pittsburgh section bulletinieee pittsburgh section bulletin, june 2011 volume 60 no. 6 page 4 of 14...

IEEE Pittsburgh Section Bulletin, June 2011 Volume 60 No. 6 of 14

Pittsburgh Section

Bulletin June 2011 Volume 60, No. 6

Included in this issue:

Bob’s Bytes ........................................................................................................................................... 2

Successes and Failures in Good and Bad Engineering Designs .................................................... 3

Wireless-Optical Convergence: The Case for Fibre-connected Massively Distributed Antennas ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

An Evening at PNC Park with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs .................................... 6

Pittsburgh Section Annual History and Awards Dinner ............................................................... 6

Local members visit lawmakers as a part of the IEEE-USA Energy Fly-In ............................. 8

Robotics & Automation: Research – Development – Applications................................................ 9

Profile of the Signal Processing Society ...................................................................................... 13

Editor: Philip Cox, [email protected]; Contributors: Bob Brooks, Guy Nicoletti, Andy Novotny, Mey Sen, Kal Sen, Dave Vaglia and Ramana Vinjamuri

All announcements for publication in a particular month’s bulletin are due to the Editor by the 20th of the

previous month. The accuracy of the published material is not guaranteed. If there is any error, please bring it to the Editor’s attention. The Section’s web site www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/pittsburgh has past issues

of the bulletin and lots of other useful information

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.ewh.ieee.org/r2/pittsburgh


Bob’s Bytes

In May, I got the opportunity to travel to Washington DC as part of IEEE USA’s Energy Fly-In. For those not familiar

with the fly-ins, they are organized by the IEEE USA and

provide a very easy and painless way to interact with the

folks in DC that you’ve elected to represent you. Details can be found at the IEEE USA web site. The point is that 15

minute meetings are arranged between you and your

legislators (or their staff) to discuss issues that are important to you as an engineer and a voter, and to offer your technical

expertise on making the decisions that affect our technology

and our profession. I had the good fortune to attend with two very knowledgeable and well-spoken engineers in the

energy field; Joe Cioletti and Kal Sen. For me, it was an

education, and I believe this will not be my last fly-in. Of

course, the Pittsburgh section is well known for being politically active in this way. The next fly-in event is June

20-21, and is focused on career related issues. Look for a

photo of our visit to Rep. Jason Altmire, district 4, in this issue.

Also in this issue, look for: a report on our Annual History and Awards Dinner; upcoming talks by a distinguished

lecturer of the Communications Society, and our own Keith

Suecker for PES/IAS; a discussion on robotics by Guy

Nicoletti; a description of the Signal Processing Society; and an upcoming baseball game.

Until Next Month

Bob Brooks – IEEE Pittsburgh Section Chair 2011

Section

Chair – Robert Brooks [email protected]

Vice Chair - Dr. Louis Hart [email protected]

Treasurer – Dr. Rin Burke [email protected]

Secretary - Dr. Jim Beck, [email protected]

Immediate Past Chair – Joe Cioletti PE, [email protected]

Awards Chair - Ralph Sprang, [email protected]

Webmaster – Gerry Kumnik, [email protected]

UpperMon Subsection

Chair: Dr. Natalia Schmid [email protected] (304) 293-9136; Treasurer/Secretary: Dr. David Graham [email protected] (304) 293-9692

Chapters

Communications Society – Co-Chairs: Phil Cox

[email protected] (724) 443-0566 and Dr. Ajay Ogirala [email protected]

Computer Society – Chair: Ralph Sprang, [email protected]

Components, Packaging, and Manufacturing Technology/Electron Devices Societies – Drs. Louis Hart and Rin Burke

Engineering In Medicine & Biology Society Co-Chairs: Bob Brooks (see above), Dr. Zhi-Hong Mao [email protected] (412) 624-9674

Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Chair: Michael J. Oliver [email protected] (814) 763-3211

