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Subproject 1 ： Opto-Electronic and Sensing Devices
The goal of the proposed efforts in Sub-project 1 is to pursue academic
excellence in the areas of opto-electronic and sensing device
technologies through working on new device fabrication techniques and
novel devices as well as state-of-the-art numerical modeling methods
with international competitiveness. The research directions meet those
of the key industry development in Taiwan and match important
state-of-the-art topics pursued in international photonics academic
communities. This research team has recently achieved several related
device technologies that not only were in the lead in Taiwan but also
attracted international recognition. These technologies have great
potentials of being further innovated and found practical applications.
These achievements are briefed in the following. First, we have
explored organic solar cells with inverted structures. The organic
layer was sandwiched by two oxides to provide good protection on the
organic materials for improved stability using full solution process.
The cost could be very low and the production speed is potentially high
for its compatibility with printing technology. Second, we established
the only laboratory to successfully develop the analytical solution to
explain the current-voltage characteristics of the organic
light-emitting diode (OLED) with the presence of trap distribution in
the organic materials. Third, the micro-structural and micro-spectral
characteristics of a vertical-aligned liquid crystal display (VA-LCD)
panel were obtained non-invasively for the first time. With 1-μm-axial
and 2-μm-transversal resolutions, the cell gap profile beneath the
patterned thin-film transistor of the VA-LCD panel can clearly be
resolved. Furthermore, the photonic device modeling and design based on
the techniques of computational electromagnetics are one of the
strengths in this team. The research in this sub-project covers the
following five topics: solar energy devices, light source devices,
display devices, sensing devices, and numerical modeling for new
interface structures and device applications.
Subproject 2 ： Integrated Platform for Intelligent Sensing Chips
Recent research in the field of brain computer interface has
demonstrated that monkeys and humans can move computer cursors and
robotic arms directly by thought. These proof-of-concept laboratory
demonstrations motivate the continuous development on VLSI chips for
cortically-controlled neuroprosthetic devices. The implantable
electrode arrays, multichannel recording ICs, and integrated wireless
data telemetry circuits drive the research field toward the direction
of long-duration and wireless experiments on freely moving subjects. In
order to further improve the neuroprosthetics and achieve a clinical
viable device, the bulk associated with the external computing systems
has to be removed. The real-time signal processing tools for brain
signals should be realized on chips.
There are several design requirements imposed by the
applications for the on-chip brain signal processing. Because of the
limited space and power resource at the recording site, low power
consumption and minimized area are two primary requirements for the
portable or implantable neural prosthetic devices. Afterwards the
high-density recording with a large number of channels is also
required. The high-density recording can advance fundamental
neuroscience studies and has the potential to improve the performance
of neural prosthetic devices. The hardware should have enough
processing capability to handle the raw cortical signals of multiple
channels in a real time. The real-time processing capability removes
the necessity of storing the large amount of raw data, which saves the
power and area of the large memory. The prompt response can thus be
achieved for the real-time applications. In addition, the wireless
telemetry is important because the wires generally impose significant
restrictions for subjects in the scientific experiments and the
clinical applications. Transmitting signals wirelessly usually requires
significant power especially for a large among of recording channels.
On-chip information extraction before the wireless telemetry removes
the redundant signals, which greatly compresses the data and the
corresponding power of wireless telemetry.
Successful proof-of-concept laboratory experiments
motivate continued development for brain computer interface. Advances
in implantable electrode arrays and miniaturized multichannel recording
ICs enable long-duration, wireless and closed-loop experiments on
freely moving subjects. To further improve clinically viable devices,
the bulk associated with external systems must be eliminated. Thus a
miniaturized processing-and-controlling system interfacing recording
ICs and actuators in a real time is required. Low power consumption and
minimized area are two primary requirements for implantable devices.
Significant computational capabilities are needed to handle
multichannel neural data in real time. Programmability is essential
because of the variability of testing subjects and application
requirements. A systematic hardware-software hierarchy is required to
facilitate the integration and controlling flexibility over the
functional blocks. It will be the way to succeed by connecting the
advanced techniques on algorithm, architecture, and system levels to
the application requirements.
For intelligent wireless mobile integrated circuits and systems, our
group will be focused on reconfigurable/programmable implementation, an
84GHz CMOS transceiver, and a novel output current feedback technique
for LED lighting applications. A flexible and
reconfigurable/programmable implementation on an FPGA or GPU platform
can bring exciting applications to current and future devices; an 84GHz
CMOS transceiver will be realized and will have a great contribution to
the academic and industry fields; a novel output current feedback
technique for LED lighting applications is of great importance
especially in industry since the cost of the driving solution would be
quite reduced.
For intelligent medical electronic circuits and systems, our research
proposal targets at developing portable physiological signal (EEG and
ECG) detection system and signal processing techniques (by using HHT
transformation) to analyze the cross-talk between human brain and
heart. Successful research outcomes will unveil the link between these
two vital human organs and promote healthy living of human beings.
