Electrical and Computer Engineering Department The University of Alabama in Huntsville

Spring/Summer 2002

UAH/34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory Featured Invited Speaker, Professor Rudolf E. Kalman

Professors John Stensby, C. D. Johnson, Rudolf E. Kalman, and Reza Adhami at the Huntsville Marriott Hotel for the 34th SSST.

Prof. R. E. Kalman, discoverer of the famous Kalman-Filter and many other fundamental principles in modern system theory, was the invited speaker at the banquet event of the 34th annual meeting of the Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), hosted this year by the UAH ECE Department and held at the Huntsville Marriott Hotel on March 18-19, 2002. The 34th SSST was dedicated to Prof. Kalman in recognition of: “…his unparalleled influence on the evolution of System Theory to the scientific discipline it is today.” Prior to his talk, Dr. Kalman was introduced by his long-time friend and another pioneering researcher in modern control and system theory, Dr. R.W. Bass (Ph.D. Mathematics at age 25, Johns Hopkins University). Dr. Bass provided some interesting recollections of system theory research activities in the period 1955-1960 when Kalman began his rise to fame, after joining the staff of the Martin Company’s Research Institute for Advanced Study (RIAS) in Baltimore. Dr. Bass, acting as a talent scout for the world famous Princeton University Mathematics Professor Solomon Lefschetz, “discovered” Kalman and was instrumental in bringing him into the RIAS research group in 1957. The full text of Dr. Bass’s presentation is contained in a separate article in this issue of Real Time. Dr. Kalman’s talk, entitled “Research: Then and Now; Some Straight-Talk About Randomness,” was broadly concerned with the concept of “randomness” and how the traditional textbook introduction of that concept is ineffective from the point-of-view of system theory.

Never known as one who avoids rocking-the-boat, Dr. Kalman briefly summarized the thrust of his talk with the following provocative, pre-conference abstract of his talk: “Looking back on a 50-year commitment to research, the speaker will explain how this commitment became a dominant concern after the discovery of Kalman filtering and led, inevitably, to a deep examination of the basis for (and limitations inherent in) that invention. It is now known that modeling randomness in the real world by means of, or as a consequence of, probability theory is not only naïve but unscientific; a fresh start must be made and is now well underway.”

Available space here does not allow an appropriate coverage of Dr. Kalman’s stimulating remarks on the concept of “randomness,” but the interested reader can find the technical details presented in several of his recently published scientific papers listed under Further Reading at the end of this article. The Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST) is an annual technical meeting of educators, graduate students, and professional researchers in the field of System Theory, who meet to present technical papers on advances and applications of system theory in traditional engineering areas such as: computer and information systems, communication systems, guidance/navigation and control systems, radar systems, power systems, etc., as well as non-traditional engineering areas such as economic systems, healthcare systems, environmental systems, educational systems, security systems, etc.

(Continued on page 2)

CubeSat: Student Satellite Program

The National Space Grant Student Satellite Program (NSGSSP) is allowing students across America to design, build, fly and operate a broad range of spacecraft. Through its strategy of "Crawl, Walk, Run and Fly" students with different levels of skill, knowledge, and experience are given the opportunity to build payloads ranging from the simple "soda-can satellites," small payloads for launch from small rockets or balloons, to building sophisticated satellites. Missions of growing complexity provide students the opportunities to acquire baseline skills and then to build on them. This is a student-driven enterprise. Students experience the entire "Design - Build - Fly - Operate - Analyze" cycle of a space mission. By bringing together university, industry, military and government resources to train America's future scientists and engineers, the program has set a goal to make aerospace history and send the first student-built satellites to Mars. If you are interested in the program at UAH, please contact Dr. Joiner (EB217B, ljoiner@ece.uah.edu) or Dr. Corsetti (EB265, corsetti@ece.uah.edu). CubeSat is a concept for student-built satellites developed by Professor Bob Twiggs of Stanford University and has been adopted for use by the National Space Grant Alliance.

Some Reminiscences of Control and System Theory in the Period 1955-1960: Introduction of Dr. Rudolf E. Kalman

The following is the text of Dr. R. W. Bass’s talk, Some Reminiscences of Control and System Theory in the Period 1955-1960, as presented (3/18/02) at the banquet/speaker event of the 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, hosted by the UAH/ECE Dept. Real Time would like to express appreciation to Dr. Bass for providing this written text and granting permission to reproduce it here.

It is a singular privilege and honor and also a great pleasure to

introduce to this distinguished audience my old friend & colleague Prof. Rudolf Kalman. The Kalman Filter provides a critical enabling technology of the Space Age!

It is well known that by now more than 100,000 papers have been published with the key words "Kalman Filter" in the Title or Abstract, and the last time I checked (about 1995) there were appearing some 200 issued Patents per year from the US Patent Office which carried the same Key Words in either Title or Abstract. More importantly, an official Raytheon statement credits the information-theoretic architecture of the Kalman Filter as critical to the success of the Patriot Missile in shooting down Iraqui SCUDS over both Israel and Saudi Arabia, and others have opined that the essential role of the Kalman Filter in Project Apollo's manned soft lunar landing combined with President Reagan's subsequently credibly-proposed SDI initiative convinced the former USSR to transform itself into a less-threatening nation -- indeed for a decade Russia has been no longer regarded as a potential military adversary, and presently is actually an ally. Kalman not only discovered what many people have recognized as the most important innovation in systems engineering since World War II but almost single-handedly laid the foundations for the modern mathematical approach to linear systems analysis & synthesis an achievement comparable to Euclid's axiomatization of geometry or Newton's formulation of a comprehensive theory of dynamics. Speaking of achievements I am reminded of what Sir Humphrey Davy replied when asked what he considered to be his life's greatest achievement: without hesitation he answered that his greatest achievement had been that "I discovered Michael Faraday!" Similarly I flatter myself that my own greatest achievement was that "I discovered Rudolf Kalman!" In a moment I'll explain what I mean by that claim. However I should preface my remarks by the comment that I have been asked to provide by means of personal reminiscences and anecdotal nostalgia some flavor of the early days when so-called Modern Control & Estimation Theory was being discovered and established. During the academic year 1955-56 I was a postdoctoral student of Solomon Lefschetz in the mathematics department at Princeton University. In March 1956 I attended an on-campus ASME meeting at which I heard a speaker named Rudolf Kalman make a presentation regarding analysis of piecewise-linear systems (such as linear-saturating systems). At that time I fancied that I knew something about this subject because while at Johns Hopkins I had written a 356-page report on Relay and Discontinuous Systems which had been accepted for publication by Princeton University

Dr. Robert W. Bass and Dr. Rudolf E. Kalman at the 34th SSST.

Press in book form and in which I had reviewed scores of published papers on the subject. But Kalman's approach struck me as so stunningly original that as I said at the time, "I nearly fell out of my chair!" I soon learned that Rudolf was an MIT-trained electrical engineer who after designing and building an adaptive control system at DuPont was now pursuing a doctorate at Columbia University. On that occasion I gave Rudolf a copy of a paper which I had submitted to the following month's Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute Symposium on Nonlinear Circuit Analysis in which I employed state-variable techniques that I had learned from Wintner, Hartman & Lewis at JHU and from their and Lefschetz's former student Richard Bellman. In that paper I used Liapunov's Second Method and the Gronwall-Bellman Lemma to define what I called then the "amount ρ of [structural] stability" of a linear system but which in today's terminology would be called a Stability Robustness Margin ρ = ρ(F). Specifically, if Φ(t) = exp(F.t) is the system's state-transition matrix, then || Φ(t) || ≤ γ.exp(-λ.t), λ > 0, γ ≥ 1, ρ = λ/γ ≤ 1/µ, where µ is the celebrated 1986 robustness criterion of Caltech's famed Mu-Synthesis creator John Doyle, who was gracious enough some 35 years later to tell his graduate students in my presence that he had been "amazed" to learn that in 1956 I had published a lower bound to the reciprocal of his Mu criterion for robust synthesis which had partially anticipated his own important discovery by some three decades. Accordingly I flatter myself that it was from my 1956 paper that Kalman first appreciated the power of two of the three perspectives which he used in order to discover the by now ubiquitous Kalman Filter, namely the State Space approach and Liapunov's Second Method. But regarding the third perspective, namely Wiener Filtering and related stochastic-process oriented results developed and fostered at MIT, I had known nothing and therefore would never have been able to conceive of, much less even conjecturally formulate, Kalman's epochal discovery. But today, as you will soon hear, Kalman regards the stochasticity aspects as of less significance than mere uncertainty, whether probabilistic or determninistic.

