Innovative Projects Realized

Cooperative Wireless Cellular Networks: System Design, Analysis and Simulation

The ever growing market demands for higher data rates and more reliable communication are the main drivers behind the technological growth in the wireless telecommunications industry. This R&D project aims to address an innovative technological shift from conventional wireless cellular networks to a paradigm of cooperative cellular networks that can potentially provide multiple-fold improvements in terms of the total data rates.

SIRADEL, as the end user of the proposed research project, will gain a clear vision on the design and performance of the cooperative cellular networks. This project will further extend SIRADEL’s network planning tools and enable the company to develop reliable and realistic business and technological shift roadmaps for its customers.

The proposed project also represents an investment in Ontario for novel technological shifts in the telecom industry. This is of strategic value to Ontario as the province currently generates 50% of Canada's revenue in the ICT sector.

Innovating Computing Devices

In general, if a user is not willing/able to implement himself the solution, attaching sensor and actuator equipment to a computer typically leads to disproportionately expensive  purchases of proprietary hardware or software, which often still requires a considerable time investment. The goal of our planned company is to provide affordable computer-attached electronic equipment to individuals and businesses worldwide. Our devices will: (1) perform data acquisition and control of external hardware, i.e. input/output (I/O) operations; or (2) speed-up compute-intensive calculations. To be able to accomplish either of these tasks, we will leverage reconfigurable electronic chips, which can implement almost any high-speed digital processing given a finite number of logic gates.  We will offer versatile boards that can be re-purposed rapidly and inexpensively to accomplish commonly needed tasks. Our first planned product will be a digital oscilloscope with a better speed and function offering, for a given price.

Next-Generation Spoken Dialogue Translation System

This proposal describes a research project towards a spoken dialog translation system  that holds a broad range of potential applications. In particular, the proposal describes a system that will be developed and can be integrated in hand-held devices where a user may talk to the system in ones preferred language and the system produces a spoken translation of what is said in another language (e.g. Japanese to English or vice versa). The language barrier between any two dialog partners speaking different languages can be bridged with the help of such a system. The proposed project spans several fields of research: knowledge and expertise in automatic speech recognition (ASR), spoken language understanding (SLU), information retrieval (IR), spoken dialog design (SDD), natural language generation (NLG), speech synthesis, and mobile telecommunication technologies are required. The expected benefit to the industrial partner is to use the research output of this project in a commercial product.

Development and Implementation of viscoelastic Fork Configuration Damper (FCD), for enhanced dynamic performance of high‐rise buildings

The goal of the project is to further develop the Fork Configuration Damper – FCD (patents pending in 7 countries) to enable its implementation in real structures and its commercialization through a University of Toronto startup company. The FCD is a new damping technology developed at the University of Toronto to mitigate wind and earthquake vibrations of high-rise buildings by increasing the level of distributed viscous damping in the structure. The FCD is embedded within structural configurations that are commonly used for high-rise buildings. Not only does the FCD reduce wind vibrations, but if an extreme event occurs (such as a large earthquake) the structural damage is concentrated in the FCDs while other elements of the structure are protected. This allows for rapid inspection, repair and replacement of the FCD following an extreme event. The research and development work will focus on developing the necessary tools for engineers to implement this new technology in Canada and worldwide. During interaction with leading structural high-rise designers, strategies for providing high-level technical sales will also be developed and will feed into the entity that will commercialize this new technology.

Active Flow Control Using Plasma Actuators for Aircraft Drag Reduction

New technologies are needed to meet the environmental targets set for the future of air and ground transportation, and to reduce dependence on fossil fuels for electric power generation. The present project aims at developing a novel flow control technology, which can generate significant aerodynamic improvements, leading to reduction of aerodynamic drag of air and ground vehicles, and better efficiency and durability of wind turbines. The proposed flow control technology combines plasma actuators, as one of the latest and most efficient flow manipulation devices, with a modern flow control approach based on secondary flow instabilities. Throughout the project, the prototype hardware elements of this flow control technology will be developed based on wind tunnel research and experimentation. The outcomes of the project will lay the scientific and technological foundations for the relevant industries, to employ the plasma actuator flow control technology towards developing more fuel-efficient vehicles, as well as more efficient and durable wind turbines.

Macrocyclic peptides as chemical probes for protein-protein interactions

Peptides control a vast range of intra- and intercellular processes. However, linear peptides suffer from instability and poor cell permeability, which limits their application as therapeutic agents. In contrast to linear peptides, cyclic variants are more resistant to both exo- and endoproteases, which explains the therapeutic potential of this class of molecules. Peptide macrocycles have shown remarkable capacity for functional fine-tuning.

