MRI: Acquisition of Ultra-High Speed Data Characterization System for Convergent Research in Big Data Era

The relentless and exponential increase in data generation and processing, especially real-time data, imposes grand challenges to society and demands significant research advancements to create new opportunities in the Big Data Era. To that end, this proposed MRI acquisition project will purchase an ultra-high speed data characterization system, including a high sampling rate arbitrary waveform generator for ultra-high speed data generation and a wide bandwidth, high resolution oscilloscope as the signal analyzer.

Besides significant and long-term impacts in corresponding research fields, this instrument will foster strategic and long-term collaborations with industry including new companies with their development of high impact, innovative products. This instrument will also help train future engineers and scientists for the fast-growing industries in this field.

It will allow new course and instructional materials to be developed for new/existing courses to bring advanced and up-to-date knowledge and experience to students. The PIs will integrate research with education and outreach programs and publish scientific conference and journal papers to broadly disseminate the research results. The PIs will further extend outreach to local high schools to inspire local students, especially minorities to the engineering world.

This proposed instrument acquisition of an ultra-high speed data characterization system will enable advancements over a variety of research activities at University of California, Davis and nearby companies and institutions to inspire/materialize innovations across disciplines for long-term economical and societal impacts. For example, it will support research on ultra-high speed mm-wave/THz integrated circuits and systems, THz semiconductor devices and ultra-fast electronics and photonics, micro/nano 2-D materials/metamaterial based THz devices and circuits, wide bandwidth and flexible optical networking, data-mining and machine learning, hardware security, etc.

Potential applications include wireless and wireline communications, internet of things (IoT), artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, virtual/augmented realities, cyber security, to name just a few. Besides the impacts in engineering and science research, the instrument will likely benefit the data analysis and understanding from all scales of human lives, such as social and behavioral science, medical and biomedical informatics, environment sensing, life understanding and universe exploration.

In addition, this instrument will also benefit research communities and human societies in the long run by providing adaptive/agile high-speed information/data analysis for fast-changing industries and research needs.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.