(Continued on page 3)

34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (continued from page 1)

The SSST conference is hosted, on a rotating basis, by various Universities in the Southeastern US. However, participants in the SSST come from throughout the US and from many countries abroad. For instance, at the 2002 SSST in Huntsville which was technical Co-Sponsored by the IEEE and the Control Systems Society of the IEEE, there were 105 technical papers presented representing the work of authors from the states of Alabama, Arkansas California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia, West Virginia, as well as from the countries of Australia, France, Germany, Japan, Greece, India, and Switzerland. The Proceedings of the 34th SSST, containing all the papers presented, were published in a 510-page bound volume. Copies of that Proceedings volume are available from IEEE Customer Services @ 1-800-701-4333 [ISBN# 0-7803-7339-1; IEEE Cat. No. 02EX540].

The first meeting of SSST was held at Virginia Polytechnic Institute (VPI) in 1969. Further details of the history and organization of the SSST may be found at the official SSST website: SSST-USA.org. The next meeting of SSST will be hosted by, and held at, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV on March 16-18, 2003 (contact: adavari@wvu.edu).

Further Reading Dr. Kalman’s critique of the conventional concept of “randomness,” and related technical details, are presented in several of his recent scientific papers. The interested reader is referred to the following:

1. R. E. Kalman, “Randomness Reexamined,” Journal of Modeling, Identification and Control, Vol. 15, p. 141-151, 1994.

2. R. E. Kalman, “Randomness and Probability,” Mathematica Japonica, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 41-58, 1995.

3. R. E. Kalman, “Probability in the Real World as a System Attribute,” Special Issue of CWI Quarterly on Control and System Theory, 1996.

4. Steve Pincus and R. E. Kalman, “Not All (Possibly) ‘Random’ Sequences Are Created Equal,” Proc. National Academy of Sciences of the USA, Vol. 94, pp. 3513-3518, April 1997.

Other researchers have addressed the same issue, but from different points of view. See, for instance:

5. Edward Beltrami, What is Random? (book), Copernicus imprint of Springer-Verlag Publishers, New York, 1999.

6. Gregory J. Chaitin, “Computers, Paradoxes and the Foundations of Mathematics,” American Scientist, Vol. 90, No. 2, pp. 164-171, March-April 2002.

ECE Dept., UAH 2 Real Time

Reminiscences: Bass and Kalman (Continued from page 2)

Most systems engineers know that all modern aerospace and marine

College of Engineering’s Highest Achievement Award

transportation systems, both civilian and military, depend upon the Kalman Filter as a mission-critical component of their guidance, navigation and control (GNC) systems. Likewise Kalman Filtering is essential for Fire Control in modern artillery. This state-variable estimation algorithm works online in real-time to estimate the unmeasured state-variables from the over-all system's known dynamics together with feedback of those variables actually instrumented for real-time measurement. Accordingly the Kalman Filter algorithm's embodiment can be likened to a sort of synthetic super- sensor suite. In Kalman's own words, the dynamics-based Kalman Filter turned out to be more important than the purely stochastic Wiener Filter because "Newton is more important than Gauss!"

In 1955 Vice President George Trimble of the Martin Co. (later Martin-Marietta and now Lockheed-Martin) sought to establish an industry-

Janice Cicero Rock Ms. Janice Rock is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a major in Electrical Engineering. She has maintained a perfect GPA at UAH.

sponsored Research Institute for Advanced Studies (RIAS) in hopes of basic-research-derived technical breakthroughs that could assist our national defense in what was then called the Cold War for containment of expansive communism. Trimble appointed Martin's accomplished electronics manager, Welcome Bender, to recruit, staff and direct RIAS in a Baltimore residential suburb. Bender's first appointment was a recent JHU Ph.D. in physics, Lou Witten, an internationally recognized expert in gravitational physics whose son Edward Witten is today a renowned string theorist at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. Noting that it was commonly acknowledged that the USSR was far ahead of the West in the field of nonlinear mechanics, Lou Witten recommended that Bender seek assistance from Solomon Lefschetz at Princeton, who was by then highly active in translating Russian papers in this field into English and in promoting nonlinear mechanics in the USA from his status as a Member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Lefschetz, a Fields Medalist, was already a world-renowned pure mathematician of the highest stature and a Professor Emeritus at Princeton. When Bender and Witten visited Princeton to make an informal presentation of their plans regarding RIAS, in hopes of recruiting Lefschetz to direct an activity in nonlinear mechanics and related fields, such as control theory, I was in the audience and by asking positively-worded questions about their plans made it clear that it sounded good to me -- though at the time Lefschetz himself was understandably reluctant to leave Princeton for Baltimore.

When Lefschetz appeared to be unreceptive to any putative RIAS offer, they made me an offer of employment at RIAS which I accepted in June 1956 though it was a hard decision to select RIAS over a by then formally-awarded NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship to continue at Princeton during 1956-57.

Later I was able to persuade Lefschetz to accept an offer from RIAS to commute by train to Baltimore and direct an activity in nonlinear mechanics whose initial goal was to compete with Soviet activity in the same field. Years later I counted out that of the first 22 theoreticians to whom Lefschetz had made permanent or visiting offers at RIAS, about 11 of them had already been Lefschetz colleagues or proteges, such as Joseph LaSalle and Lamberto Cesari, but the other 11 of them (including Andre & Seibert, Kalman, Hale & Gambill, Pipino, Bucy, and Kushner) had been theorists whom I had first called to Lefschetz's attention directly or indirectly (e.g. by recommending Kalman who in turn recommended Bucy, etc.).

Kalman's nomination of Bucy was particularly inspired because Bucy soon proved that the well-known Ricatti Equation of the Calculus of Variations was in the case of finite-dimensional systems equivalent to the Wiener-Hopf Equation of stochastic filtering theory, and collaborated fruitfully with Kalman in generalizing all of Kalman's discrete-time results to the continuous-time case, where one now speaks of the Kalman-Bucy Filter. Also Kalman, Bucy and Englar produced at RIAS, under contract to NASA, the grandfather of all Automatic Synthesis Programs, the famous ASP-C program of 1965, which in FORTRAN could cope with dimensions as high as n = 30. Today the Peacekeeper ICBM is known to employ an onboard real-time Kalman Filter of state-space dimension n exceeding n = 100! I well remember that when at Princeton in 1957 I first tried to tell Lefschetz how brilliantly original Kalman was, a world-famed and prize-winning European mathematician turned to me and said: "Tell me: WHY are you so interested in this little engineer?"

After I had worked at RIAS for less than a year, and just before Lefschetz did actually hire Kalman, I had to take a two-year leave of absence in order to fulfill my ROTC obligation by active duty service in the Air Force starting in May 1957. When I returned to RIAS in May, 1959 I became absorbed in my own efforts to find a closed-form formula for the nonlinear state-variable feedback control law of Time-Optimal or "bang-bang" control systems and therefore was not aware of what Rudolf Kalman had been working on.

(Continued on page 4)

Janice is an Amateur Radio Operator who holds the highest amateur class license. She is an on-call member of ALERT, the Birmingham SKYWARN group. During the April 1998 Jefferson County tornado, Janice relayed many vital weather reports via amateur radio and also helped rescue efforts at the site, including saving victims from the rubble of demolished homes. She was awarded the ARRL (American Radio Relay League) Emergency Communications Commendation for her efforts during this event. Janice is a Volunteer Examiner for the FCC, and an avid amateur meteorologist. She is a competitive figure skater who holds over 50 gold medals from regional events and now teaches figure skating. Janice is a former ice-dance partner of Olympian skater John Zimmerman who placed fifth in pair’s figure skating in the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. She enjoys snowboarding, white-water kayaking, rock climbing, hiking. Janice was an Assistant Race Marshall for the Mulberry Fork Canoe and Kayak Race in 1997. She held two Alabama Cups in white water slalom racing during 1996 and 1998. Her Senior Design Project (with two other students) was to design and build a yagi antenna system that will bounce VHF signals off the moon to extend "line-of-sight" communication to its greatest limits. Through her efforts as team leader, her design team received approximately $1,000 in donated equipment for their project from the Cushcraft Corp., NH. Only about 100 of these systems in the world. Now the only operational system of its type in the State of Alabama. She is a member of Phi Theta Kappa (Junior College honor society), Eta Kappa Nu (Electrical Engineering honor society), Tau Beta Pi (National Engineering honor society), and Phi Kappa Phi (Multi-discipline honor society). Upon graduation, Janice plans to work at AMCOM in research and development and return to UAH for her graduate degree.

