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Editor: Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
School of Engineering and Information Technology
Design: Creative Media Unit
Foreword
The School of Engineering and Information Technology (SEIT) is one of the four
schools of the University of New South Wales located at the Australian Defence
Force Academy campus in Canberra. Outstanding research is a key focus for the
School. This inspires our approach to teaching and other activities in the School.
The Schools diverse research interests span our base disciplines and reach into a
wide variety of application areas including space, control, cyber security, air-traffic
management, complex imaging and many others.
The research funding to the School comes from various sources including the
Australian Research Council, Centre of Excellence, Research Networks, the
Department of Defence, Defence Science and Technology Organisation and the
University of New South Wales along with other private organisations. The research
output from the School has shown excellent growth with as many as nearly 350
publications included in the Higher Education Research Data Collection.
The School is encouraging quality research and healthy competition inside
the School by innovative ideas like special awards for Excellence in Research
Publications for Academics and Ph.D. scholars. The number of publications in
highly ranked journals as well as high impact journals has increased considerably
over the last few years.
A number of academics in the School received high recognitions in the last year
enhancing the profile of the School significantly. Professor Ian Petersen was elected
a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and was awarded the prestigious
Australian Research Council (ARC) Laureate Fellowship. Dr Sameer Alam was one of
the ACT Young Tall Poppies of the year for being an outstanding young scientist.
The number and quality of Ph.D. scholars is increasing
continuously indicating the involvement of the School in
research training. The School has been able to attract
quality students from various countries around the
world, providing a dynamic work force.
This research report summarises the research
achievements of the Schools community during the
year 2011.
Prof Elanor Huntington
Head of School
April 2012
Frequently Used
Abbreviations
ADFA
ANSTO
ARC
BUS
School of Business
CRC
CSIRO
DEST
DEEWR
DSARC
DSTO
HASS
NASA
NICTA
PEMS
RRTO
SEIT
UNSW
USAF
Contents
Research Activities
Research Facilities
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115
Research
Activities
Acoustics and Vibration
SEIT Academics
Prof. Joseph Lai
Dr Krishnakumar Shankar
Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
Dr Murat Tahtali
A/Prof. Don Fraser
Other Collaborators
Bosch Chassis
Dr Antti Papinniemi
Dr Zhiye Zhao
CSIRO
Dr Theo A Evans
Oita University, Japan
Prof. Toru Otsuru
Sceintific Technology Pty Ltd
Dr Andrew Tirkel
University of Adelaide
Mr Gerard Rankin
Universitt der Bundeswehr Mnchen, Germany
Prof. Steffen Marburg
Research Description
Research undertaken by the Acoustics and Vibration
group spans a wide range of topics and includes
environmental noise, occupational noise, machinery
noise control, structural dynamics, vibration
monitoring for non-destructive inspection and
interdisciplinary areas that involve acoustics, vibration,
materials and biology. Below are some current
research projects which require the use of state-ofthe-art acoustics and vibration instrumentation and
numerical modelling techniques such as the finite
element method, boundary element method and
nonlinear time series analysis.
Figure 1: Model of a one piston, floating calliper brake system with ventilated brake disc.
Figure 2: Attractor re-constructed from time series of brake squeal test data: (a) limit cycle, (b) torus,
(c) choatic attractor
Figure 4: (a) Time series of the position vector; (b) phase-space plots with Poincare section (plane A),
maximal Lyapunov exponent and Kaplan-Yorke dimension; (c) power spectal density estimates.
Research Description
Air transportation is a large, complex, and integrated
network of systems, procedures, and infrastructure
with a primary goal of safely expediting the air traffic
flow. Present day air traffic systems are reaching
their operational limits and accommodating future
air traffic growth is a challenging task for air traffic
service providers and airlines. Due to the structured
and centralized nature of the system, it may not scale
to meet demand. Therefore there is an urgent need
to investigate and develop new methodologies and
procedures by which the air transportation system
can meet the future challenges from safety, capacity,
environment and human factors perspective.
CAPACITY
Discovering Delay Patterns in Arrival Traffic
with Dynamic Continuous Descent Approaches
using Co-evolutionary Computational Red
Teaming
The gradual introduction of advanced ATM
procedures such as Continuous Descent Approaches
(CDA) creates a challenge when balancing the
capacity-demand of arrival traffic in the presence
of constrained ground (runway, taxiway, gate)
resources. Part of the challenge is to understand
the interdependency between spatial-temporal
distribution of arrival traffic (traffic distribution) and
the dynamics of ground resources. We [Alam, Zhao,
Tang, Lokan and Abbass] used the Computational
Red Teaming (CRT) Framework to identify patterns in
arrival traffic and ground events that lead to delays in
dynamic CDA scenarios. The scenarios represent the
interaction of ground events with traffic distributions.
The search engine in CRT relies on co-evolutionary
search, with the reciprocal interaction of traffic
distributions and ground events evolving to identify
bottlenecks in the system. With each interaction a
variety of metrics are recorded which are then data
mined to identify patterns that lead to delays. Results
identified scenarios whereby delays become seriously
significant. For example, for a model of the Sydney
domestic terminal area in a dynamic CDA scenario,
flights arriving from the South-East direction with
an average inter-arrival time of 53 sec can cause
significant delays if runway 16L is impacted by a
ground event. A paper on this topic was awarded the
best paper at the 9th US-Europe ATM R&D Seminar,
Berlin, Germany, 2011
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ENVIRONMENT
A Multi-Aircraft Dynamic Continuous Descent
Approach Methodology for Low Noise and
Emission Guidance
Continuous Descent Approaches (CDAs) can
significantly reduce fuel burn and noise impact by
keeping arriving aircraft at their cruise altitude for
longer and then having a continuous descent at
near idle thrust with no level flight segments.
The CDA procedures are fixed routes that are
vertically optimized. With the changing traffic
conditions and variable noise abatement rules,
the benefits of CDA are not yet fully realized. We
[Alam, Nguyen, Lokan, Ellejmi, Kirby and Abbass]
proposed a methodology to generate aircraftspecific dynamic CDA routes that are both laterally
and vertically optimized for noise, emission and fuel.
The methodology involves discretizing the terminal
airspace into concentric cylinders with artificial
waypoints and uses enumeration and elimination
(based on aircraft performance envelope) from one
waypoint to another to identify all the possible routes.
11
SAFETY
What Can Make an Airspace Unsafe?
Characterizing Collision Risk using
Multi-Objective Optimization
With the continued growth in Air Traffic, researchers
are investigating innovative ways to increase airspace
capacity while maintaining safety. A key safety
indicator for an airspace is its Collision Risk estimate,
which is compared against a Target Level of Safety
(TLS) to provide a quantitative basis for judg ing the
safety of operations in an airspace. However this
quantitative value does not give an insight into the
overall collision risk picture for an airspace, and how
the risk changes given the interaction of a multitude
of factors such as sector/traffic characteristics and
controllers actions for flow management.
