Electrical Engineering

Specializations

1. Antennas, Microwave Engineering and Radar Systems

  • Microwave and Millimeterwave Integrated Circuits including Antennas:

The current state-of-the-art radio frequency front end (RFFE) architecture contains different types (active and passive) of devices from microwave to millimeterwave frequencies. It includes switches and switching networks, phase shifters, filters and amplifiers after the antenna. The multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) antennas have been widely studied over wide band. Miniaturization has become the trend of wireless communication; the size of the antenna must be small enough to be integrated with other components. Phase shifter is used for phased array beamforming. Different types of single-pole-multi-thru (SPnT) switches are connected between antennas to main RF path in RFFE. One of the critical pain points of the RFFE is filtering. Unlike the power amplifier, where a single device can be used for multiple frequency bands, at the present time a single filter is required for each individual frequency band. Maximizing power amplifier efficiency on the uplink, and receiver sensitivity on the downlink, will require optimization of the entire RF chain. As complexity increases, it will be crucial to understand the RF chain and any interactions between elements. At IIT Palakkad, Dr. Sukomal Dey and his team are actively working on the research and development of different RFFE components utilizing Monolithic Integrated Circuit (MIC) and Micromachining platforms up to millimeterwave frequency which is funded by science and engineering research board (SERB). The team is also working on design and development of metamaterial enabled tunable absorbers and frequency selective surfaces, micromachined devices up to submillimeterwave frequency, and ultrasound transducers using piezoelectric MEMS resonators (pMUT) for RF channel selection and biomedical applications.

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Sukomal Dey
  • Dr. Swaroop Sahoo

2. Biomedical Signal Processing and Imaging

  • Brain Computer Interface Systems:

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Systems translate the user’s thoughts (intentions) coded by brain activity measures into actions through a control signal without using activity of any muscles or peripheral nerves. During specific actions, thoughts, emotions and other mental tasks, unique neural activations occur in the brain from which neural signatures can be detected and translated to control commands for interfacing with external devices. These control signals can potentially be employed to substitute motor capabilities (e.g. brain-controlled prosthetics for amputees or patients with spinal cord injuries, brain-controlled wheel chair); to help in the restoration of such functions (e.g. as a tool for stroke rehabilitation), to enable alternative communication (e.g. virtual keyboard, speller etc.) for those who are disabled or otherwise unable to communicate, and other applications such as serious games for enhancing cognition skills. Researchers in IIT Palakkad are working on Brain Machine Interface (BMI) for a number of applications that include decoding motor imagery (hand/foot movement intentions), assistive and rehabilitation technology for enhancing cognitive and motor functions, neuroprosthetics, biometric identification, lie detection, emotion detection, cognitive workload assessment, low cost portable neuroimaging, etc. 

  • Diagnostic Ultrasound Imaging:

Ultrasound has become an integral imaging technique in medical diagnosis due to its non-invasiveness, portability, repeatability, relative inexpensiveness, dynamic imaging capability and lack of ionizing radiation. However, achieving a perfect image quality along with a high frame rate still remains a challenge. Current diagnostics ultrasound systems are empirical systems designed for average of wide range tissue variability. In IIT Palakkad, Dr. Mahesh Panicker and his team are working on developing a tissue adaptive ultrasound system which is optimal for the tissue/region under insonification and hence leads to patient adaptive ultrasound imaging. The team is also working on the research and development of an ultrasound based affordable, portable, self-guided blood and tissue velocity imaging system to assess the cardio and cerebrovascular dynamics, which could be used like a standard stethoscope as employed by physicians, which is funded by science and engineering research board (SERB). The team also has active collaborations with Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences & Technology, Thiruvananthapuram and Kasturba Medical College, Manipal Academy of Higher Education.