Daniel S. Lynn, Janice C. Rock, and Joel P. Booth with replica of “Moon Bounce.”

List of Scholarships for Janice:

• UAH Super Scholar Transfer • Reggie F. Gilland Memorial • Foundation for Amateur Radio:

• Rose Ellen Bills Memorial (awarded twice) • Lawrence E. and Thelma J. Norrie Memorial

• ARRL Charles Clarke Cordle Memorial • Consulting Engineers Council of Alabama • Linly Heflin Scholarship for Women • Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association:

• General John A. Wickham Scholarship (awarded twice)

ECE Dept., UAH 3 Real Time

Dennis Hite, ECE Lab Manager

Reminiscences: Bass and Kalman (Continued from page 3) One day I said to Kalman quite naively, "If you have n state variables then you need n sensors." "No, Bob, that's not true," replied Rudolf. "If a system satisfies my criterion of Observability, then you can optimally estimate all unmeasured state variables by using the ones that are measured together with the system's known dynamics. I have been shouting that from the rooftops for the past year! Haven't you been listening?" Later I asked Rudolf how one could be sure that one actually "knew"

I hope everyone had a good Spring semester and is ready for a refreshing Summer. You have probably noticed a lot of changes going on around the Engineering Building. Several new Pentium 4 computers have been purchased, and most all the labs in the Engineering Building have been or will be upgraded with the new systems. In addition, new equipment such as scopes, power supplies, multimeters, and training boards are being purchased and several of the Electrical and Computer Engineering instructional labs will be upgraded over the summer. The Virtual Control (instructional) Laboratory is closer to being a reality. Ten Pentium III systems have been set up with remote access software in EB262 to provide access to the Virtual Laboratory systems in EB124, pictured below. According to Dr. Shtessel the lab is in it's final phase of preparation.

Virtual Controls Lab: The Development of the Virtual Control and Dynamic Systems Laboratory is funded by the NSF grant DUE-9952801. Principal investigator (PI) is Dr. Y. Shtessel (ECE), Co-PIs are Dr. C. D. Johnson (ECE), Dr. R. Fredrick (MAE), and Mr. R. Middleton (MAE). Graduate student Sergei Pleckhanov (ECE) is working on laboratory manuals under the supervision of Dr. Shtessel. Six laboratory units: Position Servomechanism (three units), Flexible-joint Servomechanism, Magnetic Levitation Unit, and Linear Inverted Pendulum equipped with a corresponding software are already installed in the EB124. The lab units will be available for experiments soon. Please visit our Web Site,

http://www.eb.uah.edu/~controls/index.htm In the last issue of Real Time I made the comment " I have noticed a lot of activity around Engineering Building. In particular, I have noticed several students and professors working in the ECE labs..." This is about to grow exponentially if CubeSat (see page 1) gets the response expected. _______________________________________________________

2002 Linda M. Hooper ECE Staff Awards

Recipients of the 2002 Linda Mauldin Hooper ECE Staff Awards, Linda Grubbs (left) and Pat Smith (right), with Linda Hooper (center).

the dynamics of the system being controlled. Quoting something else which he had learned at MIT and which I had never heard of, Rudolf replied, "In principle, that's easy! You just take the cross-correlation of the system's output with its command input and then in a suitable sense divide it by the input's auto-correlation in order to get the input-output transfer function!" During the years just before and after Kalman accepted a professorship at Stanford in 1964 he published algebraic results pertaining to realization theory, or modeling of linear input-output systems, which laid the groundwork for a stunning discovery by his graduate student B. L. Ho. I am referring to Ho's doctoral dissertation's main result, published in 1966 as a joint paper with Kalman, which I regard as the most profound theorem pertaining to the Systems Identification (ID) problem. Firstly, if noise is negligible, then from input-output measurements one may compute the so-called Markov parameters, or coefficients of a Taylor-series expansion in the complex frequency domain of an empirical transfer function. Secondly, arrange the Markov parameters into an infinite Hankel matrix, each of whose elements is an l by m matrix in the case of l outputs and m inputs. Then the rank n of this matrix defines the minimal dimension of a state-space model of the system! Moreover, by elementary matrix algebra one may compute from the principal n × n sub-block of the Hankel matrix a triad of matrices (F, G, H) having respectively dimensions n × n, n × m, l × n and which are called the dynamical coefficient matrix, the input coupling matrix (or actuator kinematics matrix) and the output coupling matrix (or sensor kinematics matrix). Furthermore the pair (F, H) satisfies Kalman's criterion of Observability (which enables applicability of the Kalman Filter to estimate optimally all n state variables from the l sensed outputs) and the pair (F,G) satisfies Kalman's criterion of Controllability (which enables one to derive the optimal Kalman Regulator Law for state-variable feedback control). Furthermore, by Kalman's important Principle of Duality, results in asymptotic estimator theory may be converted into results in control theory, and conversely, by simple matrix transposition operations. By my own Algebraic Separation Theorem, one may design the control system as if all n state-variables were measured and available for feedback, then design a Kalman Filter to estimate them, and combine the two results into an over-all stable system whose 2n poles combine those of the ideal regulator and the optimal filter. Moreover it can be proved by Stochastic Optimzation Theory, in what some term the Guidance/Navigation Separation Principle, that such a 2n-pole system is a genuinely optimal system of the so-called LQG type. Here L refers to the assumption of linearity employed in the Ho-Kalman Identification Lemma, while Q refers to the fact that the Kalman Regulator Law minimizes the integral over future time of a prespecified arbitrary quadratic form in the state-variables and control variables. Finally, the G refers to the fact that the Kalman Filter provides unbiased minimal-variance estimates of the state variables when the process disturbances and measurements noises are all Gaussian white-noise processes. The only fly in the ointment of LQG theory is that the resultant "optimality" is very fragile if the actual disturbances and noises have covariance intensity matrices different from those assumed during the design. Here I and my collaborator Dean Zes have published a theory of Robust Tuning of a Kalman Filter in which we showed how to choose fictitious covariances that maximize my 1956 Robustness Margin ρ to produce a system optimally insensitive to whatever the off-nominal noise may be. The dual of this enables us to engage in Robust Tuning of a Kalman Regulator by maximizing its closed-loop Robustness Margin ρ = λ/γ . This can be understood as forcing the system to have the relatively fastest response time or largest λ > 0 possible while simultaneously constraining increases in its overshoot coefficient γ ≥ 1, i.e. by selecting the "most negative" real parts of its closed-loop poles that are compatible with simultaneously minimizing the associated residues. In short, a "rhobustified" system behaves like a scalar system of transfer function γ/(s + λ) wherein ρ = λ/γ is maximized. Another aspect of rendering a system insensitive to uncertainty is that of replacing the usual stochastic noises and disturbances by waveform-based disturbances modeled by a priori defined auxiliary linear systems whose states can be identified by a Kalman Filter and thereby provide synthetic disturbance feedforward capability. This Disturbance Accommodating Control (DAC) theory of C.D. Johnson is an effective way to accommodate random-like disturbances having a strong component of systematic or semi-deterministic time-behavior, and my collaborator Dan Hill and I have incorporated it in our "grandson-of-ASP-C" RhoSyn/DAC public domain MATLAB Toolkit.

(Continued on page 6) ECE Dept., UAH 4 Real Time

IEEE Student Robot Competition Three teams built independent entries to vie for the honor of

Outstanding Undergraduate in the Electrical Engineering Program

representing UAH at the IEEE SECON 2002 robot competition. A few days before leaving for the competition, the teams competed against one another at UAH. Two of the teams (Silver Streak and Head Banger) were enrolled in section 2 of the senior design class EE 494, and the third team (Brand X) consisted of four students enrolled in CPE 496 and two students who participated in the SECON 2001 student hardware competition. This year’s competition was modeled after the old computer game, Pong. Practice golf balls were introduced at the center of the table and the robots batted them back and forth trying to score points by placing a ball in the scoring bin behind the opponent’s robot. After six matches the Silver Streak team emerged undefeated and traveled to Columbia to represent UAH. Judges were Drs. Charles Corsetti and Laurie Joiner of UAH, and Eric Grigorian, IEEE Huntsville Section.

Joel Patrick Booth

The Silver Streak team built a unique robot that used one 5 inch diameter wheel driven along the table surface to intercept the ball, which was returned with a pneumatically driven paddle. The robot used a pillow block riding on a shaft above the rear of the table to keep it within the back 10 inch zone allocated for the robot. Silver Streak members are Derrick Cameron, Preston Chidebelu, Wykeisa Jackson, Daniel Miller, Miranda Parton, Robert Sawyer, Scot South, James Stafford, and Julie Troup.