In this paper, we propose an evolutionary framework
with multi-objective optimization to evolve collision risk
of air traffic scenarios. We [Alam, Aldis, Barry, Lokan,
Butcher and Abbass] attempt to identify, through
evolutionary mechanism, the minimal controller
actions that can lead to higher collision risks, thereby
identifying the contributing factors to collision risk.
Experiments were conducted in a high-fidelity air
traffic simulation environment, with an integrated
collision risk model. Results indicate that risk-free
traffic scenarios having collision risk below TLS can
become risk-prone by minimal controller actions,
with Climb and Turn manoeuvrers contributing
significantly to increased collision risk.
12
Human Factors
Towards a Code of Best Practice for Evaluating
Air Traffic control Interfaces
The quality of computer interfaces in transportation
command and control centres is vital to safe and
smooth operations. Air Traffic Control (ATC) is
probably the most dynamic area in transportation
where a large amount of information is presented
to the air traffic controller within a short timeframe.
Future Air Traffic Interfaces (ATI) are on the
horizon with more information and added levels
of sophistication. Safety is becoming a default
constraint in current systems and evaluating
the usability of these interfaces has been seen
traditionally as crucial for ensuring high operational
safety standards. To this end, a strong business case
for evaluating the usability of interfaces necessarily
requires a full-scale justification of the usability study
and its associated cost. The benefits of performing
such an evaluation also need to be communicated
to decision makers in terms of economic values and
gains. It is at this point that the field of operational
analysis intersects with human factor research. We
[Abbass, Mount, Tueck and Pinheiro] proposed a
methodology for conducting usability studies for ATI.
The methodology has been designed to connect
higher-level organisational objectives with low-level
usability metrics. The methodology will be presented
towards establishing a code of best practice for
the design and conduct of usability studies in this
domain. While the results can be generalised to other
transportation command and control interfaces, this
paper focuses on ATC because this code of best
practice is tailored towards ATC functions.
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14
Aviation Research
SEIT Academics
Ms. Sue Burdekin
Mr. Martin Copeland
Major Heath Pratt
A/Prof Andrew Neely
Research Description
The Aviation Group within the School of Engineering
and Information Technology conducts research into
a range of aviation safety topics including: pilot
behavioural issues; training and evaluation; design
and development; ergonomics, and aspects of the
human/machine interface. The School has an Aviation
Safety Studio which contains a multi-engine flight
simulator and two rotary aircraft simulators, all of
which are utilized for teaching and research purposes.
Human Factors
Mission Operations Safety Audit (MOSA) research
was initially designed as an experimental study,
conducted in an F/A-18 Hornet simulator, to determine
whether military pilots could accurately self-report,
immediately after the flight (mission), on their
operational performance across a predetermined
selection of behavioural categories designed in
conjunction with subject matter experts. To further
test the MOSA methodology, this time in a civil multicrewed operational environment, a second study was
carried out, in the field, with the cooperation of a low
cost carrier in Europe. The aim of the MOSA research
was to validate behavioural self-reported data from
professional pilots, so that management could have
confidence in this safety-critical information, and feed
it back into the training continuum. In doing so, a
safety loop could be established in a cost effective,
operationally specific and timely program of data
collection. Both the military and the civil airline pilot
studies found that professional pilots were able to
effectively self-report on their own performance across
a range of operationally tailored, predetermined
categories of behaviour.
Recently, the MOSA methodology was tested in
another operational environment and national culture;
that of a regional airline operating turbo prop aircraft
between island destinations in the Indian Ocean. The
MOSA protocols were influenced by the previous
MOSA studies, but, once again, they were customized
by airline subject matter experts to reflect categories
of behaviour that were relevant to their national
and organisational culture, and to that specific
operational environment. Confidential self-reported
in-flight performance data from Captains and First
Officers, all of whom had volunteered for the study,
were compared to ratings from a trained observer
(researcher) during forty one flight sectors. To validate
the data, a series of company specific safety related
questions were posed to each participating crew.
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16
Composite Materials
and Structures
Other Collaborators
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou,
China
Dr Jing Li
Siberian State Aerospace University, Krasnoyarsk,
Russia
Prof Alexander Lopatin
Dr Vladimir Nesterov
Australian National University, Canberra Health
A/Prof Christian Lueck
Thomas Lillicrap
Queens University Belfast
Dr Gawn McIlwain
Research Description
Applications of advanced composite materials in
the aerospace, oil and gas, high-end machines,
antennas and marine industries are gaining more and
more significance and their number is growing very
intensively. Modern composite technologies are used
to produce innovative products on an industrial scale.
The successful development of such technologies
requires an intensive research effort. In 2011, research
activities undertaken by the ACRU members included
development of new structural design and analysis
methods, materials characterisation, understanding
mechanics and physics of new processes and
materials. Substantial contributions have been made
in the field of a validated numerical modelling and
simulation of the physical and mechanical responses
of composites and structural components for a wide
range of engineering applications.
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Figure 4: Buckling mode for the cylindrical composite lattice shell with the reinforced cutouts.
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9 mins
21 mins
30 mins
39 mins
51 mins
Figure 8: Temperature distributions across the cross-section of a beam at different fire exposure time
predicted from the finite element heat transfer analyses
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25
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Computational
Intelligence
SEIT Academics
Prof. Hussein Abbass
Dr Sameer Alam
Dr Michael Barlow
Dr Daryl Essam
Dr Chris Lokan
Dr Kathryn Elizabeth Merrick
A/Prof. Ruhul Sarker
Dr Kamran Shafi
Software Developers
Mr. Qi Fan
External Collaborators
Defence Science and Technology Organisation,
Australia
Dr Axel Bender
National University of Singapore, Singapore
Prof. Tan Kay Chen
Defence Science and Technology Organisation,
Australia
Prof. Neville J Curtis
Defence Science and Technology Organisation,
Australia
Dr Svetoslav Gaidow
Monash University, Australia
Prof. David Green
UC, Australia
Assistant Prof. Eleni Petraki
Kyushu University, Japan
Prof. Jun Tanimoto
28
Research Description
Computation underlies the science of using
calculations to understand systems or solve problems
in a systemic manner. Intelligence is the high mental
capacity of a human being to utilize their cognitive
skills in a systematic and rational way to be conscious
of, understand, learn, predict and influence the
surrounding environment, using justifiable actions.
Computational Intelligence is the science of using
computations to represent, model and mimic
intelligence. Examples of Computational Intelligence
include computational problem solving methods and
algorithms inspired with concepts from Nature (e.g.
Evolutionary Computation, Ant Colony Optimization,
Marriage in Honey Bees Optimization, Estimation
Distribution Algorithms, artificial immune systems),
computations through architectures that mimic the
architectures of the brain (e.g. neural networks,
connectionism, cognitive agents), and computations
through linguistic forms (e.g. fuzzy systems,
computational linguistics).
CI members are specialized in a wide variety of
computational frameworks, methodologies, methods,
algorithms and techniques for solving problems and
understanding systems. Many projects in CI are
industry driven, attempting to popularize computations
in organisations and systems.
