• Reliable Systems Design

    Aggressive technology scaling has aggravated a number of reliability problems, particularly the aging of CMOS devices. This is caused by several mechanisms, namely: Bias Temperature Instability (BTI) is usually considered as the primary reliability concern in modern technologies, it is characterized by a positive shift in the absolute value of the threshold voltage of MOS devices, which leads to an increase in the propagation delay of various components in System-on-Chips over time. If this performance degradation exceeds circuit time margins, it may lead to system failure, thus reducing its long-term reliability. Other reliability problems include crosstalk noise and radiation. I am working on developing a range of solutions enhance the resiliency of CMOS circuits against these various reliability problems. To reduce the impact of ageing; I am looking into the use of ageing prediction sensors, circuit-level mitigating techniques and ageing aware synthesis. My work also includes developing radiation hardened designs and enhancing the reliability of on chip communications..

  • Hardware Security

    The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of numerous inter-connected resource-constrained devices such as sensors nodes and actuators, which are linked to the Internet. By 2020 it is anticipated that the IoT paradigm will include approximately 20 billion connected devices. The interconnection of such devices provides the ability to collect a huge amount of data for processing and analysis. A significant portion of the transacted data between IoT devices is private information, which must not in any way be eavesdropped on or tampered with. Such devices typically have limited area and energy resources, which makes the use of classic cryptography prohibitively expensive. Physically Unclonable Functions (PUFs) are a class of novel hardware security primitives that promise a paradigm shift in many security applications; their relatively simple architecture can answer many of the security challenges of energy-constrained IoT devices. I am working on developing hardware-based security solutions for resource-constrained IoT devices using physically Unclonable functions and hardware monitoring schemes.

  • Designing Low Complexity Energy Efficient MIMO Decoder

    The use of multiple antennas in wireless transmission, otherwise known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), is an important technique for achieving the high data-rates required. By future communication systems. Already, MIMO technology has been adopted by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project Long Term Evolution, WiMAX and by recent Wireless Local Area Network standards, such as the IEEE 802.11ac. It is envisaged that multi-antenna systems will play an even more prominent role in future as more diverse platforms become interconnected and user data rates requirements increase. However, MIMO systems present a number of challenges, in particular to the receiver, where the complexity of the signal Detection is exacerbated by the interferences from the multiple transmit antennas. I am working on developing energy efficient hardware implementation of MIMO detection systems, using a combination of optimization methods, which range from optimizing the detection algorithm to devising new hardware implementation.

  • Pedagogic Research

    The relentless development of semiconductor technologies has enabled the design of highly complex systems. Electronic engineers are now expected to build chips which have more than a billion transistors. Novel computing paradigms have recently emerged such as many-core systems and the Internet of Things. The main challenge facing educators in the field of electrical and electronics engineering is the fast-paced development these new technologies, which is not always reflected in universities curricula thought at around the word. If not addressed, this problem may lead to an increase in the gap between the actual skills of graduate students and those expected by potential employers. My research in this area focus on developing new curricula and learning resources which cover the new topics including hardware security, design tool automation tools and embedded systems. I am also interested in developing tools and techniques to combat plagiarism in engineering courses..