The ECE Senior Design Catalog

What is Senior Design?

 

Senior design is the senior capstone design project that every CECS student needs to complete before graduation. For ECE it is a 3 unit, year long design project broken up into ECE 492 as 2 of the 3 units, and ECE 493 as 1 of the 3 units. Both semesters are typically working on the same project and some projects are worked on for several years by many students.

ECE 493 students are required to write a paper and present their design projects and the work done during the semester with their group.

Download the ECE Senior Design Catalog here: Download

When Can I Take ECE 492?

 

In order to register for ECE 492, students need to have completed ECE 340/L, ECE 350, and two ECE 400-level courses. ECE 492 can be taken as soon as these requirements are met and not necessarily needs to be taken during your last two semesters if your senior year will be more than a year. ECE 492 can be started during either the fall or spring semester. All students will need to send their DPR with the grades of the course requirements to Professor Flynn for a permission number. If you are currently taking courses required to take ECE 492, you will have to wait until grades are submitted to get your permission number.

Each semester there is one section available for ECE 492 and ECE 493 and they are listed with Professor Flynn, however, you are not bound to either the day and time of the class itself or to Professor Flynn if you are already planning on working with another faculty member and have been in contact with that professor.

How to Pick a Project

There are several ways that you can decide on a project or faculty to work with. Some senior design projects are sponsored by companies like NASA and JPL, Medtronic, and Aerospace Corporation.

  • If there are specific faculty that you are interested in working with, you should reach out to them the semester before you register to let them know ahead of time.

    • If that faculty member has a specific project that you are interested in, that would be a good time to let them know that as well.

    • If you know other students that are also registering for ECE 492 that you work well with and are dependable, speak with those students and let the faculty member know that, too.

    • If you are interested in working on a project outside of ECE, let the faculty lead know of your interest and let Professor Flynn know what project you will be working on.

  • If you have your own idea for a project, reach out to the faculty that you believe will be the best fit. It is best to do this before the semester starts.

  • If you do not have a preference or a group before the semester starts, you should attend the class that is scheduled. During the first meeting, projects will be presented. If one catches your interest, speak to the team lead or faculty.

  • If you are impartial to the projects proposed and do not have your own in mind, you will be assigned as needed to a specific project or will be given a new project to work on.

I've Registered (or Should Be), What Now?

 

  • ECE 492 students who are not registered and need to be should email Professor Flynn with their DPR and contact one of the faculty who are working on projects immediately.

  • ECE 492 students who are registered but have not joined a project should immediately contact one of the faculty who are working on projects. If you need help you can contact Professor Flynn.

  • ECE 492 students who are registered and are on one of Professor Flynn's projects will receive an invitation via ZOOM on the first day of class for the scheduled day and time as listed for the course.

  • ECE 492 students who are registered and have joined a project that is not with Professor Flynn should contact the faculty member to determine the meeting day and time.

Volunteering

 

If you are a sophomore, junior, or a senior not quite ready to register for ECE 492, you can always volunteer on a project. This can get you more design experience and build a relationship with the team leads, the students who will be team leads next semester, and with the faculty. It may also help you realize whether you like or don't like something by getting involved.

Reaching Out to Faculty

 

If any of these projects catches your attention, you should let the faculty know as soon as possible. You can email them if you have questions about the project, to introduce yourself and let them know you are interested in joining their ECE 492 group for Fall 2021, or if you'd like to volunteer. If the projects in the catalog list required or recommended skills or classes, make sure to include that as well.

If you have your own idea for a senior design project, make sure to take a look at the faculty and their specific interests so you can email the appropriate professors. The more developed your idea, the better it will be for the faculty to decide if they're the right person and can lead the project. You may also reach out to faculty not listed here.

Competitions

 

Annual Senior Design Project Showcase

Every spring semester, the College of Engineering and Computer Science holds a competition across all of the school's departments. This is a voluntary competition where senior design groups present their work to a more robust panel of judges from industry. We're hoping for the Spring of 2022 that the competition can be held in person. Groups would be given a table to set up their projects and are expected to give an oral presentation.

Winners of this competition not only receive a certificate to show off their hard work, but there is also a monetary award for first place.

If you're interested in participating in the SDPS, talk with your ECE 492/493 team members and faculty advisor, and good luck!

ECE Senior Design Paper and Presentation Competition

All ECE 493 students are required to participate in the Senior Design Paper and Presentation Contest in the semester they are taking ECE 493, regardless of what department their project is in. Groups are to submit a paper and a 10 minute presentation on their work completed during the semester for their project.