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30
31
Concrete Technology
and Materials
SEIT Academics
A/Prof Obada Kayali
Prof Evgeny Morozov
Dr Amar Khennane
Dr Tapabrata Ray
Other Collaborators
Roads ACT
Dr M. Sharfuddin Ahmed
CEO-VECOR Building Systems Ltd
Mr. Alex Koszo
University of Kuwait Kuwait
Prof M. Naseer Haque
University of Wolverhampton-UK
Research Description
The advances in the technology of concrete have
gained momentum in the past decade. New materials,
design methods, ideas, innovations and standards
have been introduced. Meanwhile, the issue of
sustainability of building materials in general and of
the concrete industry in particular has come under
careful scrutiny. This is because the production of
concrete is a main source of green house emissions.
To put this into perspective, it has been found that for
every tonne of cement produced, there is a tonne of
carbon dioxide emitted in the atmosphere. Thus the
technology of concrete has taken a special direction
aimed towards innovations to produce concrete that
may be sustainable .
The research activities in concrete and building
materials which are taking place at the School of
Engineering and Information Technology have been
steered towards the theme of sustainability.
This has included the innovation in materials as well as
research that aims to produce concrete of desirable
and predictable durability. These activities are briefly
described in the following paragraphs.
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33
Geopolymer Research
Geopolymer is now promising to be a major building
material. Its importance is that it can be made from
industrial wastes and by-products. The use of fly ash
and blast furnace slag in manufacturing this type of
concrete is anefficient way to get rid of the waste
34
XRD of geopolymers at various stages (M: Mullite, Q:Quartz, G: Gypsum, P:Portlandite, A: Albite, L:
Labradorite)
Particle
Size Distribution of Cement, Ground Granulated Blast Furnace Slag, Silica Fume and Fly Ash
using equipment at UNSW-Canberra.
Research into printable concrete
This research is focused on exploring admixture
interactions in order to develop an acceptable
concrete that can be used in a potential automated
construction process. This automated construction
process can be described as concrete printing.
Printing concrete construction involves concrete being
pump through a system to be extruded into its desired
shape without form work.
35
Control Applications
SEIT Academics
Prof Ian R. Petersen
A/Prof Hemanshu R. Pota
A/Prof Valeri Ougrinovski
Other Collaborators
SEIT, UNSW Canberra
Prof Elanor Huntington
A/Prof Charles Harb
Mr Toby Boyson
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Prof Jiankun Hu
Dr Matt Garratt
Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
36
Research Description
Feedback control systems are widely used in
manufacturing, mining, automobile and military
hardware applications. In response to demands for
increased efficiency and reliability, these control
systems are being required to deliver more accurate
and better overall performance in the face of
difficult and changing operating conditions. In order
to design control systems to meet the demands
of improved performance and robustness when
controlling complicated processes, control engineers
require new design tools and better underlying
theory. The Control Research Group conducts
fundamental research into theory and applications of
automatic control systems. Particular interests of the
members of the group include theory of optimal and
robust control systems, quantum control, stochastic
control systems, and applications to active noise
control, signal processing, navigation and guidance.
The Control group receives financial support from
the Australian Research Council and the Defence
Science and Technology Organisation.
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38
Cyber Security
Biometric Security
Mr Wencheng Yang
Mr Kai Xi
Ms Wanrong Wu
Other Collaborators
SEIT Academics
Prof. Jiankun Hu
Dr Lawrie Brown
Dr Robert Stocker
Dr Frank Jiang
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Prof. Ian Petersen
Research Description
Cyber security is a major concern in our information
age and will become more threatening due to the
ubiquitous network connections and more advanced
and automated attacks tools available. Cyber attacks
can intrude privacy, bring down a whole plant,
communication centre, and commanding systems.
Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPSs), e.g., firewalls,
intend to prevent these attacks but cannot effectively
deter new attacks or variations of virus what are
occurring daily. How about insiders attacks? Such
attacks do not go though network firewalls at all.
Cyber security is an exciting, and challenging area/
topic for both academic research and industrial
applications. It will be an on-going effort in the
foreseeable future.
Security strength is always upon the weakest link of
the systems. Therefore cyber security is a system
concept and covers a very broad spectrum including
cryptography, access control, authentication, network
security, intrusion detection etc. The Cyber Security
group at UNSW Canberra conducts both theoretical
and applied research in the aforementioned topics
with emphasis on biometrics security, sensor network
key management, and intrusion detection.
The Cyber Security group has received financial
support from the Australian Research Council, and the
University of New South Wales.
39
Network Security
Network security is becoming a major issue in our
daily life. Firewall technology seems to be insufficient
as we are having more and security break-in reports
on worm, various attacks. In theory, it is impossible to
prevent such attacks. Therefore, it is very important to
have a second defense which is intrusion detection.
Several interesting projects are given below.
Project 1: Anomaly intrusion detection. Normally firewall
technology can detect attacks with known features.
However new ways of attack are happening all the
time. There is a need to detect attacks with unknown
features. Anomaly detection is a promising technology
that can detect unknown attacks. This project tries to
explore effective schemes to reduce high false alarm
rates in the existing technologies.
Project 2: Wireless sensor network security. Wireless
sensor network is regarded as the most influencing
technology in the 21st century. However, security
is a major issue in sensor network as it is normally
deployed in a hostile environment and also it cannot
afford many existing security mechanisms due to
energy issue. This project will explore energy efficient
security schemes especially on cryptography key
generation and distribution.
40
Developmental Systems
and Machine Learning
SEIT Academics
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Dr Kamran Shafi
Dr Amitay Isaacs
Dr Michael Barlow
Dr Chris Lokan
A/Prof Valeri Ougrinovski
Prof Hussein Abbass
Dr Jen Badham (Visiting Fellow)
Other Collaborators
University of Newcastle
Dr Ning Gu
University of Maryland
Dr Mary Lou Maher
University of Sydney
Dr Xiangyu Wang
Research Description
Topics studied by the Developmental Systems and
Machine Learning group lie at the intersection of
cognitive science, developmental robotics, virtual
worlds and machine learning research. Cognitive
science is the interdisciplinary study of how
information used during perception, language,
reasoning, motivation and emotion, is represented
and processed, either in a human or animal, or by
a machine (specifically a computer in our case).
Developmental robotics and character animation
in virtual worlds are application areas that use
principles of cognitive and developmental sciences
to build artificial systems capable of ontogenetic
development. Such systems initially have little or no
domain-specific knowledge or skills in their infant
stage, but are equipped with generic reasoning
mechanisms that permit them to acquire such
knowledge and skills through interaction with their
environment as they mature to an adult stage.
Researcher areas of interest to the Developmental
Systems and Machine Learning group include, but are
not limited to, reinforcement learning, neural networks,
data mining, ensemble learning and learning
classifier systems, as well as naturally inspired
cognitive models, genetic and evolutionary systems.
