if interesting applications



are selected, the research results will have wide applicability. His past research is a prime example,having led to the formation of a bioinformatics company whose software is being used by researchlaboratories around the world.

Specifically, his research project will tackle three priorities: single-agent search games (puzzles),with emphasis on path finding algorithms, DNA sequence alignment algorithms, and developmentof a generic planning system; algorithms for computer-based poker, with attendant problems ofdealing with imperfect information and opponent modelling; and development of “realistic”characters for sports and role-playing games.


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HIGH-PERFORMANCE ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCE SYSTEMSiCORE ChairComputing ScienceUniversity of Alberta

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This report represents a summary of the second year of the iCORE Chair in High-Performance ArtificialIntelligence Systems. The group now consists of three professors, four affiliated professors, one post-doctoral fellow, nine PhD students, and 16 Masters students. In addition, there are four programmer/analysts (two part-time), and a half-time secretary.

The High-Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems research group specializes in artificial intelligenceresearch, investigating new technologies for creating “intelligent” behaviour in a computer. Althoughthe research spans many areas of artificial intelligence, including search, machine learning, and heuristicknowledge, historically the group has used games to demonstrate the ideas. Fundamental problems inartificial intelligence are being investigated in the context of computer programs that play chess, checkers,Go, and poker. Many of the game-playing programs have achieved a high level of performance andhave challenged the best human players in the world.

Although the group’s reputation was initially made by applying research work to classic board andcard games, since 1999 the team has been moving more towards addressing the challenges of thecommercial games industry. Commercial games (or, more precisely, interactive entertainment) is amaturing industry that had $15 billion in sales in North America last year, with an impressive 15percent growth in the market. In the past year the team strengthened ties with Electronic Arts ofVancouver (the largest games company in the world) and BioWare of Edmonton (the world leader inrole-playing games). The new technology has been well received by both companies, with good prospectsfor integration into commercial products.

Another thrust of this project is the development of parallel programming environments. For over15 years, the team has been building tools to simplify the task of parallel programming. The thirdgeneration tool, CO2P3S, is now available on the web and actively promoted at major parallel computingconferences.

DR JONATHAN SCHAEFFER

Dr Jonathan Schaeffer is iCORE Chair of High Performance Artificial Intelligence Systems at the University of Alberta.iCORE has committed $500,000 per year for five years for a total of $2.5 million dollars to develop this research group.


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The project is progressingextremely well along the linesoutlined in the original iCOREproposal. The group has built aninternational reputation based onartificial intelligence (AI) research,using games as an experimentaltest-bed for this work. However,the research challenges from the

classic board and card games arelimited (the games of poker andGo being notable exceptions).Since 1999, we have been slowlymoving our research effortstowards addressing the challengesof the commercial games industry.This represents a goldenopportunity for us, since artificial

intelligence research in thisindustry is still in its infancy. Atthis point in time, over 40 percentof our graduate students areworking in this area, and thisnumber will only increase.More details can be found atwww.cs.ualberta.ca/~games.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

In the past year we have mademajor strides forward in engagingthe commercial games industryand making significant progressin doing industry-based research.We have become one of thelargest research groups in thisarea. However, as we are learning,there is a large gap betweenacademic research and industryexpectations. The commercialgames industry in particular isheavily performance oriented.They need real-time solutionsthat use little CPU and memory.Few AI efforts address real-timeconstraints – an area which isone of our research group’sstrengths. We are not developingindustrial strength solutions forour partners, but we are buildingproof-of-concept demonstrationsthat show that our technology canmeet the stringent industrydemands.

Our group continues to buildon its past success in artificialintelligence. Most notable is thepoker project, which is addressingthe hard AI problems ofreasoning with imperfect andincomplete information. Ourprogress in the past year has beenexcellent, developing newtechnology that has resulted in a

quantum improvement in thestate of the art, Our poker-playing program became the firstsuch program to be competitivewith a top human player (January2003). In the upcoming year, wehope to challenge the best playersin the world.

The long-term objective of ourwork is to enhance ourunderstanding of search,knowledge and their interactions.We have one of the strongestgroups in the world working ondeveloping high-performancesearch algorithms. Unlike mostresearch groups, we buildcomplete AI systems, addressingall the issues needed to achievehigh performance. It alwaysstarts with search (well definedand understood), integratingapplication-dependent knowledge(not yet well understood) only onan as-needed basis. Discoveringnew ways to lessen dependence on

knowledge is critical to AIsuccess; human knowledge isfraught with error and difficult toobtain. The goal is to automatethis process as much as possible.

Part of the project fundingsupports research into parallelcomputing, which was not

discussed in the original iCOREproposal. For over 15 years wehave been developing newparallel algorithms and tools tosimplify the difficult task ofwriting a correct parallelapplication. These activities havealways hovered around 30percent of the chair’s researchtime. While this research area isnot artificial intelligence, it isconsidered “high performance.”

Of interest is that thetechnology we built to developparallel applications (ourCO2P3S parallel programmingenvironment) is directlyapplicable to our artificial

WE HAVE ONE OF THE STRONGEST GROUPS IN THEWORLD WORKING ON DEVELOPING HIGH-PERFORMANCE SEARCH ALGORITHMS. UNLIKE MOSTRESEARCH GROUPS, WE BUILD COMPLETE AISYSTEMS, ADDRESSING ALL THE ISSUES NEEDED TOACHIEVE HIGH PERFORMANCE.


intelligence scripting project.CO2P3S builds on the(sequential) software idea ofdesign patterns – exploitingcommonly occurring softwaredesigns. CO2P3S uses paralleldesign patterns. We have copiedthis technology for AI scripting.Character behaviour also followspatterns. If one describes acharacter as a “guard” then thatconveys a lot of informationabout that character’s behaviour.The guard notion becomes abehavioural pattern that can becustomized to give the specificbehaviour that is desired. It isinteresting that the technologywe developed for parallelcomputing is relevant in artificialintelligence.

Commercial Games ResearchIn the past, computer graphicswere the major technologicaldifferentiators between competinggames products. The realism ofthe graphics has increasedconsumer demand for realism inthe game characters. Thecommercial games industrynow recognizes that artificialintelligence has become a majorconsumer consideration inassessing the quality of a product.Unfortunately, the gamesindustry has few AI expertsresearching new technologies,giving universities an opportunityto have a major impact in newtechnology development. Inacademia, the University ofAlberta has the world’s largestresearch group working in thisarea.

1.) The first major thrust is in AIscripting. Character behavioursin games are usually definedusing scripts. However, the result

is complex software that is hardto maintain. Further, theresulting performance of thecharacters is disappointingbecause the characters will onlydo precisely what has beenscripted, and typically this is avery small (usually one) set ofbehaviours. We have beendeveloping a tool that allows forthe rapid construction of complexcharacter behaviours. The tool,called ScriptEase, is based onhaving a rich set of pre-definedbehaviours (for characters,speech, situations, and plot) thatthe user can select and thencustomize to their needs. Thiswork is novel and, because ourextensive experience withpatterns (see the CO2P3S sectionbelow) gives us a competitiveedge for developing thenext generation of scriptingtechnology. Our prototype toolhas been used to build complexstories in a very short time. Thework has been demonstrated toBioWare and been very wellreceived. Creating realisticcharacters has many industrialapplications, including trainingprograms, web interfaces, andother forms of interactiveentertainment.

2.) The second major thrust ispathfinding. For many computergames, the “simple” task ofhaving a character find a pathfrom their current position to agoal is a time-critical, CPU-intensive function. This is aninstance of a problem domaincalled single-agent search, but inthis case is restricted to a two-dimensional grid (with the intentof moving to three dimensions).We developed new algorthms forgrid-based pathfinding, yielding

some surprising results that runcounter to conventional wisdom.BioWare has implemented someof our ideas in their next productand report that they resulted inimproved performance. The sametechnology is applicable to awider domain of applications,including robot planning.

