CONNECTIONS Electrical Engineering Department • Cal Poly College of Engineering • Winter 2019
Message from the Chair —————————————————
T
Dennis Derickson
his has been a very exciting year for us here at the “Big E” electrical engineering building at Cal Poly. The department has been busy upgrading our Learn by Doing facilities to keep our students highly engaged in our laboratory environment. Here is a short list of focus projects that I wanted to highlight: • Construction is in progress for an outdoor project and meeting space in the northwestern part of the “Big E” building. This new 2,400-square-foot facility features comfortable seating, plenty of power connections, and a garden-like setting. I look forward to meeting you here during your next visit to the department. • The department is in the final design phase for a new outdoor power systems laboratory on the northeastern part of the “Big E.” This 1,800-square-foot outdoor laboratory will be an area where we will design and install energy storage and generation experiments. Backhoes will begin work in 2019. This outdoor power systems laboratory is part of our larger Advanced Electric Power System Microgrid Laboratory initiative that will take several Please see MESSAGE, Page 2
Creating IoT in the Classroom
Electrical Engineering students Vikrant Marathe, left, and Denis Pyryev, right, check out the heartbeat of Professor Vladimir Prodanov during their Internet of Things class.
Students make medical monitoring devices in Internet of Things class
W
hen the temperature drops to 32.5 degrees, Johnny Rosecrans will get an automated call on his cellphone, alerting him to rush to the Cal Poly orchards. “Avocados and citrus are very sensitive to frost,” said Rosecrans, crops unit technician in the College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences. Because of his warning, though, he’ll know when to immediately turn on wind machines
to offset the impact of frost and save the fruit from pending death. The technology that alerts Rosecrans illustrates some of what Professor Vladimir Prodanov had in mind when he launched an internet of things class in the spring of 2017. The internet of things (IoT) is the network of devices – including cars, kitchen appliances, heart monitors and much more – that is connected to the internet in a manner that allows for the exchange of data. “You collect data and make smart decisions Please see IoT CLASS, Page 3
CONNECTIONS MESSAGE
From Page 1
years to build. • Keysight Technologies and Anritsu continue to be major supporters of our RF and microwave engineering program. We just completed a new 250-square-foot research area that includes our first test equipment capable of operating up to 50 GHz. This will help faculty to engage our students in the rapidly expanding 5G communication system area. • We remodeled our 20-100 digital design laboratory with new carpet, seating and a more modern design look that is open 24 hours a day. We also created a third digital design laboratory in 20-136 with a full complement of electronic test and measurement equipment. • We created a new faculty-led project design laboratory so students can work with us on undergraduate and graduate research EE Chair Dennis Derickson and department staff Yvonne Lynch and Lani Woods look over the projects with uninterrupted access. construction of a courtyard patio outside of Building 20 with project manager Justin Koerber, right. All of these projects depend on support from in the nation. EE welcomes your input on these and new initiaour alumni, friends and industrial sponsors. We thank you for your continued support as we strive to make tives we can work on together for the future. Sincerely, our Cal Poly electrical engineering laboratory facilities one of Dennis Derickson the most thorough set of facilities for undergraduate education
More than 80 graduates and friends of Cal Poly attended the annual Bay Area alumni event at the Maxim Integrated Core Automotive Division in San Jose.
Bay Area Alumni Event Held in San Jose Continues to Grow
W
ith increasingly more departments involved, the annual Bay Area alumni event is getting bigger each year, said John Greene, a 2016 graduate who serves as the event’s emcee and organizer. “This event is developing into a College of Engineering event rather than just an EE event,” said Greene, associate business manager at Maxim Integrated’s Core Automotive division. The event was previously held at Texas Instruments in Santa Clara. But Mark Fortunato, a senior principal at Maxim and member of the EE department’s Industrial Advisory Board, suggested the event be held at Maxim in San Jose. “I figured that our facilities were more than adequate for this event, and that it would be beneficial to both the EE department
2 | CONNECTIONS
and Maxim to have it here,” he said. The first Maxim alumni event was held in 2016. The following year, Greene took over as event organizer. Nine departments were invited to attend, an increase from four in 2017 and two in 2016. Last year’s event was attended by roughly 85 people, Greene said – about 20 more than the year before. Held February 1 at Maxim’s Jack Gifford Event Center, the dinner-and-drinks event included EE department and program updates, success stories and giving-back goals. After an introductory cocktail hour, Jim Meagher, then the CENG’s interim dean, offered a speech before the crowd broke into groups based on their departments. A date for this year’s event has not yet been sent, Greene said, though they typically happen in February.