Applications include robotics, digital characters
in virtual worlds, intelligent environments, network
intrusion detection and social networks.
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SEIT Academics
A/Prof Mark Pickering
Dr Andrew Lambert
Dr Murat Tahtali
Other Collaborators
Trauma and Orthopaedic Research Unit, The Canberra
Hospital
A/Prof Paul Smith
A/Prof Jennie Scarvell
Dr Tom Ward
Research Description
There are many aspects of engineering which can be
applied to improve medical technology. The current
focus of the Engineering in Medicine group is the
application of image and signal processing techniques
to aspects of orthopaedic medicine. In particular,
the research focus has been on the development of
new ways to measure the three dimensional motion
of bones in a joint while the patient is performing
everyday functional tasks. The measurement of how
the bones move can provide valuable information
for many aspects of the treatment of injured joints.
For example, an analysis of pre- and post-operative
motion on patients undergoing total knee replacements
can provide valuable feedback to the designers
and manufacturers of knee implants. The ability to
accurately measure joint motion can also be used in
planning rehabilitation treatments targeting particular
muscle groups to bring the joint motion back into the
normal range after injury or reconstructive surgery.
The research of the group has focussed on developing
improved imaging techniques to fuse 2D motion data
available from standard hospital imaging equipment
with 3D CT data and alternative non-invasive
techniques for kinematic analysis using ultrasound.
Medicine
Engineering in
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True Displacement
Registration Result
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5
0
0
15
10
15
20
2D Bmode US Slice No.
25
True Displacement
Registration Result
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0
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15
2D Bmode US Slice No.
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44
30
25
110
SCV
MI
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
05
510
1015
1520
2025
SCV
MI
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10
20
30
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60
70
80
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Maximum-Entropy
Analyses of Flow
Systems
SEIT Academics
Dr Robert Niven
Other Collaborators
Australian National University, Australia
Prof. Roderick Dewar
Dr Charley Lineweaver
CNRS Poitiers, France
Prof. Bernd Noack
CSIRO / University of Western Australia, Australia
Prof. Klaus Regenauer-Lieb
University of Hiroshima, Japan
Dr Hisashi Ozawa
Research Description
This theme concerns the concept of entropy, a
measure of the disorder of a system, and one of the
most profound but least understood discoveries of
human knowledge. As shown by Boltzmann, entropy
is based on probabilistic (combinatorial) concepts,
providing the tool to predict the most probable state
of a system. Although this idea is widely applied
in statistical mechanics and thermodynamics,
the fundamental concept has far broader power
of application, being applicable to all systems of
probabilistic character. The potential for new methods
for analysis of many scientific, engineering and human
systems - to replace a variety of empirical and semitheoretical methods - is especially strong.
In this project, the generic maximum entropy method
(MaxEnt) developed by Jaynes in 1957 was
used to infer the state of several different types of
probabilistic systems. Research was undertaken on
several interrelated projects, as listed below.
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Geotechnical
Engineering and
Pavement Geotechnics
SEIT Academics
A/Professor Robert Lo
Dr Rajah Gnanendran
Other Collaborators
Road and Traffic Authority (RTA), NSW
Queensland Department of Transport and Main Roads
SafeLink Joint Venture
Maccaferri Australia Pty Ltd
Nehemiah Reinforced soil, KL and Syd.
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
University of Nottingham, UK
Centre of Research and Professional Development, HK
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
48
Research Description
Geotechnical engineering is a vital part of civil
engineering that deals with the engineering aspects
of soils and rocks which are collectively referred as
geomaterials. The designs of every building, bridge
or any other civil engineering structure built on the
ground must give due consideration to the underlying
and/or surrounding geomaterials. Among the
geomaterials, soft clays are widely found in Australia
and around the world and they are problematic for
constructing civil engineering structures due to their
low shear strength, high water content and large time
dependent deformation characteristics. However, due
to rapid growth of infrastructure and transpiration
development and environmental considerations, the
necessity of constructing road embankments and other
structures on such soft soils is common. Excessive
ground deformations, which is a common scenario
in such problematic soils, causes severe damages to
pavements and other related structures and research
in soft soil engineering form an important part of
our research activities. Another principal area of our
research is concerning the instability and liquefaction
potential of sandy soils under cyclic or dynamic
loading conditions such as earthquakes.
Soils being weak in tension, different stabilization
methods are adopted for overcoming design and
construction problems involving them (e.g. steep
slopes, retaining walls). The use of geosynthetic
reinforcement has been advocated recently to
be an economical method for stabilising such
soil structures. However, design of reinforced soil
structures depend on the interaction behaviour
between the soil and the reinforcement and research
is under way in this area also.
Road pavements are constructed with geomaterials
and hence their designs are influenced by the
engineering behaviour of pertinent geomaterials
under the influence of the environmental and traffic
loading conditions. Thousands of kilometers of
granular (gravel) base pavements (i.e. pavements
without a structural asphalt layer) exist in Australia
and a number of these pavements fail prematurely.
Important research initiatives such as light stabilization
of granular materials using cement blended with
slag or flyash and incorporating unsaturated soil
mechanics principles to characterise the behaviour of
pavement materials are undertaken by our group to
address this problem with the objective of developing
innovative solutions.
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150
(a)
50
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A1
-50
100
150
100
(b)
200
300
400
50
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A1
-50
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10
20
Axial Strain, 1 (%)
30
50
40
30
20
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100
IS
100
50
Nb
Figure 4. Accelerated Pavement Model Test on cemented base and clay subgrade
(from Gnanendran, Piratheepan, et al. 2011)
Figure 5. Typical vertical deformation and horizontal strain responses obtained from accalerated pavement
model testing (from Gnanendran, Piratheepan, et al. 2011)
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80
DOS(%)
10%
15%
60
40
20
10
100
0.8
C15-540
C15-450
C15-360
C10-H-540
C10-H-450
C10-H-360
Axial strain(%)
0.6
0.4
0.2
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1
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10
100
1000
No. of cycles, N (log scale)
10000
High Frequency
Engineering
SEIT Academics
Dr Greg Milford
Dr Robin Dunbar
FLTLT Matt Gibbons (Visiting Fellow)
Other Collaborators
Australian National University
Dr Ilya Shadrivov
Dipartimento di Elettronica e Telecomunicazioni,
Politecnico di Torino
Dr Ladislau Matekovits
Research Description
The High Frequency Engineering Research group
conducts theoretical and applied research in the
fields of antennas, microwave and millimetre wave
electronics, and computational electromagnetics.
The following paragraphs summarise the groups
activities in 2011.
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Figure 2.3 Photo of 20-stage structure, including a 50 Ohm through-line for calibration purposes. Overall
length is 150mm.
55
56
Figure 3.4 Spectrum of the measured signal radiated by the NL CRLH circuit, showing comparative
amplitude f2 and pump frequencies (approx. 3.2 GHz and 5 GHz respectively) and much weaker f1
frequencies (around 1.8 GHz).