Mr. Joel Patrick Booth is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a major in Electrical Engineering. His Senior Design Project was to design and build a yagi antenna system (page 3) that will bounce VHF signals off the moon to extend “line-of-sight” communications to its greatest limit. Only about 100 of these systems are in operation around the world. Now it is the only operational system of its type in the State of Alabama Joel is a determined individual. He is a recipient of the Dr. Wernher Von Braun Award and a 2-time recipient of the Radio Club of America Award. Joel is an Amateur Radio Operator, a member of ALERT, the Birmingham SkyWARN group. Joel works with the group relaying vital information to the National Weather Service by either ground-level storm spotting or as a Net Control Operator. He is a volunteer examiner for the FCC. He is a member of Phi Theta Kappa, Eta Kappa Nu, Tau Beta Pi, and Phi Kappa Phi. Upon graduation, Joel will be working at the Propulsions and Structures Directorate on the Redstone Arsenal. Joel enjoys snowboarding, white-water kayaking, rock climbing, and hiking.

Success of the 34th SSST: A Result of Combined Efforts of Many The success of the 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, hosted by the UAH ECE Dept., was made possible by the combined efforts of many individuals and organizations who generously contributed their time, labor, and skills, as well as financial and logistical support. The members of the 34th SSST Organizing Committee and their areas of responsibility were: General Chairman – Dr. Reza Adahmi; Technical Program Chairman – Dr. John Stensby; Planning, Coordination, Accommodations, and Publications – Dr. C. D. Johnson; Registration – Dr. Michael Oliver, Director of Continuing Education; Reception – Dr. Laurie Joiner; Publicity – Dr. Alex Poularikas; Donations – Dr. Reza Adhami and Dr. Ned Audeh. The wide range of typing, word-processing and graphics efforts associated with preparation of the SSST Proceedings volume, the Technical Program booklet, the Program for the Dinner Banquet and Speaker event, and numerous other documents were provided by ECE Technical Secretary, Mrs. Linda Grubbs, who also spent many hours running the Conference Registration Table, ably assisted by ECE secretaries Mrs. Jackie Siniard and Mrs. Linda Hooper (formerly “the” secretary of the ECE Dept., now retired). Each of the four meeting rooms, in which the conference Technical Sessions were held simultaneously, was equipped with UAH-provided equipment consisting of an overhead projector, an LCD projector, and a desktop PC to accommodate a variety of speaker presentation formats. The daunting effort required to set-up, check-out, and provide continuous operational support and security for that equipment, throughout the conference, was provided by Mr. Dennis Hite, ECE Technical Services and his several assistants. Mr. Jason Winningham, Computer Systems Engineer, UAH ECE Dept., also provided valuable help in establishing the SSST website. Ashlee Phillips, ECE student and webmaster for the ECE site, was diligent in keeping the SSST material updated on a timely basis. Generous financial support for the 34th SSST was provided by the following Huntsville-area companies: Dynetics Inc., Z/I Imaging Corporation, Applied Data Trends Inc., Sigmatech, Adtran, The Colsa Corporation, and by the UAH Office of University Relations, Dr. Derald Morgan, VP; the UAH

Division of Continuing Education, Dr. Michael Oliver, Director; the UAH College of Engineering, Dr. Jorge Aunon, Dean; and the UAH Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Dr. Reza Adhami, Chairman. Other persons who provided critical logistical support for SSST activities are Mr. Joel Lonergan, Director of University Relations and his staff: Ms. Susan Carlson, graphics and still photography; Mr. Ray Garner, news service; and Mr. David Denton, video. In addition, Mrs. Joyce Bryant, UAH Division of Continuing Education, provided essential pre-registration support and reporting services. Ms. Michelle Buckelew of Allied Photocopy contributed greatly to smoothing-out the many hassles associated with printing and binding the conference proceedings volume. Mr. Lynn Britton of GlobalDocugraphiX, Huntsville, provided valuable advice, patience and support in creating and supplying the gift-memento given to each registered SSST attendee. The introduction and timely coordination of speakers at the 24 technical sessions was critical to the success of the 34th SSST. The volunteer Session Chairpersons who provided that valuable service were: Dr. Jeffrey Kulick, UAH; Dr. W. D. Blair, Georgia Tech; Dr. Tom Jannett, UAH: Dr. Dennis Irwin, Ohio University; Dr. Jim Zhu, Ohio University; Dr. Nagendra Singh, UAH; Dr. Laurie Joiner, UAH, Dr. Reza Adhami, UAH; Dr. Alex Poularikas, UAH; Dr. John Stensby, UAH; Dr. Jennifer English, UAH; Dr. Derald Morgan, UAH; Dr. Bassem Mahafza, Colsa Corp.; Dr. Richard Gordon, Ole Miss; Dr. Charles Corsetti, UAH; Dr. Earl Wells, UAH; Dr. John Gray, Naval Surface Warfare Center; Dr. Dan Hahs, Dynetics Inc.; Dr. Yuri Shtessel, UAH; Dr. Asad Davari, West Virginia University; Dr. Emil Jovanov, UAH; and Dr. Arlynn Wilson, Adtran Corp. Mr. William (Buddy) Bishop, UAH part-time faculty, provided valuable “stand-by” support for any emergency and/or “no-show” situations that might have arisen at the SSST; fortunately, there were none. The synergistic efforts of all these persons enabled the 34th SSST to reach a new level of effectiveness and professionalism that will serve as the standard-for-comparison in the future.

ECE Dept., UAH 5 Real Time

Introducing Dr. Jamshid Nayyer Professor of ECE

Fall 2002 ECE Course Listing Electrical Engineering Computer Engineering EE100 Concepts/Digital Signals Sys CPE112 Intro Computer EE201 Digital Logic Design Lab Prog for Engr EE202 Intro Digital Logic Design CPE212 Fund Softw Engr EE300 Electrical Circuit Anal I CPE321 Computer Org EE301 Electronic Measurement Lab CPE412 Intro Paral Prog EE305 Electronic Devices & Design CPE421 Microcomputers EE307 Electricity & Magnetism CPE427 VLSI Design

Dr. Jamshid Nayyer joined the UAH ECE Department in February 2002 as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Nayyer received his Ph. D. in Electronics Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1976 where he was involved in research works on optical multimode fibers. During September 1986 to September 1987, he was a visiting scholar at the Tokyo Institute of Technology where he conducted original research works on high-speed optical switching. He joined the central research laboratories of Sumitomo Cement Co. in January 1990 where he designed the fastest Ti:LiNbO3 optical modulators (10GHz) exhibiting lowest thermal drifts. In March 1997, he was assigned to the Electro-technical Research Laboratories of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) of Japan where he carried out research works on ultrafast optical devices until March 1999. He served at the Department of Electrical & Electronics Engineering of Kanazawa University (in Japan) as an Associate Professor from April 1999 to September 2001. Dr. Nayyer is well experienced in optical devices such as modulators, switches, branches, etc. and has published dozens of reviewed papers in internationally recognized journals. He holds one issued patent and a few in pending status. Dr. Nayyer’s recent interests are in wide-band optical devices and optical communication networks. He enjoys and spends his spare time on jogging, table tennis and easy-listening music.

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Reminiscences: Bass and Kalman (Continued from page 4) In 1960 Rudolf and I journeyed to the first IFAC in Moscow and one of my most-cherished memories is that of sitting next to Rudolf while Premier Kosygin was extolling the virtues of the 1958 Pontriagin Maximum Principle (whose main special case, namely that of the Adjoint System approach to Time-Optimal Control, I had anticipated in my 1956 paper). In 1961 I gave a short-course at NASA Langley on "Modern Control Theory." After returning I mentioned to Rudolf that I had proved that "if a system is Controllable according to your criterion of Controllability, then one may compute a control law which places the closed-loop poles in any prespecified stability-constellation." Rudolf responded, "that's very significant, Bob, because it establishes how fundamental my criterion of Controllability is!" Indeed, every contribution of Kalman to modern control & estimation theory has turned out to be truly fundamental. In summary, Kalman's seminal contributions include: The Kalman Filtering Theory The Linear Quadratic Optimal Control Theory The Control/Filter Duality Principle The Canonical Decomposition Theorem for Linear Input-Output Systems The Algebraic Realization Theory The Ho-Kalman Lemma re System ID via a Minimal Realization The discovery of a Liapunov Function for the Lur'e Problem Numerical analysis enabling an Automatic Synthesis Program (ASP-C) For these and other contributions to systems theory Kalman has received many well-deserved prizes and medals. These include (as well as various European awards too numerous to mention): A Kyoto Prize in High Technology An IEEE Centennial Medal An IEEE Medal of Honor Membership in the US National Academy of Science Membership in the US National Academy of Engineering A Steele Prize of the American Mathematical Society An Oldenburger Medal of the ASME A Bellman Heritage Award of the ACC Accordingly it is now my privilege to introduce to you the true Father of Modern Systems Theory, Professor Rudolf Kalman!