For intelligent embedded systems for cyber-physical
systems, we will aim on developing the essential enabling technologies
for user centric cyber-physical services and systems. These
technologies enable low-energy, fully integrated, wireless connected
cyber-physical systems.
For electronic design automation for intelligent integrated circuits
and systems, we will provide design algorithms, methodology, and tools
for all the addressed architecture and circuit designs to optimize the
design cost, silicon area, power consumption, and design time, and to
improve circuit performance at the same time. Involved major
tasks include, from front-end to back-end design processes, electronic
system-level (ESL) design to boost the design productivity, formal
verification to validate design correctness, logic synthesis to
optimize Boolean functions, simulation to verify circuit timing
behavior, physical design to optimize layout area and timing, testing
to validate circuit function and timing, etc.
Subproject 3：Millimeter-wave and System-in-Package Technologies
The explosive development in wireless applications has necessitated the
demands in electromagnetic bandwidth. Being scarce in the land and
natural resource, Taiwan’s prosperity relies on fully nurturing of the
human resource and better utilizing spectrum resource. It is thus
important to strategically encourage millimeter-wave (mmW) researches
for continuing development of ICT industry. Hence, the subproject is
missionary in technology advancement and exploration of new
applications in microwave and mmW spectrum for benefits of the human
being.
In order to fulfill the requirements of mass storage, personalization,
and mobility in today’s highly integrated digital products, the IEEE
802 standard organization has formed a 60GHz Wireless Gigabit group to
promote 802.11ad. Using the unlicensed band in MMW spectrum, e.g.,
57-64 GHz by FCC 47 CFR 15.255, the multi-Gbps high-speed wireless
communications with 7 GHz bandwidth has emerged innovative applications
and great opportunities in various areas, such as HDTV/3DTV, medical
equipments, and Kiosk systems. NTU microwave group has been globally
leading in the mmW integrated circuits (MMIC) and system integration,
and also actively involved in the IEEE 802 standardization process. To
keep Taiwan’s momentum, the master piece of the group research is to
develop the key components in the mmW multi-channel transceiver module,
including the mmW system-on-chip (SoC), system in package (SiP), and
miniature multi-antennas for higher integration, lower power
consumption, and exploratory applications with WPAN/WLAN/ WiMax
compatibility.
Subproject 4 ： Seamless Connectivity
Although the contribution of telecoms to global CO2 emissions is small
at first glance, the reality is that wireless telecoms will play an
increasingly important role in total ICT related energy consumption,
under the current fast growth of wireless data traffic and emerging new
network architecture such as LTE and LTE-A. The research in the basic
technologies for achieving green communication shall be able to reduce
the power consumption in many wireless access networks, while
maintaining the quality of service of various network. Our approach is
to detect and predict the users’ behavior and the usage of
applications, and then dynamically adjust their network connection
mode, reduce radio resource allocation, and even re-configure the
network and turn off certain communication components. We will propose
an energy optimization model, with QoS as constraints, based on the
fact that multiple access networks (3G/3.75G/4G etc) may coexist in the
future cellular network. Since most user activities during the period
of 12:00 AM – 7:00 AM is relatively small, even by the simple
reconfiguration approach, one should be able to reduce the energy
consumption up to 25%. Further improvement of the energy saving will
rely on the proposed energy optimization model and redesign of the
communication components. The considered components include base
stations, DSL or FTTx nodes, and the CPE network nodes, such as WiFi
AP, femtocell AP, and our research results should also help Taiwan’s
communication industry to further improve their competiveness.
Future communications will be characterized by an
even higher QoS demand from the user under an even stringent
requirement for efficient resource utilization. Cooperative and
collaborative networking (CCN) thus plays a key role in providing rich
application support (e.g. broadband access and seamless connectivity)
out of scarce resource availability (e.g. energy and spectrum). Since
future communication platforms will be highly heterogeneous
encompassing primary and secondary radio access, smart power grid, and
fiber-optic communication, CCN will be highly cross-disciplinary to
employ theories from quantum computing, social networking, and
molecular communications for solving the problems. In addition, to
maximize user performance subject to limited resource constraints, CCN
is highly optimized across different layers of the protocol stack
spanning the physical, MAC, and routing layers. With the proposed CCN
technologies, existing communication networks such as wireless mesh
networks, vehicular ad hoc networks, and mobile communication systems
will be effectively upgraded for 4G and machine-to-machine (M2M)
communications. Therefore, CCN will be highly competitive both in
academia and industry, in science and technology.
In this five-year project, we will study and develop
key technologies that enable DSA-based communications. In particular,
we will apply game theoretic framework to DSA communications. The game
theoretic framework will enable cooperative operation among
self-organized DSA devices. We will also develop new protocols that use
sequenced-based channel hopping to ensure communicating secondary
devices to discover each other in a fully distributed manner. Practical
issues such as pricing for DSA wireless service will also be
considered. Our solution will alleviate the exhaustion of precious
spectrum resources and facilitate the wide deployment of DSA
communications.