57
58
SEIT Academics
A/Prof Sudhir Gai
A/Prof Harald Kleine
Dr Jong-Leng Liow
Dr Neil Mudford
A/Prof Andrew Neely
Dr Sean OByrne
Dr Krishna Shankar
Dr John Young
Other Collaborators
BAE Systems
Adam Billiards, James Whitford
Colorado State University (USA)
Prof. Ranil Wickramasinghe
The Defence Science and Technology Organisation
Dr Judy Odam, Dr Allan Paull, Dr Nigel Smith
McGill University (Canada)
A/. Prof. Eugene Timofeev
NASA Langley Research Center (USA)
Dr James Moss
Ohio State University (USA)
Prof. Walter Lempert
RWTH Aachen (Germany)
Prof. Herbert Olivier
Tianjin University
Xiubing Jing
United States Naval Academy
David Myre
University of New South Wales
A/Prof. Tracie Barber, Dr Robert Nordon, A/Prof Hans Riesen
(PEMS), A/Prof. Gary Rosengarten, A/Prof. John Fletcher, Prof
Wang Jun, Dr Li Huaizhong
University of Queensland
Prof. Russell Boyce, Dr Tim McIntyre, Prof. Richard Morgan
University of Southern Queensland
Prof. David Buttsworth
University of Western Australia
Prof. Yee-Kwong Leong
University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa)
Prof. B. Skews
Research Description
In 2011, research continued in the areas of very
high-speed flows at supersonic and hypersonic Mach
numbers and for very small-scale, low-speed flows for
microfluidic applications. The research of high-speed
flows has relevance to the development of vehicles
for high-speed flight and planetary exploration both
in terms of the external aerodynamics and heat
transfer associated with atmospheric flight at these
speeds as well as the development of propulsion
systems such as scramjets to power these vehicles.
Quite separately, the investigation of microfluidics is
concerned with the scaling of fluid flows to very small
geometries and their application to small chemical
processing systems often for biomedical needs.
The research performed in both areas ranged from
fundamental studies to improve our understanding
of the underlying physics governing these flows to
more application-based studies. These investigations
incorporated a wide range of experimental, numerical
and analytical techniques.
59
60
Streamlines and normalised pressure contours
behind a rearward facing step at two hypersonic
enthalpies (26 MJ/kg and 50 MJ/kg)
61
Two streamline plots for the case of L/D = 3: the flow field is characterised by the presence of a number
of unsteady vortices.
62
Time-resolved shadowgraph visualisations showing three instants of the interaction of a shock wave with
three cylinder models of two different radii.
63
!"#$%&'()*$+,-)./'!0!('
!"!#$
!%&'()$"%*+*,-$!%&./)$#'0.1(2',$
12'
3).45,+'
!"#
c1
c2
Contours of vorticity in a vertical plane (0 and 180 azimuthal positions) of the micro-hydrocyclone for
(A) 0.1, (B) 0.2 and (C) 0.4 m/s inlet velocities (A, B & C1 - one time-step results after the flow reached a
statistically steady state and C2 - time-averaged results). The increased vorticity at the wall with higher
inlet velocities are a consequence of the formation of Grtler vortices.
64
Force measured for a 600 m diameter end mill cutter running at 3m/tooth with different cutting speeds
65
Growth
stage
End of
growth
Breakup
stage
6t
4t
6t
12t
9t
13t
18t
15t
19t
24.2t
18.6t
25.3t
30.2t
27.6t
32.3t
37.2t
38.6t
39.3t
43.2t
47.6t
46.3t
50t
54.3t
53t
The variation of droplet formation behaviour and time for 0.01%, 0.025% and 0.1% xanthan gum solution
(t=10 ms).
The variation of droplet formation behaviour and time for 0.01%, 0.025% and 0.1% xanthan gum solution
(t=10 ms).
66
Image Coding
SEIT Academics
Prof John Arnold
Prof Michael Frater
A/Prof Mark Pickering
Dr Matt Garratt
Dr Andrew Lambert
Research Description
Digital television is now big business worldwide, and
techniques that can lead to improved compression
of audiovisual services are of great interest both
to international standards bodies and to industry.
Indeed, the increasing capacity of communications
systems is often outpaced by the increasing demand
for access to audio-visual services. The development
of more efficient transmission techniques for
audiovisual services will be of considerable benefit
to all regions of Australia and in particular to remote
regions. It can be expected that the development
of this technology will significantly improve service
quality in these areas without the need for upgrading
the existing telecommunications infrastructure.
This will allow, for example, pay and free-to-air
operators to provide additional services within their
current bandwidth limitations. Staff and students in
the Image Coding Lab are currently working on a
number of projects relating to the compression and
analysis of images and video sequences.
67
Mobile Calendar
30
28
Average PSNR
26
24
22
ALC
ALCH
ALCH (1bit)
GN
ICA
ICASSC
Dufaux & Konrad
Alzoubi & Pan
BPS7
20
18
16
14
12
0
20
40
60
80
100
Iteration
120
140
160
180
200
68
69
Imaging Through
Turbulence
SEIT Academics
Dr Andrew Lambert
Dr Murat Tahtali
A/Prof Harald Kleine
A/Prof Donald Fraser (retd)
Other Collaborators
School of Optometry, QUT
Prof David Atchison
DSTO Australia
Dr Leszek Swierkowski
Dr Geoff Nicholls
Dr Garry Newsam
CSIRO
Dr John Lasalle
Dr David Lovell
Dr Charles Jenkins
Dr Michael Goodwin
Applied Optics, National University of Ireland Galway,
Ireland
Prof Chris Dainty
Dr Nicholas Delaney
Dr Liz Daly
Dr Ruth Mackay
Dr Alex Goncharov
University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Dr Steve Weddell
70
Research Description
In several different fields, images are distorted by
the intervening medium. For example, images of
objects observed by telescope often exhibit unwanted
distortion and blurring due to distortion of the
wavefront by atmospheric turbulence.
We are continuing to investigate the restoration
of such images, requiring a time-sequence to be
captured and processed to remove the distortions
and reveal a clear image of the scene.
In addition, we are investigating the distribution
and behaviour of the intervening turbulent layers,
particularly for Space Situational Awareness (SSA).
Similar problems exists when imaging the retina of
the eye, in optometry or ophthalmology, due to the
inherent optical characteristic of the materials of the
eye, and also when imaging objects involving a water
surface disturbed by waves. Application areas for
these techniques include ground-based and aerial
telescopic surveillance, investigation of turbulence
severity for astronomy sites, adaptive optics in
optometry, and visualisation of objects through water.
Optical and real-time image processing techniques
are also easily applied to imaging the full wavefield in the above areas, and in microscopy.
Massively parallel image processing techniques
are being investigated using grid computing, field
programmable gate array (FPGA) clusters, and
graphical processing units (GPU).
Applied Optics
Andrew Lambert spent 2010 on sabatical hosted by
the Applied Optics group at National University of
Ireland, Galway. He would like to thank his sponsors
at NUIG for this very productive opportunity.