Power & Energy & Industry Applications Societies Chair: Dave Vaglia, [email protected]; Past: Mey Sen, [email protected] 412-373-0117

Magnetics Society – Chair: Dr. Jimmy Zhu, [email protected]

Nanotechnology Society - Chair: Dr. MinheeYun [email protected]

Robotics Society – Chair: Dr. Guy Nicoletti [email protected] (724) 836-9922

Signal Processing Society – Chair: Dr. Ramana Kumar Vinjamuri;,[email protected]

Society on Social Implications of Technology Chair: Joe Kalasky, P.E., [email protected] (724) 838-6492

Affinity Groups

GOLD – Chair: Jason Harchick [email protected]

Life Member – Chair: Bob Grimes, P.E. [email protected] (412) 963-9711

Women In Engineering – Chair: Dr. Rin Burke [email protected]

Committees

Consultants Network

Professional/Career Activities (PACE) Chair: Joe Kalasky, P.E. (see above)

Student Activities – Rajiv Garg, [email protected]

Membership Development – Dr. Karl Muller P.E., [email protected]

Publicity – Chair: Thomas Dionise, P.E. [email protected] (724) 779-5864





























Successes and Failures in Good and Bad Engineering Designs

Speaker: Keith H. Sueker, P.E., IEEE Life Senior Member

Date: Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Time: Social 6:30 PM, Program 7:00 PM

Place: Westinghouse Energy Center

4350 Northern Pike, Monroeville, PA 15146

RSVP: Required to Dave Vaglia ([email protected]) by June 8, 2011 with each

attendee’s Name, Affiliation, email, and phone number. If you would like to receive PDH, please

bring a copy of this announcement for verification of your attendance. A non-Member who would

like to receive PDH is required to pay $10 to IEEE Pittsburgh Section. A Member who would like to

receive PDH is required to show membership ID.

Organizers: Power & Energy Society/Industrial Applications Society

Abstract: In the course of designing new apparatus, some designs come off brilliantly and some

require serious fixing. This talk will cover a number of each type with a description of problems

and their appropriate fixes plus a number of designs that worked out very well. All of the designs

are associated with the hardware of power electronics systems by Robicon in the Power Systems

Group, for which the author was engineering manager for a number of years. Design is a

fascinating activity with daily new challenges, but mistakes are inevitable and the trick is to fix

them as soon as possible – preferably before shipment!

Speaker: Mr. Sueker is a Consulting Engineer and a Life Senior

Member of the IEEE. He is a Professional Engineer in the

Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He received a B.E.E with high

distinction (1947) and an M.S.E.E (1950), all in Electrical

Engineering, from University of Minnesota and Illinois Institute of

Technology, respectively. He was employed by Westinghouse for 19

years and then for 24 years by Robicon Corporation in various

positions as an engineer and a manager. His work experience includes

the design of very large SCR converter systems for fusion power

research, and, later for military systems. He served as an expert

witness in litigations involving transformers and power conversion

and investigated a VAR compensator failure for Failure Analysis

Associates. He is the author of a book titled "Power Electronics

Design – A Practitioner’s Guide," Elsevier, 2005.

DIRECTIONS TO WESTINGHOUSE ENERGY CENTER

From Pittsburgh take Interstate 376 East (Parkway East). Take Exit 84A to Monroeville.

Cross Business Rt 22 at the traffic light and proceed on Rt 48 South (Moss Side Blvd) approx ½

mile (two traffic lights). The 2nd

traffic light is at a 4-way intersection with an Exxon station on

the right. Turn left onto Northern Pike. Proceed approx 0.2 miles and turn right at the 1st traffic

light onto Westinghouse Dr. Travel 0.7 miles (past the guard stand) to the 3 flags where the



building’s main entrance is located. Parking in the evening will be plentiful. Use the main

entrance and check with the security guards inside. You will be directed to the proper room for

your meeting.

From the PA Turnpike, take Exit 57 (Monroeville). After the toll plaza, get in the left

lane to get on Business Rt 22 West. At the first light, turn left onto Rt 48 South (Moss Side Blvd)

and follow the above directions.