3.) The third major thrust isapplying machine learning togames. Game companies arereluctant to ship games that learnin response to the user’sinteractions. The reason for thisis that it is difficult to control thelearning, and a player cancontrive to have a programlearn poor behaviour. Also,conventional learning algorithmsare either too slow, or learn tooslowly. For example, in ElectronicArts successful FIFA soccergame, the computerized soccerplayers are incapable ofadjusting their play to match thatof their human opponents. Wehave developed new technologythat allows computer soccerplayers to dynamically modifytheir behaviour in a controlledway, allowing the program torecognize when it has made amistake and adjust its play sothat the mistake is not repeated.This technology has beenenthusiastically endorsed byElectronic Arts.

A major highlight of this yearwas Jack van Rijswijck’s paper onthe machine learning algorithmsthat he developed for FIFA soccer.This work was accepted forpresentation at the annual GameDeveloper’s Conference. This is thepremier conference in the industry,with a heavy emphasis on newdevelopments that can impactgame-program development. Very

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few academic papers have everbeen accepted for this conference.

Another commercial games-related research initiative isMichael Buro’s work on real-timestrategy games. He has developeda test-bed for exploring issues inreal-time strategy gamesincluding client-server archi-tectures, managing limited CPUresources, and complex groupbehaviours. Buro is working withRelic, a Vancouver-based gamescompany.

Classic GamesTraditional games research hasconcentrated on two-playergames of perfect information (theopponents are not hidinganything). Poker is very challen-ging because of hiddeninformation (you do not know theopponent’s cards), multipleplayers (typically 10 in a game),and deception (bluffing is criticalto successful play). Thesedimensions significantly complicatethe problem domain, making it anapplication domain that betterrepresents the complexities ofintelligence in real life. Forexample, poker is a model foreconomic game theory as well asbusiness negotiations andInternet auctions.

For almost a decade we havebeen developing new technologiesfor dealing with imperfectinformation. We have applied thenotion of Nash equilibriums tobuild a pseudo-optimal two-player poker program (anoptimal program is too computa-tionally expensive to build rightnow). This program achievedinternational success by narrowlylosing a match to a world-classplayer in January 2003. Plans arein place for a real-money match

against one of the best players inthe world in 2003.

Other efforts in classic gamesinclude:

1.Martin Müller has built upa team of six peopleworking on computer Go.Unless games like chess,search is ineffective here.Success in the gamedepends on using complexinteracting knowledge.

2.For almost a decade wehave been working onsolving the game ofcheckers. It has a searchspace of O(1020) – adaunting number. Webelieve it likely that we cansolve the game in the nextyear. That is we will have aprogram that will neverlose (assuming checkers isa draw with perfect play, asseems likely). Although thefinal result – solvingcheckers – is notparticularly exciting fromthe scientific point of view,the technology and toolsdeveloped to solve such alarge computationalproblem are relevant to awide audience.

We continue to improve ourworld-championship programsfor the games of Lines of Actionand shogi (Japanese chess). Inaddition, we were the first teamto build a perfect program for thegame of 10 x 10 domineering.

Other Artificial IntelligenceInitiativesPlanning: Many of our search-based research contributions areapplicable to the field of artificialintelligence planning systems.For the past year we have beenbuilding a hierarchical planning

system. It takes a planningproblem domain (e.g. a robothaving to plan how to restockinventory) and decomposes itinto a global problem (what hasto be done) and a series of localproblems (stocking individualitems). The result is a system thatcan come up with workable plansconsiderably faster thanconventional approaches. We areworking on generalizing thetechnology to handle a wider setof application domains.

Optimal multiple sequencealignment: A cornerstone forunderstanding the humangenome is the computationalproblem of sequence alignment-determining the (dis)similarity ofDNA protein strands. We havedeveloped new technology forperforming an optimal alignmentof multiple (long) DNA/proteinstrands that is roughly four timesfaster than existing approaches.In the past year we have workedwith biologists to assess andimprove the quality of ouralignment results.

CO2P3SThe CO2P3S project attempts to usemodern software technology tosimplify the complexities ofdeveloping parallel applications.CO2P3S stands for CorrectObject-Oriented Pattern-basedParallel Programming System.As the name suggests, thepackage uses objected-orientedtechnologies, design patterns andframeworks to facilitate codedevelopment. A user selects aparallel design pattern that bestmatches their application needs,selects some options to customize itto their application, and then fills inCO2P3S-generated sequential codestubs with application-dependent


code. The result is a complete,functional parallel application. Thesoftware is available for download(www.cs.ualberta.ca/-systems/cops).

The state of the art in parallelprogramming tools remainsprimitive, and we face a difficulttask to demonstrate the value ofour tool set. Despite being wellreceived in academia (for example,reflected by a best paper prize),we have not yet been able to buildup a strong user community.

CISSWe initiated CISS, the CanadianInternetworked Scientific Super-computer (www.cs.ualberta.ca/-ciss). We have worked ondeveloping grid-like software thatcan be installed at the user level,without need for systemadministrator support. Thesoftware allows an otherwiseidle computer to “pull” incomputational tasks to beexecuted from a remote site. Ineffect, one can create a virtualsupercomputer. The scalabilityand portability of the software

was demonstrated on a nationalscale on November 4, 2002. Onthat date, we were able to harness1,376 computers spanning 20administrative domains at 18different sites. In a single day, wewere able to do three and a halfyears of computing to help solvean interesting computationalchemistry property.

The purpose of CISS was three-fold. First, it demonstrated thefunctionality of the software used.Second, it furthered chemistryresearch. Third, it helped buildthe social infrastructure forsharing high-performancecomputing resources in Canada.

WestGridAlthough this is not a directresearch contribution, in manyways the WestGrid project mayhave the most long-term impact.WestGrid is a partnership of eightAlberta and British Columbiainstitutions to bring world-classhigh-performance computingresources to western Canada. Thepartners are the University ofAlberta, University of British

Columbia, University of Calgary,University of Lethbridge, SimonFraser University, TRIUMF,Banff Centre, and NewMIC. Thisproject was successful at achievingroughly $50 million of fundingfrom the Canada Foundation forInnovation, the province ofAlberta, the province of BritishColumbia, computer vendors, andthe member institutions. The fiveco-principal investigators for theproject are Jonathan Borwein(Simon Fraser University), GrenPatey (University of BritishColumbia), Jonathan Schaeffer(University of Alberta), BrianUnger (University of Calgary),and Mike Vetterli (SFU/TRIUMF). Although the AIresearch will benefit in only smallways from this infrastructure, theimpact on the researchproductivity of Alberta andBritish Columbia researchers willbe immense. There will be majorbenefits to researchers in areasdiverse as biology, chemistry,physics, engineering, medicine, andthe social sciences.