This is a vibrant group of internationally recognised
researchers undertaking projects in astronomy,
optical communications, and image processing.
However, most of the effort is in the field of
ophthalmology. Andrew participated in an inaugural
study of surveillance imaging over long paths over
water, to determine the rational for adaptive optics in
seaborne communications systems. He continued to
investigate the companioning of high speed digital
circuits with adaptive optics systems, an area which
is being expanded upon by a shared PhD candidate
at NUI Galway, Mr Shan Xui, with emphasis on
plenoptic imaging for microscopy.
Work in the adaptive optics area continues,
particularly in space and terrestrial surveillance, with
PhD candidates, Manuel Cegarro and Sqnldr Mal
Gould. The objectives are to investigate compact
AO systems with novel wavefront sensing and
electro-optics. A demonstrator assembly is being
designed for the Schools Meade 16 telescope,
and the holographic wavefront sensor is being
investigated, with these two students.
A simple
of this
process,
called
SLODAR,
Figure version
1: Beacon
creation
using
a SLM.
(left) The phase profile may be encoding on the illumination beam
involved
creation
two
angularly
separated
to (right)
createofan
annulus
on the
retina ofretinal
the eye to guide adaptive optic correction while imaging the
sources
which
are refracted
various of
optical
retina, or
for investigation
ofby
thethe
workings
its crystalline lens.
Engineering and Information Technology Research Report 2011
71
72
Figure 2: Plenoptic Camera. Images from a trial plenoptic camera formed with a microlens array and
consumer 14 megapixel camera capture the direction of illumination as well as the spatial distribution
of the image. From these images any depth of focus can be reconstructed with post-processing. Such
recordings enable examination of the layers of a turbulent volume within a shock-tunnel.
Immiscible
Contaminants in Natural
Porous Media
SEIT Academics
Dr Robert Niven
Other Collaborators
The University of New South Wales
Prof. Nasser Khalili
Dr Markus Oeser
The Australian National University
Prof. Mark A. Knackstedt
A/Prof. Timothy J. Senden
Dr Michael L. Turner
Dr Adrian P. Sheppard
Dr Jill Middleton
Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and SelfOrganization, Gttingen, Germany
Dr Kamaljit Singh (former PhD student)
Research Description
Control of the geometric form and mobility of an
immiscible fluid phase, such as air or hydrocarbon
liquids, in water-saturated natural porous media (soil
and rock materials) has emerged as one of the most
demanding engineering challenges of the 21st century.
When subject to fluid flow, such immiscible fluids
tend to fragment to form discrete gas bubbles or fluid
droplets commonly referred to as ganglia which
remain trapped in the porous medium due to the strong
forces induced by surface or interfacial tension.
Such droplets are then effectively immobilised. It has
been estimated that some 20-30% of known petroleum
reservoirs have been rendered unrecoverable by this
mechanism, of critical importance in light of concerns
over limitations to world oil supply (peak oil).
In addition, such entrapment substantially increases
the cost and difficulty of remediation of immiscible
contaminants, such as hydrocarbons and solvents,
from contaminated sites. Furthermore, efforts to
redress global warming by the geosequestration of
CO2, involving the injection of CO2 into deep geological
formations, could be significantly impaired by this
mechanism. For these reasons, a long-standing
body of research has been conducted in SEIT on the
behaviour of immiscible fluids in natural porous media.
73
74
Operations Research
and Optimisation
SEIT Academics
A/Prof Ruhul Sarker
Prof. Hussein Abbass
Dr Daryl Essam
Dr Chris Lokan
Dr Michael Maher
Dr Alan McLucas
Prof Charles Newton
Dr Tapabrata Ray
Other Collaborators
School of Business, UNSW Canberra
Dr Jason Mazanov
Research Description
Optimisation problems arise in many real-life design,
planning and decision processes. Most real-world
optimisation problems are complex as they involve
interacting variables and parameters, restrictions,
ambiguous goals and one or more objectives.
Typical examples of such problems are: planning,
resource allocation, logistics, inventory control,
scheduling, and company operations problems.
Worldwide, organizations are facing the problem of
appropriately modelling and solving their complex
decision problems. The optimal solutions of such
problems would result in higher productivity in
those organisations.
The Operations Research (OR) and Optimisation
group, at UNSW Canberra, conducts both theoretical
and applied research for solving complex optimisation
problems. The group covers a wide range of topics
including modelling and solving real-world problems,
analysing and improving existing OR techniques,
developing new heuristic algorithms, applying Artificial
Intelligence techniques to OR, and developing new
intelligent systems based techniques for optimisation
problems. The group also works on soft OR
techniques and their implementation for solving
real-world complex decision problems.
The Operations Research and Optimisation group
receives financial support from the Australian
Research Council, the Defence Science and
Technology Organisation and the University of New
South Wales.
University of Newcastle
Dr David Cornforth
Curtin University of Technology
Prof M Quaddus
Queensland University of Technology
Prof Erhan Kozan
Monash University
Dr Joarder Kamruzzaman
Victoria University
A/Prof Rezaul Begg, Dr Lutfar Khan
University of Lethbridge, Canada
Prof. Sajjad Zahir
National Defence Academy, Japan
Prof Akira Namatame
Anna University, India
Prof KSP Rao
Pennsylvania State University, USA
Dr Aman Haque
75
76
Figure 2(b): Optimum Design of the SixInch Sub
77
Figure 4: Evolution of generated dragonfly-wing (thin) towards the target dragonfly-wing (thick) for matching.
Figure 5: Evolution of generated damselfly-wing (thin) towards the target damselfly-wing (thick) for matching.
78
79
80
OR in Bioinformatics
Multiple sequence alignment is one of the most
important issues in molecular biology as it plays an
important role such as in life saving drug design.
In this paper, we (Naznin, Sarker and Essam) divide
given sequences into two or more subsequences and
then combine them together in order to find better
multiple sequence alignments by applying a new GA
based approach to the combined sequences. We also
introduce new ways of generating an initial population
and of applying the genetic operators. We have
carried out experiments for the BAliBASE benchmark
database using the sum of pair objective function with
the PAM250 score matrix. To evaluate our proposed
approach, we have compared with well known
methods such as T-Coffee, MUSCLE, MAFFT and
ProbCons. The experimental results show that better
multiple sequence alignments may be obtained with
higher number of divisions, however the computation
time increases with the number of decompositions.
The overall performance of the proposed
Decomposition with GA (DGA) method is better than
the existing methods and the GA method (without
decompositions). A paper from this research has been
accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on
Evolutionary Computation (ERA A*) in 2011.