EE310 Solid State Fundamentals CPE431 Intro Comp Arch EE313 Electrical Circuit Anal II CPE438 Real Time & EE315 Intro Electronic Anal & Design Embed Systems EE321 Computer Organization CPE448 Intro Comp Nets EE382 Analy Meth Continu Time CPE490 Spec Topics CPE EE383 Analy Meth Multivariable CPE495 Comp Eng Des I EE384 Dig Signal Process Lab CPE512 Intro Paral Prog EE410 Selected opics/ECE CPE421 Microcomputers EE411 Electrical Power System CPE527 VLSI Design EE412 Sr Design Proj Elec Engr CPE531 Intro Comp Arch EE414 Analog & Digital Filter Design CPE538 Real Time & EE420 Random Signals & Noise Embed Systems EE421 Microcomputers CPE548 Intro Comp Nets EE424 Intro Data Commun Networks CPE619 Model & Anal EE425 Intro Control/Robotic Sys Comp/Comm Sys EE426 Communication Theory CPE621 Adv Microcomp EE427 VLSI Design I Techniques EE436 Digital Electronics CPE626 Adv VLSI Design EE447 Electromagnetic Waves CPE695 Projects in SPE EE448 Anal & Comp Meth Elec Engr I CPE699 Master’s Thesis EE451 Optoelectronics CPE799 Doctoral Disser EE452 Optical Systems Design EE454 Optical Fiber Communications EE461 Optical Systems Design EE468 Intro to Computer Networks EE494 EE Design Projects EE500 Random Signals & Noise EE504 Intro Data Commun Networks EE505 Intro Control/Robotic Sys EE506 Communication Theory Optical Engineering EE510 Selected Topics / ECE EE516 Digital Electronics OPE441 Opt Sys Design EE521 Microcomputers OPE451 Optoelectronics EE527 Electromagnetic Waves OPE454 Opt Fiber Comm EE528 Anal & Comp Meth Elec Engr I OPE459 Opt Engr Design EE532 Optical Systems Design EE534 Optical Fiber Communications EE541 Optics I EE542 Physical Optics EE548 Intro to Computer Networks Optical Science Engr EE607 Robotic Systems Control EE609 Electromagnetic Field Theory OSE541 Geometrical Opt EE610 Selected Topics/ECE OSE542 Physical Optics EE612 Graduate Design Project OSE655 Optics Solids & EE616 Microelect Dev / Integ Circ Opto-Elect Dev EE619 Intro Radar Systems OSE656 Lens Design EE648 Digital Signal Processing OSE690 Selected Topics EE654 Optical Testing OSE799 Doctoral Dis EE691 Graduate Seminar I EE697 Master’s Project for Pan II EE699 Master’s Thesis EE701 Adv Linear Control Theory EE704 Nonlinear Control Systems EE706 Kalman Filt Tech Con & Sig Proc EE744 Coding Theory & Spread Spectrum EE710 Selected Topics/ECE EE799 Doctoral Dissertation Check www.uah.edu for the latest updates!

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ECE Dept., UAH 6 Real Time

Commencement 2002

Doctors of Philosophy Mohamed A. Aborizka Field: Computer Engineering

Dissertation: “An Architectural Framework for the Specification, Analysis and Design of Intelligent Real-Time Monitoring Agent Based Software Systems”

Advisor: Dr. Krishna Kavi Joseph M. Arul Field: Computer Engineering

Mark Horton College of Engineering Outstanding Graduate Student In ECE

Dissertation: “Implementation and Performance

Evaluation of Scheduled Dataflow (SDF) Architecture”

Advisor: Dr. Krishna Kavi Vidhyacharan Bhaskar Field: Electrical Engineering

Dissertation: “Adaptive Rate Coding For Asynchronous Code Division Multiple Access Communications Over Slowly Fading Channels”

Advisor: Dr. Laurie L. Joiner Mark Donald J. Brown Field: Electrical Engineering

Dissertation: “Continuous and Smooth Sliding Mode Control”

Advisor: Dr. Yuri Shtessel Andrew Scott Keys Field: Electrical Engineering

Dissertation: “Multilayered Dielectric Stacks as Broadband Optical Phase Modulators”

Advisor: Dr. Richard L. Fork Fenglei Li Field: Electrical Engineering

Dissertation: “An Integrated Amorphous Silicon Photo Detector for Optical Interconnections”

Advisor: Dr. Dashen Shen Leemin Pea Field: Optical Science and Engineering

Dissertation: “Z-Scan Analysis of Optical Nonlinearities in Liquid Crystals”

Advisor: Dr. Gregory Nordin Ilya A. Shkolnikov Field: Electrical Engineering

Dissertation: “Output Tracking in Causal Nonminimum-Phase Nonlinear Systems in Sliding Modes”

Advisor: Dr. Yuri Shtessel Yi Sun Field: Optical Science and Engineering

Dissertation: “Liquid Crystal Adaptive Lens with Circular Electrodes”

Advisor: Dr. Gregory Nordin

Masters of Science in Engineering

Masters With Thesis (field) Joseph Booth (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. J. Kulick Chakravarthy Deverapalli (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. L. Joiner Narendrakumer Patel (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. L. Joiner David Sparks (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. Gregory Nordin Steven Douglas Vanstone (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. R. Adhami Koon-Kim Jeremy Wong (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. B. Peters Christopher L. Zoeller (Electrical); Thesis Advisor: Dr. L. Joiner

Non-Thesis Masters (field) Coleman D. Bagwell (Electrical), Alex Boydston (Electrical), John G. Brooks ( Electrical), Eric T. Broyles (Electrical), Kevin Chan (Electrical), Chia Chi Chiang (Electrical), Kenneth Collier, Jr.(Electrical), Daniel T. Corley (Electrical), Craig A. Farlow (Electrical), James S. Jackson (Electrical), Peter S. Kerr (Electrical), Young-Ju Lee (Computer), Lixia Li (Computer) Marcus Oni (Electrical), Zenin Pan (Computer), Alexey Petrenko (Computer), Nazli Rahmanian (Electrical), Jeffrey P. Rice (Electrical), John W. Sudduth, Jr. (Electrical)

Mark A. Horton received both B.S.E. (1979) and M.S.E. (1999) degrees from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, ECE Department, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. under Dr. Reza Adhami. Mr. Horton has over 22 years experience in the development of real-time hardware-in-the-loop simulations that are used to evaluate the performance of U.S. Army air defense systems. He has spent the last year performing research in biometric based signal processing. His expertise includes radars, experimental and test development, signal processing, controls, random signals, and biometrics.

2000 - Present U.S. Army AMCOM, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama DB04, Electronics Engineer, Man-in-the-Job Experimental Developer • Performed doctoral research in biometric based personal identification

system signal processing culminating in two technical papers, passing of Ph.D. qualifying exams and acceptance of Ph.D. dissertation proposal.

1981 – 2000 U.S. Army AMCOM, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama DB03, Electronics Engineer • Led the design, development, and utilization of five world-class state-of-the-

art high-fidelity hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) performance evaluation simulation test-beds for the PATRIOT air defense system.

• Led the design, development, and utilization of two exceptionally complex high-fidelity HWIL electromagnetic interference effects test-beds for the HAWK and PATRIOT air defense systems.

• Designed and developed a state-of-the-art research tool for rapid test and development of improved HAWK missile track and guidance algorithms.

