Kristofer S.J. Pister (Advisor)

The goal of this project is to create useful, efficient design synthesis tools for MEMS devices. Design synthesis helps engineers develop rapid, optimal configurations for a given set of performance and constraint guidelines. The current MEMS design synthesis tool is based on a case-based design library and uses variant optimization techniques for adapting old designs to new design problems. The design synthesis tool recommends the initial designs to the designer based on the given design specifications and further optimizes the design parameters to satisfy the design performance...

An enabling technology for large scale sensor networks is the ability to determine a sensor node’s location after deployment. Some applications, such as inventory management, use sensors that move regularly, and this spatial information is crucial to the network's operation. A device to wirelessly measure the distance between two network nodes using an RF transceiver will be developed. The distance measurement is performed by calculating a cross correlation between a received and an expected signal. Methods for reducing the effects of noise, clock offset and multipath propagation...

Recent breakthroughs in understanding insect flight have led to increased interest in small robotic flying aircraft which can hover and navigate through cluttered environments. MEMS inertial sensors have been an enabler in this regard. What types of additional sensors are required for autonomous flight and of what sorts of behaviors could palm-sized fliers be capable? We are performing a Multidisciplinary Design Optimization, combining constraints of propulsive technologies, powertrain efficiencies, novel sensors and communication drop-off payload to understand this space. The...

Compression of packets in wireless sensor networks and mobile ad-hoc networks is of great interest because of the substantial opportunities for power and bandwidth savings. The method of compression discussed here is protocol agnostic, meaning that it operates with any combination of MAC, NET, TRAN, and APP layer protocols in an IEEE 802.15.4 network, while all previously devised compression schemes for wireless sensor data have a more substantial protocol dependence and thus require revisions as protocols are updated, or even complete replacement. Secondly, this method is adaptive,...