81
Opto-Electronics
SEIT Academics
A/Prof Charles Harb
Prof Elanor Huntington
Dr Greg Milford
Prof Ian Petersen
Mr Trevor Wheatley
Other Collaborators
Centre for Quantum Computer Technology, Australian
Research Council
Loyola University New Orleans, LA, USA
M. Calzada, T.G. Spence
Macquarie University, NSW, Australia
Y. He, B.J. Orr
Australian Federal Police, ACT, Australia
K.P. Kirkbride
ACQAO, The Australian National University
J. Janousek, H-A. Bachor
Department of Physics, Denmark
P. Buchhave
Los Alamos National Laboratories, Los Alamos,
NM, USA
D.S. Moore
Department of Applied Physics and Quantum Phase
Electronics Center, School of Engineering, The
University of Tokyo, Japan
A. Furusawa, H. Yonezawa, D. Nakane, H. Arao
Institute for Quantum Computing, University of
Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada
D. W. Berry
Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics, Waterloo,
ON N2L 3G1, Canada
D. T. Pope
Department of Physics, Centre for Quantum
Computing Technology, University of Queensland,
QLD, Australia
T. C. Ralph
Centre for Quantum Dynamics, Centre for Quantum
Computing Technology, Griffith University, QLD,
Australia
H. M. Wiseman
82
Research Description
The Opto-Electronics research group conducts
fundamental research into potentially high-payoff
applications of opto-electronic systems.
The Opto-Electronics group receives financial
support from the Australian Research Council through
the Linkage Projects, Discovery Projects, and Centres
of Excellence Schemes. The group is a member
of the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and
Communication Technology and receives additional
financial support from the University of New South
Wales and the Australian Federal Police. The following
paragraphs discuss the research report for 2010.
Laser
m2
PDH
Controller
(s)
5.2
5.1
5
4.9
4.8
4.7
0
time (s)
EKF
LM
expected
8
4
x 10
M1
EOM
MMO
AOM
MMO
MOD2
HWP
PCB
MIXER
PD
QWP
PZT
5.3
HWP
HWP
MMO
5.4
Detector
MOD1
ISO
5.5
LASER
x 10
PZT
Fabry-Perot Cavity
AOM
5.6
CAVITY
DIGITISER
M2
PD
HV AMP
SERVO
83
84
for k = 1:1:L
SCA:
G(o) x N(1:k)
Score Result
Compare to Reference
for k = 1:1:L
CSCA:
G(o) x R(1:k)
Score Result
Compare to Reference
Calculate D(o) with Optimal L
85
0.1
Kalman
Existing
0.09
0.08
0.07
0.06
0.05
0.04
0.03
0.02
0.01
0 4
10
3
86
/( ||)
1
10
0.42
10
10
0.04446155
0.0444
2 ()
0.0442
0.044
0.0438
0.0436
0.0434
1
Robust
Kalman
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
0.054
0.052
0.05
0.04881205
2 ()
Figure 5 illustrates the comparison of the meansquare phase estimation error for the Kalman filter
with that for the existing filter. The graph is a plot of
the mean-square estimation error versus a suitably
scaled parameter for the underlying model.
As can be seen, in the lower values regime for the
considered parameter, the existing filter behaves
as good as the optimal Kalman filter; however, as
the parameter value rises, the Kalman filter has
significantly less mean-square error, and therefore
superior performance, than the existing filter. The red
vertical line indicates the value of the parameter as
used for the adaptive experiment.
10
0.0446
2
10
0.048
0.046
0.044
0.042
0.04
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
0.07
Robust
Kalman
0.065
0.8
0.055
0.051975399
SQL
0.0542
Probability
2 ()
0.06
0.05
0.045
0.04
1
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
Optical cat states can be generated using a photonsubtracted squeezed vacuum state. A strong
signature of the quality of such a state is when the
state has a negative Wigner function. A negativevalued Wigner function such a cat state has been
experimentally demonstrated around the wavelength
of 860 nm. However, the experimental result for
cat state generation at 1550 nm is still limited by
imperfections in the experiment such as: non-photonnumber-resolving ability, inefficiency and dark count
of the projected photon number detector, which
have been discussed by many researchers. But
even if these factors were considered, experimental
results reported at 1550 nm are still not as good
as that at 860 nm. Therefore, we aim to develop a
more comprehensive model of the experiment to
quantitatively investigate the impact of experimental
imperfections in the experiment.
A mathematical model was developed that
covered the possible imperfections of the input
state, projected photon number detector and the
interactions between them. All these imperfections
degrade the properties of Schrodinger cat state.
We analyzed our experimental results based on the
developed model. Figure 7 shows the photon number
distribution of the input state as reconstructed from
the experimental data, which is quite similar to the
photon number distribution predicted by our model
as shown in figure 8. The predicted photon number
distribution for the photon-subtracted squeezed
vacuum is shown in Figure 9, which is also similar to
the experimental results.
2
3
Photon number
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Probability
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
2
3
4
Photon number
1
0.9
0.8
0.7
Probability
0.6
0.5
0.4
0.3
0.2
0.1
0
3
4
Photon number
87
Remote Sensing
SEIT Academics
Dr Xiuping Jia
Dr Mike Ryan
A/Prof Mark Pickering
A/Prof Donald Fraser
Dr Andrew Lambert
A/Prof Tuan Pham
Other Collaborators
Faculty of Engineering, UNSW
A/Prof Linlin Ge
Dr Ngai Kwok
Australian National University
Prof John Richards
Geoscience Australia
Dr Adam Lewis
Dr John Schneider
Research Description
Remote sensing has been used widely ranging from
weather forecasting to land cover change monitoring.
It is a field of technology in which sensors are
mounted on aircraft or spacecraft platforms and
used to acquire images of regions on the earths
surface. Each optical image is the reflectance of the
solar spectrum at a particular range of wavelength.
Typically the hyperspectral images are generated
by recording the reflectance of ground cover types
with approximately 200 spectral bands. The data
produced will be processed by computer to extract
valuable information for various applications.
There are three issues in remote sensing data
interpretation: data compression and transmission,
data correction and data analysis. These issues are
investigated by this group.
88
89
Figure 1 (a) The original DC Mall image. The Maximum Likelihood classification results (b) using reduced
features based on PCA (b) using reduced spectral features based on kernel LFDA, and (c) using reduced
spectral features plus colour texture feature based on kernel LFDA.
90
SEIT Academics
Dr Rob Stocker
Prof. Hussein Abbass
Mrs Jenny Backhouse
Dr Michael (Spike) Barlow
Dr Gary Millar
Dr Ed Lewis
Dr Tim Turner
Collaborators
INTERNATIONAL
University of Arizona (Tuscon AZ USA)
Prof H Randy Gimblett (School of Renewable Natural
Resources)
University of Southern California (Los Angeles CA
USA)
Prof Thomas W Valente (Keck School of Medicine)
University of Aizu (Aizu-Wakamatsu-shi Fukushimaken JAPAN)
Dr Henry Larkin
AUSTRALIA
Australian National University (Canberra ACT)
Dr Rob Ackland (The Australian Demographic and Social
Research Institute ADSRI)
Dr Jennifer Badham (National Centre for Epidemiology and
Population Health)
Dr Al Klovdahl (Sociology, College of Arts and Social
Sciences)
Dr Dirk Van Rooy (Department of Psychology)
Charles Sturt University (Bathurst NSW)
Prof Terry Bossomaier (Centre for Research in Complex
Systems - CRiCS)
CSIRO (Newcastle)
Research Description
The Social Networks Group (SNG) conducts
theoretical and applied research that is primarily
focussed on network structure and function.
