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Research Activities

EECE Research Nuggets
Hurricane Katrina Power & Telecommunication System Failure Modes
A study of the infrastructure and procedural failure modes that caused the
telecommunication network and power system to become ineffective and fail. Initial research found that power and communications systems suffer wind damage to poles and flood damage to ground-based systems. Cellular phone towers fail because electrical generators aren't refueled or because landlines connecting the cell towers fail. Electrical systems that suffer only wind damage can be restored much more quickly than areas that also suffer flood damage. Research is being conducted to develop self-powered ad hoc networking nodes that can be easily deployed and quickly integrated with existing infrastructure, other government agencies, and NGOs, while providing secure WiFi access to assist in recovery efforts. The investigators are currently planning on a system level design to mitigate the extent of failures and damages.

High Speed Digital Protection of Power Networks
High speed protection of power networks is an absolute necessity for maintaining
stability of the system and continuity of supply. Several methods such as, digital relays, traveling wave relays, fault identification using state space techniques and statistical methods have been developed. Investigators in this department have attempted to solve this problem through a new delay compensation approach. The delay in fault identification is mostly due to the system parameters and to a smaller extent due to the statistical nature of the fault. Fortunately, the parameters, which contributes to a significant part of the delay can be precisely assessed and compensated to counter the delay. The investigators expect that this method can provide operating speeds of three to four milliseconds.

Educational Supercomputer
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette is working with high school(s) to engineer and develop a supercomputer utilizing inexpensive or used computers and equipment as an educational project. No funding has currently been realized, but as project definition begins to take shape, the University of Louisiana at Lafayette will submit proposals, applying for both research money and educational grants.
 

CAPE 2 Pico Satellite Project
University of Louisiana at Lafayette is designing and building to a second pico-satellite, as a follow-up to the first pico-satellite CAPE1. Research is being conducted into advanced modulation and encoding techniques to improve communication performance. The on-board power and computer system is being redesigned to improve efficiency and provide robust performance. One mission being considered is to gather data for analysis on global warming, ocean currents, and salinity from microsensors in various parts of the earth and sea. A LEO satellite cluster for networking is being researched as well.

Collaborative Remote Optical Circuits Laboratories
Remote data acquisition technology coupled with video instructions and simulations have been used to create distance laboratories for the general area of optical circuits in a collaborative effort between three core institutions: University of Colorado at Boulder, University of Houston, and University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Researchers at these three universities expect this NSF funded project to help introduce hands-on laboratory for distance education. While hands-on laboratory practices promise an engaging experience, effective teaching time can potentially be increased through the usage of remote-controlling capabilities of equipment and systems.
 

An Integrated Research and Education program in Optical Fiber Communications
Researchers at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette are developing a program on optical wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) networks. The research includes both theoretical and experimental investigation of the key issues on the next generation of WDM systems. The major objectives include: (i) the development of ultra-high speed (> 40 GHz) optical clock generation technologies that are simple, robust, and cost-efficient, (ii) the applications of optical clock in optical 3R regeneration and wavelength conversion, (iii) the implementation of all-optical signal processing for routing control in next generation of optical networks, and (iv) building an optics and fiber communications laboratory that will provide a discovery-oriented environment for education-related activities.

Smart fault tolerant control strategy for safer aircraft systems
The ultimate goal of this project is to design a smart and robust fault tolerant controller (FTC) for aircraft systems. In the proposed architecture, passive and active approaches will be merged together for the best achievable performance. The proposed FTC approach:1) utilizes robust control as the first line of defense to failures/parameter variations, 2) triggers a reconfigurable controller in case of severe impairments. Depending on the magnitude of the failure signature and the impairment severity, one controller will be switched over. The proposed control strategy can be implemented in Intelligent flight control system in order to improve the operating characteristics of aircraft, reduce false alarms and false reconfigurations and increase safety and reliability. The project is supported by LaSpace/NASA.