Wireless-Optical Convergence: The Case for Fibre-connected Massively Distributed Antennas

Speaker: Distinguished Lecturer Dr. Victor C.M. Leung, Dept. of Electrical and Computer

Engineering, the University of British Columbia

Date: Thursday, June 23rd, 2011

Time: Pizza: 6:00 PM, Talk: 6:30 PM

Place: University of Pittsburgh, School of Information Science, 135 Bellefield Ave.,

room 403

Sponsors: Communications Society and University of Pittsburgh

RSVP: to Philip Cox, [email protected].

Abstract: Wireless access architectures employing femto- and pico-cell base-station/access

point can reduce power consumption and enhancing wireless spectrum utilization by shortening

the links and exploiting cooperative and cognitive mechanisms, but co-ordinations between base-

stations or access points may incur large overheads. We present a novel architecture that exploits

wireless-optical convergence for next generation broadband wireless access employing fibre-

connected massively distributed antennas (BWA-FMDA). In this architecture, a large number of

distributed antennas are connected via radio over fibres (RoF) to a centralized processing entity

to minimize the communication overhead of system co-ordination. The coverage area of the

proposed BWA-FMDA system can range from a few tens of square meters in homes and office

environments, delivered via IEEE 802.11a/g/n or femto-cell hotspot solutions, to several square

kilometers supporting last-mile technologies such as WiMAX, LTE, and LTE-A using pico- and

micro-base-stations. This new architecture leads to many new research problems, including the

fundamental performance limits of massively distributed antenna systems, improved

measurement-based channel models involving massively distributed antennas, advanced radio

resource management and access control schemes that approach the performance limits in

realistic propagation environments, and improved opto-electronic transceivers designs for low

cost active optical cables suitable for RoF applications. In this talk we demonstrate the potentials

of BWA-FMDA architecture by considering its application in license-free and licensed wireless

systems. We present the cognitive WLAN over fibre (CWLANoF) system, which applies the

BWA-FDMA architecture in the license-free ISM band for cooperative spectrum sensing,

interference avoidance/mitigation and dynamic channel assignment. BWA-FMDA can also be

applied in licensed bands to create coordinated multiple point (CoMP) operations of femto-cells,

which provides higher spectral efficiency (bps/Hz) and higher energy efficiency (bits/Joule).

Simulation results and address potential research issues are presented for each scenario. We

conclude with a short discussion on our current effort to develop and deploy a BWA-FMDA

testbed based on commercially available equipment.



Biography: Victor C. M. Leung received the B.A.Sc. (Hons.)

degree in electrical engineering from the University of British

Columbia (U.B.C.) in 1977, and was awarded the APEBC Gold

Medal as the head of the graduating class in the Faculty of Applied

Science. He attended graduate school at U.B.C. on a Natural

Sciences and Engineering Research Council Postgraduate

Scholarship and completed the Ph.D. degree in electrical

engineering in 1981.

From 1981 to 1987, Dr. Leung was a Senior Member of Technical

Staff at MPR Teltech Ltd., specializing in the planning, design and

analysis of satellite communication systems. In 1988, he started his

academic career at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he

was a Lecturer in the Department of Electronics. He returned to U.B.C. as a faculty member in

1989, currently holds the positions of Professor and TELUS Mobility Research Chair in

Advanced Telecommunications Engineering in the Department of Electrical and Computer

Engineering. He is a member of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems

at U.B.C. He also holds adjunct/guest faculty appointments at Jilin University, Beijing Jiaotong

University, South China University of Technology, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and

Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. Dr. Leung has co-authored more than 500

technical papers in international journals and conference proceedings, and several of these papers

had been selected for best paper awards. His research interests are in the areas of architectural

and protocol design, management algorithms and performance analysis for computer and

telecommunication networks, with a current focus on wireless networks and mobile systems.

