Kiran George, California State University-Fullerton CAREER: Design and Implementation of an Evolving Intelligent Wideband Digital Receiver System on a Tribrid Computing Platform Capable of Cognitive Learning
Intellectual Merit: The fundamental function of a modern radar receiver is to intercept radio frequency signals to identify and locate its source. Lack of a priori knowledge of the waveform of interest, multitude of signals and the noise energy that occupies the same frequency spectrum as the signal, makes the design of a modern wideband receiver a daunting task. The objective of this effort is to design and implement an intelligent wideband digital receiver capable of achieving a near-zero false alarm rate (< 10-6) and a high instantaneous dynamic range by ascertaining the legitimacy of signals while categorizing and tracking incoming signals based on the signal environment, attributes and cues, and simultaneously enhancing its knowledge base through cognitive learning during both in-field and off-field operations, strongly augmented by three kinds of memory: intrinsic, semantic, and most importantly episodic. The design will utilize a tribrid hardware architecture where the computational intensity is intelligently partitioned and handled between three commercially available off-the-shelf processor systems: accelerated processing unit, many-core TILE processor, and field-programmable gate array with silicon photonic technology as the high-speed backplane to enhance chip-to-chip data communications and reduce data starvation of the processors.
Broader Impacts: Outcomes of the proposed research can be applied to a broad range of areas such as wireless communication systems, biomedical signal processing, and other applications that utilize fast Fourier transform based spectral estimation. The proposed learning system design will be realized in two distinct hardware form factors which will serve as a starting point for researchers to incorporate the proposed cognitive learning model into their specific applications. Likewise, the proposed customized silicon photonic interface card design can be utilized by engineers to improve the data transfer rate between data acquisition card and processors in real-time systems. The proposed research will generate both educational and research opportunities at California State University, Fullerton (CSUF), Wright State University and Cypress College (CC) through graduate research program, undergraduate apprentice program, lunch speaker series, and undergraduate summer research program. Planned educational activities include the integration of research findings into engineering courses and the introduction of a specialty track. Concrete outreach efforts to expose the underrepresented and minority students at CSUF, CC and local high schools are planned. Outcomes will be widely disseminated to academic and industrial communities through international conferences, journals, CSUF website, and at on-campus events.