RESEARCH TEAM

TEAM LEADER

Jonathan Schaeffer

AWARDS

Canada Research Chair in Artificial IntelligenceFellow, AAAINSERC E.W.R. Steacie Fellowship

TEAM MEMBERS

Michael Buro

Martin Müller

TITLE

Associate Professor

Associate Professor

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OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Russ Greiner

Rob Holte

Paul Lu

Duane Szafron

TITLE

Professor

Professor

Assistant Professor

Professor


Yngvi Bjornsson

TOPIC

Learning Search Control

AWARDS

Gold medal-ComputerOlympiad

PHD CANDIDATES

Darse Billings*

Adi Botea*

Markian Hlynka*

Akihiro Kishimoto

David O’Connell*

Ehud Sharlin*

Brian Sheppard

Jack van Rijswijck*

Peter Yap*

Ling Zhao

TOPIC

Computer Poker

Planning Systems

Learning Search Control

Computer Go

Single-agent Search

Tangible User Interfaces

Computer Scrabble

AI Architectures for SportsGames

Pathfinding on a Grid

High-level Planning

AWARDS

+

+

+

World ComputerShogi Champion

PGS-B

+

+

Alberta Ingenuity


MSC CANDIDATES

Michael Chung*

Patrick Earl*

Mark Goldenberg*

Dave Gomboc

Zhuang Guo*

Thomas Hauk*

Alex Kovarksy

Jonathan Newton

Xiaochen Niu

Dominique Parker*

James Redford*

Terry Schauenberg*

Xiaomeng Wu

Jonathan Yip

Haizhi Zhang*

Jianjun Zhou

TOPIC

Real-time Strategy Games

Meta Parallel Programming

Parallel Job Scheduling

Tuning Evaluation Functions

Web-server Patterns

Probabilistic Two-playerSearch

Machine Learning in RTS

Learning Mistakes

Heuristic Knowledge andSearch

Pattern-based AI Scripting

Pattern-based AI Scripting

Opponent Modelling

Bayesian Learning

Scripting in RTS

Search Algorithms

Incremental SearchAlgorithms

AWARDS

Alberta Ingenuity

PGS-A

+

PGS-A

PGS-A

Students that are supervised or co-supervised by Jonathan Schaeffer are indicated by a *. Faculty involvedin (co-)supervising these students include Michael Buro, Rob Holte, Paul Lu, Martin Müller, Duane Szafron,Jaap van den Herik (University of Maastricht) and Ben Watson (Northwestern University). Studentswho are current or past holders of a major scholarship are indicated by a +.

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SUPPORT

Neil Burch

Aaron Davidson

Marcus Enzenberger

Amanda Hansen

Matthew McNaughton

Kai Tan

POSITION

Programmer/Analyst

Programmer/Analyst

Programmer/Analyst

Administration

Programmer/Analyst

Programmer/Analyst

COLLABORATIONS

The group is actively workingwith several partners:1. Electronic Arts

(commercial gamesresearch) has historicallyprovided cash and graduatestudent internships. In thepast year, they made a(small) software donation tothe group.

2. BioWare (commercial gamesresearch) sponsors theresearch with $10,000 peryear.

3. Relic (commercial gamesresearch) is negotiating aproject.

4. Joerg Denzinger, University

of Calgary works on a jointresearch project, supportedby Intelligent Robotics andIntelligent Systems (IRIS)NCE funding.

5. Strong research ties withIKAT at the University ofMaastricht (TheNetherlands) and theComputer GamesLaboratory at ShizoukaUniversity (Japan) includeannual visits and graduatestudent exchanges.

6. WestGrid is a multi-institutional initiative(University of Alberta,University of BritishColumbia, University of

Calgary, University ofLethbridge, Simon FraserUniversity, TRIUMF, BanffCentre, and NewMIC) andmulti-disciplinary initiative.The industrial partnersinclude Hewlett Packard,IBM, and Silicon Graphics.

7. Alberta Ingenuity Centerfor Machine Learning(AICML). This researchcenter was formed in thepast year, with JonathanSchaeffer one of the co-principal investigators.AICML is starting to workwith a number of industrialpartners.


In addition to the iCORE grant of $500,000 per year, Russ Greiner, Rob Holte, Randy Goebel, andJonathan Schaeffer attracted $7 million over five years from Alberta Ingenuity’s Centre of Excellenceprogram. NSERC provides yearly operating grants of $20,000 and $46,200 to Drs Müller andSchaeffer, and part of the $600,000 NSERC MFA grant (Pollard et al. with Schaeffer as a coapplicant)provides infrastructure. Dr Schaeffer’s Tier 1 CRC provides $200,000 per year for salaries andoverhead. The National Centres of Excellence funding provides $155,000 (IRIS-Schaeffer) and$125,000 (PENCE-Szafron et al.) per year.

The $11,990,000 Canada Foundation for Innovation WestGrid grant is to build high-performancecomputing facilities in Western Canada. The PIs are Jonathan Borwein (Simon Fraser University),Gren Patey (University of British Columbia), Jonathan Schaeffer (University of Alberta), BrianUnger (University of Calgary), and Mike Vetterli (TRIUMF). Schaeffer and Unger leveraged theCFI funds to get $6 million in provincial matching funds. Combined with vendor contributionsand operating funds from CFI, the total project budget is roughly $50 million.

FUNDING

Schaeffer is the co-founder of BioTools Inc. (www.biotools.com), a bioinformatics company. BioToolshas three successful commercial products: PEPTOOL (protein analysis), GENETOOL (DNA analysis),and CHROMATOOL (DNA/protein assembly). These products are used in over 1,000 researchlaboratories around the world. Success with these products led to the opportunity to do contract workwith some of the biggest players in the human genome efforts. Currently most of BioTool’s work is ona contractual basis.

Chenomx is a spinoff from BioTools (www.chenomx.com). Chenomx has developed revolutionarysoftware technology to do fluid analysis. From a spectrogram produced by a NMR machine, itsprograms can analyze the data to a level of detail not easily possible in a laboratory. The firstapplication is to analyze urine. Conventional urine analysis (as prescribed by a doctor) returns theanalysis of six (of over 250) compounds in the urine. Chenomx’s software accurately returns ananalysis of over 100 compounds, faster and at less cost. The company has partnered with Varianand Breuker, the two largest NMR manufacturers in the world. Its product, ECLIPSE, is currentlyunder evaluation by a major pharmaceutical company.

BioTools and Chenomx are successes, but both have been hampered by a lack of venture capital.Together they employ over 20 people and have combined revenues of roughly $1 million.

Additional ActivitiesOur group has had several other notable events happen:1. Hosted the third biennial Computers and Games conference in Edmonton (July 2002). Over 110

people attended from around the world.2. Martin Müller organized the 21st Century Cup Computer Go championship in Edmonton (July

2002). Twelve programs from around the world competed. The two University of Alberta entriesfinished in the middle of the pack.

3. Schaeffer is the co-author of the official FIDE rules for man-machine chess matches (FIDE is thebody that governs international chess). Schaeffer was one of the match officials for the GarryKasparov-DEEP JUNIOR chess match in New York (January/February, 2003).

4. Schaeffer is on the executive committee of C3.ca, the national voice for high-performance computingin Canada. C3.ca is producing a long-range strategy for funding high-performance computing inCanada. The team is headed by Kerry Rowe (Vice-President Research, Queen’s University) andSchaeffer is one of the seven co-authors.

5. Competed in the 2002 World RoboCup Championships (small-sized league). Matt McNaughtonand his team won two games and lost two games, placing third in their division.


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PUBLICATIONS

Refereed journal papers1. R. Hayward and J. van Rijswijck, “Hex and mathematics,” Discrete Mathematics, 2003, to appear.2. S. MacDonald, J. Anvik, S. Bromling, D. Szafron, J. Schaeffer, and K. Tan, “From patterns to

frameworks to parallel programs,” Parallel Computing, vol. 8, no.12, 2002, pp. 1663-1683.3. J. Zhou and M. Müller, “Depth-first discovery algorithm for incremental topological sorting of

directed acyclic graphs,” Information Processing Letters, 2003, to appear.4. M. Müller, “Conditional combinatorial games and their application to analyzing capturing races in

Go,” Information Sciences, 2003, to appear.5. M. Müller, “Counting the score: Position evaluation in computer Go,” Journal of the International

Computer Games Association, vol. 25, no.4, 2002, pp. 219-228.6. M. Buro, “Report on the IWEC-2002 man-machine Othello match,” Journal of the International Computer

Games Association, vol. 25, no.2, 2002, pp. 113-114.