Dr. Leung is a registered professional engineer in the Province of British Columbia, Canada. He

is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and a Fellow of the

Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications

Society. He has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in

Communications – Wireless Communications Series, the IEEE Transactions on Wireless

Communications and the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and is serving on the

editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, Computer Communications, the Journal

of Communications and Networks, as well as several other journals. He has guest-edited several

journal special issues, and served on the technical program committee of numerous international

conferences. He is a General Co-chair of CSA 2011, Chinacom 2011, and MobiWorld and GCN

Workshops at IEEE Infocom 2011. He chaired the TPC of the wireless networking and cognitive

radio track in IEEE VTC-fall 2008. He was the General Chair of AdhocNets 2010, WC 2010,

QShine 2007, and Symposium Chair for Next Generation Mobile Networks in IWCMC 2006-

2008. He was a General Co-chair of BodyNets 2010, CWCN Workshop at Infocom 2010, ASIT

Workshop at IEEE Globecom 2010, MobiWorld Workshop at IEEE CCNC 2010, IEEE EUC

2009 and ACM MSWiM 2006, and a TPC Vice-chair of IEEE WCNC 2005.


An Evening at PNC Park with the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs

Date: Saturday, July 9, 2011

Time: Game starts at 7:05 PM

Place: PNC Park, North Shore, Pittsburgh

Cost: $16.00 per ticket

Sponsors: PES/IAS Chapter

RSVP: By sending your check payable to “IEEE Pittsburgh Section” to

Andrew Novotny

514 Price Ave

North Braddock, PA 15104

Come out and enjoy a fun-filled evening with your friends and families of IEEE members as we

watch our Pittsburgh Pirates take on the Chicago Cubs.

An added bonus is Skyblast featuring Zambelli Fireworks with .38 Special in concert performing

their popular hits. It will also be a Scratch’n Win Saturday night in PNC Park.

Be sure to reserve your seats early. Contact Andrew Novotny at (412) 351-4954, Work 412-

374-3346 or [email protected] if you have any questions.

THE DEADLINE TO ORDER TICKETS IS JUNE 8, 2011

Pittsburgh Section Annual History and Awards Dinner

The IEEE Pittsburgh Section Annual History Dinner was held on May 13, 2011 at the University

Club of University of Pittsburgh. There were 29 members and 16 guests present at this event. Dr.

Georges Montillet of GFM Consulting LLC gave the keynote speech titled The life of Nikola Tesla and his inventions: a man out of his time. The Wizard of the West. The Power

& Energy Society Outstanding Engineer Award was given to IEEE Life Fellow Joseph

Koepfinger. Mey Sen hosted the program.


IEEE Pittsburgh Section Annual History Dinner, May 13, 2011

(L to R): Mey Sen (hostess of the evening) and

Georges Montillet (keynote speaker).

(L to R): Mey Sen (Immediate Past Chapters Chair),

Joseph Koepfinger (winner of the 2011 PES

Outstanding Engineer’s Award), and Dave Vaglia

(2011 PES-IAS Chapters Chair)


Local members visit lawmakers as a part of the IEEE-USA Energy Fly-In

IEEE Pittsburgh Section Chair Robert Brooks and Past Chairs Joseph Cioletti and Kalyan Sen

visited their Congressional Representatives and Senators on May 10, 2011 as a part of the IEEE-

USA Energy Fly-In to Washington, D.C. They discussed the IEEE-USA’s National Energy Policy

Recommendations with the lawmakers.

The IEEE-USA – with a membership base of 215,000 – organized this third annual Congressional

visit on energy issues. In this nationwide participation, IEEE-USA members had an opportunity to

meet their respective lawmakers and voice their concerns.

IEEE Pittsburgh Section Past Chairs Joseph Cioletti and Kalyan Sen, Rep. Jason

Altmire, and current Section Chair Robert Brooks during the congressional visit.