IoT CLASS From Page 1 about how to optimize resources,” Prodanov said. While the term internet of things was coined nearly 20 years ago, and its roots stretch at least to the 70s, its uses have proliferated in recent years with technological advances. “It’s growing so fast it’s difficult to predict,” Prodanov said. With that in mind, Prodanov developed a course with assistance from a former student, John Greene, who now works as an associate business manager at Maxim Integrated, a San Jose-based company that makes analog and mixed-signal integrated circuits. Meanwhile, Maxim donated hardware that the students could use in the class, along with $15,000 to Prodanov’s professional development account allowing for student projects, small equipment purchases and attendance at professional conferences. Greene’s goal was to give back to his alma mater and give Maxim a marketing presence in universities. Initially, he said, the idea was to give faculty hardware to use in existing classes, but that would force faculty to change their courses to fit the hardware. Then he learned that Prodanov was actually thinking of creating a new class on IoT, which gave him the opportunity to help shape it. “It was great timing,” Greene said. “Everything was lining up.” The course, which will be offered in the spring after a successful pilot run last year, is structured to demonstrate how concepts and techniques students have seen in other classes will play out in IoT. “This class is important because most engineering advances, despite revolutionary impact, have evolutionary development,” Prodanov said. The class will have a hands-on approach, thanks to the Maxim hardware, which includes circuit boards and sensors. That hardware will be easy to use while demonstrating IoT by allowing students to measure things like body temperature, which can be relayed to their cellphone via Bluetooth. Greene said the hardware is equipment Maxim is currently selling, so students are working with up-to-date technology. And the curriculum, he said, also aims to allow professors to teach the way they want. Prodanov, he said, is especially interested in health monitors and sensors, so the hardware relates to that. While IoT can simplify life – medical patients can use a medical mobile device to
send data to healthcare professionals, for example – there are also security concerns. “I think we have to be mindful of that,” Prodanov said. “Because some of the early applications of IoT are built on older technology, which was not exactly designed for that kind of massive proliferation.” Greene agreed. And Maxim products, he said, include security chips. “Security is extremely important in IoT,” he said. “There are really intelligent people out there and, unfortunately, not all of them are out there to make the world a better place.” For Rosecrans, the IoT makes his work more convenient and efficient. In the orchard, four solar-powered precision soil moisture monitoring devices donated by Hortau collects information about irrigation and displays it on an app Rosecrans can access anywhere from his phone or iPad. On the app, a line chart is displayed from each of the devices, detailing the soil moisture trend. “You can see my irrigation events,” he said, standing amid rows of mandarin orange trees while pointing to a chart on his iPad. “These are getting drier and drier.” The Hortau devices still use tensiometers to measure the soil. But in the past, tensiometers had to be checked manually at the site, and any line charts or data had to be created and recorded by hand. During the drought, such devices helped farmers cut back water and energy use. But they also help anticipate crop stress at any time, leading to healthier crops and better production. “It helped me fine tune my irrigation, which saves water and saves money,” Rosecrans said.
“This class is important because most engineering advances, despite revolutionary impact, have evolutionary development.” EE Professor Vladimir Prodanov
Johnny Rosecrans, Crops Unit Technician in the College of Agriculture, Food & Environmental Sciences, checks out the moisture content of the soil near the monitor in the Cal Poly Orchard on his tablet computer.
ee.calpoly.edu | 3
CONNECTIONS
The Internet of Trees
Cal Poly “Treety” project wins top prize in statewide Internet of Things challenge
Assistant Professor Joseph Callenes-Sloan, above, led a team of Cal Poly Engineering students, including Huy Duong, Sonia Mannan, Yiupang Chan, Larry Hu, Jake Loveland and Nicholas Serres, to study trees in San Diego.