Refereed conference papers1. D. Billings, N. Burch, A. Davidson, R. Holte, J. Schaeffer, T. Schauenberg, and D. Szafron,

“Approximating game-theoretic optimal strategies for full-scale poker,” in International JointConference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2003, pp. 661-668.

2. M. Goldenberg, A. Kovarksy, X. Wu, and J. Schaeffer, “Multiple agents moving target search,” inInternational Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (JJCAI), 2003, pp. 1511-1512.

3. Y. Bjornsson, M. Enzenberger, R. Holte, J. Schaeffer, and P. Yap, “Comparison of different abstractionsfor pathfinding on maps,” in International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2003,pp. 1536-1538.

4. M. McNaughton, J. Redford, J. Schaeffer, and D. Szafron, “Pattern-based AI scripting usingScriptEase,” in AI’2003: The Sixteenth Canadian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 2003, pp.35-49.

5. K. Tan, D. Szafron, J. Schaeffer, J. Anvik, and S. MacDonald, “Using generative design patterns togenerate parallel code for a distributed memory environment,” in ACM SIGPLAN Symposium onPrinciples and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), 2003, pp. 203-215.

6. A. Botea, M. Müller, and J. Schaeffer, “Extending PDDL for hierarchical planning and topologicalabstraction,” in iCAPS workshop on PDDL, 2003, pp. 25-32.

7. Pinchak, P. Lu, J. Schaeffer, and M. Goldenberg, “The Canadian internetworked scientificsupercomputer,” in High Performance Computing Systems and Applications, D. Senechal, Ed., 2003,pp. 193-199.

8. Kishimoto and J. Schaeffer, “Distributed game-tree search using transposition table driven workscheduling,” in International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), 2002, pp. 323-330.

9. S. Bromling, S. MacDonald, J. Anvik, J. Schaeffer, D. Szafron, and K. Tan, “Pattern-based parallelprogramming,” in International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP), 2002, pp. 257-265.

10. Kishimoto and J. Schaeffer, “Transposition table driven work scheduling in distributed game-treesearch,” in AI’O2: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, ser. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, R.Cohen and B. Spencer, Eds. Springer Verlag, 2002, pp. 56-68.

11. S. MacDonald, D. Szafron, J. Schaeffer, J. Anvik, S. Bromling, and K. Tan, “Generative design patterns,”in 17th IEEE International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE), 2002, pp. 23-34.

12. M. McNaughton, P. Lu, J. Schaeffer, and D. Szafron, “Improving single-agent search using memory-efficient heuristics,” in American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) National Conference,2002, pp. 737- 743.

13. M. Müller, “Multicriteria evaluation in computer game-playing and its relation to AI planning,” inAIPS-2002 Workshop on Planning and Scheduling with Multiple Criteria, 2002, pp. 1-6.

14. M. Müller, “A generalized framework for analyzing capturing races in Go,” in Sixth Joint Conference


on Information Sciences, 2002, pp. 469-472.15. M. Buro, “ORTS: A hack-free RTS game environment,” in Computers and Games, ser. Lecture Notes

in Artificial Intelligence. Springer Verlag, 2003, to appear.16. M. Buro, “ORTS: A hack-free environment for real-time strategy games,” in International Joint

Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), 2003, to appear.17. N. Bullock, “Domineering: Solving large combinatorial search spaces,” International Journal of the

Computer Games Association, vol. 25, no.2, 2002, pp. 67-84.18. Y. Bjornsson and T. A. Marsland, “Learning control of search extensions,” in Joint Conference on

Information Sciences, 2002, pp. 446-449.19. Y. Bjornsson and M. Winands, “YL wins Lines of Action tournament,” Journal of the International

Computer Games Association, vol. 25, no.3, 2002, pp. 185-186.20. Y. Bjornsson and T. A. Marsland, “Learning extension parameters in game-tree search,” Information

Sciences Journal, 2003, to appear.21. A. Botea, “Using abstraction for heuristic search and planning,” in 5th International Symposium on

Abstraction, Reformulation, and Approximation, ser. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence, S. Koenigand R. Holte, Eds., vol. 2371. Springer Verlag, 2002, pp. 326-327.

22. L. Zhao, “Tackling Post’s correspondence problem,” in Computers and Games, ser. Lecture Notes inArtificial Intelligence. Springer Verlag, 2002, to appear.

23. E. Sharlin, Y. Itoh, B. Watson, Y. Kitamura, L. Liu, and S. Sutphen, “Cognitive cubes: A tangibleuser interface for cognitive assessment,” in ACM Computer-Human Interfaces (CHI), 2002, pp.347-354.

24. J. van Rijswijck, “Learning goals in sports games,” Game Developers Conference, 2003, to appear25. C. Pinchak, P. Lu, J. Schaeffer, and M. Goldenberg, “The Canadian Internetworked Scientific

Supercomputer,” in High Performance Computing Systems and Applications (HPCS), 2003, pp. 193-199.

26. A. Botea, M. Müller, and J. Schaeffer, “Using abstraction for planning in sokoban,” in Computers andGames, ser. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence. Springer Verlag, to appear.

27. M. Müller, “Proof-set search,” in Computers and Games, ser. Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence.Springer Verlag, 2003, to appear.

28. M. Buro, “The evolution of strong Othello programs,” in Entertainment Computing-Technology andApplications, R. Nakatsu and J. Hoshino, Eds. Kluwer, 2003, pp. 81-88.

Magazine papers1. J. Schaeffer, “Tangled up in blue,” New Scientist, vol. 91, no. 3, May-June 2003, pp. 276-278.

Conference posters1. Y. Xu, A. Huckauf, W. Jager, P. Lu, J. Schaeffer, and C. Pinchak, “CISS-l experiment: Ab initio study

of chiral interactions,” in 39th International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC)Congress and 86th Conference of the Canadian Society for Chemistry, 2003, poster abstract, toappear.

2. B. Li, S. Buckingham, J. Schaeffer, A. Spencer, and W. Gallin, “Computational analysis of voltage-gated potassium channels,” in Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB), 2003, p. 131,poster abstract.

Abstract1. J. Schaeffer, “Solving the games people play,” in Seventh Computer Olympiad. Technical Report CS

02-03, Department of Computer Science, University of Maastricht, 2002, abstract for keynote talkat the Seventh Computer Olympiad.S

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MACHINE LEARNINGAlberta is a leading centre for machine learning• iCORE Chairs: Jonathan Schaeffer, Rich Sutton (starting 2003), Ian Witten (Visiting

Professor)• CRC chair: Dale Schuurmans• Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Machine Learning: Rob Holte, Russ Greiner, Randy

Goebel, Jonathan Schaeffer, Michael Bowling, Rich Sutton, Dale Schuurmans• U of A Computing Science:

Data mining - Joerg Sander, Mario Nascimento, Osmar Zaiane, Davood RafeiPattern recognition - Terry Caelli, Walter Bischof, Vadim BulitkoNatural language - Andrew Lin, Greg Kondrak

DATA OVERLOAD PROBLEM

• In business: Data volume doubles or triples every year, in decision making contexts(Globe & Mail, “How firms can cope with grip of data fear,” 21 November 2002)

• In biotechnology: “Automated sequencing technology accelerates the pace of inputto database, from the current rate of doubling every 20 months. High throughputfrom cDNA sequencing is expected to double the size of databases in less than oneyear.” National Library of Medicine Centre for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)

• Of online information: 2.1 billion publicly accessible pages, 7.3 million adder perday (Cyveillance, July 2000)

WHAT IS MACHINE LEARNING?

Developing efficient and robust algorithms for finding useful patterns in data.Machine learning refines raw data into useful information.

