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The research program
in the School of Engineering builds upon partnerships between the faculty and a number of industry,
government, and international agencies. The School of Engineering faculty members boast a strong
record of publications in refereed journals and international conferences, and are at the forefront
of local and regional research activities. Our strategic objective is to conduct research that is
relevant to the local and regional communities while contibuting to science and our profession. Below
are representative research projects that are underway in the School of Engineering.
Wireless Cooperative Sensor Networks
Dr. Hamid Shafiee’s research work encompasses various
issues in wireless communication, especially in wireless cooperative/sensor networks.
Space-time codes over multiple antenna systems provide diversity and coding gains over
wireless fading channels. When employing more than one antenna at each node of a wireless
network is not feasible, data transmission from a source node to the destination can be
carried out using relay terminals. Such a cooperative strategy in effect forms a virtual
antenna array with potentially substantial diversity gains. Since cooperative networks
are inherently power-limited, communication from the source to the destination should be
done with minimum transmission power, subject to the network Quality of Service
(QoS) measure being maintained. Of special importance in the development of
cooperative/sensor networks is the design of efficient and practical algorithms for
network configuration. This means that, for transmitting data from a source to a
destination, a set of terminals need to be selected as relays, so that the desired
QoS measure is maintained. One of the objectives of this research work is to develop
novel routing strategies for wireless cooperative/sensor networks.
Satellite-Based Environmental Monitoring System
Professor Hosni Ghedira is partnering with the Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST) to establish a world-class environmental observation and monitoring program. Dr. Ghedira's current research activities with EIAST focus on developing new satellite-based tools to forecast detect and monitor different environmental hazards in the UAE and the Gulf region. Currently, four engineers and graduate students are working on 3 different research projects: sandstorms, fogs and coastal water pollution. One of the ongoing research projects is the development of a satellite-based tool for forecasting, detection and classification of fog events in Dubai metropolitan area and in UAE main roads and highways. Fog maps are generated for reflectance values in order to classify each fog event into different density levels. The DubaiSat satellite system, the first spatial program in the Middle East dedicated to environmental observation and monitoring, will launch its first platform, DubaiSat-1, in early 2009. The new satellite data, combined with existing earth observation satellites, will provide potentially significant enhancements to the predictive capabilities of the existing environmental models as well as improved capabilities for monitoring and predicting natural hazards such as sandstorms, land degradation, desertification and droughts.
Strength and Deformation Response of Calcareous Sand
Calcareous sand is abundant in the Gulf region and is used for construction of reclaimed
land off the shore of Dubai. Dr. Alaa Ashmawy is
examining the effect of shape and angularity of highly angular calcareous sand on the
mechanical response using Discrete Element Methods (DEM). One limitation of
currently-available DEM software is its inability to model irregular particle shapes.
To this end, angular particle tranformation algorithms have been developed to
reconstruct each particle into clumps of spherical elements for use in DEM models.
In addition, Dr. Ashmawy is conducting collaborative research with Keller Grundbau
to examine the in-situ shear strength of calcareous sand deposits using CPT.
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