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Bachelors of Science in Engineering, Electrical Engineering Option Muhammad Ali Anwar, Jana Owens Bladow, Joel Patrick Booth, Doris Ione Bowman, Tatum Delon Bradley, April Charlene Burgess, Everett Delane Burner, Joseph Albert Caldwell, Derrick Gibby Cameron, Corey Dwayne Carter, Preston C. Chidebelu, Gyoung Min Choi, Christopher Cornelius, William Edward Cruger, Thomas Paul Etheredge, Melvin Demetrius Felton, Anthony Alan Gipson, Warren Orville Glave, Donn Alan Hall, Willie Earl Harper Jr., Joshua W. Hester, Kyle Jason Holdmeyer, Cecil Ray Holland Jr., Elizabeth Maynard Lampkins, Damien Lindsay Hollier, Buckley Hopper, Julie R. Hudson, Tabitha Michelle Ivey, Wykeisa DeShay Jackson, Michael Shawn Jones, Virginia M. Kibler, Ellen R. LaFiore, Martin E. LeBlanc, Larry Jay Levitt, Jason Alexander Lovely, Daniel Stephen Lynn, Thomas N. McAllister, Jamison Lee McNees, Bradley Mecklenburn, Brad Eugene Miller, Justin Len Morgan, Raymond Craig Myers III, Nhan Huu Nguyen, Daniel Jeremy Nuckols, Patrick Neil Osterc, Ashley Brian Owens, Charlie Nguyen Tam Pierce, Thomas Jason Puckett, Janice Cicero Rock, Robert Mack Sawyer III, Lisa Jayne Anderson Seabrook, Martin Dean Serr, Jason David Setzer, Rajesh Arun Shah, Jeffrey P. Shaver, Stephen Brent Shelton, James J. Stafford, Michelle Feathers Staggs, Chad M. Stevens, Linda F. Taylor, Julie Wynne Troup, Audrey J. Woodall, Ri On Yi, Syed Asim Zia

Computer Engineering Option Khalid Al-Zarouni, Nathan Larry Anderson, Michael Keegan Baum, Brentson Jerome Bell, Yuli Richard Chang, John Christopher Chapman, Toy Jefferson Cumbie Jr., Andrew Dwight Evans, Warren Orville Glave, Joel Trevor Hall, Christy Johnson, Bridget Renee Johnston, Paul Edward Kosinski, Jonathan Manis, Amanda Leigh Montoya, Jacob Lee Noffke, Le E. Pitts, Daniel Paul Pritchett, Toby Wayne Rimes, Marsha Nicole Robinson, Teresa L. Samuels, Jeremy Keith Sharp, Lori Lee Sisson, Linda F. Taylor, Ambrey Kamarie Watkins, Nathan Bradley Wincey, Jana Leigh Woodham, Jeffery Daniel Wright, Syed Asim Zia

Optical Engineering Option William E. Berry, Todd A. Bohanan, Jason J. A. Green, Gregory J. Outerbridge II, Eric J. Tuck, Wade Usry, William E. Walker

ECE Dept., UAH 7 Real Time

Distinguished Engineers – Alumni Awards 2002

Fredric H. Clark Dr. Fredric H. Clark received the College of Engineering Distinguished Engineer Alumni Award for his outstanding contributions in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Clark earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Arkansas in 1967, and both his Master of Science in Engineering degree in 1969 and Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1980 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Electrical Engineering Department. Dr. Clark is an owner, co-founder and President of CAS, Inc., a company that has specialized in weapon systems analysis and system solutions since it’s founding in 1979. Dr. Clark has over 30 years experience in management, research and development of complex systems. He has managed and directed operations at CAS as it has grown from it initial two founders to over 700 employees. Dr. Clark’s experience has spanned the spectrum of aerospace systems, missile systems, radar systems, weapons systems effectiveness analyses, system countermeasures and counter-countermeasures, C3I systems, and land combat systems. Many of the simulations developed by Dr. Clark are utilized on Army air defense, missile defense, and aircraft systems. Additionally, for the past 20 years, Dr. Clark has been actively working with the US Allied Nations on the performance and improvements of their defense systems. Prior to the starting of CAS, Inc., Dr. Clark worked at the IBM Corporation Federal Systems Division where he designed a Laser Guided Bombing System and digital navigation/bombing system for the B-52. While at IBM he also conducted analyses on the Apollo Moon Mission, the Skylab Program and initial designs of the Space Shuttle.

Eric R. Grigorian

Mr. Eric R. Grigorian received the College of Engineering Distinguished Young Engineer Alumni Award for his outstanding contributions in Electrical Engineering. Mr. Grigorian earned both his Bachelor of Science in Engineering degree in 1983 and his Master of Science in Engineering degree in 1987 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Electrical Engineering Department. He has continued his education by taking additional postgraduate courses such as digital communications, digital signal processing, digital image processing, neural networks, as well as others. He is also a registered Professional Engineer with the State of Alabama, and is President of the IEEE Huntsville Section. Mr. Grigorian has over 17 years experience in defense and commercial systems integration and deployment. He recently joined Z/I Imaging as Director of Computational Hardware Center of Competence. Previously, he was COO and Vice President of Product Development for Q-PC, Inc. and Vice President of Commercial Markets for Applied Data Trends, Inc. He worked in multiple Manager-Engineering roles for Intergraph’s Federal Systems Division, being responsible for design and development of programs such as rugged workstations for shipboard automation (Smartship), and Manual Air Defense Operations Center (MADOC), which was installed at multiple sites within Saudi Arabia. Mr. Grigorian was lead engineer for the development and commercialization of a Real Time Video Scan Rate Converter. He also was Lead Hardware Engineer for several PATRIOT hardware and communications tasks. As part of his development activities, Mr. Grigorian designed and developed a PC based expansion card that allowed interface to HAWK and PATRIOT tactical data links.

Robert E. Skelton Dr. Robert E. Skelton received the College of Engineering Distinguished Engineer Alumni Award for his outstanding contributions in Electrical Engineering. Dr. Skelton earned the Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1963 from Clemson University, the Master of Science in Engineering degree in 1969 from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, Electrical Engineering Department, and the Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanics and Structures in 1976 from the University of California in Los Angeles. Dr. Skelton is currently a Professor at the University of California in San Diego, where he is Director of the Structural Systems and Control Laboratory and Director of the Aerospace Engineering Program. Prior to joining the faculty of UCSD, he was a Professor in Purdue University’s School of Aeronautics and Astronautics for 21 years, where he was Director of the Purdue Structural Systems and Control Laboratory. He is an internationally known researcher and educator, and has published 3 books and over a hundred journal papers on control. Dr. Skelton began his career working on programs at the Marshall Space Flight Center, employed first with the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and then the Sperry Rand Corporation, designing control systems for spacecraft. He received the SKYLAB Achievement Award from NASA in 1974. His pointing control design for the Apollo Telescope Mount paved the way for the Theory of Covariance Control, which he developed. Dr. Skelton served on the National Research Council’s Aeronautics and Engineering Board. He serves on the External Independent Readiness Review Team for the Hubble Space Telescope. Dr. Skelton is a fellow of IEEE and AIAA. He is also an Associate Editor of three journals: the Journal of Mathematical Modeling of Systems, the Journal of Mathematical Problems in Engineering, and the Journal of Systems and Control. In 1991 he received the Alexander von Humbolt Foundation’s “Senior US Scientist Award.” In 1999 the American Society of Civil Engineers awarded him the “Norman Prize” for his contributions to the subject of Structural Control, a new area in which he is a pioneering researcher.

ECE Dept., UAH 8 Real Time

Alumni of Achievement In 2001, the UAH marked fifty years of teaching in a year-long celebration called “Fifty Years of Class.” The UAH Alumni Association embarked on a project to recognize fifty graduates who exemplify UAH’s high standards and who personify the university’s first half century of progress. Winners were chosen to represent alumni from each of the five colleges who graduated at least ten years ago. The following three ECE alumni were among the fifty UAH alumni recognized at the Alumni of Achievement Day celebration on February 4, 2002. Marcus J. Bendickson, Ph.D. Ph.D., Electrical Engineering, 1980. CEO Dynectics, Inc. James H. Crocker M.S., Electrical Engineering, 1975. Program Director, Next Generation Space Telescope Program, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation Kelly V. Grider, Ph.D. M.S., Engineering, 1965; Ph.D., electrical Engineering, 1972. Engineering consultant, defense contractors and government projects

Outstanding Undergraduate Student Computer Engineering Program

Toby Wayne Rimes

Mr. Toby Wayne Rimes graduated in Fall 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a major in Computer Engineering. He is a recipient of a 4 year Scholar Athlete on the UAH Men's Soccer Team. Toby is employed at Mentor Graphics in Huntsville, AL where he is a member of the Software Development team. His current assignment is developing a software for printed circuit board design.

