Wireless Communications and lnformation Processing (WiCom) Group
The WiCom group supports wide range of fundamental as well as applied research in the areas of wireless communication and information processing. The core expertise of the group lies in mathematical/statistical modeling, estimation and detection/decision theory, optimization and control theory, and information theory. The group has received funding from federal and state agencies such as National science foundation, NASA EPSCOR program, Kansas Dept. of Transportation (KDoT), Sandia National Labs (Department of Energy), U.S Marines (M2 Technologies), State of Kansas, Kansas State University Targeted excellence program as well as industry partners (e.g., Garmin Inc., Trisquare Communications, etc.). Researchers in the group have contributed to over 60 peer reviewed publications in the last five years.
Key projects in the wireless communication area over the last five years include design of a practical cognitive radio; resource allocation and quality of service assurance in a competitive cognitive radio network; precoding for MIMO and MIMOOFDM systems; coexistence issues between ultrawideband and GPS systems; multiuser detection in MC-CDMA systems, and biologically inspired spreading sequence design strategies. The group's contribution to the fields of spread spectrum communication and MIMO precoding has resulted in two patent applications.
Projects in the area of information processing in sensor networks include resource allocation in collaborative target tracking; information fusion strategies for distributed event detection over bandwidth constrained networks; optimal control based sensor deployment strategies; sensor fusion in biomedical applications, networked control of distributed systems, and automated pavement distress detection via image processing and sensor fusion methods.
Communication Circuits Laboratory
The department's communications circuits laboratory (CCL) conducts coordinated teaching and research in analog and radio frequency (RF) design. Within the teaching area, students design, build, and test complete radios and radar systems at VHF through microwave frequencies. This gives our graduates practical, hands-on experience necessary for this field of engineering. Our research efforts have been primarily focused on design of transceivers in integrated circuit form, with special emphasis on the modeling and application of high-Q spiral inductors and performance of semiconductor processes.
Students and faculty connected with the CCL have experience with standard bulk-CMOS, silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and silicon-on-sapphire (SOS), and GaAs integrated circuit processes. Designs are created with tools from both Agilent and Cadence, and tested at the board and chip levels with industry-calibre measurement equipment and probing stations. An example of research and development work is the Mars microtransceiver recently developed in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This three-year project resulted in a complete RFIC chipset for future missions to the planet Mars. See http://www.ece. ksu.edu/research/mars/ for additional information.