Analysis of cell signaling in cancer has identified a plethora of signaling pathways that are implicated in cancer initiation and progression. Some signaling systems are characterized by enrichment in specific modular domain classes. Because these domains bind short peptides, it should be possible to design specific macrocyles that would present the corresponding amino acid sequences in a conformationally biased form. This strategy would provide an effective means of developing potential cancer therapeutics.

Increasing the economic value of non-commercial wood species through induced fungal pigmentation systems

This research proposes to investigate spalting (natural wood pigmentation by fungi) as a method for creating value-added wood products.  Specifically, this research will focus on the development of creating naturally colored wood for commercial applications, as well as increasing the value of blue stained pine wood inadvertently produced by the mountain pine beetle.  Industry benefits from this research include an increased value to both low and high value lumber produced by the company, and gaining a foothold into the newly developing market for spalted wood – a market in which very few industries are currently engaged.

Prosthetic Communication software for individuals with special needs

My goal is to develop new approaches in speech technologies for physically or cognitively disadvantaged users. This includes applying the specialized automatic speech recognition (ASR) algorithms developed during my doctoral research into real-world tools for speakers with speech disorders. For example, I will develop software-assisted human-human interaction in which speech that is unintelligible because of physical disability is modified to produce a more comprehensible equivalent. This will involve acoustic transformations and speech recognition preprocessing. Much of my postdoctoral research will involve applying my expertise in ASR for atypical speech to Professor Mihailidis' COACH project. This project provides technologies that intelligently support older adults with special needs (e.g., dementia) in their home environment. I will integrate specialized ASR software into COACH that will interact in a dialogue with older adults and respond to emergency situations. This software will be developed at Quillsoft Ltd. and will be integrated into their flagship product, SpeakQ.

Measurement Optimization for Localization using Modeled Radio Maps and Compressive Sensing

Location information is an important enabler for context-aware services and communication system improvement. Localization can be performed by comparing the power readings of all surrounding wireless transmitters to a database of these readings at all possible locations, known as the radio map. For this localization process to work, the system requires accurate radio maps. Our industrial partner, Siradel, have designed a software to create modeled estimates of radio maps for any site, which need to be refined with measurements. These measurements are costly if a high level of accuracy is required.

Our role is to develop limited measurement schemes (schemes performing a small number of measurements) that can Increase the accuracy of the modeled radio maps, enhance the fidelity of the location estimation using the improved radio maps, and dynamically update and refine the radio map according to site changes.

The results of this project will help our industrial partner in both refining their modeled radio maps with minimum measurement cost, and building accurate and affordable localization systems that are easily commercialized.

Pe-cursor reduction for improving signal integrity in high-speed data Communications

As data transmission rates increase, transmission quality over existing channels degrades. Advanced signal processing techniques to compensate for the mechanisms which degrade transmission quality are known. Simulations studies conducted at the data rates proposed for next generation data communication products show that pre-cursor inter-symbol interference (ISI) is becoming a significant contributor to degradation in transmission quality. In previous generation products this mechanism has been an insignificant contributor; little effort has been done to explore techniques to combat pre-cursor ISI. Companies at the fore-front of devising new techniques to combat the effects which degrade signal integrity (like pre-cursor ISI) have an advantage over others. Gennum believes the outcome of this post-doctoral work will result in techniques to compensate for pre-cursor ISI and may also result in novel ideas to mitigate other degrading contributors on signal integrity. The outcome will provide advances in the field of signal processing and could position Gennum to be the leading supplier of next generation data communication products.

Pain-Free Steroid Hormone Extract Analysis Using Digital Microfluidics

Quantitative steroid hormone measurements are a mainstay in the field of clinical endocrinology, due to their effects in myriad processes from maturation to hormone-sensitive cancers. Conventional steroid hormone testing protocols require a venopunture blood draw (~5 mL) followed by a time consuming immunoassay (~2 hr) each time a single  hormone is tested. In response to this problem (and opportunity) the Wheeler Lab developed a method relying on digital microfluidics coupled with liquid chromatography – tandem mass spectrometry detection (LC-MS/MS). The major benefits of our method is the reduced sample size (~1 µL) and time required (~20 min) for analysis. Our goal is to commercialize this technique by way of a start-up company. However, to attract investment we must: (1) validate the estrogen analysis method (2) extend the extraction method to multiple steroid hormones and (3) develop an alpha prototype device. MITACS Strategic Fellowship funding will be a vehicle to accomplish this work.

Cold laser ablation as a novel tool for biodiagnostic applications and biomarker discovery

We have developed a technology platform that allows us to obtain quantitative information regarding biomarkers much faster than currently possible, without the need to use expensive antibodies for detection. Our platform allows for simultaneous detection of many biomarkers at once. This reduces the time and the cost associated with biodiagnosis, and will directly contribute to public health by providing a reliable platform for early detection of many diseases.