Innovative Projects Realized

Hydrocarbon-based fuels have been the primary source of energy for mankind for centuries. However, during the last century there has been an exponential increase in the utilization of such fuels and the demand for energy is growing continuously. Hydrocarbon fuels are the primary source of greenhouse emissions which are severely affecting the global climate and jeopardizing the living environment of future generations. All these issues drive a growing concern about finding suitable alternative fuels that can successfully replace the conventional fuels used in a wide spectrum of applications from electricity generation to automotive and aerospace applications. Of the alternate fuels tested or proposed, hydrogen is a promising candidate.

Besides others ways, water electrolysis is an interesting technology for hydrogen production.  Electrochemical hydrogen evolution involves several intermediate steps with hydrogen chemisorbed on the metal surface. The binding energy between the metal and hydrogen controls the reaction rate. A too weak or too high binding energy results in low hydrogen evolution reaction rates. Platinum have medium binding energies for hydrogen and is the best electrocatalyst for hydrogen production. However, platinum is an extremely rare element and there is an urgent need to find alternatives. An interesting candidate is nickel.  Nickel is not only interesting from is electrocatalytic activity, but as well due to its stability in strong alkaline solutions at elevated temperatures (typical condition in industrial hydrogen production by electrolysis). Contrary to platinum, no nickel supply constraints over long term are expected. Canada produces about 30% of the world supply of nickel.

The successful candidate will develop nano-structured nickel electro-catalysts by thermal spraying technology.

Thermal spraying technology allows forming porous and nano-strucutred coatings of various metals. The candidate will learn how to use this technology and, based on his developed experimental plan, will explore systematically the activity of the coatings. The samples will be prepared in house and/or in collaboration with an industrial partner. During the internship the candidate will work in close collaboration with the catalysis center of the University of Ottawa, where she/he will perform microscopic cauterizations, i.e.  scanning electron (SEM), transmission electron microscopy TEM),  high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM)  imaging and X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis. Electrochemical activity characterizations involve real electro-active surface determination (by CO-stripping), Tafel-plot analysis and determination of exchange current density.

Student is first expected to learn the techniques used in the research mentioned above.  Then the student is expected to implement an algorithm, and do an experimental study. If time permits, the student will be mentored to design an algorithm to compute sparse planar subggraphs.

Real-time systems are built as sets of components interacting with their environment. In most cases (including robotics, traffic control, manufacturing and industrial applications, etc.), these applications must satisfy "hard" timing constraints. If these constraints are not met, systems decisions (even correctly computed) can lead to catastrophic consequences for goods or lives. The development of real-time controllers in distributed environments has been proven a very complex task, in terms of both development difficulties and related costs. We have provided a new systematic method and associated automated tools to develop hard real-time control applications reducing both development costs and delivery time. We use a simulation-based methodology for development, incrementally replacing simulated components by their real counterparts interacting with the surrounding environment.

Currently the implementation of navigation information systems – sometimes called “GPS” or GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite Systems) for convenience – is undergoing some significant transitions.  Additional satellite constellations are being proposed and fielded (Glonass, Galileo, Compass, SBAS) aggressively.  In addition location technology is rapidly being incorporated into the mass-market consumer space thru implementation in cellular phones, autos, surveillance, tracking, and standalone navigation products – providing and enabling a whole new class of applications called Location Based Services (LBS).  Effective development, manufacturing, and fielding of these systems requires new testing techniques that model real world expected conditions to provide assessments regarding performance, availability, accuracy.  In this context, GNSS signal generation is key and the ability of such generators to duplicate real-world conditions is of particular importance. However, increasing the number of constellations, and therefore signals to be generated, raises considerable challenge as the hardware required. The common practice in this regard has been to use a standard computer front-end that controls one or many dedicated digital signal processing cards that carry out the required real-time signal processing. Increasing the number of satellite constellations/channels can therefore be handled by increasing the number of dedicated cards. This approach is quite direct and presents a relatively low risk. However, it can be costly since the required cards tend to be specialized (typically FPGA-based).

At École de technolgie supérieure, we have developed a working prototype of a multi-constellation simulator.  In order to maximize the performance of this simulator prototype, this research projects aims at investigation the use of multi-core CPUs and/or high performance GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) to carry out more of the computation and signal processing tasks in the computer front-end thereby reducing the need for dedicated and costly real-time signal processing cards. Therefore, an optimal distribution of computational load between CPU/GPU and FPGA must be sought first at an architectural level then implemented and tested.

