PI Institution: Ohio State University
Intellectual Merit: This grant will fund the purchase of the core equipment needed to set up a new Integrated Wireless Communication Systems Laboratory (IWCSL), to serve a multidisciplinary community performing research in a diverse set of state-of-the-art activities in wireless technology. The goal is to support teams which span the fields of communication systems, signal processing, integrated circuits and systems, antennas, electromagnetics and device physics. These teams will address issues such as the effort to develop Systems on a Chip (SOC) for handheld devices with low power and extremely small size, complex digital modulation, radio frequencies as high as 60GHz, the need for more bandwidth and higher data rates (up to 1Gbps), to accommodate more users and meet service demands involving voice, data and digital multimedia. The equipment will include high-frequency vector signal generator, analog signal generator, an advanced vector signal analyzer, mixed signal oscilloscope (1GHz bandwidth) and a probe station, and an upgrade of their existing large signal network analyzer.
Broader Impacts: This new laboratory will support the needs of four major groups at OSU, in an integrated fashion. Thus it will enhance the degree of cross-disciplinary integration in education and in student projects, as well as exposing them to truly state-of-the-art equipment important to their possible future employment in industry. This equipment will allow students to pursue research, thesis and design projects in emerging areas such as third (3G) and fourth (4G) generation wireless systems, Ka-band antenna phased arrays for space applications, programmable software defined radios, RFIDs, WLAN, Ultra Wide Band (UWB) and WiMax systems on a chip.