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Outstanding Undergraduate Student Optical Engineering Program

Todd Bohanan

Mr. Todd Bohanan graduated in Fall 2001 with a Bachelor of Science in Engineering with a major in Optical Engineering. In his senior thesis, "Pebble Bed Reactor for Powering Mobile Solid State Lasers", he addressed in part the use of nuclear reactors to power weapons lasers. Learning was Mr. Bohanan’s top priority. His advisor indicated that Todd often worked all night and then attended his class the next morning. Mr. Bohanan is an employee of the TVA Brown's Ferry Nuclear Plant.

ECE Students Participate in 34th SSST The Technical Program of the 34th SSST contained a number of papers authored, or co-authored, by ECE students. The students, and titles of their papers, are

Robert Adams “Modeling of Epicardial Signals in the Human Body,” Robert Adams, Nagendra Singh, and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Ashkan Ashrafi “A simple Wide-Band Frequency Independent Quadrature Phase Shifter,” Ashkan Ashrafi, Reza Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Coleman D. Bagwell “A Dynamic Power Profiling of Embedded Computer Systems,” Coleman D. Bagwell, Emil Jovanov, and Jeffrey H. Kulick, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Vidhyacharan Bhaskar “Adaptive Rate Coding for Image Data Transmission,” Vidhyacharan Bhaskar and Laurie L. Joiner, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Daniel Corley “A Low Power Intelligent Video-Processing Sensor,” Daniel Corley and Emil Jovanov, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Paul Cox “Multi-Class Support Vector Machine Classifier Applied to Hyper-Spectral Data,” Paul Cox and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. “A simple Wide-Band Frequency Independent Quadrature Phase Shifter,” Ashkan Ashrafi, Reza Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Dan Daniels “Reusable Launch Vehicle Attitude Control Using A time-Varying Sliding Mode Control Technique,” Yuri. B Shtessel, Jim Zhu, and Dan Daniels, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Ayman Ghobiel “Discrete Wavelet Transform Domain Adaptive Decision Feedback Equalization,” Ayman Ghobriel and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002.

Mark Horton “The Cost and Benefits of Using 2-D Gabor Filters in a Filter-Based Fingerprint-Matching System,” M. Horton, P. Meenen, R. Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. Joowan Kim “Performance of Noise Canceller Using Adjusted Step Size LMS Algorithm,” Joonwan Kim and A.D. Poularikas, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Sin M. Loo “Handel C for Rapid Prototyping of VLSI Coprocessors for Real Time Systems,” S.M. Loo, Earl Wells, N. Freije, J. Kulick, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Peter Meenen “The Cost and Benefits of Using 2-D Gabor Filters in a Filter-Based Fingerprint-Matching System,” M. Horton, P. Meenen, R. Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. Milena Melenkovic “An Accelerometer-Based Physical Rehabilitation System,” Milena Melenkovic, Emil Jovanov, John Chapman, Dejan Raskovic, and John Price, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Hamid Reza Naji “On Incorporating Multi Agents in Combined Hardware/Software based Reconfigurable Systems - A General Architectural Framework,” Hamid Reza Naji, and B. Earl Wells, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Narendra Patel “Improved performance of Space-time Block Codes on Rayleigh Fading Channel,” Narendra Patel and Laurie L. Joiner, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Brent Priddy “Wireless Distributed Data Acquisition System,” Brent Priddy and Emil Jovanov, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. Christopher Zoeller “Passive Coherent Location Radar Demonstration,” Christopher Zoeller, Merv Budge, Michael Moody, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002.

ECE Dept., UAH 9 Real Time

Publications, Presentations and Awards ELECTROMAGNETICS

Nagendra Singh, Professor Journal Articles Boykin, T. B., Dennis Hite, N. Singh, Two capacitor problem with radiation, Amer. J. Phys. 70, 4125-420, 2002. Singh, N., Temporal and spatial features of electron holes emerging from double layers formed in a density cavity, Geophys. Res. Lett., in press, 2002. Singh, N., Space-time evolution of electron-beam driven electron holes and their effects on the plasma, Nonlinear Processes in Geophysics, in press, 2002. Conference Papers Nagendra Singh, Spontaneous Formation of Current-Driven Double Layers in Density Depletions and Its Relevance to Solitary Alfven Waves, AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, Dec. 2001. Nagendra Singh, Nonlinear Waveforms Generated by Electron Beam-Driven Instabilities, AGU Fall Meeting, San Francisco, Dec. 2001. Robert D. Adams, Nagendra Singh, Reza Adhami, Modeling of Epicardial Signals in the Human Body, Proc. 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, IEEE, March 18-19, 2002, p. 401-405. Saikat Saha, N. Singh, P. D. Craven, D. Gallagher, J. Jones, Development of a 3-D Hybrid Code and Its Application to M2P2, STAIF Conference, March 2002.

ELECTRON DEVICES Fat Duen Ho, Professor Journal Article T. C MacLeod and Fat Duen Ho, “Electronic Model of a Ferroelectric Field Effect,” Integrated Ferroelectrics, Vol. 40, pp. 55-64. 2001. Conference Papers Andrew B. Phillips and Fat Duen Ho, “Potential Charge Balance Model for a Floating Gate EEPROM Cell,” Accepted for publication, Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Circuit and Systems, Arizona, May 2002. Mark A. Bailey and Fat Duen Ho, “A Metal-Ferroelectric-Semiconductor Field-Effect Transistor Memory Cell,” Accepted for presentation, 14th International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics, May 27-June 1, 2002, Japan. Todd MacLeod and Fat Duen Ho, “Simulation Model of a Ferroelectric Field Effect Transistor,” Accepted for presentation, 14th International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics, May 27-June 1, 2002, Japan.

CONTROL

Yuri Shtessel, Associate Professor Journal Articles I. A. Shkolnikov and Y. B. Shtessel, "Tracking a Class of Nonminimum Phase Systems with Nonlinear Internal Dynamics via Sliding Mode Control using Method of System Center," Automatica, Vol. 38, Issue 5, May 2002, pp. 837-842. Y. Shtessel, J. Buffington, and S. Banda, "Tailless Aircraft Flight Control Using Multiple Time Scale Re-configurable Sliding Modes," IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, Vol. 10, No. 2, 2002, pp. 288-296. I. A. Shkolnikov and Y. B. Shtessel, "Tracking Controller Design for Nonlinear Nonminimum Phase Systems via Method of System Center," IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control," Vol. 46, No. 10, 2001, pp. 1639-1643. I. A. Shkolnikov and Y. B. Shtessel, "Aircraft Nonminimum Phase Control in Dynamic Sliding Manifolds," AIAA Journal on Guidance, Control, and Dynamics, Vol. 24, No. 3, pp. 566-572, 2001.

CONTROL

(Continued) Conference Papers Y. Shtessel, J. Zhu and D. Daniels, "Reusable Launch Vehicle Attitude Control Using a Time-Varying Sliding Mode Control Technique," Proceedings of 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), Huntsville, AL, pp. 81-85, 2002. J. Zhu, D. Laurence, J. Fisher and Y. Shtessel, "Direct Fault Tolerant RLV Attitude Control- A Singular Perturbation Approach," Proceedings of 34th SSST, Huntsville, AL, pp. 86-91, 2002. Ilya A. Shkolnikov, Yuri B. Shtessel and Sergey V. Plekhanov, "Analog-to-Digital Converters: Sliding Mode Observer as a Pulse Modulator, " Proceedings of the 40th Conference on Decision and Control, Orlando, FL, December, 2001.

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE ENGINEERING Aleksandar Milenkovic, Assistant Professor Journal Article A. Milenkovic, V. Milutinovic, "A performance evaluation of cache injection in bus-based shared memory multiprocessors," Microprocessors and Microsystems, Vol. 26, 2002, pp. 51-61.

B. Earl Wells, Associate Professor Conference Papers "Handel C for Rapid Prototyping of VLSI Coprocessors for Real Time Systems ," S. M. Loo, B. Earl Wells, N. Freije, and J. Kulick, Proceedings of the 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), pp. 6-10, Huntsville, AL, March 18-19, 2002. "On Incorporating Multi Agents in Combined Hardware/Software Based Reconfigurable Systems -- A General Architectural Framework," Hamid Reza Naji and B. Earl Wells, Proceedings of the 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), pp.344-348, Huntsville, AL, March 18-19, 2002. "On the Use of Distributed Reconfigurable Hardware in Launch Control Avionics," B. Earl Wells and Sin Ming Loo, Proceedings of the 20th Digital Avionics Systems Conference, Datona Beach, FL, October 14-18, 2001. [Session 8B Re-usable Launch Vehicles -- Awarded Best Paper of Session] "Case Study: On Performing Efficient Highly Parallel Three-Dimensional PIC based Simulations in Constantly Changing Computing Environments," B. Earl Wells, Sin Ming Loo, and Nagendra Singh, Proceedings of the 2001 Huntsville Simulation Conference (HSC), Huntsville, AL, October 3-4, 2001. "SADL: Simulation Architecture Description Language,"Kenneth Ricks, John Weir and B. Earl Wells, Proceedings of the ISCA 14th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Computing Systems (PDCS-2001) , Dallas, Texas, August 8-10, 2001. "Exploring the Hardware/Software Continuum in a Computer Engineering Capstone Design Class using FPGA-based Programmable Logic," S. M. Loo, B. E. Wells, and R. K. Gaede, Proceedings of the 2001 Int’l Conference on Microelectronic Systems Education, Las Vegas, NV, June 17-18, 2001.