The student will collaborate with other team member to quantify the computational requirements for multi-channel GNSS signal generation (focus on a 12 channel GPS L1 scenario), determine the optimal CPU/GPU vs. FPGA distribution of the computational load and Implement and test the 12-channel GPS L1 scenario using the proposed distribution of (2)

In a typical scenario, a large heterogeneous software system, installed on many different sites and composed of several interacting components, exchanging data with several different protocols, must be updated to correct some defects, add new functionalities, or replace some obsolete components without breaking the system and while keeping its dependability.

This research project aims at developing approaches to substantially increase the efficiency of change management for high dependability software systems, such as avionic software systems, controlling navigation systems or company mission critical distributed applications. We will particularly focus on the challenges of updating multi-components software systems; systems that include a large quantity of components with the following non-exhaustive list of challenging characteristics: Different languages; Running on different OSes; Built by third-parties; Using different communication protocol; Distributed on processors.

Project activities will be carried out in collaboration with industrial partners, in particular CAE Inc. and CS Communications Canada showed a keen interest for this project. After a first phase during which approaches and technologies will be developed using open source systems, the industrial partners will choose and detail industrial, typical scenarios of software updates. The academic partners will use these scenarios as a "test bed" against which to assess the appropriateness of the solutions as well as a source of information to build the solution.

This research project involves case studies, and laboratory experiments with students and professional developers as well as building tools. We expect that students will work on the theoretical aspects, implementation, and experiments needed to study and characterize the software systems used in high-dependability, distributed systems; study and characterize componentization, redundancy, coupling, cohesion, and criticality of subject systems; study, define, and develop appropriate change-impact analyses; and develop models for software update cost and risk assessment.

During the past two decades, the primal-dual scheme has been a major tool for the design of algorithms with very good approximation factors for NP-hard problems. This method is based on the duality theorems of Linear Programming (LP): Strong duality ensures that satisfaction of complementary slackness conditions implies optimality of a (fractional) solution. “Good” relaxation (i.e., relaxation by a small factor) of these conditions can be shown to imply a good integral solution for the original problem formulated as an LP. The primal-dual method is based on the connection between a primal LP and its dual, but in recent years a new method called iterated rounding has been applied to a variety of problems, for which no equally good primal-dual schemes were known. Iterated rounding deals only with the primal LP formulation of the hard (say, minimization) problem, and very carefully rounds up a fractional solution piece-by-piece to an integral one. So, iterated rounding is a combinatorial primal method (like Simplex is a combinatorial method for solving LPs) and the primal-dual scheme involves both the primal and the dual (like similar methods for solving LPs).

 

With the fast growth in the Micro-Electromechanical System (MEMS) market, there is also growing need for miniaturized power sources. MEMS devices are beginning to make significant contributions in new subjects, including Lab-on-Chips (LOC) and other micro-fluidic devices, wireless communications, sensors, and optics. In all these technologies, electric power is a vital issue for the further development of the MEMS field. Large numbers of MEMS devices are still powered by external (macroscopic) power supplies, which in many cases lead to inter-connection problems, cross-talk, (electronic) noise, difficulties in controlling the power delivered, and most importantly, compromise the advantage of reduction in device size. In contrast, this complexity is reduced if miniaturized site-specific power is employed, and therefore improvements in noise and power efficiency may be achieved. Past investigations has been showed that the conflicting requirements which prevent good performance, high capacity, and long durability of rechargeable batteries can be (partly) eliminated when the cell is miniaturized and operated with a flowing electrolyte as a continuous electrochemical reactor. The proposed micro battery concept consists of one (or more) micro channel(s) which is (are) manufactured into a micro-fluidic/MEMS device which needs an on-board power source to fulfill its task.

The micro-fluidic batteries have great potential to be employed as the standard power source in MEMS and LOC devices. Also, it is attractive to number up these devices to obtain power systems for conversion and storage of larger amount of energy, e.g. combined with photovoltaic cells or wind turbines as an autonomous (remote) energy supply system. The potential of this project include sustainability and environmental considerations. Miniaturized rechargeable batteries decrease the need for raw material. The enhanced lifetime as well as the less waste generated by production, effects positively the entire cradle-to-grave cycle of small scale power sources.

The student  will be involved with the identification of the physical and chemical phenomena occuring in the micro-fluidic battery on the basis of a literature research. After the identification of the relevant phenomena, the governing equations for electrolyte flow, mass transfer of species, chemical reactions, and thermodynamics/heat transfer have to be identified.

The primary goal is to set-up a simple but effective 1-D model of the phenomena within the micro-fluidic battery. The model should reflect the essential physicochemical features with a low level-of-detail and should be solved with either MATLAB or a commercial CFD code.