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Research Associations

Chairs
Research
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The Chana and Heinrich Manderman Chair in Optoelectronics

Incumbent: Prof. Amos Hardy

Established in 2003, the main purpose of the Chair is to provide support for research and activities, in the field of optoelectronics. This includes modeling and analysis of optical guiding components, both passive and active. For example, optical couplers, optical filters, optical waveguide amplifiers or lasers, and other components that are based on the interaction of light with matter

The Ludwig Jokel Chair of Electronics

Incumbent: Prof. Avi Gover
The Chair was donated by the late Adelheid Jokel in 1980 in memory of her husband. The Chair will support research activities in the fields of Electronics and Electromagnetics. Sub-fields of special emphasis include study of radiation sources and applications in the mm-waves and THz frequency regimes and coherent radiation sources based on electron beams operating in the entire electromagnetic spectrum.

The Kranzberg Chair in Plazma Engineering

Incumbent: Prof. Raymond (Reuven) Boxman
The objective of the Kranzberg Chair is to encourage research on understanding and utilizing the fourth state of matter - plasma. Plasma is a gas which is ionized, i.e. electrons have been separated from some or all of the ions or molecules in the gas so that they can move independently through the gas, converting the gas from an insulator to a conductor. Currently research is being conducted to utilize plasma to deposit thin films and coatings for extending the life of cutting tools and lowering the cost of flat panel displays, generating nano-particles, stabilizing the orbit of spacecraft, and disinfecting water

The Celia and Marcos Maus Chair of Computer Systems Engineering

Incumbent: Prof. Uri Shaked
The Chair was established in 1985 to provide leadership and guidance regarding the role of university research and activity in Computer Systems Engineering (CSE). It also provides improved research capabilities in several areas of CSE.

 

The Henry and Dinah Krongold Chair of Microelectronics

Incumbent: Professor Gil Rosenman
School of Electrical Engineering
Faculty of Engineering

The Chair was established 10 years ago. Its vision focused on developing microelectronic technologies in a wide variety of research areas in this important and advanced field aiming at innovative, creative and inter-disciplinary approach. A large number of research program have been run within the Chair's framework and have been generously funded by Israeli and international agencies. To date their results have been published in dozens of research papers in the leading professional literature and served as a basis for 10 Ph.D. and 23 M.Sc. theses. Almost all the graduates hold senior positions in the Israeli microelectronic industry while some joined academic faculties of Israeli universities.
The research programs supervised by the Chair include
  • Experimental research of nano-layers of organic molecules at semiconductor surfaces. This was partly performed in collaboration with HMI, Germany.
  • Theoretical study of the above subjects in collaboration with WIS, Rehovoth
  • Characterization of gate oxide nano-layers (SiO2 and hi-κ) on novel Si and SiC-based VLSI devices and their physical modeling, in collaboration with NIST, USA
  • Studies of photocatalytic processes on nano-crystalline semiconductor films, in collaboration with Otago University, New Zealand
  • Nano-resolution imaging of the electronic structure at semiconductor surfaces using scanning electron microscopy in collaboration with Oxford University and Imperial College, UK
  • Reliability studies of novel microelectronic devices in collaboration with U. of Maryland, USA and Freescale, Israel
  • Characterization of novel GaAs and GaN-based RF devices and their physical modeling in collaboration with Gal-El, Israel
  • Development of a wireless network based on microelectronic sensor and devices

Chair of Radar, Navigation and Electronic Systems

Incumbent: Prof. Nadav Levanon
Radar (Radio Detection And Ranging) is a branch in electrical engineering, founded before and during WWII, and eventually determined its outcome. Radar is still a critical component in modern warfare. It can be found in war planes, ships, submarines (sonar), missiles, air defense, surveillance, and more. The civilian use of radars is also growing, such as weather radars, air traffic control, automotive radars, remote sensing, medical imaging, etc.
Progress in electronic devices, especially signal processors, created a revolution in radar. The magnetron, originally developed for radar, moved to microwave ovens, and was replaced by coherent solid state amplifiers. Digital signal generators and processors make it possible to replace the narrow, high power pulse, with a sophisticated low-power long-duration waveform that can be compressed at the receiver into an effective narrow pulse. Such waveforms provide modern radar with long distance, narrow range and velocity resolution, hence high accuracy. .
In military applications radar keeps competing with counter measures, by seeking waveforms that are difficult to intercept. The ever changing threats keep posing new challenges to military radar, such as ground penetrating capabilities, or tracking trajectories of short-range rockets and mortars. The challenges that civilian applications pose are just as difficult. Automotive radars for cruise control and accident mitigation require extremely low probabilities of false alarms, despite expected interference from many similar radar units in other cars, in close proximity..
Israel's security depends to a great degree on technological capabilities. Yet, Israel is not exposed to classified know-how that US and NATO countries share. In radar Israel must rely on independent advanced research. Basic radar research needs an academic environment that is not hindered by deadlines, can publish, and can teach students. The radar and navigation chair at Tel Aviv University strives to become such and academic knowledge center. Radar courses have been taught at Tel Aviv University for more than 15 years, and TAU is leading the Israeli academic community in the radar field..
Navigation is a sister branch to radar. They share many common concepts and technologies. Both have military and civilian applications. The advent of satellite navigation (GPS) makes navigation easily available to civil use. Soon there will be a GPS receiver in each cell phone. This phenomena creates a new research area that deals more with applications than the core technology. Yet, there is progress in non-GPS navigation capabilities, starting from missile homing and ending with guiding a miniature capsule within the human body..
The purpose of the chair is therefore to advance academic research in radar and navigation, contribute to cooperation with research labs in universities, government laboratories and industry, both in Israel and overseas, and help graduate students through courses and research..
The chair incumbent is Prof. Nadav Levanon, a faculty member of TAU since 1970. Prof. Levanon has published two radar texts: Radar Principles (Wiley, 1988) and Radar Signals (Wiley, 2004). He is a fellow of the IEEE and of the IEE, and heads TAU's Yitzhak and Chaya Weinstein Research Institute for Signal Processing..