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Mahesh R. Panicker

3. Communication and Signal Processing

  • 5G Wireless Communication and Internet of Things (IoT):

The continuously expanding needs of the data networks have led to new research and development activities in wireless communication networks to meet the ever-changing demands. This includes designing efficient architectures and techniques for the physical and media access control layers of the new generation of wireless communication systems. These systems primarily include 5G wireless networks and IoT networks. At IIT Palakkad, Dr. Jobin Francis, Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan and their teams are working on several problems that aim to improve the practical efficiency of these systems. Specifically, we address the problems of efficient radio access network architectures, link adaptation, optimal coding and modulation, tackling high mobility in vehicular networks, low-complexity and practical transceiver algorithms for large-scale and heterogeneous wireless networks. 

  • Statistical Signal Processing:

Sensor networks have become omnipresent in our current era of autonomous vehicles, remote sensing, intrusion detection, weather observation, radars, etc. Decentralized detection, estimation and multimodal data fusion are key components in these sensor networks. At IIT Palakkad, Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan and his team are working on developing novel and low-complexity multimodal data fusion and distributed detection algorithms for various applications, each having its own system constraints.  

  • Sparse Signal Processing and Machine Learning:

In big-data and large data networks, the signals dealt with have two inherent properties: large-dimensionality and sparsity. Data compression, reconstruction and parameter estimation are some of the important signal processing operations that may be required to perform here.  At IIT Palakkad, Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan and his team are using machine learning and signal processing tools to develop efficient methods for processing sparse signals.  

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Jobin Francis
  • Dr. Lakshmi Narasimhan Theagarajan

4. Nanoelectronics, Plasmonics and Semiconductor Devices

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Arvind Ajoy
  • Dr. Revathy Padmanabhan

5. Power systems and power electronics

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Arun Rahul S.
  • Dr. Manas Kumar Jena

6. Instrumentation and Control System

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Shaikshavali Chitraganti
  • Dr. Sneha Gajbhiye
  • Dr. Sreenath Vijayakumar

7. VLSI Systems

Faculty Members

  • Dr. Subrahmanyam Mula

 

Research Facilities

Laboratories / Research Centers

Research Equipments

  • Brain Machine Interface Systems Laboratory:
  1. ActiCHamp 64-channel Electroencephalograph (EEG) Amplifier, Brain Products
  2. EMOTIV EPOC+ 14-channel Wireless EEG
  3. Muse 4-channel EEG
  4. Mobile Workstation Dell 3520 
  • Center for Computational Imaging:
  1. Verasonics Vantage 128-channel research ultrasound system
  2. 64-channel airborne ultrasound system
  3. Vitus SIU-3 portable ultrasound imaging system
  4. Neurosky mindwave single channel EEG acquisition system

