Intellectual merit: The overarching goal of this proposal is to investigate fundamental issues of interference mitigation based on novel filtering architectures and nanomechancial resonators. These are expected to result in interference tolerant nanoreceivers with unprecedented capabilities not found in conventional receivers. Interference mitigation is among the most critical features of reconfigurable radio frequency front-ends of adaptive receivers. Unlike conventional simplified approaches that typically define a receiver?s minimum detectable signal with respect to its noise level, it is truly signal interference that primarily limits the achievable communication range in a signal-dense environment. As a result, the scientific objectives of this effort can be summarized as: 1) Investigate new adaptive filtering architectures with the ability to dynamically reject strong interferers even when located arbitrarily close to the desired band. 2) Demonstrate new bandstop filter architectures that can be implemented with relatively low quality factor integrated resonators but achieve rejection levels found in traditional filters only when implemented with high quality factor resonators. 3) Demonstrate integrated nanoresonators used for objectives 1 and 2 based on a simple post-CMOS processing technology. The integrated nanoresonators will be highly reproducible, tunable, and will be fabricated with high yield technologies. Broader Impacts: A number of steps have been planned to expand the broader impacts of this project. The most important activities include: 1) Integrate research results into the curricula and widely disseminate important research results. Specifically, in addition to standard journal and conference publications, research results will be integrated into the courses taught on microsystems, radio frequency design, and nanoscale engineering. Articles will also be submitted to communications and microsystems trade magazines to have the work spread to the professional engineering community at large. 2) Extensive use of the memsHUB web portal to disseminate results from this study to the micro/nano-engineering community through online simulation tools. This is expected to be critical in bridging the gap between fundamental science and microsystems engineers. 3) Support of undergraduate student research through the NSF REU and/or other funding sources. All professors have strong histories of involving undergraduates in their research. Junior-level students will be hired to support the proposed research. 4) Attract and retain U.S. minority students through appropriate programs as well as engage undergraduate students to research early in their careers. Accomplishing these goals through service-learning and project-oriented programs at Purdue will be a priority. The investigators have already a record in attracting and retaining minority students including through similar efforts.
