April 15: Disruptive Technology Development in the areas of Wireless Sensors, Smart Antennas and CEM
Dr. Tayfun Özdemir
President, Virtual EM Inc., Ann Arbor, MI
Date: Friday, April 15, 2011 - 2:00pm - 3:00pm
Abstract:
Wireless Sensors: Bio/Chemical sensing has been around many decades and has immense potential to improve human life by making it possible to detect explosives, ensure food safety, and monitor environment, to name a few. The sensitivity and selectivity of the sensors must be increased by orders of magnitude to face today’s sensing challenges. Merging wireless technology with sensing makes the system more effective in terms of detection range, ease of deployment and system management. This talk will present high-risk/high-return technology development efforts at Virtual EM with particular emphasis on detecting Biological Warfare Agents (BWAs) and Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs).
Self-Structuring Antenna (SSA): Proliferation of wireless technologies and their applications gave way to conflicting requirements for delivering higher throughput at lower power and lower cost. Modestly priced smart antenna technologies are filling the gap between inexpensive passive antennas and expensive active phased arrays, and the SSA technology is one such offering. Talk will present the description of the patented technology, current prototypes for infrastructure monitoring and space applications, and the technology roadmap for next generation consumer wireless applications.
Hardware Acceleration for Computational Electromagnetics (CEM): A typical antenna design engineer today uses CEM software for modeling simple resonant antennas since modeling larger systems takes long to run on desktop systems or require prohibitively large investments in massively parallel computers with low Flops/$ ratio. Therefore, accurately predicting the performance of an antenna array or its performance on a large platform such as an aircraft or ship is beyond the reach of an average antenna designer today. The culprit is the general purpose processor employed in today’s computational machines and the solution is the special purpose processor, i.e., an Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC). This talk will present the proof-of-concept desktop system currently being commercialized by Virtual EM Inc. as well as the technology road map being pursued for developing the first ASIC for accelerating Method-of-Moments (MoM) computations. The talk will also address the importance and challenges of developing and commercializing disruptive technologies from the point of view of a small technology firm.
Short Bio:
Dr. Tayfun Özdemir is the President of Virtual EM Inc., where he manages daily operations and leads business development. Virtual EM is an R&D house funded by U.S. Department of Defense, NASA and NSF contracts involving wireless sensors, antennas, and computational electromagnetics. Dr. Özdemir holds a patent on a planar integrated antenna and has over 20 years of experience in his field of expertise. He published 6 journal papers and two book chapters, made over 50 conference presentations, and serves as the Chair of the AP/MTT/ED Chapter of the Southeast Michigan Section of IEEE. Dr. Özdemir was also the chair of the 2010 IEEE Great Lakes Technology Symposium held in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and chairs the 2012 organizing committee.