Projects

No. Project Name Amount (in INR) Duration Funding Agency
1 Compact and Efficient GaN-based Battery Pre-heater Module for Operations in Subzero Climatic Conditions Rs.2000000 31 January 2024 to 30 January 2026 IPTIF - IMPACT
2 Design and Development of Wireless Power Transfer Unit for Blood Pressure Monitoring with Electromagnetic Signal - A Prototype Rs.523920 08 January 2024 - 07 July 2024 NAADISENS MED TECH LLP
3 Optimization for an Image Reconstruction Mechanism for Breast Tumor Detection over the Ultra-wideband Regime with High Gain and Compact Antennas utilizing Near Field Microwave Medical Imaging Rs.3791535 2 years IIT Mandi iHub & HCI Foundation
4 Imaging Software for Portable Ultrasound Scanner Rs.1217760 01 October 2023 - 30 June 2024 SAMSUNG R&D INSTITUTE INDIA-BANGALORE PRIVATE LIMITED
5 Design and Emulation of Electric Vehicle Permanent Magnet Machines Rs.1304895 01 September 2023 - 31 December 2023 SERB International Research Experience (SIRE)
6 Development of Real-time Compact AI-Enabled UWB Radar Based See-Through-wall Human Sensing System for Hand-Held and Mobile Robot Based Human Search Applications Rs.8521000 16 August 2023 - 15 August 2028 MeitY C2S
7 Design and Implementation of AI powered Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) and IoT Enabled Underwater Acoustic Sensor Networks Rs.2080000 21 February 2022 - 20 February 2024 IITG TIDF
8 Method and System of for detecting an object using Microwave Imaging Rs.3010000 07 June 2023 - 06 June 2025 TETRA
9 Development of a Prototype and Portable Imaging System for Malignant Tumor Detections Over Near Field Ultra - Wideband Regime Powered by Radio Frequenc Signals Rs.1450000 19 June 2023 - 18 June 2025 ERG
10 CSR Funds from M/s. Redpine Signals India Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad - 2023 Rs.810704 23 March 2023 - 22 March 2025 Redpine Signals India Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad
11 Optical Sensor Network for Detecting Elephant Movement Rs.350000 23 February 2023 - 22 March 2023 KINFRA CSR (22-23)
12 Design, Development and Validation of Smart Weather Station for Crop Yield Enhancement Rs.270000 23 February 2023 - 22 March 2023 KINFRA CSR (22-23)
13 Study for improved estimation as well as understanding of deep cloud particles and melting layer microphysical properties using phase based polarimetric radar simulations and measurements Rs.1800120 07 February 2023 - 06 February 2026 SERB CRG
14 Coding for Low-Latency Communication Rs.3500000 19 September 2022 - 18 September 2027 DST INSPIRE
15 Compact, High-gain Ultrawideband Antennas for Real-time Underwater Wireless Communication Rs.1180000 31 January 2023 - 30 January 2026 IITG TIDF
16 Indoor Detection of Person using Phased array radar & FMCW 60 GHz Radar for Detecting a Person and Monitoring Vital Sign Rs.180000 01 October 2022 - 31 March 2023 Multicoreware Inc., CA
17 Automatic Target Detection using Side Scan Sonar (SSS) and Multibeam Echosounder (MBE) Images Rs.1965000 08 July 2022 - 07 March 2024 DRDO CAIR
18 Filter development for Radiographic Images Rs.54000 20 March 2022 - 20 September 2022 Visi Consult Pvt. Ltd., Maharashtra
19 Robust receive beamforming algorithm for underwater sonar imaging system for Mine Like Object Detection in the presence of reverberation Rs.989218 16 May 2022 - 15 May 2023 DRDO NPOL
20 Design and Evaluation of OTFS and OCDM Transceivers for Underwater Acoustic Communication Rs.2136880 02 November 2022 - 01 November 2025 Naval Research Board
21 Stochastic Resonance based detectors using thin-film integrated ferroelectrics Rs.7373630 26 December 2022 - 25 December 2025 SERB CRG
22 Design and Development of Planar Tuneable RF Filters for 5G Communication Systems Rs.1338000 01 November 2022 - 31 October 2024 KSCSTE Back-to-Lab Post Doctoral Fellowship
23 CSR Funds from M/s. Redpine Signals India Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad Rs.1064745 September 2022 - September 2024 Redpine Signals India Pvt. Ltd., Hyderabad
24 Engineering porous silicon for capacitive deionization Rs.5815832 28 June 2022 - 27 June 2025 SERB POWER
