Four ECE Students Receive Undergraduate Honors Research Scholarships

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Linnabary, Belz and Chaudhari
Four students at The Ohio State University’s ElectroScience Lab on west campus recently won Undergraduate Honors Research Scholarships and a chance to work directly with their faculty advisors.

Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) scholars, Matt Belz, Ryan Linnabary, Shreyas Chaudhari, and Matt Daehn received a $2,000 scholarship divided between Spring 2018 and Autumn 2018 semesters. As part of the program, they must complete an undergraduate research thesis, which requires a collaborative effort with their faculty advisors. The research allows the students to receive the designation of "With Research Distinction" or "With Honors Research Distinction" on their diploma.

Belz works with Dr. Waleed Khalil as part of the Circuit Laboratory for Advanced Sensors and Systems (CLASS) group. 

“My thesis research is focused on analytical modeling for mm-Wave voltage controlled oscillators (VCOs),” he said. “Traditionally, (radio frequency) designers needed to spend months to design a VCO because there are many interdependent design factors. The goal of my research is to design algorithms that will significantly reduce time to market for RF designs.”

As a part of Dr. Asimina Kiourti's research group, Chaudhari is developing an origami-based tessellated antenna whose operating frequency and radiation pattern can be self-tuned by adjusting the shape of the antenna itself.

"The antenna is fabricated using polymer threads, and can be easily integrated into clothing and mechanical structures to provide a non-invasive way to quantify flexion and deformation. The project provides a unique opportunity to incorporate art with electromagnetics, and I am very excited by the potential applications," he said.

Linnabary is developing a test-bench for a space borne geophysical remote sensing instrument (next-generation GNSS receiver) in coordination with Ohio State and University of Michigan faculty researchers, along with graduate students involved in receiver development. His work is supported by ECE research scientist Andrew O'Brien and professor Joel Johnson.

“We seek to expand an existing system's data-acquisition capabilities. My test-bench assembles and transmits simulations of GNSS signals reflected by Earth's surface to test the new instrument's enhanced features and expose any problems prior to space deployment,” he said. “I feel this work has significant implications for not only hurricane disaster forecasting but also climate studies, land-feature classification, vegetation, sea ice, and soil-moisture analysis.”

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Matt Daehn
Daehn is also working under Johnson, as well as Senior Research Associate-Engineer Dr. Alexandra Bringer, assisting NASA on the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) satellite mission, which aims to provide global soil moisture data.  

"The frequency band SMAP operates in is supposed to be protected by international regulations, but there is clear evidence of radio frequency interference (RFI) in this band which can impact the quality of the data products," Daehn said. "While there are algorithms in place to filter out this RFI, not all of it is completely filtered out. My research focuses broadly on trying to improve RFI detection and mitigation algorithms, characterizing RFI sources, and looking at how the RFI environment has been changing since the mission began."