Distinguished Lecturers’ Talks

Presentations by IEEE Distinguished Lecturers

on Monday morning, January 16, 2021

Microwave Near-field Imaging of Human Tissue: Hopes, Challenges, Outlook

Dr. Natalia K. Nikolova, Canada Research Chair in High Frequency Electronics Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

Abstract

More than 40 years ago Larsen and Jacobi experimented with microwaves in the imaging of canine kidney. Their pioneering work triggered high hopes for a new diagnostic modality in medicine but also identified serious challenges. Research effort in this area continues unabated, focused especially on early-stage breast-cancer detection. The need for alternative cancer diagnostic tools is urgent and perceived worldwide as a high priority for research and development. Yet the very few clinical trials of experimental microwave imaging systems have not satisfied the requirements of today’s medical diagnostics. This talk briefly reviews past and recent developments in near-field microwave methods for tissue imaging.

Speaker’s Bio

Natalia K. Nikolova received the Dipl. Eng. (Radioelectronics) degree from the Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria, in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1997. From 1998 to 1999, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), during which time she was initially with the Microwave and Electromagnetics Laboratory, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, and, later, for a year, with the Simulation Optimization Systems Research Laboratory, McMaster University, Canada. In 1999, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, where she is currently a Professor. Her research interests include theoretical and computational electromagnetism with applications in inverse scattering, microwave imaging, as well as microwave and antenna computer-aided analysis and design. Prof. Nikolova has published more than 200 refereed manuscripts. She has authored 3 book chapters and has delivered many invited lectures on computer-aided microwave analysis and design as well as on microwave near-field imaging.

Prof. Nikolova held a University Faculty Award of NSERC from 2000 to 2005. Since 2008, she holds a Canada Research Chair in High-frequency Electromagnetics. She is a Fellow of the IEEE, a member of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) and a correspondent of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI).

Autonomous Aero-Visual and Sensor Based Inspection Network for Power Grid and Asset Monitoring

Dr. Arun K. Somani – Anson Marston Distinguished Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

Abstract

We describe a theoretical and experimental program to develop the inspection and monitoring functions using various sensors along with development and usage of needed visual sensor and MAV technology for persistent intelligence, reconnaissance, maintenance and surveillance for obscured or logistically challenging assets in non-urban environments such as US Power Grid. The system is self-monitoring. This sophisticated mechanism requires a real-time operation to sustain the quality-of-service. We discuss issues in design and information propagation in such sensor clustered topology, optimization for power-aware networking, and link and node capacity assignment to achieve the desired goals.

Speaker’s Bio

Arun K. Somani is currently Anson Marston Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, Ames, IA. He earned his MSEE and PhD degrees in electrical engineering from the McGill University, Montreal, Canada, in 1983 and 1985, respectively. He has worked as Scientific Officer for Govt. of India, New Delhi from 1974 to 1982 and as a faculty member at the University of Washington, Seattle, WA from 1985 to 1997.

Professor Somani’s research interests are in the area of computer system design and architecture, dependable computing and networking, WDM-based optical networking, and reconfigurable and parallel computer systems and use of information technology for infrastructure applications. He has ~300 technical papers, several book chapters, one book, and has supervised more than 60 MS and more than 25 PhD students. He has served on several program committees in various capacities, IEEE distinguished visitor and IEEE distinguished tutorial speaker. He has delivered several key note speeches, tutorials and distinguished and invited talks all over the world. In 1999, he was elected a Fellow of IEEE for his contributions to “theory and applications of computer networks.” He has been awarded a Distinguished Scientist member grade of ACM in 2006.

A Look At Some Of The Principles Of Wireless Communication From A Maxwellian Viewpoint

Dr. Tapan Sarkar – Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY

Abstract

The objective is to discuss the various problems associated with some of the current methodologies related to propagation modeling and antenna diversity in wireless communication, including a proper interpretation of the Shannon Channel Capacity theorem. Another goal is to illustrate that there is actually a height loss in the current deployment and better results can be obtained using a horizontally polarized antenna than with a vertically polarized antenna. To deal with broadband applications it is necessary to modify ones concept of classical antenna theory and it will be seen that the impulse response of an antenna on transmit is not equal to the receive impulse response when using the same antenna. A proper understanding of the wideband electromagnetic principles in the time domain can lead to a 40 GHz dispersion less transmit receive system and experimental data will be presented to illustrate it.