F
rom tiny seedlings and giant redwoods to ocean palms and mountain pines, trees have long inspired photographers, poets and painters. But a team of Cal Poly engineering students recently discovered that planting trees in large cities can provide benefits beyond leafy aesthetics. “Of course, trees have many obvious environmental benefits,” said faculty advisor Joseph Callenes-Sloan, an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department. “But we realized that trees also have many socioeconomic benefits. For example, trees have an impact on property values and changes in traffic. People are more likely to walk in streets that have trees. This is important for businesses to get more foot traffic, so there’s an economic benefit as well.” An analysis of tree benefits by students Callenes-Sloan advised won first place last spring in the GE Digital CSU Challenge – the second year in a row a Cal Poly team has taken top honors. The challenge, designed to spark interest in engineering and computer science, prompted CSU students to develop an approach to San Diego’s Climate Action plan using data collected from new streetlamps. An excellent example of how 4 | CONNECTIONS
internet of things how beneficial a tree would be to a certain can be used, the city area,” Callenes-Sloan said. recently upgraded The team’s Tree Score for various loca14,000 streetlights, tions was used to formulate a plan to reduce using GE technology. carbon emissions, revitalize neighborhoods The streetlamps were by increasing business revenue, and make equipped with cameras, microphones and neighborhoods more pedestrian-friendly other sensors that capture data from the by providing shade for pedestrians and surrounding environment in order to track reducing traffic accidents. The project edueverything from traffic flow and parking cated residents and government employees spot usage to pollutant levels. while also encouraging locals to plant trees That’s a lot of data – and it was up to the through the city’s Free Tree SD program. students to decide how to use it to further Teams from Cal State Fullerton and San the city’s plan. Diego State finished in “There were no limiting second and third place, “We realized that factors, and that allowed us respectively. Taking top trees also have many to think outside the box for prize afforded the Cal Poly socioeconomic benefits. team $8,000 in scholarship ideas for the competition,” said Nicholas Serres, an For example, trees have money – and a newfound electrical engineering major understanding of trees. an impact on property and one of six students on “I think I view trees with values and changes in new respect and value them the team. The rest of the team inmore when I see them in traffic.” cluded computer engineercities,” Serres said. “I never Assistant Professor ing students Huy Duong, understood the plethora of Joseph Callenes-Sloan Jake Loveland and Sonia benefits they bring a comMannan, software engineering major Larry munity, but now I can appreciate it.” Hu, and computer science student Yiupang Callenes-Sloan, who was raised in rural Chan. Illinois, knew some benefits – “My grandThat team decided to develop an applica- father grew walnut trees,” he said – but the tion – “Treety: a pact between the people, project has also helped him see trees in a the city, and the earth” – that would use different way. streetlamp data to determine what locations “I love the trees on campus here,” he in the city would best benefit from planting said, nodding toward his office window. “It new trees. would be interesting to collect data and look “The idea was for them to get a score for at spatial maps here on campus.”
Arakaki Projects Include Algae, Animals and Astrophysics A
Electrical Engineering Professor Dean Arakaki has a finetuned schedule, working with three multidisciplinary student projects.
ssociate Professor Dean Arakaki is currently working on three collaborative projects involving five Cal Poly departments. The algae biofuel multidisciplinary renewable energy project investigates electric fields as a method for disrupting algae to release lipids (molecules that are insoluble in water) for potential biofuel applications. A second project focuses on using radio detection (and designing radio antennas) to find neutrinos, elementary particles that interact very weakly with other particles of matter yet have massive implications for modern astrophysics. Because they are unlikely to interact, high-energy neutrinos produced by extremely distant sources can reach Earth unimpeded, carrying with them valuable information about events far off in our universe, Arakaki said. “When high-energy neutrinos Electrical Engineering student Juan David Gonzalez checks out algae under a microscope as part of a multidisciplinary project involving the use of electricity to speed up the production of biofuel from algae. interact with atoms in a dielec-
Students from Electrical Engineering, Animal Science and Aerospace Engineering have teamed up on a project that entails testing VHF antennas on a drone used to track animals in the High Sierra.
