Student Design Engineers at Work
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Kenya Wind Energy | Vision Based Analysis | SmartDIMM | Crystal Oscillator | Current Projects
Our previous design ventures have spanned various fields of expertise and have encompassed a variety of scopes. Throughout the development of our projects, IDS faculty, staff and students have supported projects from initial development through implementation.
A diverse team of engineering, business and social sciences students worked collaboratively over three years to develop a sustainable method of providing electricity to extremely impoverished communities in western Kenya. Penn State collaborated with Bowling Green State University, University of Nairobi (UoN), Kenya and Kochia Development Group, a community-based organization in Kenya to develop a robust and sustainable hybrid power system for rural communities in Kenya. The objective was to build the system in Kenya using Kenyan resources and set up a profit-driven business around it to ensure economic sustainability. The engineering design process and the business planning necessitated the students to think from a completely different perspective because their target customers live on less than $10/month.
The model developed for this project emphasized building strong relationships between all the involved parties and incorporated multi-disciplinary engineering design, business development and social sciences to make the project truly successful and sustainable. The project culminated in July 2007 with the construction of the pilot windmill system and implementation of the cursory business plan. Six mentors (essentially faculty members) and 100 students worked on the various technical and non-technical aspects of this project from Fall 2004 to Summer 2007. These activities were very tightly integrated into the student’s academics by way of senior design projects, independent study courses and various credit courses in business planning (BA 301H), appropriate technologies, entrepreneurship and engineering leadership. This initiative was funded by a $12,000 grant from the National Collegiate Innovators and Inventors Alliance (NCIIA) and Khanjan Mehta was the acting Principal Investigator. Related publications include:
Mehta, K., “Lessons from the Field: Setting up a Windmill Based Business in Rural Kenya”, NCIIA Annual Meeting, Dallas, TX, 2008
Links to various related news items can be found at: http://www.cedcc.psu.edu/khanjan/interest.htm
IDS developed a "turn-key" vision based analysis system as part of a team development effort. IDS played significant roles in system design, electronic subsystem designs, and software development. Hardware components included multiple high resolution cameras, spectrometers, precision motor positioners, solenoid positioners, precision system temperature controllers, and computer controlled lighting. The software system application written in LabView was highly structured and involved over 400 subprograms. Software performed all measurement and control functions, data reduction, and data export through the internet to remote SQL database servers. Also, IDS performed much of the initial hardware and system integration, subsystem qualification and performance testing. Design details and specific system pictures are not available since the end product is a proprietary system, however a generic block diagram can be viewed.
Continuing improvements in semiconductor density are enabling new classes of System-on-a-Chip architectures that combine extensive processing logic and high-density memory. By 2009, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors [1] predicts that a single high-end microprocessor die will contain approximately 84 million logic transistors. Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) density is increasing at an even faster pace, with 2Gbyte DRAM chips expected in the same timeframe. Large-scale problems may be handled “on-chip” using the increased memory and logic density, but new architectures must be developed which can effectively exploit these tremendous on-chip resources.
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MCXO development included two phases: 1) initial development, and 2) performance enhancement. A typical 1" x 1" implementation is shown at the left in top and bottom views.
Initial development is described in publication 1. Performance enhancements phase is described in publication 2.
A Microcontroller Compensated Crystal Oscillator (MCXO) is described that incorporates varactor compensation techniques and high precision analog-to-digital and digital-to-analog convertors. Design enhancements are reported which improve stability and spurious noise characteristics and add a "run-time" continuous calibration feature. Temperature stability is improved through firmware enhancements that better utilize the capabilities of the MCXO, resulting in measured performance of ± 0.1 ppm from minus 40 to plus 85° C. Thermal packaging and calibration temperature protocol improvements are described which reduce differences in thermal gradients between calibration and open-loop run-time operating modes. Aging and frequency drift compensation is implemented by re-calibration performed automatically whenever a reference standard input signal is applied to the MCXO.
Students seen here breadboarding a simple circuit before committing components to final circuit design.
Students Will Ferry and Jeff DiTeodoro attend Texas Instruments TechDay in New Jersey, helping IDS evaluate new technology.
ECS is designing for the future.