• Patterns in medical data diagnose diseases from early symptoms predict effectivenessof alternative therapies

• Patterns in manufacturing process data improve process control• Patterns in atomic probe microscope data improve understanding of molecular structure• Patterns in human web use improve effectiveness of e-business, improve accuracy of

navigation

Computers have learned:• to do accurate credit card approval

• to dispatch telephone technicians

• to optimize parameter settings forseparating oil from gas in an oil refinery

• to catalogue celestial objects (Fayyad etal. 1993)

• to identify genes (Delcher et al. 1995)

•Humans analysts are 50% accurate; Machinelearning was more than 70% accurate

•BellAtlantic saved $10 million per year

• in 10 minutes (human experts require more thanone day)

• automatically discovered 22 new quasars withmore than 92% accuracy

• automatically identifies more than 97% of genes



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SOFTWARE ENGINEERINGDECISION SUPPORTiCORE ProfessorComputer Science and Electrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Calgary

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The discipline of Software Engineering Decision Support integrates human and computational intelligenceto facilitate better decisions during the software life cycle. This is a highly interdisciplinary enterpriseusing concepts from other disciplines such as computational intelligence, cognitive science, and knowledgeengineering where empirical evaluation is a fundamental principle.

The main achievements over the last year have been the development of novel approaches and toolssupporting early life-cycle decisions. The most successful results were achieved in the area of softwarerelease planning under resource and budget constraints. Computational efficient evolutionary algorithmshave been designed and implemented, providing a set of most promising solutions. The final decision-maker can chose out of those solutions, taking into account further implicit and time-dependent constraints.First steps towards developing a commercial product out of these results have been conducted. In addition,a new approach called Soft Requirements Negotiator has been developed that initially uses qualitative,and later quantitative information to provide decision support.

The reported results are part of a broader effort to develop an integrated decision support system withintelligent components for knowledge retrieval, analysis and reasoning, multi-criteria decision aid,simulation and negotiation. Assuming a process-sensitive and web-based ‘Intelligent Decision Guide’, thesystem will proactively support process decisions in software development and evolution, to mitigateproject risks and to generate the most promising solution alternatives taking into account differentstakeholder interests, project parameters and business constraints.

During the reporting period, further progress has been achieved in creating a core team of researchersand in establishing or enhancing dynamic national and international collaborations. The team has startedto prepare the 16th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering,taking place in Banff in June 2004. This will be an excellent opportunity to present research excellence toboth academia and industry.

DR GUENTHER RUHE

Dr Guenther Ruhe is an iCORE Professor leading the Software Engineering Decision Support Laboratory, establishedin the department of computer science and department of electrical and computer engineering at the University ofCalgary. iCORE has committed $350,000 per year for five years, for a total of $1.75 million dollars to establish thisresearch group.


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Background and MotivationSoftware Engineering DecisionSupport is of critical interest toboth research and industry.Decisions must be made duringall iterations of the software lifecycle. Currently, many of thosecrucial decisions are made in anad hoc manner, based onsimplistic rules of thumb, andwithout links to best knowledge,models, or experience. The impactof poor decisions on the qualityof our software becomes morepronounced the earlier in thelifecycle those decisions are made.The main characteristics ofdecision-making during earlylifecycle phases are that (i) thequantity and quality ofinformation available at this stageis typically low, (ii) that theprocesses and available decisionparameters are dynamicallychanging, and (iii) that a numberof conflicting stakeholderinterests with different objectivesand constraints must be balancedand optimized.

Intelligent decision support ismainly required in situationscharacterized by the followingfactors: complexity, uncertainty,presence of multiple stakeholders,large quantities of (organization-specific) data, and/or rapidchanges in problem parametersand related information. Support,here, means providing access toinformation that would otherwisebe unavailable or difficult toobtain, facilitating generationand evaluation of solutionalternatives and prioritizingalternatives by using explicitmodels that provide structure for

particular decisions.Only a few examples of

software engineering decisionsupport systems exist presently.None of them is specialized tocharacteristics mentioned above.Additionally, existing systemstypically consider decisionsupport as static, not as acontinuous problem-solvingactivity. What is missing is anunderstanding of decision-making as a crucial part of theprocesses of evolutionarysoftware development, theexistence of active links to humanand computational intelligence,and reusing prior decisions,knowledge, and experience.

Research at the laboratory forSoftware Engineering DecisionSupport is oriented towardsexcellence related to two focusareas of the strategic iCOREresearch strategy: “SoftwareSystems” and “IntelligentInformation Systems”. To achievenovel research results, we proposean interdisciplinary approachusing concepts and results fromother disciplines such ascomputational intelligence,cognitive science, knowledgeengineering, management science,and optimization. In more detail,the following objectives are aimed:

(i) To develop a hybridmethodology “Intelligent Supportfor Evolutionary SoftwareDevelopment” integrating andenhancing methods and techniquesfrom related disciplines. Specialemphasis is on:• uncertainty and

incompleteness ofinformation;

• involvement of differentstakeholders;

• conflicting objectives andconstraints;

• dynamically changingproject, process andprocess parameters.

(ii) To instantiate and adapt theproposed methodology in thecontext of seven classes ofproblems of evolutionarysoftware development:• release planning;• soft requirements

negotiations;• trade-off analysis for

requirements selection;• requirements-centric

selection of COTSproducts;

• design decisions forevolvable systems;

• simulation-based decisionsupport for softwarequality assurance;

• scheduling and resourceplanning for softwareproject management.

The long-term goal of theproject is to provide a prototypeintelligent decision supportsystem. Assuming a process-sensitive and web-based “intelligentdecision guide,” the system willproactively support processdecisions in evolutionary develop-ment, to mitigate project risksand to generate the mostpromising solution alternativestaking into account actual projectparameters and constraints.


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RESEARCH PROJECTS

Software release planningunder budget and resourceconstraintsThere is a growing recognitionthat an incremental approach tosoftware development is oftenmore suitable and less risky thanthe traditional waterfall approach.This preference is demonstratedby the current popularity of agilemethods, all of which adopt anincremental approach todelivering software rapidly. In theincremental software processmodel, requirements are gatheredin the initial stages and, takingtechnical dependencies and userpriorities into account and theeffort required for eachrequirement, the system isdivided into increments. Theseincrements are then successivelydelivered to customers. It is oftentrue that any given requirementcould be delivered in one, severalor even all releases. Consequently,there is a need to decide whichrequirements should be deliveredin any given release. Since thereare likely to be many differentusers all with different viewpointson what the user value ofrequirements is, this decisionis potentially very complex.Exacerbating this is the fact thatthere is a range of constraints, oneof which is the desired maximumeffort for any given increment. Inaddition to this factor, risk is animportant consideration. A givenproject may have a risk referent.This is a level of risk whichshould not be exceeded. In anincremental delivery model thismeans that a given release hasalso a risk referent.

In response to these issues

we have developed anevolutionary and iterativeapproach called EVOLVE+ thatoffers quantitative analysis fordecision support in softwarerelease planning. The model isextended from and takes intoaccount:• priorities of the

representative stakeholdergroups with respect torequirements;

• effort estimates forimplementing eachrequirement and effortbounds for each release;

• precedence constraints,where one requirementmust occur in a releaseprior to the release foranother requirement;

• coupling constraints wherea group of requirementsmust occur in the samerelease;

• resource constraints wherecertain requirements maynot be in the same release;and

• a risk factor estimate foreach requirement and amaximum risk referentvalue, calculated from thisfor each release.

Soft requirementsnegotiationsSoft requirements negotiator(SRN) is a decision supportmethod for requirements selectionunder incompleteness anduncertainty. Given a set ofrequirements, the decision makerneeds support in the process ofgradually reducing, evaluatingand prioritizing the candidate setsof requirements. In our new

approach SRN, the initial data areused under consideration of theirincompleteness and uncertainty.SRN explicitly considers the factthat the available information isalways incomplete and uncertain,but gradually becomes better andbetter during the negotiationprocess. The approach is initiallybased on a simple three-pointscale for all the involvedattributes. Later on, quantitativeinformation is used to determinetrade-offs between the supposedvalue (or priorities) of selectedrequirements, and the estimatedeffort to realize them.