Groups will present for judges from industry and will be placed based on their tallied scores. There is a first, second, and third place certificate awarded that you can proudly present on your personal sites like LinkedIn.

ECE Faculty Participating in Senior Design

Professor James Flynn

Professor Flynn works with all kinds of projects and leads the general senior design course. He helps students find a project and a group to work with if they're unsure about what to do.

  • JPL CleanBot

    The CleanBot is a robot that uses light engines to clean JPL’s clean rooms. The robot will be mounted with UVC lights to dose the floors to kill off any contaminants. The CleanBot project has 3 distinct design teams which work collaboratively: Power, Navigation and ArUco Markers. All teams communicate about their progress as the design of the robot is still being worked on. The project was previously funded by JPL but currently is not.

    All teams looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

  • Power Team

    The power team works on the power budget, the chassis, tires, and motors of the robot. They are still at the designing stages of the robot.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • ECE 410, 411, and 412 plus lab recommended

    • Familiarity with MATLAB and Simulink, strongly recommended

    • Familiarity with SOLIDWORKS recommended

  • Navigation Team

    The navigation team is working towards the robot's autonomous navigation and are developing the algorithms needed to carry out the necessary movements and responses to the designated map.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Knowledge in Linux, C, and Python is recommended

    • A good working knowledge of Differential Equations and Linear Algebra strongly recommended

    • ECE 455 is helpful

  • ArUco Markers Team

    The arUco team works on localization with fiducial markers - making sure the robot knows where it is in the room. The team refers to the ROS wiki on the internet to do their research and testing. So far they have tested the max and min detection and how the size of the markers affects it. The team has also attempted to manually map a room with the marker. They are currently in the research and testing phase.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Familiarity with Linux operating system is recommended

    • 1 year of coding is enough - Comp 110 and 182

    • Any other coding languages and classes is a plus but not required

  • Optical Satellite Communication Project

    The Optical Satellite Communications project is to create a device to be affixed to satellites, called an InterSatellite Optical Communicator (ISOC). This ISOC will enable cross-link communications between spacecraft at high speeds over large distances in free space. The goals of the project include full sky coverage, Gbps data rates, and the ability to maintain multiple simultaneous links.

    The Optical Satellite Communications project is broken down into three sub teams; Rx, AoA, and Tx. Each of the three teams is its own senior design group and Rx and Tx have their own sub-teams. All members get together to write the same senior design paper at the end of the semester.

  • AoA Team - Angle of Arrival

    AoA's job is to calculate the angle of arrival of the signals and track transmitting signals/satellites as they move so that each ISOC can send a focused laser back to the origin of the message, wherever its location in space might be.

    Looking for 3-4 students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • ECE 460/L recommended, but not required

    • Experience with MATLAB strongly recommended

  • Rx Team - Receiver

    There are three sub-teams who are in charge of designing different parts of the receiver system.

    1. The PCB Sub-team: Designs printed circuit boards (PCB) using KiCad and other software to implement the system, which is broken up into integrated circuits (ICs) and discrete components.

    2. The FPGA Sub-team: Important in the testing of our system—they use a Field-programmable-gate-array to transmit and receive data in the form of bitstreams to make sure that our system works.

    3. The Link Budget Sub-team: Account for all the power gains and losses through the system, and members of this team often research components by reading data sheets.

    Looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    PCB:

    • ECE 440 recommended

    FPGA:

    • ECE 420, 520, and 524 recommended

    • Familiarity with Vivado recommended

    Link Budget:

    • ECE 309 or a good grasp of MATLAB recommended

  • Tx Team - Transmitter

    There are four sub-teams in charge of different parts of the transmitter team.

    1. The Collimation Team: Works on improving the accuracy of the laser beam through reducing its area of divergence. This can be done by using a combination of optic lenses and mirrors so that the beam is uniform and focused when it reaches the photodiode of the receiver.

    2. The Modulation Team: Works on ways to improve the laser’s modulated waveform to the receiver. This includes researching, deciding on and implementing the best modulation technique for the system.

    3. The Bit Error Rate (BER) Testing Team: Works on testing the transmitted signal’s integrity by using the FPGA’s Integrated Bit Error Ratio Test (IBERT) to evaluate the percentage of transmitted bits that are received incorrectly. This is important for meeting the BER requirement of the project.