Robotics & Automation: Research – Development – Applications

Fundamentals of Robot Kinematics

Part II

(Continued from Part I)

Guy M. Nicoletti, MS, Ph.D., IEEE LM

Assoc. Prof. Emeritus, Engineering

University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg, Greensburg Pa

[email protected], [email protected]

HOMOGENEOUS LINK TRANSFORMATION

It is apparent from the previous example that the kinematic equations could become quite

elaborate with the addition of one or more links. Obviously, the approach used in deriving these

equations is by no mean systematic and could cause serious mathematical complexities,

especially if the motion is in three dimensions. This problem was recognized many years ago by

scientists in the field of computer graphics, and the result was the development and use of

homogeneous transformation matrices.

A transformation matrix is a 4 by 4 matrix, which when multiplied by a vector describing an

orthogonal coordinate system, changes its orientation and position in space. The question often

arises as to why is a 4 by 4 matrix, when the coordinate frame vector is only 3 by 1. To simplify

the answer to this question, consider the following transformation

[

] = [

] [

]

This results in the three independent equations

=

= + + (7)

= + +

It is evident from equations (7) that the vector [ ] can only be scaled or rotated this 3

by 3 matrix. For example, of = = = = = = 0 then (7) becomes:

= =

=




Which is a scaling of the coordinate system by a constant value in each direction. Of course, if

= = = e (where e is some arbitrary constant), then the entire coordinate system is

magnified or minimized by an amount e.

Rotation of a coordinate system by an angle θ about one of its axes is accomplished by projecting

the other two axes on a rotated orthogonal triad (Figure 4), resulting in the following three

direction cosine transformation matrices

For rotation [

] = [

] [

]

For rotation about axis [

] = [

] [

]

For rotation about axis [

] = [

] [

]

Figure 4. Rotation of a coordinate system by an angle θ about one of its axes

The rotation shown in Figure 4 is accomplished by projecting the other two axes on a rotated

orthogonal triad.

To perform a translation of a vector in space by some constant amount, a 3 by 3 matrix no longer

suffices. A coordinate frame can be moved to any point simply by adding a constant value along

its axes. For example, a vector [ ] can be translated by an amount[ ] using

the transformation

= + a

= + b (8)

= + c


Equation (8) can be represented in matrix form only if the vectors (or coordinates [ ]

and [ ] are written as homogeneous coordinates. The homogeneous coordinate

representation of vectors in space associates , with each vector [ ] , an ordered 4 by 1

vector [ ] , with , , , and chosen so that X = ⁄ , Y = ⁄ , and Z =

⁄ . Therefore, a vector [ ] can be identified as [ ] , or in normalized

homogeneous representation, as [ ] .

Hence, equation (8) now can be represented as

[

] = [

] [

]

Furthermore, the transformation matrix that generated equation (7) can be expanded to a 4 by 4

matrix (without affecting its operation), resulting in

[

] = [

] [

]

It is to be noted the bottom rows in the fourth-order matrices presented above contributes to

perspective transformation and thus is never used in robot kinematics.

Successive translations and rotations can be combined into a single transformation matrix that

will carry out the two operations in one step. This is accomplished by concatenating the

individual matrices.

For robotic manipulators, the first step is to set up the appropriate coordinate systems at each

joint and at the base. The most commonly adopted convention is the one proposed by Paul: place

the coordinate frame at the end of its respective link. All the consecutive reference frames would

have a common post rotated direction for the x axis, and the z axis would be in the direction of

motion of the next link; this is shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Robot manipulator with two convolute joints and one prismatic


Therefore, to transform from coordinate frame , , to , , one performs the

following series of transformations:

1. Rotate amount about ;

2. Translate amount along which is the same as ; And from , , , to , , .

1. Translate amount , along ;

2. Rotate amount , about which is the same as .

The general set of transformations would thus include four consecutive operations (Paul),

namely:

1. Rotate by about (if revolute joint);

2. Translate by along (if prismatic joint);

3. Translate bt (constant length) along ;

4. Rotate by about .

These four homogeneous transformations result in the following matrix

= [

] (9)

From which the position of the end effector [ ] relative to coordinate [ ] can be obtained as

[ ] = [ ]

Where [ ] = ….