The Gordon Chair

Incumbent: Prof. Moshe Tur
The Center, established in 1983 by an endowment from the late Mr. Gershon Gordon, conducts interdisciplinary teaching and research in the field of energy. It is operated jointly with the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Faculty of Exact Sciences, with the Faculty of Management as an adjunct member.
A study program offered by the Center aims to provide the skills and manpower required by the energy industries and governmental bodies.
The Center offers such courses as Solar Energy and Reservoir Geophysics, Fuel Cells, Energy Management and Photovoltaics, given by prominent scientists in their respective fields. It also supports research programs in energy­related fields within the University leading to higher degrees in graduate programs.

The Signal processing Chair

Incumbent: Prof. Anthony Weiss

Signal processing is an area of electrical engineering and applied mathematics that deals with operations on or analysis of signals, in either discrete or continuous time to perform useful operations on those signals. Signals of interest can include sound, images, time-varying measurement values and sensor data, for example biological data such as electro-cardiograms, control system signals, telecommunication transmission signals such as radio signals, and many others. Signals are analog or digital electrical representations of time-varying or spatial-varying physical quantities. In the context of signal processing, arbitrary binary data streams and on-off signals are not considered as signals, but only analog and digital signals that are representations of analog physical quantities.

Typical operations and applications

Processing of signals includes the following operations and algorithms with application examples:

  • Filtering(for example in tone controls andequalizers)
  • Smoothing, deblurring (for example inimage enhancement)
  • Adaptive filtering(for example forecho-cancellationin a conference telephone, ordenoisingfor aircraft identification by radar)
  • Spectrum analysis(for example inmagnetic resonance imaging,tomographic reconstructionandOFDMmodulation)
  • Digitization, reconstruction andcompression(for example,image compression, sound coding and othersource coding)
  • Storage (indigital delay linesandreverb)
  • Feature extraction(for examplespeech-to-textconversion)
  • Modulation(inmodems)
  • Prediction
  • System identificationand classification
  • A variety of other operations

In communication systems, signal processing may occur at OSI layer 1, the Physical Layer (modulation, equalization, multiplexing, etc) in the seven layer OSI model, as well as at OSI layer 6, the Presentation Layer (source coding, including analog-to-digital conversion and data compression).

Mathematical topics embraced by signal processing

  • Linear signals and systems, andtransform theory
  • Calculus
  • Vector spacesandLinear algebra
  • Functional analysis
  • Probabilityandstochastic processes
  • Detection theory
  • Estimation theory
  • Optimization
  • Programming
  • Numerical methods
  • Iterative methods

Categories of signal processing

Analog signal processing

Analog signal processing is for signals that have not been digitized, as in classical radio, telephone, radar, and television systems. This involves linear electronic circuits such as passive filters, active filters, additive mixers, integrators and delay lines. It also involves non-linear circuits such as compandors, multiplicators (frequency mixers and voltage-controlled amplifiers), voltage-controlled filters, voltage-controlled oscillators and phase-locked loops.

Discrete time signal processing

Discrete time signal processing is for sampled signals that are considered as defined only at discrete points in time, and as such are quantized in time, but not in magnitude.

Analog discrete-time signal processing is a technology based on electronic devices such as sample and hold circuits, analog time-division multiplexers, analog delay lines and analog feedback shift registers. This technology was a predecessor of digital signal processing (see below), and is still used in advanced processing of gigahertz signals.

The concept of discrete-time signal processing also refers to a theoretical discipline that establishes a mathematical basis for digital signal processing, without taking quantization error into consideration.

Digital signal processing

Digital signal processing is for signals that have been digitized. Processing is done by general-purpose computers or by digital circuits such as ASICs, field-programmable gate arrays or specialized digital signal processors (DSP chips). Typical arithmetical operations include fixed-point and floating-point, real-valued and complex-valued, multiplication and addition. Other typical operations supported by the hardware are circular buffers and look-up tables. Examples of algorithms are the Fast Fourier transform (FFT), finite impulse response (FIR) filter, Infinite impulse response (IIR) filter, Wiener filter, Adaptive filter and Kalman filter.

Fields of signal processing

Statistical signal processing - analyzing and extracting information from signals and noise based on their stochastic properties

Audio signal processing - for electrical signals representing sound, such as speech or music

Speech signal processing - for processing and interpreting spoken words

Image processing - in digital cameras, computers, and various imaging systems

Video processing - for interpreting moving pictures

Array processing - for processing signals from arrays of sensors

Time-frequency signal processing - for processing non-stationary signals[3].

Filtering - used in many fields to process signals

Seismic signal processing

Data mining

The purpose of the chair is therefore to advance academic research in signal processing, contribute to cooperation with research labs in universities, government laboratories and industry, both in Israel and overseas, and help graduate students through courses and research..