ECE Research Seminar Series

The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department is honored to present our Distinguished-Speaker Jafar Saniie, Filmer Endowed Chair Professor and chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering here at Illinois Tech. Saniie's talk is on "Ultrasonic Target Detection and Communications."

Abstact

Ultrasonic imaging applications often resort to signal modeling, parameter estimation and data analysis for aberration detection, pattern recognition, and classification. In this study, we present Split-Spectrum Processing (SSP) for ultrasonic target detection in the presence of strong clutter, and the Chirplet Signal Decomposition (CSD) to characterize highly complex and interfering patterns of ultrasonic scattered echoes for signal analysis and imaging. The chirplet decomposition of ultrasonic signals facilitates a systematic, tractable and quantitative approach to correlate the estimated chirplets to the actual physical characteristics of the objects and their embedded environment that generates scattered ultrasonic echoes. Signal decomposition and identifying the source of ultrasonic signals has a broad range of applications including nondestructive testing, structural health monitoring, and tissue characterization.
Ultrasonic communications through solid channels are adversely affected by absorption, scattering, refractions, reverberations, beam skewing, dispersion, mode conversation, and multipath. And, above all, these challenges are compounded by the geometrical structure of solids and type of ultrasonic waves. To explore and combat these challenges, we have developed a Software Defined Ultrasonic Communication (SDUC) System-on-Chip (SoC) platform which is reconfigurable and offers high-performance computational capability. We have examined the SDUC system using AM (Amplitude Modulation), OOK (on and off keying), BPSK (Binary Phase Shift Keying), QPSK (quadrature phase shift keying), and OFDM (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing). The SDUC system is tested using differently structured solid channels (such as blocks, plates, and pipes); and bitrates and bit rate errors are examined using 2.5 MHz ultrasonic transducers.

Over the years there has been an ongoing effort in the ECASP Research Laboratory to engage undergraduate students in research related to signal and image processing, sensors, machine vision, autonomous navigation, embedded computing, and communications. A brief video presentation of the research/development projects of undergraduate students will be presented.

Biography

Jafar Saniie (IEEE Life Fellow for contributions to ultrasonic signal processing for detection, estimation, and imaging) received his B.S. degree with high honors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in 1974. He received his M.S. degree in Biomedical Engineering in 1977 from Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, and his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1981 from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. In 1981 Saniie joined the Department of Applied Physics, University of Helsinki, Finland, to research photothermal and photoacoustic imaging. Since 1983 he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology where he is the department chair, the Filmer Endowed Chair Professor, and director of the Embedded Computing and Signal Processing (ECASP) Research Laboratory. Saniie's research interests and activities are in ultrasonic signal and image processing, software-defined ultrasonic communications, statistical pattern recognition, estimation and detection, data compression, time-frequency analysis, embedded digital systems, digital signal processing with FPGAs and system-on-chip, and ultrasonic nondestructive testing and imaging. Saniie has been a Technical Program Committee member of the IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium since 1987 (The Chair of Sensors, NDE and Industrial Applications Group, 2004-2013), the lead guest editor for the IEEE UFFC Special Issue on Ultrasonics and Ferroelectrics (August 2014) and the IEEE UFFC Special Issue on Novel Embedded Systems for Ultrasonic Imaging and Signal Processing (July 2012), associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics, and Frequency Control since 1994, IEEE UFFC Ultrasonic Awards Chair (2018 and 2019). Saniie was the general chair for the 2014 IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium in Chicago. He served as the ultrasonics vice president of the IEEE UFFC Society (2014-2017). He has over 330 publications and has supervised 26 M.S. and 35 Ph.D. dissertations to completion. He received the 2007 University Excellence in Teaching Award.

Note: This seminar is open to everyone at Illinois Tech. For more information regarding this seminar, please contact Mahesh Krishnamurthy in ECE, Illinois Tech Phone: 7-7232, Email: kmahesh@ece.iit.edu