We do not compute the resultsfrom the given data but use thesedata as a guide to assist thedecision maker in the explorationof the solution space and in theconstruction of the results. As afinal result, we propose a set ofthe most appropriate solutions.Our approach is soft in the sensethat it does not depend on a rigidmodel and does not make strongassumptions about the availableinformation. It was inspired bythe paradigm of multi-criteriadecision aid, in particular theconcordance/non-discordanceprinciple.

Trade-off analysis forrequirements negotiationEvaluation, prioritization andselection of candidate requirementsare of tremendous importanceand impact for subsequentsoftware development. Effort,time as well as quality constraintshave to be taken into account.Typically, different stakeholdershave conflicting priorities andthe requirements of all these


stakeholders have to be balancedin an appropriate way to ensuremaximum value of the final setof requirements. Trade-offanalysis is needed to proactivelyexplore the impact of certaindecisions in terms of all thecriteria and constraints.

The proposed method calledQuantitative WinWin uses anevolutionary approach toprovide support forrequirements negotiations.The novelty of the presentedidea is four-fold. Firstly, ititeratively uses the analyticalhierarchy process (AHP) fora stepwise analysis to balancethe stakeholders’ preferencesrelated to different classes ofrequire-ments. Secondly, require-ments selection is based onpredicting and rebalancing itsimpact on effort, time and quality.Both prediction and rebalancing isbased on the simulation modelprototype GENSIM. Thirdly, thealternative solution sets offered fordecision-making are deve-lopedincrementally based on thresholdsfor the degree of importance ofrequirements and some heuristicsto find a best fit to constraints.Finally, trade-off analysis is usedto determine non-dominatedextensions of the maximum valuethat is achievable under resourceand quality constraints. As mainresult, quantitative WinWinproposes a small number ofpossible sets of requirements fromwhich the actual decision-makerfinally can select the mostappropriate one.

Requirements-centricselection of COTS productsAs the use of COTS componentsbecomes more and more

prevalent in the creation of largesystems, the need for assistancefor the selection of suitablecomponents in the early stage ofthe software life cyclegrows. COTS-based SoftwareDevelopment (CBSD) focuses onbuilding large software systemsby integrating previously

existing software components.CBSD’s success depends onthe successful evaluation andselection of COTS softwarecomponents to meet customerrequirements. However, thisprocess is faced with severaldifficulties: uncertainty, incom-pleteness and even incon-sistencyof the information available,instability of proposed systemrequirements, as well as a greatvariety of objectives andconstraints for the actualdevelopment process and the finalproduct. Objectives can berelated to usability, correctness,compliance to requirements,stability, or performance. Con-straints can be related to time,cost or fitness to architecture anddependencies between softwarecomponents.

A number of methodologicalproposals have been formulatedto improve effectiveness of theindividual selection of COTScomponents based on the fitnessto requirements. However, evenmore benefits can be expected if

we look for multiple COTScomponents to be integrated froma global evaluation perspective.The problem is to support theselection of a combinationof components. As we areencountering typical trade-offrelationships, support here meansthe generation of a set of

most promising solutionalternatives, from which thedecision maker can finallyselect the best fit consideringalso implicit and subjectiveaspects.

In a large software system,components depend on eachother and should not beevaluated individually. The

domination procedure usuallyused in single and local COTSselection can easily lead to sub-optimal solutions from aglobal perspective. Since manyinteracting factors influence theglobal selection, these factorsshould be considered in finalsolution sets. The globalperspective is also needed in orderto avoid the interferenceof a new component selectedfor a subsystem with othercomponents previously selected forother subsystems, and to avoidundesirable restrictions for furtherselections. We are then facing aproblem that goes beyonda decision among severalalternatives, but rather anoptimization problem where anoptimal combination of COTSproducts has to be found.

Simulation-based decisionsupport for software qualityassuranceSoftware development companieshave real constraints forcompetitive market edge and

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TRADE-OFF ANALYSIS IS NEEDED TOPROACTIVELY EXPLORE THE IMPACT OFCERTAIN DECISIONS IN TERMS OF ALL THECRITERIA AND CONSTRAINTS.


delivery of a quality product.Decision processes are the drivingforces to organize a corporation’ssuccess. To achieve qualityprocesses and practices there arepermanent trades-offs to thedifferent aspects related to thefinal quality of the product. Intoday’s markets, these trade-offsare forced by the pressures ofconstraint management (e.g.budget, schedule and resources).

The development of asimulation model based oninformation about current or pastreality helps understand whysystem states that are of interestbehave in the observed way givencertain start conditions andexogenous influences are in place.The simulation models reproducecurrent or past behaviour ofreality, systematic variation ofmodel parameters (i.e., sensitivityanalysis or inclusion andexclusion of model structures)and help in understanding systembehaviour. In particular, thenature of trade-off relationshipsbetween system states can beinvestigated this way.

We consider softwaredevelopment from a systemtheoretic perspective and assume

the existence of global (business)goals when studying systems.Starting from an initialunderstanding of the systemunder consideration, the mostcritical and worst understoodparts of the overall system aremost promising candidates for anin-depth investigation. Thisinvestigation can be done bydesigning and implementinga GQM-based measurementprogram with the goal derivedfrom the subsystem underinvestigation. The results fromthis program are used to betterunderstand system structure andsystem behaviour at this point.This process can be iteratedseveral times, where not only onemeasurement program needs tobe considered at each step. Theapplication of this interactive(between SD and GQM) andevolutionary (models, results, andinsights are evolving and relyingon each other) process results in:• a sequence of SD models

with increasing accuracyand validity in describingreality;

• a sequence of GQM plans(including existing results)derived from the global

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improvement goal(s) andthe perspective of thewhole system;

• a means to incrementallyimprove the validity ofboth the SD models andthe GQM models bychecking their respectiveconsistency;

• a method to combine theresults of GQM with thepower of SD to show howdifferent individual/localgoals fit together; and

• a method that combinesexperiments in a virtualworld by conductingsimulation runs withexperiments in a real worldby performing goal-oriented measurement.

Based on descriptive modelingof existing processes, productsand quality related attributes,simulation will be used to betterunderstand and predict theimpact of the different verificationand validation activities. Theprocess models themselves will beinitially based on the unifiedprocess and will be later tailoredto customers’ specific processes.

TEAM LEADER

Guenther Ruhe

TITLE

iCORE Professor, Software Engineering Decision Support

RESEARCH TEAM


OTHER TEAM MEMBERS

Amandeep

Jinfang Sheng

Kornelia Streb

TITLE

Research Associate Department CS

Visiting Researcher, Department of ECE

Adminstrative Assistant


An Ngo The

Des Greer

Dietmar Pfahl

TOPIC

Computational Intelligence, Department of Computer Science

Release Planning, University of Belfast

Software Process Simulation, Fraunhofer InstituteExperimental Software Engineering

PHD CANDIDATES

Abdallah Mohamed

Jingzhou Li

Michael Ochs

Liang Zheng

TOPIC

Bayesian Belief Networks

Decision Support Processes

COTS Selection

Evolutionary Modeling Intergating Measurement andSystem Dynamics

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COLLABORATORS

Dr Maurer

Dr Denzinger

Dr Walker

Dr Eberlein

Dr Far

TITLE

Associate Professor at Department of Computer Science

Associate Professor at Department of Computer Science

Assistant Professor at Department of Computer Science

Associate Professor at Department of Electrical & ComputerEngineering

Associate Professor at Department Electrical and ComputerEngineering


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MSC CANDIDATES

Zhizhong Li

Joseph Momoh

Wei Shen

Yuhang Wang

Qun Zhou

TOPIC

Requirements Management using Rough Set Analysis

Decision Support for Software Project Management

Trade-off Design Decisions

Decision Support for Perspective-based Software Inspections

Effort Estimation for COTS-based Software Development

COLLABORATIONS

RESEARCH COLLABORATIONSFraunhoder IESE andFraunhofer-Center MarylandIn accordance to the AcademicCooperation Research Exchangebetween the University ofCalgary and the FraunhoferInstitute for ExperimentalSoftware Engineering (“FhIESE”), the Laboratory forSoftware Engineering DecisionSupport and Fh IESE agreed toa collaborative research andpersonnel exchange. On thisbasis, Dr Dietmar Pfahl will visitthe laboratory for three months.Collaboration with Fraunhofer-Center Maryland has just startedafter a visit in Fall 2002.

