Project-based Learning within a Large-Scale Interdisciplinary Research Effort

The modern engineering landscape increasingly requires a range of skills to successfully integrate complex systems. Project-based learning is used to help students build professional skills. However, it is typically applied to small teams and small efforts. This paper describes an experience in engaging a large number of students in research projects within a multi-year interdisciplinary research effort. The projects expose the students to various disciplines in Computer Science (embedded systems, algorithm design, networking), Electrical Engineering (circuit design, wireless communications, hardware prototyping), and Applied Physics (thin-film battery design, solar cell fabrication). While a student project is usually focused on one discipline area, it requires interaction with at least two other areas. Over 5 years, 180 semester-long projects have been completed. The students were a diverse group of high school, undergraduate, and M.S. Computer Science, Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering students. Some of the approaches that were taken to facilitate student learning are real-world system development constraints, regular cross-group meetings, and extensive involvement of Ph.D. students in student mentorship and knowledge transfer. To assess the approaches, a survey was conducted among the participating students. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the approaches. For example, 70% of the students surveyed indicated that working on their research project improved their ability to function on multidisciplinary teams more than coursework, internships, or any other activity

Radio frequency channel characterization for energy harvesting in factory environments

This thesis presents ambient energy data obtained from a measurement campaign carried out at an automobile plant. At the automobile plant, ambient light, ambient temperature and ambient radio frequency were measured during the day time over two days. The measurement results showed that ambient light generated the highest DC power. For plant and operation managers at the automobile plant, the measurement data can be used in system design considerations for future energy harvesting wireless sensor nodes at the plant. In addition, wideband measurements obtained from a machine workshop are presented in this thesis. The power delay profile of the wireless channel was obtained by using a frequency domain channel sounding technique. The measurements were compared with an equivalent ray tracing model in order to validate the suitability of the commercial propagation software used in this work. Furthermore, a novel technique for mathematically recreating the time dispersion created by factory inventory in a radio frequency channel is discussed. As a wireless receiver design parameter, delay spread characterizes the amplitude and phase response of the radio channel. In wireless sensor devices, this becomes paramount, as it determines the complexity of the receiver. In reality, it is sometimes difficult to obtain full detail floor plans of factories for deterministic modelling or carry out spot measurements during building construction. As a result, radio provision may be suboptimal. The method presented in this thesis is based on 3-D fractal geometry. By employing the fractal overlaying algorithm presented, metallic objects can be placed on a floor plan so as to obtain similar radio frequency channel effects. The environment created using the fractal approach was used to estimate the amount of energy a harvesting device can accumulate in a University machine workshop space