tric, like ice, they produce a cascade of particles that emit coherent emissions at radio frequencies. These short, broadband impulses can be detected by an array of radio antennas, the design and optimization of which is the overall objective of this project.� The third project, involving tracking animals, entails designing and testing VHF directional antenna to track animal beacon transmitters from small aircraft, designing lightweight UHF modem receivers for recovering GPS telemetry and designing radio-frequency identification systems for recovering animal condition data. The project will include field testing of actual systems with animals on the Cal Poly campus before it is used to help the USDA Forest Service monitor a rare weasel called a fisher in the Southern Sierra Nevada. The other Cal Poly departments involved in the three projects include Biology, Physics, Animal Science and Aerospace Engineering. ee.calpoly.edu | 5
CONNECTIONS
Professor James Mealy, who received a Best Paper award from the ASEE, works with Electrical Engineering student Zekarias Taddese in his digital design course.
EE Professor Samuel O. Agbo co-authored the new book Principles of Modern Communication Systems.
He Wrote the Book on Communications
S
amuel O. Agbo’s book, “Principles of Modern Communication Systems (Cambridge University Press),” has been lauded as an accessible, yet technically accurate, text for the field of communications. Written with Matthew O. Sadiku from Prairie View A&M University in Cypress, TX, the text was designed for a one-semester course and includes the physical and engineering principles of communication systems using an accessible, mathematically rigorous approach. Beginning with background material on signals and systems and random processes, the book guides students through core topics, such as amplitude modulation, pulse modulation and noise. “Not only have they achieved the difficult task of being technically accurate, they have also achieved the almost impossible task of being easy for students to understand as well as being a fantastic aid to instructors in the field of communications,” wrote Charles K. Alexander, of Cleveland State University. Agbo, who teaches courses in basic circuit analysis, energy storage elements, radio control circuits and phasors, received his PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1984, and his MBA in 1985, both from the University of Houston. Before joining the Electrical Engineering Department at Cal Poly in 1991, Agbo taught at Texas Southern University, Houston, from 1984 to 1985, and at Florida Atlantic University from 1986 to 1990.
6 6 |
CONNECTIONS
Flipped Classroom Experiment Wins ASEE Best Paper Award
J
ames Mealy’s summary of a flipped classroom experiment was recognized with the Best Paper award last April during the American Society for Engineering Education conference at the University of Colorado. “The paper describes an experiment where I gave students an option to use weekly quizzes as part of their course grade or have the course grade determined primarily by the knowledge they’ve attained at the end of the course,” said Mealy, an associate professor. The experiment took place in
Mealy’s intermediate digital design course, taught in a studio-type format. Students who opted to have their grade weighted more on a final exam received more instructor interaction throughout the course while the other students had to dedicate more time on quizzes and exams. While the experiment suggested that non-quiz students had a performance advantage, Mealy’s paper concluded, “we believe that giving students a choice in the weightings of their assessments provided benefits for both sets of students.”
New Tenured Track Professor has Extensive Experience in Industry
M
ajid Poshtan, the department’s newest incoming tenure track professor, has more than 20 years of experience in academics and industry, with expertise in several areas. Those areas include electric power systems design, operation, distributed generation and fault analysis and protection. Poshtan earned his BS in Electrical Engineering from Tehran University in Iran before earning his masters in Electrical Engineering (with a focus on electric power systems) from University of New Brunswick, in Canada, and a doctorate in Electrical Engineering (with a focus on electric power systems) from Tulane University in
New Orleans. After working as a contractor engineer in transmission planning at Entergy Corp. in New Orleans, he was an assistant professor at the Majid Poshtan Petroleum Institute in the United Arab Emirates and an associate professor at American University in Dubai. He joined Cal Poly as a full-time lecturer in 2014 and was named associate professor in 2018.