University of New South WalesA similar agreement as signedwith Fh IESE is in preparationto be signed with the researchgroup of Dr Ross Jeffrey atUniversity of New South Wales.It intends to conduct jointresearch and exchanging PhDstudents based on that.

INFORMAL COLLABORATIONSInformal collaborations werelaunched especially with the

groups of Dr Lionel Briand(Carleton University, Canada), DrKhaled El-Emam (NRC, IIT), DrJens Jahnke (University ofVictoria, Canada), Dr David Raffo(University of Portland, USA),and Dr Goivanne Cantone(University of Rome, Italy).

COLLABORATION WITH INDUSTRYBrycolAn NSERC CRD proposal titled“Simulation-Based DecisionSupport Software QualityAssurance” was initially sub-mitted to CSER, the (Canadian)Consortium for Software Engin-eering Research. Created in 1996,CSER is a multi-party, industry-led research program, gearedtoward solving selected industrialproblems in software engineering.The project called SimQuali aimsto benefit the collaborators, theirstudents and the Canadianeconomy in various ways. As asmall company, Brycol Consultingcannot afford to support aresearch department. This projectprovides the opportunity forBrycol to benefit from thecollaborative research results

embedded in an interaction/argumentation device whendiscussing trade-off in softwarequality improvements andoutcomes. The intelligent decisionsupport tool will provide thecapability to evaluate theoutcomes of feasibility alternativesbased on standard variables forverification and validationtechniques.

MotorolaA proposal for funding of onePhD student was submitted to theUniversity partnership programof Motorola. The project isdevoted to develop a new andinnovative methodology tosupport analysis and decisions insoftware system development. Inour new approach, the initial dataare used under considerationof their incompletenessand uncertainty. Instead ofcomputing the results from thegiven (uncertain) data, our newapproach provides the decision-maker “a guided tour” in thesolution space and assists him/her in the construction of the finalselection. The support tool will


supplement the Motorola’s use ofthe Decision Driven(tm) designmethodology and its existingMotorola DecisionLink toolfor building and maintainingdecision networks for the stage ofsoftware analysis and designs.

CorelCollaboration with Corel is devotedto release planning. Their maininterest is to provide plans that fitto resource and budgetconstraints. No comm-ercial product for thatpurpose is available onthe market. Corel hascontacted the lab basedon a self-running demothat is provided athttp://www.releaseplanner.com. In accor-dance to discussionsconducted with Inno-Center and UniversityTechnologies Inc.(UTI), the strategy is tohave Corel as a referencecustomer for a laterproduct development.For access to businessrelevant real-world data, a disclosureagreement as signed.

Nortel Networks and AlternaTechnologiesTwo non-academic organizationshave joined the proposedNSERC Strategic Project Grant:Alterna Technologies Group Inc.(Calgary) and Nortel Networks(CDMA Base-station Development,Calgary). The CDMA wirelessgroup of Nortel Networks ispresently supporting threereleases in the application field,plus three releases in develop--ment and one release in the

planning phase. The basetransceiver station is primarilydriven by software. Each release,the software team adds morefunctionality to its applicationcode. Release planning andrequirements negotiation is ofcrucial importance for businesssuccess.

Alterna provides and inte-grates a full suite of internet-based global e-finance solutions

allowing customers to maximizetheir visibility to liquidity,improve productivity, reducecosts, and increase shareholdervalue. Evolutionary developmentprocesses are an essential meansto better react to changingmarkets and policies.

With both partners, we haveextensively discussed the projectgoals and how these match withtheir priorities and currentdemands. In their letter ofsupport, each expresses its strongcommitment for in-kindcontributions to achieve projectgoals.

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MULTIDISCIPLINE OR MULTI-INSTITUTIONAL PARTNERSHIPSAlberta Software EngineeringResearch Center ASERCThe Alberta Software EngineeringResearch Consortium ASERC iscomposed of faculty and graduatestudents from the University ofAlberta and the University ofCalgary that are engaged inapplied research in softwareengineering and partner companies

that currently participateor intend to participate incollaborative researchwith the academicmembers.

International SoftwareEngineering ResearchNetwork (ISERN)The software engineeringresearch group at theUniversity of Calgarysuccessfully appliedto become a member ofthe International SoftwareEngineering ResearchNetwork ISERN. Thisgives us excellent

opportunities to further extendcollaboration with leadingresearchers and researchinstitutions all over the world.For a list of the 33 memberorganizations, see http://www.iese.fhg.de/network/ISERN/pub/isern.list_of_members.html.

ALBERTA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCHALBERTA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCHALBERTA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCHALBERTA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCHALBERTA SOFTWARE ENGINEERING RESEARCHCENTER (ASERC)CENTER (ASERC)CENTER (ASERC)CENTER (ASERC)CENTER (ASERC)ASERC is composed of faculty and graduatestudents from the University of Alberta andthe University of Calgary that are engagedin applied research in software engineeringand partner companies that currentlyparticipate or intend to participate incollaborative research with the academicmembers.


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FUNDING

Current funding is based on the iCORE research grant ($350,000 over a period of five years),and an existing NSERC grant ‘Decision Support for COTS-Based Software Development’with an annual funding of $24,000 over a period of four years.

The proposal for an Alberta Research Center for Innovative Software EngineeringTechnologies (AISET) including 24 researchers from six departments located in three AlbertaUniversities was asking for funding of about $2 million over a period of five years. TheAlberta Ingenuity Science and Engineering Advisory Council finally evaluated the proposalin the category B (second best in a four point scale). This means, the proposal did not receivefunding but may advance to full proposal stage in future competitions, with help from Ingenuityand institution. SEAC especially recommended continued support from Alberta institutionsand iCORE.

Three more proposals have been submitted:(i) NSERC Strategic Project Grant asking for about $180.000 over a period of three

years plus in-kind contributions from Nortel Networks and Alterna Technologies.(ii) NSERC CRD Grant asking for about $100.000 including in-kind contributions from

Brycol Consulting.(iii) Funding for one for PhD student was submitted to Motorola’s University Partnership

Program requesting $25.000 over a period of three years.


Current commercialization is focused on a tool for software release planning. No commercialproduct for that purpose is available on the market. In accordance to discussions conductedwith Inno-Centre and University Technologies Inc. (UTI), the strategy is to further conductresearch in this context to incrementally develop a powerful support tool and to use Corel as afirst reference customer for a later product development.

For access to business relevant real-world data, a disclosure agreement was signed. Currently,software release planning is widely done ad hoc and without tool support. A comprehensiveanalysis of existing software solutions and pending patents in this area was conducted byUTI Calgary. The results have shown that no competitive products or results are currentlyavailable for this dynamic and complex task.