Speaker’s Bio

Tapan K. Sarkar is a professor of electrical engineering at Syracuse University. His current research interests deal with numerical solutions of operator equations arising in microwaves and signal processing with application to system design. He has authored or coauthored more than 350 journal articles and numerous conference papers and 32 chapters in books and fifteen books, Smart Antennas (IEEE Press and John Wiley & Sons, 2003), History of Wireless (IEEE Press and John Wiley & Sons, 2005), Physics of Multiantenna Systems and Broadband Adaptive Processing (John Wiley & Sons, 2007), Parallel Solution of Integral Equation-Based EM Problems in the Frequency Domain (IEEE Press and John Wiley & Sons, 2009), and Time and Frequency Domain Solutions of EM Problems using Integral Equations and a Hybrid Methodology (IEEE Press and John Wiley & Sons, 2010). Dr. Sarkar is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of New York. He received Docteur Honoris Causa both from Universite Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France in 1998 and from Politechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2004. He received the medal of the friend of the city of Clermont Ferrand, France, in 2000.

Tapan K. Sarkar received the B.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, in 1969, the M.Sc.E. degree from the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, NB, Canada, in 1971, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY, in 1975.

From 1975 to 1976, he was with the TACO Division of the General Instruments Corporation. He was with the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, from 1976 to 1985. He was a Research Fellow at the Gordon McKay Laboratory, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, from 1977 to 1978. He is now a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Syracuse University. His current research interests deal with numerical solutions of operator equations arising in electromagnetics and signal processing with application to system design. He obtained one of the “best solution” awards in May 1977 at the Rome Air Development Center (RADC) Spectral Estimation Workshop. He has authored or coauthored more than 280 journal articles and numerous conference papers and 32 chapters in books and fifteen books, including his most recent ones, Iterative and Self Adaptive Finite-Elements in Electromagnetic Modeling (Boston, MA: Artech House, 1998), Wavelet Applications in Electromagnetics and Signal Processing (Boston, MA: Artech House, 2002), Smart Antennas (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), and History of Wireless (John Wiley & Sons, 2005).

Dr. Sarkar is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of New York. He received the Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility in 1979 and in the 1997 National Radar Conference. He received the College of Engineering Research Award in 1996 and the Chancellor’s Citation for Excellence in Research in 1998 at Syracuse University. He was an Associate Editor for feature articles of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Newsletter (1986-1988). He was the Chairman of the Inter-commission Working Group of International URSI on Time Domain Metrology (1990–1996). He was a distinguished lecturer for the Antennas and Propagation Society from 2000-2003. He is currently a member of the IEEE Electromagnetics Award board and an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He is the vice president of the Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES. He is on the editorial board of Journal of Electromagnetic Waves and Applications and Microwave and Optical Technology Letters. He is a member of Sigma Xi and International Union of Radio Science Commissions A and B.

He received Docteur Honoris Causa both from Universite Blaise Pascal, Clermont Ferrand, France in 1998 and from Politechnic University of Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2004. He received the medal of the friend of the city of Clermont Ferrand, France.

Advanced Doherty Power Amplifiers

Dr. Fadhel M. Ghannouchi, Alberta Innovates Professor and Canada Research Chair, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, The Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada

Abstract

This talk presents recent research progress related to the design of advanced Doherty power amplifiers/transmitters.

In the first part, the novel architecture of digitally driven dual-input Doherty PAs will be introduced. In this architecture, the input signal is digitally preprocessed and supplied separately to each branch of the Doherty PA in order to solve the problems complex gain imbalance between the carrier and peaking PAs; and, to minimize the loss of drive power into the peaking branch at back-off. The superior capabilities of the digital Doherty PA compared to the conventional fully-analog Doherty PA will be confirmed through experimental implementations.

The second part of this talk is dedicated to dual-band Doherty PAs. The design considerations of dual-band passive components will be discussed; and, a practical implementation of dual-band Doherty PA will be demonstrated. Modeling and linearization of dual-band Doherty PAs based on two-dimension digital predistortion will be covered as well.

Speaker’s Bio

Fadhel M. Ghannouchi (S’84–M’88–SM’93–F’07) is currently an Alberta Innovates Professor and Canada Research Chair with the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, The Schulich School of Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, and Director of the Intelligent RF Radio Laboratory (iRadio Lab.). He has held several invited positions with academic and research institutions in Europe, North America, and Japan. He has provided consulting services to a number of microwave and wireless communications companies. He has authored or coauthored over 500 journal and conference publications. He holds seven U.S. patents and has seven pending. His research interests are in the areas of microwave instrumentation and measurements, nonlinear modeling of microwave devices and communications systems, design of power and spectrum efficient microwave amplification systems, and design of intelligent RF transceivers for wireless and satellite communications.