Dolan, Taufik Named 2018 Hood Endowed Professors T wo faculty members, Dale Dolan and Taufik, were recently named Hood Endowed Professors. The Electrical Engineering Industry Advisory Board chose the two from a pool of six EE/CPE applications submitted for 2018. The criteria for the award include impacts applicants make as educators, initiatives, leadership, opportunities for student projects and more. Taufik began joined the Cal Poly faculty in 1999, while Dolan, a past Hood recipient, joined in 2009. The Richard and Julie Hood Electrical Engineering Endowment was established to promote professional development. Richard Hood, a 1973 electrical engineering graduate, founded Maxim Integrated Products.
More Awards for Taufik
Taufik, EE professor and director of the Electric Power Institute, added to his list of accomplishments and honors last spring when he received the Distinguished Scholarship Award from Presi-
Electrical Engineering Professors Taufik, left, and Dale Dolan were named the Hood Endowed Professors for 2018.
dent Armstrong and the Don & Paula Heye Annual Award for Outstanding Club Advisement from the College of Engineering. Last May, Taufik was one of three faculty members campus-wide to receive the Distinguished Scholarship Award, nominated and chosen by fellow faculty members on the Academic Senate Distinguished Scholarship Awards Committee. The following month, Jim Meagher, then
Solar Project is Enlightening
S
tudents in Art MacCarley’s Solar Photovoltaic System Engineering class spent lots of time outdoors last spring, when they designed and installed a complete 5 kw off-grid solar photovoltaic system on campus. The project occurred during MacCarley’s EE/ BRAE 450 class, which entailed the physics of solar energy, solar site planning, electrical and mechanical design, regulatory approval and more. The solar project was built on the Mobile Plant Factory, a research and outreach facility operated by the Bioresource and Agricultural Engineering Department. “This hands-on project experience complements the course lectures, which provide theoretical and technical skills in this important field of alternative energy,” MacCarley said.
the interim CENG dean, presented Taufik with the award for club advisement. Taufik, who joined Cal Poly in 1999, has received numerous teaching awards, most notably the 2012 Outstanding Teaching Award from the American Society of Engineering Education - Pacific Southwest Section, and he is a past Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award recipient. He has supervised 186 senior design projects.
Busy Times for EE’s Benson
I
n addition to welcoming the arrival of her first child (It’s a girl!), Bridget Benson has been working with other EE faculty to redesign introductory electric circuits labs so students can make use of modern tools and project-based learning. Meanwhile, she’s preparing for a 2-quarter sabbatical with the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in 2020. “Over the past few years, I have been advising masters and senior projects sponsored by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute,” she said. “During my Bridget and baby are doing fine. sabbatical, I will work on projects with MBARI engineers and scientists and work to generate more student projects in collaboration with MBARI. “ A certified Scuba diver, who has explored the waters of French Polynesia, Mexico and Belize, Benson’s focuses include selecting and developing technology to advance marine science research. Past projects have entailed designing and building a camera system along the Cal Poly pier and a project that uses computer vision to count and classify fish. ee.calpoly.edu | 7
College of Engineering Electrical Engineering Department 1 Grand Avenue San Luis Obispo, CA 93407
The Road to Industry Several fields tips with industry leaders last spring provided up-close looks at workplaces that are popular landing spots for Cal Poly engineering students. Here are three field trips. A tour of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory featured stops at the von Karman Auditorium and Spacecraft Museum, the Spacecraft Operations Center and the Spacecraft Assembly Facility, as well as a look at several antenna ranges.
A tour of PG&E’s research facility in San Ramon included a visit of their microgrid demonstration system, as well as high voltage and high power laboratories.
POWER THE FUTURE MAKE A GIFT TO SUPPORT ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING LABS, PROJECTS AND CLUBS Click HERE to make a gift now, or contact Tanya Hauck, assistant dean of advancement, at thauck@calpoly.edu or (805) 756-2163.
The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power tour offered a look at the high voltage DC to AC conversion facility that powers much of Southern California.