Welcome to the graduate programs in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Oklahoma Tulsa campus. Designed with students in mind, our goal is providing the professional and research skills necessary to successfully advance a student’s engineering career.
Our mission is to offer an excellent experience in learning and conducting research in all aspects of electrical and computer sciences. At OU-Tulsa, ECE, students are closely supervised by faculty and work with them in one-on-one meetings to discuss various research topics and student assignments.
We offer coursework toward earning a M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering. We also offer a Ph.D. degree in Engineering that is aimed at mid-career engineering professionals.
Students graduating from the Big Data Analytics Concentration Area will be well versed in four key aspects of big data: collection, storage, organization, and processing. Moreover, students will be exposed to state-of-the-art machine learning tools (e.g., the deep learning paradigm) to solve future big data challenges.
Next Generation Network research at OU is fueled by an ambitious mission: Making wireless connectivity as affordable, seamless, and omnipresent as oxygen. The hub for this research is the BSON Lab (i.e., Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enabled Self Organizing Network Laboratory).
Research focused on innovative modulation formats and efficient digital electronic signal processing at receiver and transmitter. Cost-efficient technologies that can be economically adopted in data centers are emphasized.
Contact |
A virtually unlimited amount of free data is now available. By manipulating data with inexpensive computational resources, we can mitigate anticipated problems and create products previously unimaginable (e.g., self-driving cars, human-like chatbots, near-perfect machine translation systems, even curing cancer). In the very near future, it will be possible for a wireless system to have a capacity 1000x or more than that of existing systems by merely leveraging user behavior information.
Students graduating from the Big Data Analytics Concentration Area will be well versed in four key aspects of big data: collection, storage, organization, and processing. Moreover, students will be exposed to state-of-the-art machine learning tools (e.g., the deep learning paradigm) to solve future big data challenges. Faculty-led research centers on the following:
Our Next Generation Network research is fueled by an ambitious mission: making wireless connectivity as affordable, seamless, and omnipresent as oxygen. The hub for this research is the BSON Lab (i.e., Big Data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Enabled Self Organizing Network Laboratory). The research team working in the BSON Lab focuses on applied research for developing pragmatic solutions and making future wireless networks more intelligent, self-organizing, low cost, and globally ubiquitous.
The team designs and builds networks for improved human-to-human (H2H), human-to-machine (H2M), machine-to-machine (M2M), device-to-device (D2D) and Internet of things (IoT) connectivity. We are currently focused on the following three research thrusts:
Increasing demand for data- and video-intensive content and the aggressive adoption of cloud-based services are the driving force behind the need for an ever increasing capacity in service provider backbone and metro networks, as well as for high speed interconnect of hyper-scale data centers. While an industry-wide transition from 10G and 40G speeds to 100G within data centers is now underway, next generation 400G and beyond technologies are currently under vigorous pursuit.
Optical communication in free-space (i.e., short FSO) provides much higher bandwidth than its RF counterpart despite new advancements in multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) technology. FSO encodes information on visible or infrared light, and then transmits light beams into the atmosphere to establish license-free, directional, secure, and electromagnetic interference-immune networking. Research activities are presently focused on software defined optics, cognitive optics, and optical diversity.
Research at the OU College of Engineering at OU-Tulsa focuses on innovative modulation formats and efficient digital electronic signal processing at receiver and transmitter. Cost-efficient technologies that can be economically adopted in data centers are emphasized. These include coherent communication based on direct-detection receivers and novel schemes, such as Kramers-Kronig coherent receiver using only a single photodiode.
Electromagnetic compliance is often a lengthy expensive process. To this end, the Wireless and Electromagnetic Compliance and Design Center (WECAD) offers customers a wide range of testing with relatively low costs. The lab runs pre-scan testing at an economical fixed rate created as a cost-effective means of identifying electromagnetic compliance (EMC) problems. Radiated emissions, conducted emissions and radiated immunity are just a few examples of automated tests run in a 6.6m x 4m x 3m anechoic chamber consisting of fully lined RF absorbing ferrite tiles, a floor mounted turn-table, conductive plane, antenna mount, and several video cameras for observation. The WECAD center offers a diverse range of operating frequencies and analysis equipment available for customer use.
The lab provides a user friendly laptop based interface that utilizes TILE software to interact with everything inside and outside of the chamber (turntable, cameras, signal generator, spectrum analyzer, etc.). Testing schemes/parameters can easily be altered within the software to accommodate changes as needed. The final results of the test procedures are presented in a report summary available electronically and in a hard-copy, consisting of easy-to-read graphs, test procedures, test equipment, with raw data available upon request.
Troubleshooting the design, if compliance problems are encountered during testing, is another service offered to customers; including debugging and assistance with shielding, filtering and grounding techniques. Confidentiality and security for customer materials and prototype components are ensured. There is ample storage space for modules located in the adjacent office of the testing facility. We encourage you to visit the lab, if you have not done so already, as to allow yourself further familiarization with the lab's capabilities, facilities, equipment and personnel.
Technical specifications of the chamber and related equipment are in a separate document.