25 Pilot lab course on NPTEL & Development of Kits Rs.500000 2022-2023 IIT Madras
26 DHR-GIA Proposal: Development of an Affordable Wearable IoT-GPS Enabled Intelligent Vital Signs Monitor for Smart Health Monitoring Services Rs.3035990 20 June 2022 - 19 June 2024 Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)
27 Multiscale Modeling of Ferroelectrics for Negative Capacitance Applications Rs.660000 18 February 2022 - 17 February 2025 SERB MATRICS
28 Factorizing Matrices Under Structural Constraints Rs.660000 21 February 2022 - 20 February 2025 SERB MATRICS
29 An automated fluorescence slide imaging microscope for portable and low cost applications Rs.3125350 28 January 2022 - 27 January 2024 SERB SRG
30 Diagnosis tool for Breast Cancer Detection using Novel Microwave Medical Imaging (MMI) Techniques followed by Method Validations on the Concealed Object Detections - a Prototype Rs.322926 01 February 2022 - 31 March 2022 Western India KINFRA Ltd - CSR
31 Design and Development of a Software Solution for Enhanced Monitoring of Future Power System with High Renewable and Power Electronics Penetration Rs.2905950 30 December 2021 - 29 December 2023 SERB SRG
32 Simulation Studies of electronic/photonic band gap materials for microwave applications Rs.1368000 04 December 2021 - 03 December 2023 ISRO RESPOND Programme, Department of Space
33 Design and fabrication of inorganic electrochromic devices using layer engineering Rs.2470000 07 December 2021 - 06 December 2023 ISRO RESPOND Programme, Department of Space
34 Pulse Oximeter Design and Development Rs.275000 May 2021 - June 2021 ITI Limited Palakkad
35 Design and Fabrication of an LED-based solar simulator with integrated electrical and optical measurement capability Rs.6540601 2021 - 2024 DST Solar Energy Research & Development (SERD)
36 Modeling Latency In Cell-Free Massive MIMO To Enable URLLC In 5G Cellular Systems Rs.1100950 2020 - 2022 SERB - Start-up Research Grant (SRG)
37 An Accurate and Efficient Parallel R-C Digitizer for Moisture Sensing Rs.2805440 2020 - 2022 SERB - Start-up Research Grant (SRG)
38 HARKAL: Hardware Accelerated Robust Kernel Adaptive Learning Rs.1724280 2020 - 2022 SERB - Start-Up Research Grant (SRG)
39 An automated lung ultrasound workflow for diagnostic assistance in COVID-19 and beyond Rs.608960 2020 - 2021 SERB - CRG COVID-19 Project
40 Real-time Crowd Sensing using Mobile Phone tracking Rs.600000 4 months (April 2020 - August 2020) Federal Bank
41 Automated Lung Ultrasound for Covid-19 Screening and Monitoring Rs.600000 6 months (April 2020 - October 2020) Federal Bank
42 Pulse Plethysmograph for ICUs Rs.600000 4 months (April 2020 - August 2020) Federal Bank
43 Low-cost Medical Ventilator - Electrical Rs.600000 4 months (April 2020 - August 2020) Federal Bank
44 A multimodal brain-machine interface-based neuro-enhancement system for retarding the decline of cognitive and motor functions in the early-stages of Dementia, Stroke and Parkinson’s Disease patients Rs.6717160 2020 - 2023 DST - Cognitive Science Research Intiative
45 Multi-functional optically-sensitive devices with high efficiencies using perovskites Rs.3087770 2020 - 2022 SERB - Start-up Research Grant (SRG)
46 Low voltage MEMS actuation using Negative Capacitance Rs.2773690 2019 - 2021 SERB - Start-Up Research Grant (SRG)
47 Feedback control of stochastic hybrid systems with state- dependent noise Rs.660000 2019 - 2022 SERB MATRICS
48 A Compressed Sensing based Framework for Physical Layer Security in Large Dimensional Wireless Communication Systems Rs.3500000 2018 - 2023 DST INSPIRE Grant
49 Brainwave - based Driver Drowsiness Detection System Rs.1200000 2019 - 2020 (18 Months) UVJ Technologies Pvt. Ltd., Kochi
50 Design and Development of RF Front-end (RFFE) Passive Components for Indian Fifth Generation (5G)Cellular Mobile Network Applications from Microwave to Millimeterwave Rs.4211530 2019 - 2022 SERB - Early Career Research Award (ECRA)
51 Investigation of a portable, affordable and self-guided bedside ultrasound system for tissue and blood velocity imaging Rs.4910830 2019 - 2022 SERB - Early Career Research Award (ECRA)