Based on the MIMO channel understanding, efficient
and practical algorithms for synchronization and channel estimation can
be designed, which can be applied to the 4G wireless communication
systems.
Through the cooperation with sub-project III, the
multi-channel RF transceiver can be integrated with the baseband
processor. This cooperation model will increase the participants
to have the system design capability.
Subproject 5 ： Media and Social Cloud Computing with Chinese Flavor
Cloud and mobile computing are expected to be the key areas driving ICT
innovations for the next decade, and we expect to have significant
contributions on several fronts.
First, our
scientific research will achieve technology breakthroughs in the areas
of cloud computing algorithms, cross-language translation, multimedia
search, and mobile user interfaces. Focusing on Chinese culture related
cloud informatics, our world-leading innovations will be shared with
the academic community through publications at the top-tier
international conferences and journals, further advancing NTU’s
academic competitiveness and awareness internationally.
Second, we
plan to demonstrate our technical development by making the following
two cloud services publicly available for users unfamiliar with
Chinese: (1) Chinese language learning system, and (2) Multimedia food
ordering services for Chinese restaurants.
Third,
world-leading Taiwanese companies are in the process of transforming
from manufacturing to services, and our innovation will help advance
the state of the art of these industries. Our research and
demonstrating services are also aligned with Taiwanese Government’s
“Six Key Emerging Industries” (Tourism & Travel and Cultural
Creativity), and “Four Key Intelligent Industries” (Cloud Computing).
Last, our
project will help train the next generation of mobile and cloud
computing talent through academic research, development, and technology
transfer, and will help drive innovations in these areas for the next
few decades.
Subproject 6 ： Intelligent Diagnostic and Therapeutic Care System
The aim of intelligent medical therapeutics (IMT) is to leverage the
advanced technologies to improve the efficiency of the current
therapeutic procedure. Diagnosis is a science for making judgment of
the disease process by integrating the past medical history, symptoms,
physical exam, lab and clinical imaging data in an attempt to ensure
correct diagnosis and in turn to maximize therapeutic efficiency. With
the advent of aging of our society, there is growing emphasis on the
need for intelligent therapeutic care and biomedical instrument. The
bioengineering is an interdisciplinary field that integrates
engineering technology, biology and medicine in order to develop
instruments and equipments, and to provide needed help for prevention,
diagnosis, and treatment of human disease. It provides an opportunity
for personalized medicine, and such development enables the general
public to be more conveniently and comprehensively realize their own
health conditions, and also to improve the ability as well as mechanism
for self-health management. As a result, the intelligent diagnostic and
therapeutic care system holds the promise of improving disease
diagnosis, monitoring, and therapeutic methods, reducing the cost of
health-care organization, and enhancing quality of care for general
public. There are totally five topics which will be addressed under
this sub-project：
Personalized Healthcare Service Decision Support System:
To apply data mining technologies and analyze
liver-cancer data extracted from their Electronic Health Record (EHR),
and expect to achieve three sub-goals: (1) to develop a cross-national
data mining platform to share research resources/experiences, (2) to
provide early detection of diseases, and (3) to establish standardized
treatment, pathway and guidelines.
Clinical Medical Image Diagnosis:
In this project, the CAD systems will be developed
with several imaging modalities including 2D/3D US, elastogrpahy, ABUS
and MRI. Because there are several similar techniques used in these CAD
systems, the CAD systems could be modularized. Also, the US recording,
tracking system and portable PC-based US system are developed in the
project.
Intelligent Diagnostic and Therapeutic Devices:
This topic is to develop new robots more in line
with the rehabilitation specifications and requirements, and then
achieving the goal of realization of a world-class advanced
rehabilitation robot. Besides, we will build up our smart CPSD
algorithm and its hardware implementation toward streamline of clinical
application. From medical aspects, such a novel approach possibly
contributes to new disease model and thus leads to new therapeutic
means, especially for home care users.
Healthcare System for Elderly People:
The proposed system, which integrates technologies
to monitor social signals in a retirement home setting will be helpful
to dementia patients and their caregivers which aims to enhance the
social activities participation of the elderly, thereby delay the
degradation of cognitive ability and reduce the probability of
dementia, in order to achieve better life quality and reduce the
medical and healthcare cost. Our goal is to enable early detection of
abnormal behavior amid daily social activities.
Data Mining on Clinical Databases:
In recent years, the release of next-generation
sequencing (NGS) platforms overcomes the limitation of microarrays by
massively sequencing every piece of information of our genome.
Recently, the 1000 genome pilot project generated 15 million of SNPs
across multiple human populations. To date, there are more than 30
millions of SNPs in the NCBI dbSNP database, which is expected to
increase as more low-MAF SNPs will be found.
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