Capstone Project for 2018-2019

Ok folks, I finally found some time to post some project ideas for 2018-2019. I'd be happy supervising any one of the projects mentioned below.

It'd be best if I were approached by a team of 4-6 people that form a cohesive project team. 

Even better would be if the team members have some complementary skills. For example, if some team members were good at (or interested in learning) embedded coding while others wanted to focus on analog circuit design, and still others wanted to approach the project from the system level, then that usually works out the best.

The suggested projects are:

Category #1: IC Design Related Projects

These projects involve intensive analog, digital, or mixed-signal integrated circuit design. Cadence tools will be used (Analog Design Environment, Composer, Virtuoso, etc.) along with Synopsys tools (e.g. Design compiler).

This category of project is directed at students who are interested in possibly conducting an MASc in the area of integrated circuits, and then continuing on into an industry career in this area, or continuing on into a PhD conducting research into integrated circuits.

Specific IC design projects that may be of interest:

• RFIC direct down conversion receiver using non-coherent local oscillators. This type of receiver avoids DC offsets found in "traditional" direct conversion receivers by using a spread spectrum LO. Students will design the various receiver building blocks including LNA, mixers, LO generator, AGC, phase detectors, and filters.
• Wideband tunable bandpass filter based on active inductors. The team will design and implement a high-Q bandpass filter that uses a "simulated" or "virtual" inductor comprised of a gyrator. This type of circuit is useful for software defined radio applications.
• Low-power SAR ADC using non-binary weighted capacitor arrays. This is a type of ADC that can achieve high resolution at low power. This project involves mixed-signal circuit design and would be good for students interested in a career designing ICs for biomedical applications.
• Machine Intelligence accelerator. This project will create an IC to accelerate the training of neural networks.

Other IC design project suggestions will certainly be considered if I think I could supervise the project to a successful completion.

Category #2: Embedded Systems and Wearables

These projects utilize off-the-shelf components to build "cool stuff". Generally some custom mixed-signal circuitry is designed and implemented and used for sensing and control within the target application. An embedded controller (micro controller, Raspberry Pi, FPGA, etc.) is used to collect and process data, and either act upon the data or give the user of the system actionable information.

Here are some concept projects I've been mulling over. If you have an interesting project in mind along these lines I'm certainly willing to hear more about it as well.

• nIRS-based imaging. Two years ago I ran a project for early onset Alzheimer's detection using nIRS. We were building the sensor system and processing system that would inject near infrared light at two wavelengths into the skull and measure the returned signal for each wavelength. From these values we could track the oxygenated blood flow in the illuminated areas. This type of information can be useful for potentially detecting early onset Alzheimer's symptoms. The group got fairly far along with the project and did very well in the departmental competition. There was still work left to do and so I continued on with the project last year.  For last year's project we started mostly from scratch and rebuilt the imaging system using near-infrared light, a different processing structure, and a different architecture for the system which was an improvement on the previous year's work. The target application for last year's group was cognitive load evaluation. In other words as cognitive load increases the blood flow to the prefrontal cortex changes and can be tracked. This group also did extremely well and came close to completing the project but not quite. So this year I'm very interested in seeing this project through to final completion which would involve successfully imaging biological structures, for example circulatory systems, using the infrared light. This is a challenging project involving analog and mixed-signal circuit design, sensor interfacing, micro controller programming, and signal processing.
• Open-source heart rate monitor.  When I go to the gym I use the Wahoo TickrX heart rate monitor which pairs with my phone and collects my heart rate as I work out. From that it can calculate calories burned and a few other metrics. I would love to develop an open source heart rate monitor that is actually useful in the gym environment. This will involve acquisition of the ECG signal, signal processing, sensor interfacing, and probably some machine intelligence and neural networks. I well know the limitations of my current gear and I have some ideas on how to improve the mechanism so we could discuss those ideas.
• Electromyographical measurement system.  The system will measure muscle activity electronically. I won't say much more about it here except to mention that it will be a fascinating project but very challenging.  As with the other projects listed above this one is multidisciplinary and requires analog and mixed-signal circuit design, sensor interfacing, embedded programming, and signal processing.
• Confocal imaging system. I have a high-powered microscope that I would like to retrofit and turn into a confocal imaging system. This will involve some mechanical design and 3D printing, a control system to sweep the focus of the lensing system, and some imaging hardware and signal processing that will take the image sequences and build the 3D model. 
• Other ideas:  I've quite a few potential projects floating around so I didn't list them all here but could discuss them with students interested in fairly complex multidisciplinary projects. 

( Please excuse typos in the above text – I was using voice dictation.)