    4. The Link Budget Team: Will work on the power calculations for the transmitter and determine the gains and losses throughout the system. This team will be using component data sheets and MATLAB to predict the performance of the designed transmitter system.

    Looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • ECE 460/L and ECE 561 recommended

    • ECE 578 and experience with OpticStudio recommended for Collimation Team

    • ECE 420, ECE 520, ECE 524, and experience with Vivado recommended for BER Team

    • Experience with MATLAB recommended for Link Budget Team

  • Emergency Vehicle Alert

    Prompt emergency vehicle (EV) response times are directly correlated to positive outcomes in health emergencies and law enforcement. Providing passenger vehicles with more time to get out of the way may help reduce response times and has the potential to save lives. When there is an active EV nearby with beacon transmitter, it broadcasts a signal to receivers on passenger vehicles. Incorporating GPS coordination into the system provides more detailed information to drivers. Requirements for this project are bound to highway traffic safety protocols and radio broadcast regulations and should not distract the driver or show false positives.

    Students should be comfortable reaching out to fire department or law enforcement agencies to learn more about what kind of devices are allowed inside of EVs. Issues of practicality must be continuously addressed and assumptions questioned.

    Looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Familiarity with PSPICE strongly recommended

    • Familiarity with Altair Feko Winprop is helpful

  • Ultrasonic Transponder

    Details unavailable at this time - please reach out to Professor Flynn for more information.

Dr. Bradley R. Jackson

“My general interests are in applied electromagnetics, antennas, and RF/microwave circuits. If students have ideas for projects these areas, they can feel free to reach out to discuss.”

  • Smart Antenna for Small Satellites

    In this project, students learn how to design advanced antenna systems for small space satellites that can adapt to their environment to optimize performance. This project is supported by The Aerospace Corporation (https://aerospace.org) and includes regular meetings with them to give students experience presenting their technical work to senior engineers in a professional setting.

    Looking for 2-4 students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Subgroups work on tasks that include electromagnetic simulations of antennas, microwave circuit design, experimentation in anechoic chambers using software defined radios, and digital signal processing algorithms using MATLAB.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Experience with MATLAB, ADS, HFSS, or FEKO is desirable, but not required.

    • ECE 370 is recommended as well as the ECE 370L lab, but these are not strictly required.

Dr. Alam MD Sahabul

Dr. Alam MD Sahabul is the newest Professor in town! He is ready to join the Matador family and contribute to our senior design list. He currently teaches signal processing and naturally, his projects involve a lot of signals.

  • Cellular-enabled UAV Communications

    In this senior design project, 5G transceivers will be designed to provide cellular connectivity for UAV nodes where the UAV nodes will act as a user equipment (UE).

    For this, any communication node (access point or UE) can be composed of a software defined radio (SDR) and a laptop/desktop/Raspberry Pi based on the complexity where the digital processing in the laptop/Raspberry Pi can be accomplished in GNU radio.

    Looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Raspberry Pi skills

    • General Programming

  • Massive MIMO for Capacity Improvement in HAPS Communications

    In this senior design project, the design of innovative algorithms will be investigated that might be useful to provide capacity improvement using ultra massive MIMO in HAPS communications.

    Looking for students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Experience with MATLAB

    • ECE 460

    • ECE 450

Dr. Xiaojun (Ashley) Geng

“My areas of interests lie in control systems and robotics-related projects. I have worked with students on projects related to unmanned aerial vehicles, multi-agent robotic systems, and sensor data processing. My research experiences include control of asynchronous sequential machines, genetic algorithms, multi-agent cooperative control, power scheduling for electric vehicles, and noise reduction for optical communications.”

  • Sensor Pallet for Drone

    Open to students in ECE or ME. This objective of this project is to design and prototype a smart pallet for drones with capabilities of sensor data logging and in-flight sensor fusion. The entire pallet consists of a mechanical frame, a large array of sensors, microprocessors, and software to process sensor data. Both the hardware and software of the pallet will be designed to be plug-and-playable.

    The designed pallet should be easily attached to and detached from common commercially available drones, for the purpose of testing a new sensor technology or a data fusion algorithm.

    Looking for approximately 3 EE, 3 CompE, and 1-2 ME students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    Programming in C/C++/Python to record and process sensor data, working with microprocessors, CAD mechanical design and analysis of the pallet, implementing algorithms on sensor data fusion, integrating hardware and software, and testing pallet design on a drone.