S. M. Yoo, Associate Professor Conference Papers Z.H. Zhou and S.M. Yoo, "An All-to-All Multicast Routing Decreasing Channel Overheads in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks," ISCA 17th Int'l Conf. on Computers and their Applications (CATA-2002), San Francisco, pp. 228-231, April 2002.

ECE Dept., UAH 10 Real Time

Publications, Presentations and Awards

OPTICS David Pollock, Assoc. Research Professor Conference Co-Chair Session I, “Traceability of Absolute Radiometry in Remote Sensing to SI Units with Steven Brown of the National Institute of Standards and Technology,” Conference on Characterization and Radiometric Calibration for Remote Sensing being held at Utah State University April 29 - May 2, 2002. [This is the third year for The University of Alabama in Huntsville to co-sponsor this conference.] SIGNAL PROCESSING / COMMUNICATIONS

Reza Adhami, Professor and Chair Conference Papers “The Cost and Benefits of Using 2-D Gabor Filters in a Filter-Based Fingerprint-Matching System,” M. Horton, P. Meenen, R. Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. “A simple Wide-Band Frequency Independent Quadrature Phase Shifter,” Ashkan Ashrafi, Reza Adhami, and Paul Cox, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. “Discrete Wavelet Transform Domain Adaptive Decision Feedback Equalization,” Ayman Gobriel and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. “Multi-Class Support Vector Machine Classifier Applied to Hyper-Spectral Data,” Paul Cox and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002. “Modeling of Epicardial Signals and Human Body,” Robert Adams, Nagendra Singh, and Reza Adhami, 34th SSST, March 18-19, 2002.

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Laurie Joiner, Assistant Professor

Conference Papers Patel, N. and L. L. Joiner. “Improved Performance of Space-time Block Codes on Rayleigh Fading Channel,” Proc. 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, March 2002, pp.128-132. Bhaskar, V. and L. L. Joiner. “Adaptive Rate Coding for Image Data Transmission,” Proc. 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory, March 2002, pp.251-255. Joiner, L. L. and J. J. Komo. “Soft-decision decoding of nonbinary codes,” Proc. MILCOM 2001, November 2001.

SIGNAL PROCESSING / COMMUNICATIONS

(Continued) Emil Jovanov, Associate Professor Conference Papers Colemann D. Bagwell, Emil Jovanov, Jeffrey H. Kulick, A Dynamic Power Profiling of Embedded Computer Systems, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. Daniel Corley, Emil Jovanov, A Low Power Intelligent Video-Processing Sensor, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. Milena Melenkovic, Emil Jovanov, John Chapman, Dejan Raskovic, John Price, An Accelerometer-Based Physical Rehabilitation System, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002. Brent Priddy, Emil Jovanov, Wireless Distributed Data Acquisition System, 34th Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), March 18-19, 2002.

SOLID STATE Timothy Boykin, Associate Professor Journal Articles Timothy B. Boykin, Dennis Hite, and Nagendra Singh, “The two-capacitor problem with radiation,” American Journal of Physics 70, 415 (2002). Book Chapter [Although copyright date is 2000 the book itself did not appear until Late Spring 2001.] Timothy B. Boykin, “Tailoring Empirical Tight-Binding Models for Semiconductor Heterostructures,” in L. M. Gaggero-Sager and S. Vlaev, eds., Some Contemporary Problems of Condensed Matter Physics, (Nova Science Publishers, 2000). Presentations Fabiano Oyafuso, Gerhard Klimeck, R. Chris Bowen, and Timothy B. Boykin, "Atomistic Electronic Structure Calculations of Unstrained Alloyed Systems Consisting of a Million Atoms", 8th International Workshop on Computational Electronics, October 15-18, 2001, Univ. of Illinois. Gerhard Klimeck, Fabiano Oyafuso, Timothy B. Boykin, and R. Chris Bowen, "Multi-million Atom Electronic Structure Simulations using NEMO 3-D", March Meeting of American Physical Society, March 17-22, Indianapolis,IN (2002).

___________________________________________________ Dashen Shen, Professor Journal Article "Tetrahedral amorphous carbon thin film for silicon-on-insulator application", Z. R. Song, Y. H. Yu, C. L. Li, S. C. Zou, F. M. Zhang and X. Wang; D. S. Shen; E. Z. Luo, B. Sundaravel, S. P. Wong and I. H. Wilson, Appl. Phys. Lett., Vol 80, p. 743, 2002.

ECE Dept., UAH 11 Real Time

ECE Dept., UAH 12 Real Time

ADTRAN TDP Class of 2002

Pictured above at the ADTRAN graduation ceremony (left to right): Jorge Aunon (UAH Dean of Engineering), Reza Adhami (UAH Chair of ECE), Jerry Moore (ADTRAN Vice President Emeritus), Leif Sandstrom (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Marcus Oni (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Alex Boydston (ADTRAN TDP graduate), John G. Brooks (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Coleman (Chip) Bagwell (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Daniel Corley, (ADTRAN TDP graduate), James Scott Jackson, (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Kenneth Lee Collier, Jr. (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Peter Kerr, (ADTRAN TDP graduate), Lewis Radonovich (UAH Provost, VP Academic Affairs), Mark Smith (ADTRAN CEO, Chairman), and Howard Thraikill (ADTRAN President, COO, Director). We celebrated the graduation of the third group of Master's students from our new ADTRAN Technical Development Program (TDP) in Electrical and Computer Engineering on May 24, 2002. Seven students graduated from TDP in Spring/Summer 2002. This was not simply a worthy achievement for these individual students, but it is a milestone for a unique partnership between UAH and ADTRAN, and a tribute to a new kind of alliance between academia and industry. The TDP is a two-year program that integrates engineering design work experience with university graduate study. TDP participants are full time employees at ADTRAN while active in the program. Participants receive paid, 50% released time from work during academic terms when taking nine semester hours. Both internal and external candidates may apply to the program (e.g., current employees, new graduates, and experienced non-employees). TDP participants are selected using the normal evaluation and selection process utilized by ADTRAN. Coleman D. (Chip) Bagwell received his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Mississippi State University in May 2000. Chip began working for ADTRAN in January 1998 as participant in the Mississippi State University Cooperative Education program. He became a full-time employee and TDP participant in May 2000 after the completion of his B.S. degree. Chip received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. Alex Kim Boydston received his B.S. degree from The University of Alabama in Huntsville in June 1992. Alex became a full-time employee and TDP participant with ADTRAN in Spring 2000. Alex received his M.S.E. in Electrical Engineering in December 2001. John G. Brooks received his B.S. degree from the University of Alabama in December 1999. John began working for ADTRAN in March 2000, when he became a full-time TDP participant. John received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002.

Kenneth Lee Collier, Jr. received his B.S. degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in December 1999. Kenneth began working for ADTRAN in January 2000, when he became a full-time TDP participant. Kenneth received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. Daniel Corley received his B.S. degree from the University of Missouri in May 1998. Daniel became a full-time employee with ADTRAN in June 1998, and a TDP participant in August 2000. Daniel received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. James Scott Jackson received his B.S. degree from Clemson University in May 2000. James became a full-time employee and TDP participant with ADTRAN in June 2000. James received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. Peter Kerr received his B.S. degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville in May 2000. Peter became a full-time employee and TDP participant with ADTRAN in August 2000. Peter received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. Marcus Oni received his B.S. degree from Auburn University in August 1999. Marcus became a full-time employee with ADTRAN in September 1999, and a TDP participant in August 2000. Marcus received his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in May 2002. Leif Sandstrom received his B.S. degree from Tennessee Technical University in May 2000. Leif became a full-time employee and TDP participant with ADTRAN in August 2000. On completion of a Thesis, Leif will be receiving his M.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering in December 2002.

Congratulations ADTRAN Grads!

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