[ ] = [ ]

[ ] = [ ]


Profile of the Signal Processing Society

The IEEE's first society, the Signal Processing Society is the world’s premier professional

society for signal processing scientist and professionals since 1948. Signal processing is the

enabling technology for the generation, transformation, and interpretation of information. At

national and international levels the IEEE SPS serves its members through high quality

publications, conference, technical and educational activities, and leadership opportunities. Its

goal is to keep members abreast of the latest information and to serve the public at large.

Over time signal processing has evolved to be a specialized core research area that uses

mathematical, statistical, computational, heuristic, and/or linguistic representations, formalisms,

modeling techniques and algorithms for generating, transforming, transmitting, and learning

from analog or digital signals, which may be performed in hardware or software. Signal

generation includes sensing, acquisition, extraction, synthesis, rendering, reproduction and

display. Signal transformations may involve filtering, recovery, enhancement, translation,

detection, and decomposition. The transmission or transfer of information includes coding,

compression, securing, detection, and authentication. Learning can involve analysis, estimation,

recognition, inference, discovery and/or interpretation.

As seen above, signal processing has myriad applications in various scientific disciplines. Signal

processing is essential to integrating the contributions of other engineering and scientific

disciplines in the design of complex systems that interact with humans and the environment, both

as a fundamental tool due to the signals involved and as a driver of new design methodologies.

As such, signal processing is a core technology for addressing critical societal challenges that

include healthcare, energy systems, sustainability, transportation, entertainment, education,

communication, collaboration, defense, and security.

Pittsburgh chapter of SPS, a joint chapter with control systems society, realizes the wide spread

applications and abilities of signal processing. Pittsburgh has evolved itself as a technology city

from a historical steel city in the past decade. Renowned technology firms such as Google,

Apple, Intel have set up their research labs in the midst of two flourishing campuses of the

University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University. UPMC and affiliated medical centers

are using leading technologies in health care. For these and many more companies signal

processing is one of the important tools of research and design. Pittsburgh chapter of SPS

organizes multiple talks per month inviting distinguished researchers and scientists from the

universities as well as the industry, thus catering the needs of health care, education, defense and

entertainment. We welcome you all to be part of this technology society. It is your society.

IEEE Pittsburgh Section Bulletin May 2011 Volume 60 No. 5 of 14

2011 Calendar – Meetings of IEEE Pittsburgh Section Jan Feb Mar Apr May June July August Sept Oct Nov Dec

Executive

Committee

20

Panera,

Wilkins

Twp.

17

TBD

17

Panera Bread

Wilkins

21

Panera Bread

Wilkins

19

Panera Bread

Oakland

16

Panera

Miracle

Mile

21

TBD

18

Panera Bread

Oakland

15

TBD

20

WVU

Section 19

Eng. Week

13

History

Dinner

Communic

ations

3

Network

Arch.

31

Network Arch

14

Wireless

5

Internet

22

Wireless

23

Dist.

Antennas

Computer

EMBS 18

Brain-

Computer

Interface

18

Human

Posture

8

Biometrics

15

Neural

6

Hand

Tracking

EMCS

PES/IAS 19

Capacitors

23

Storage &

Hydro

16

Voltage Reg.

14

PE License

13

History

Dinner

15

Eng.

Designs

9

Pirates

Magnetics

Robotics 10

Advances in

Robotics

Sig.

Processing

18

Brain-

Computer

Interface

18

Human

Posture

14

Wireless

8

Biometrics

15

Neural

22

Wireless

6

Hand

Tracking

CPMT/ED

Social Impl

Technology

10

Advances in

Robotics

19

Legislative

Upper Mon 28

Cyber

Attacks

4

Wireless

14

Software

Women in

Eng’ing

Life Mem.

GOLD 14

PE License

PACE 19

Legislative

Student Act

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