Her group’s research is focused on understanding wireless signal propagation as well as enabling communication in challenging environments. This includes vehicle-to-vehicle wireless radio communications, acoustic communications between underwater vehicles, and communications inside processor chips. The research aims to improve existing functionality as well as to enable new, highly useful functionalities. 

For example, her team is exploring ways to design wireless links at terahertz frequencies that can provide data rates of hundreds of gigabytes per second. This research is designed to address the key challenges facing cloud computing data centers—that is, cable management problems and the pin-count issues causing bottlenecks that prevent faster computing. 

Research Goals

• Energy-efficient underwater acoustic communications: For sensing and vehicular applications, such as seismic monitoring, analysis of resource deposits, oceanographic and environmental studies, tactical surveillance, deep-water construction and repairs, scientific or resource exploration, and defense applications
• Electromagnetic side-channel signals in high-performance processors/systems: Understanding data leakage, quantifying the extent of the threat, and providing useful insights for computer designers to minimize such leakage
• Protecting low-power, embedded IoT devices: Determining whether malicious software has been installed on semiconductors, capacitors, power supplies, and other components

Activities

• On-chip and off-chip interconnects and communication in computer systems
• Wireless channel modeling and measurements
  • Mobile-to-mobile
  • Underwater
• Electromagnetic security and compatibility
• Applied electromagnetics
• Wireless communications

Leadership

• Editor, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications 2012-2017 
• Executive editor, Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies 2011-2016 (Wiley)