PUBLICATIONS

Accepted publications by refereed journals1. G. Ruhe, A. Eberlein, and D. Pfahl, “Trade-off analysis for requirements selection,” International

Journal on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering (in press).2. D. Pfahl, O. Laitenberger, G. Ruhe, J. Dorsch, and T. Krivobokova, “Evaluating the Learning

Effectiveness of Using Simulations in Software Project Management Education: Results from aTwo Times Replicated Experiment,” Information and Software Technology (in press).


3. D. Pfahl and G. Ruhe, “IMMoS: A New Framework for Integrated Measurement, Modelling, andSimulation,” International Journal of Software Process: Improvement and Practice (in press).

4. D. Pfahl, O. Laitenberger, G. Ruhe, and J. Dorsch, “An Externally Replicated Experiment forEvaluating the Learning Effectiveness of Using Simulations in Software Project ManagementEducation,” International Journal on Empirical Software Engineering (in press).

Refereed Conference Papers1. G. Ruhe and D. Greer, “Quantitative studies in release planning under risk and resource constraints,”

appears in: International Symposium on Empirical Software Engineering, 2003.2. G. Ruhe, “Intelligent Support for Selection of COTS Products,” Net.ObjectDays, Erfurt, Springer,

2003, pp. 34-45.3. G. Ruhe, A. Eberlein, and D. Pfahl, “Quantitative WinWin - A New Method for Decision Support in

Requirements Negotiation,” 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and KnowledgeEngineering, Ischia, Italy, July 2002, pp. 159-166.

4. I. Grützner, D. Pfahl, and G. Ruhe, “Systematic courseware development using an integratedengineering style method,” World Congress Networked Learning: Challenges and Solutions forVirtual Education (NL 2002), Berlin, Germany, 2002.

Books1. G. Ruhe, “Software Engineering Decision Support - Methodology and Applications,” Innovations in

Decision Support Systems, ed. Tonfoni and Jain, International Series on Advanced Intelligence Volume3, 2003, pp. 143-174.

Workshop on Software Engineering Decision SupportThe first International Workshop on Software Engineering Decision Support was held in conjunctionwith the 14th International Conference on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering SEKE’2002in Ischia, Italy. The workshop was a great success, and the iCORE Chair was asked to organize a successorevent in 2003 again. Ten high quality papers were finally accepted after a peer review process. A specialissue of the Journal on Software Engineering and Knowledge Engineering will be edited with advanced andimproved versions of the four to five best papers of the workshop.

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NOTES





ABOUT iCOREMissionThe mission of the Alberta Informatics Circle ofResearch Excellence (iCORE) is to attract and growa critical mass of exceptional researchers in the fieldof informatics, that is, areas of computer science,electrical and computer engineering, physics,mathematics and other disciplines related toinformation and communications technology (ICT).

Target areasiCORE is directing its support to areas in whichAlberta has a chance to develop internationallyrecognized research teams. It is also focusing onareas in which Alberta companies are active, so thatintellectual property and valuable knowledgeworkers resulting from iCORE’s investment willhave compelling reasons to stay in Alberta.

Chair and Professor Establishment (CPE) Grants

iCORE Chairs are awarded to exceptionalresearchers with outstanding research records thatplace them in the top five percent of their fields.iCORE Professors are mid-career researchers withoutstanding potential whose record may not yetjustify a Chair position.

Research teams funded may vary in size from asingle Chair or Professor working alone to teamswith ten or more members. iCORE funds can beused to cover the salaries of chairs, professors,research associates, postdoctoral fellows andgraduate students, as well as some research operatingand equipment costs. The research itself may rangefrom fundamental to applied.

CPE grants are normally awarded for five years,represent one-half or less of the total budget, andare renewable on a competitive basis.

Industry Chair Establishment (ICE) Grants

iCORE Industrial Chairs are awarded to researchersundertaking high-caliber internationallycompetitive research. Industrial Chairs are alwaysdeveloped in conjunction with a sponsor company(or companies) that has demonstrated a willingnessand ability to collaborate closely with the researchteam, and to exploit proposed research in Alberta.The program is also typically matched with NSERCawards.

Funded research teams may vary in size from oneto ten or more members, and may include a Chair,professors, research associates, postdoctoralresearchers, graduate students and research staff. Thefunds may also cover operating and equipment costs.

ICE grants are normally awarded for five years,represent one-third or less of the total budget, andare renewable on a competitive basis.

Focus on peopleiCORE invests in people - the highest caliberresearch scientists who work on fundamental andapplied problems in informatics. Around theseleaders, world-class research teams are developed.

THE ROLE OF THE ALBERTA INFORMATICSTHE ROLE OF THE ALBERTA INFORMATICSTHE ROLE OF THE ALBERTA INFORMATICSTHE ROLE OF THE ALBERTA INFORMATICSTHE ROLE OF THE ALBERTA INFORMATICSCIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCECIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCECIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCECIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCECIRCLE OF RESEARCH EXCELLENCE

iCORE was established in October 1999by the Government of Alberta to fosterworld-class university-based research thatsupports the ICT sector. This investmentstems from a belief that strongfundamental research is at the core of ahealthy economic sector, which in turncreates social, cultural and economicadvantages for Albertans.

FLAGSHIP GRANT PROGRAMS

For more information on iCORE’s strategy andareas of research focus, visit www.icore.ca


EMERGING CLUSTERS

NETWORKS AND WIRELESS COMMUNICATION START DATEWireless Communications (Dr Norman C. Beaulieu) 2000-01Advanced Technology Information Processing Systems (Dr Graham Jullien) 2000-01Wireless Location (Dr Gérard Lachapelle) 2000-01Broadband Wireless Networks, Protocols, Applications, (Dr Carey Williamson) 2000-01and PerformanceWireless Traffic Modeling and Simulation (Dr Carey Williamson) 2001-02High Capacity Digital Communications (Dr Christian Schlegel) 2001-02Algorithmic Number Theory and Cryptography (Dr Hugh Williams) 2001-02Wireless Science and Technology (Dr Jim Haslett) 2002-03

NANOSCALE AND QUANTUM INFORMATICSNanoscale Engineering Physics (Dr Michael Brett) 2000-01Nanoscale Engineering Physics (Dr Mark Freeman) 2000-01Nanoscale ICT (Dr Robert Wolkow) 2002-03Quantum Information Science (Dr Barry Sanders) 2003-04

INTELLIGENT SOFTWARE SYSTEMSHigh Performance Artificial Intelligence (Dr Jonathan Schaeffer) 2000-01Software Engineering Decision Support (Dr Guenther Ruhe) 2001-02Reinforcement Learning and Artificial Intelligence (Rich Sutton) 2003-04Intelligent Oils Sands Mining Systems (Hong Zhang) 2003-04

Graduate Student Scholarships (GSS)•Designed to recruit exceptional graduate students•Operates in conjunction with NSERC, Alberta

Ingenuity and other major awards•Up to two hundred awards annually

Visiting Professor (VP) Grants•Designed to bring internationally recognized researchers

to Alberta for six months to two years to developpartnerships and possibly recruit Chairs or Professors

ICT Strategy Planning and Recruiting(ISPR) Grants•Designed to support the interaction with potential

candidates for major iCORE award programs• Supports ICT conferences and workshops in Alberta in

areas where a Chair or Professor award may be made

The iCORE Lectures•A lecture series with

iCORE award holders heldat a host university andbroadcast live to the otheruniversities in Alberta viathe Alberta VideoClassroom Network

Banff Summit• An annual event

commencing in 2004• Week-long think tank of

Alberta and internationalICT researchers

• Focused workshopsbringing iCOREresearchers and industrytogether to work on currentissues in ICT research

SUPPORT PROGRAMS

Documents

Research Report - ualberta.ca › ~hcdc › Library › iCORE_RR5.pdfResearch Report Report on research programs April 2002 to March 2003 $28 million iCORE investment yields $223 million