Faculty

Dr. Anirudh Guha

Assistant Professor
Email ID: aguha@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 403
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/aguha

Research Interests

  • Power Electronics
  • Modulation and Control of Power Electronic Converters and Systems
  • Modular Multilevel Converters and Applications
  • Power Electronics for Renewable Integration, Power System Applications
  • Motor Drive Applications including Traction Applications and High Speed Drives

Dr. Arun Rahul S.

Assistant Professor
Email ID: earunrahul@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 416
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/earunrahul

 

Research Interests

  • Advanced Motor drives, Power converter control for renewable energy

  • Multilevel power converters and PWM techniques for power converters

Dr. Arvind Ajoy

Assistant Professor
Email ID: arvindajoy@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 414
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/arvindajoy

Research Interests

  • Ab-initio and tight-binding atomistic computation
  • GaN device and circuit design for RF and High Power applications
  • Micro-electromechanical Systems (MEMS)
  • Scientific Instrumentation

Dr. Jobin Francis

Assistant Professor
Email ID: jobinfrancis@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 413
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/jobinfrancis

Research Interests

  • System level modelling and optimization of wireless networks
  • 5G cellular networks and emerging use cases
  • Cooperative communications and radio resource management
  • Performance analysis – impact of channel aging and reduced uplink feedback; modelling latency in fronthaul

Dr. M. Sabarimalai Manikandan

Associate Professor
Email ID: msm@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 407
https://www.iitpkd.ac.in/people/msm

Research Interests

  • Signal Processing for Signal Quality Assessment, Noise Recognition, Denoising, Feature Extraction and Compression
  • VLSI Signal Processing Architectures for Enery-Efficient Event Detection and Monitoring Systems
  • AI/Machine Learning for Event Recognition
  • Internet of Things - Energy Consumption Reduction Strategies, Cognitive Radios and Data Security
  • Multimodal Information Processing
  • Image Processing - RGB, RADAR, LiDAR, SONAR, Thermal/IR and Hyperspectral

Dr. Manas Kumar Jena

Assistant Professor
Email ID: mkj@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 409
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/mkj

Research Interests

  • Power System Protection
  • Power System Stabili ty and Dynamics
  • Wide Area Monitoring System(WAMS) and its Application
  • Application of Digital Signal Processing /AI/ML in Power System

Dr. Naga Brahmendra Yadav Gorla

Assistant Professor
Email ID: nagabrahmendra.g@iitpkd.ac.in
https://www.iitpkd.ac.in/user/16431

Dr. Revathy Padmanabhan

Assistant Professor
Email ID: revathyp@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 417
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/revathyp

Research Interests

  • Modeling, design, fabrication and characterisation of resistive switching memories
  • Multi-functional optically sensitive devices using perovskites
  • Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)

Dr. Shaikshavali Chitraganti

Assistant Professor,
Email ID: shaik@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 408
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/shaik

Research Interests

  • Stability/control in networked control systems
  • Control theoretic approach to cyber physical systems
  • Event triggered estimation

Dr. Sneha Gajbhiye

Assistant Professor
Email ID: snehagajbhiye@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 405
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/snehagajbhiye

Research Interests

  • Stability and stabilization of nonlinear systems
  • Cooperative control of multi-agents systems
  • Analytical aspects of autonomous systems and their control (application towards robotics)

Dr. Sreenath Vijayakumar

Assistant Professor
Email ID: sreenath@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 406
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/sreenath

Research Interests

  • Capacitive and Resistive Sensors
  • Signal Conditioning Circuits
  • Sensors for Automotive and Industrial Applications
  • Measurements and Instrumentation

Dr. Subrahmanyam Mula

Assistant Professor
Email ID: svmula@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 411
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/svmula

Research Interests

  • VLSI Signal Processing
  • Digital VLSI Circuits and Systems
  • Adaptive Signal Processing
  • Machine Learning in Silicon

Dr. Sukomal Dey

Assistant Professor
Email ID: sdey28@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 421
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/sdey28

Research Interests

  • Microwave and Millimeterwave Integrated Circuits
  • Broadband and reconfigurable Antennas
  • RF MEMS at Millimeter and Submillimeter wave Frequencies
  • Ultrasound Transducers using Capacitive and Piezoelectric MEMS Resonators

Dr. Swaroop Sahoo

Assistant Professor
Email ID: swaroop@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 415
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/swaroop

Research Interests

  • Microwave Remote Sensing
  • Active and Passive Remote Sensing
  • Weather Radar
  • Microwave Radiometer

Dr. Vijay Muralidharan

Assistant Professor
Email ID: vijay@iitpkd.ac.in
Contact Number: 04923 226 402
https://iitpkd.ac.in/people/vijay

Research Interests

  • Robotic Control
  • Nonlinear Control
  • Medical Devices
  • Product Design