  • Autonomous UAV Team

    Open to students in ECE and ME. The objective is to lift off, fly, and land a drone autonomously (without human intervention) from one location to another given location with obstacle avoidance capability. Starting Fall 2022, Dr. Sahabul Alam will co-advise the Autonomous UAV team.

    Looking for approximately 3 EE, 3 CompE, and 1-2 ME students to join the project in ECE 492 for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    Selection and modifications of drone components, getting familiar with drone operations, sensor integration, programming in Python and C/C++, test flight planning, and a lot of testing and problem solving.

Dr. Kourosh Sedghisigarchi

Dr. Sedghisigarchi's research interests are in smart grids, micorgrids, distributed generation, renewable energy, power electronics, and power systems and control.

  • Power System for Solar Electric Aircraft

    The objective of this project is to develop an optimized scaled electric aircraft propulsion power system with photovoltaic power generation. The major goal is to maximize flight time by optimizing the electric power system losses for a scaled electric aircraft considering weight, size, cost, and all possible risks involved.

    The frame of the aircraft is chosen on the dexterity of being affordable, expendable, and capable of modifications. Exploration and analysis of components undergone determine the capability needed for a full flight.

    The aircraft system components may be divided into three major subsystems: generation, power conversion and load. An optimization problem should be formulated for a defined performance index and divided into several phases. This project requires several bench and flight tests.

    Looking for 3-5 students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Familiarity with power systems (ECE 411), power electronics (ECE 412), energy storage, and control (ECE 480) backgrounds are required.

    • Familiarity with MATLAB/Simulink and simpowersystem toolbox is needed.

Dr. Ruting Jia

“My general interests are Nonlinear Control, Optimal Control as well as Fuzzy Logic Control with its applications in Artificial Intelligence. I’ve worked with students on projects including particle swarm optimization, PID control as well as Fuzzy Logic Control with various applications. (Sample works are attached here for students’ references) If students have ideas of their own projects in the corresponding areas, they can feel free to reach out and discuss.”

  • Fuzzy Logic with Its Applications

    Open to students in ECE or ME. The goal of this project is to design a fuzzy logic controller / fuzzy inference system with simulation or hardware implementation to achieve various control objectives for a variety of applications, including but not limited to Face recognition, Handwriting Recognition, Robot Arm Control, Gas Turbine’s speed control, Cruise Control, Solar Panel MPPT System, Drone flight control, EV Breaking System and Traffic Light Control etc. Majority of the 493 students’ works are published in various IEEE.

    Programming needed to design the Fuzzy Inference System/ Fuzzy Logic Controller, design and implementing algorithms. If hardware included, processing the sensor data and working with microprocessors, integrating software and hardware designs are also required.

    Looking for approximately 4-6 EE, CompE, and ME students to join the project in ECE 492 for 2 groups (2-3 students per group) for Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • MATLAB strongly recommended.

    • C/C++ strongly recommended.

    • Students should have background of Fuzzy Logic Control or are recommended to take ECE581 together with ECE492.

Dr. Jack Ou

Dr. Ou's research interests are in RF and analog integrated circuits. If you're interested in working on any of his projects, please fill out the form: https://forms.gle/Htgrz3x7niK73q327

  • Analog Design Productivity

    The goal for this project is to develop tools for increasing analog circuit design productivity.

    Sample tasks: automatic layout generation, automatic synthesis of analog filter circuits, batch physical verification, and batch command line simulation.

    Looking for 2 students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Required course: ECE 595

    • Recommended courses: ECE 440 or ECE 443

  • Ultra Low Power Computing Devices

    The goal for this project is to design nanowatt digital circuits for data conversion applications.

    Sample tasks: generate behavioral model of digital circuits in Verilog, synthesize digital circuits using Genus, generate digital circuit layout using Innovus, perform physical verification using Assura.

    Looking for 3 students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Required course: ECE 526/L.

    • Recommended courses: ECE 443 and/or ECE 442.

  • Natural Language Processing With Python

    The goal for this project is to analyze text with natural language processing tool kit from Python. Possible collaboration with faculty from the College of Humanities.

    Sample tasks: process raw text, categorize words, classify text, extraction information from text, analyze sentence structures, analyzing the meaning of sentences.

    Looking for 2 students to join the project in ECE 492 in Fall 2022.

    Preferred coursework and/or skills:

    • Required experience: prior project experience with Python