Dr. Hazem Refai, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering, directs the activities of the Wireless and Electromagnetic Compatibility and Design Center.
Photonics is the science and technology of generating, controlling, and detecting light at a microscopic (quantum) level. There are many applications of photonic technology in our information-based society, most notably in telecommunications, medicine, image and information processing, remote sensing, and defense. The graduates of tomorrow with expertise in photonics will design next-generation optical networking equipment (fiber optics), new diagnostic and therapeutic medical instrumentation, new consumer electronics products (e.g., digital cameras, flat-screen TVs and 3D displays, media players), new guidance and targeting technology for advanced weapons systems, and new sensors for homeland security applications.
The Photonics Lab at OU-Tulsa supports research and graduate education in photonics. The lab contains a variety of instrumentation for test and measurement of photonic components, subsystems and systems. The lab also contains optical and mounting components to enable prototype optical system assembly and test.
The Quantum Optics Lab was built in 2011. It was supported in part by a grant from the United States Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The Quantum Optics Lab extends the space of T-Com faculty and student engagement into an emerging and exciting area of research and graduate instruction. Even within a brief span of its existence, this Lab has resulted in implementing, for the first time, the three-stage quantum optics protocol for securing information unconditionally. Current activities of the Lab are supported partially through funding from the National Science Foundation under a research grant. Some of the equipment in the Lab and details of some of the experiments under way are described below.
The Quantum Optics Lab houses multiple experimental set-ups demonstrating fundamental optical and quantum mechanical concepts. It contains experiments that provide proof of concepts in principles of photon polarization and wave-particle duality of light. Also, interferometer experiments measuring small phase shifts in two light beams are available in the Quantum Optics Lab. Optical components such as polarizing filters, wave plates, liquid crystal retarders, entanglement demonstrator, avalanche photodiodes and various other quantum optical devices and components are being utilized in several experimental arrangements. One of the experiments in the Lab is the Young’s Double Slit apparatus. The double-slit experiment, sometimes called Young's experiment, is a demonstration of the wave-particle duality of light using a laser source. Also this experiment demonstrates the dual characteristics of a single photon using an attenuated light source.
Other experiments in the Quantum Optics Lab include the Mach-Zehnder interferometer, Michelson’s interferometer and Sagnac interferometer. These experiments rely on the concepts of constructive and destructive interference and demonstrate this by the division and subsequent recombination of light beams. Applications of interferometry in physics and technology are very broad, they are revealed in a host of applications involving high precision length measurement or the very sensitive detection of mechanical displacements.
An additional experiment in the Lab provides proof of concept of the three-stage protocol proposed by Dr. Subhash Kak. This experimental set-up is the first implementation of a quantum key distribution protocol. It also provides security against siphoning attacks. The only other implementation of a quantum key distribution system based on the BB’84 protocol is not free from siphoning attacks. The experimental set-up in the Lab utilizes passive optical devices and software programming using LabView to successfully implement the three-stage protocol.
The Lab also owns commercial grade, state-of-the-art Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) systems which implement popular QKD protocols and generate quantum cryptographic keys. These systems have the potential to be used for further research and understanding of quantum key distribution protocols.
In summary, the Quantum Optics Lab offers numerous opportunities for students to learn, pursue research and familiarize themselves with the latest technologies in quantum mechanical and optical domains.
The Lab design is based on a five-island configuration: Internet Protocol (IP), Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), Legacy, Optical Networking and Wireless. These networking islands encompass all the possible base telecommunications technologies and include a Photonic Lab in which students, faculty, equipment manufacturers, and network operators can reliably test new theories and methodologies without impacting production networks and facilities. Within the lab, we are developing base methodologies for testing between heterogeneous networks, network application testing and configuration, plus a myriad of other design and security related projects.
Interoperability Lab Islands:
Voice-over-Internet Protocol (VoIP)
Research Goals and Objectives
Interoperability Testing of VoIP protocols and equipment
Develop - Applications over VoIP
Evaluate - CODEC Performance | Networks and Protocols | QoS, NAT | implications
Test - VoIP over wireless | Traffic volume impacts
Legacy Time Division Switches
Research Goals and Objectives
Interoperability Testing of VoIP protocols and equipment
Develop - Test techniques
Evaluate - Evaluate SS7 capabilities
Test - Interoperability
Optical Test Bed
Research Goals and Objectives
Net dynamic traffic balancing and reconfiguration
Net protection (link, node, service)
Physical layer studies and security
Fault management (link, node, service)
Network Topologies
Research Goals and Objectives
Develop - Mesh Ring topologies
Integrate - with FSO and wireless
Evaluate - Traffic, switching, protection
Test - Efficiency and performance
Photonics Area
Research Goals and Objectives
Photonic devices, components, and sub-systems for optical communications and information processing.
Develop - Free-space optical communications
Advanced display technologies, analog fiber optics for avionics applications, and optical security techniques.
Evaluate - Effects of optical interference on free-space optical communications
Suitability of wavelength-division-multiplexing techniques for high-bandwidth analog signal transmission.
Test - RF & optical spectrum analysis; optical polarization analysis; optical power measurement; waveform analysis