Its foundations lie in considering social organisation,
communication and interaction and how that research
can be used to describe and/or predict complex
(social) system behaviour. A regular newsletter is to
be circulated to members via the official web site and
Wiki (under construction) that provides more detailed
information about SNG.
Mission
The Social Network Group (SNG) will provide a
service to social network researchers that enables key
processes for effective collaboration, communication,
project initiation and completion, publication, and
promotion over national and international boundaries.
Research Projects
Landscape and behavoural factors in
cross-border migration
National security has become an increasingly
important concern for countries where borders
are bounded by or are in close proximity to other
countries whose political, ideological and cultural
perspectives are very different. In particular,
where such reasons seem to encourage illegal
migration and/or criminal activity, management of
such trafficking is of great concern to respective
governments. What factors influence such individual
and group behaviour? We (Dr Rob Stocker, Prof
Randy Gimblett and Dr Spike Barlow) explore
similarities and differences between events in the
USA and Mexico and in Australia and Indonesia for
valuable insights. From these insights we develop a
multi-agent simulation model to examine (in silica)
factors that influence landscape and patterns of
behaviour for application to other locations.
We propose to take a serious-game approach to
developing the model so as to capture the strategic
and tactical planning of the players. This project
(initiated in 2009 and supported by SSP Leave in
2010) is continuing through 2011.
91
92
Figure 2. Conventional findings suggest that the underlying structure of social networks has assortative
mixing of degrees. Here, experimental results show both assortative (on the left) and disassortative (on
the right) mixing of degrees with different network densities.
Figure 3. An overview model describing the process of social interaction between individual human
participants, emphasising key human characteristics and the importance of language in connectivity
patterns between interacting actors in a dyad.
Engineering and Information Technology Research Report 2011
93
Software Engineering
SEIT Academics
Dr Chris Lokan
Dr Gary Millar
Other Collaborators
Zayed University, U.A.E.
A/Prof Emilia Mendes
Research Description
Research in Software Engineering aims to improve our
ability to develop high-quality software as productively
as possible. It is a wide discipline, in which a diverse
range of proposals is made for how things can be
done better but relatively few claims are backed
up by evidence. There is growing realisation of
the importance of empirical software engineering:
conducting experiments and using measurement to
demonstrate the advantages of different techniques
and to improve our ability to manage the software
development process.
The Software Engineering research group
concentrates on empirical software engineering,
and software project management. In particular, the
group has interests in measurement. Some research
is fundamental: what is good or bad about particular
measures, and why? Other research looks at how
measurement can be applied in software project
management, for in-house developments and for
software acquisition projects.
94
Viable Systems
Research Description
The Viable Systems Planning group carries out
applied research into governance (especially strategy
or policy) a nd architecture of enterprises, using
the principles of cybernetics and the practices of
Enterprise Architecture/ Enterprise Engineering.
SEIT Academics
Dr Edward Lewis
Dr Gary Millar
95
96
97
Systems Engineering
SEIT Academics
Dr Mike Ryan
Dr Alan McLucas
Ms Brownwyn Jones
Research Description
The Systems Engineering research group conducts
theoretical and applied research in the fields of
systems thinking and modelling, systems engineering,
and requirements engineering. The following
paragraphs summarise a number of the groups
projects in 2011.
98
99
Underwater
Communications
SEIT Academics
Dr Mike Ryan
Prof Elanor Huntington
Prof Michael Frater
Mr Craig Benson
Dr Mark Reed
Dr Andrew Lambert
Dr Frank Jiang
Dr Robin Dunbar
Research Description
The oceans play a vital role in life on Earth. Not
only do they cover over 70% of the Earths surface,
but they play a vital role in regulating our climate,
providing food and sit over substantial natural
resources. The oceans are however relatively
unexplored, and poorly understood. Technology is
starting to change this lack of knowledge. Sensors
capable of monitoring conditions for extended
periods of time are being placed in ever greater
number and remotely operated or autonomous
vehicles can survey hostile environments. One of the
major bottlenecks in collecting this data in near real
time is underwater communication.
Sending data from submerved sensors and vessels
cannot normally be done by radio communications
as is done in most other domains. Radio waves
propagate only very short distances under water,
and the higher the frequency, the shorter the
communication range. Alternates to radio waves are
light, sound and cables. Cables can include fibreoptics, and can therefore offer very high data rates,
as well as potentially providing power to a sensor or
submerged vehicle. Such tethers to stationary nodes
need expensive connectors, and must be terminated
to an interface node, such as a surface buoy. Surface
buoys being problems of their own in terms of
maintenance cost, potential obstructions to shipping
traffic, and susceptability to damage from extreme
weather. Cables connecting to vehicles are normally
known as umbilicals or tethers, and complicate
vehicle operations as well as requiring specialised
ships on the surface. Wireless solutions such as light
or sound are therefore appealing.
100
101
102
The estimation of the number of nodes using crosscorrelation depends on the dimensionality of the
nodes. So it will be better if we could estimate
the dimensionality first. The estimation of the
dimensionality of the nodes measures whether
the nodes are oriented in 1D, 2D or 3D. The
dimensionality of the nodes would also be helpful in
obtaining additional information about the network
e.g. localization of the nodes, AOA estimation etc.
Researches are going on regarding the dimensionality
of communication networks. Most researches on
dimensionality are for the network architecture before
deployment of the nodes. But the dimensionality of a
deployed unknown network is almost new research
area. In my knowledge, one protocol-based technique
has been proposed for the dimensionality estimation
in a communication network. It has already been
mentioned that use of protocol is inefficient in some
environment like underwater, underground, etc. In this
work, similar cross-correlation technique to estimate
the number of nodes has been used to estimate the
dimensionality of a communication network after
deployment. The process will be concurrent with
the number of nodes estimation. Thus the proposed
cross-correlation technique to estimate the number of
nodes with their dimensionality will be interesting in
the field of wireless communication network like WSN,
RFID, etc.
Unmanned Vehicles
SEIT Academics
Dr Matt Garratt
A/Prof Hemanshu Pota
Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
Dr Andrew Lambert
Dr Tapabrata Ray
Other Collaborators
University of New South Wales
A/Prof Jinling Wang
Research Description
The unmanned vehicles research group has been
working with both fixed and rotary wing unmanned
aircraft for over a decade. In the past two years, work
has also begun with unmanned ground vehicles and
unmanned underwater vehicles. Expertise extends
from studies of the aerodynamics of flapping wings
and micro air vehicles, through robust autopilots, to the
practicalities and challenges of rotary wing operations
from maritime platforms. The research carried out
during 2011 is explained in the following paragraphs.
High-Bandwidth Control of an
Unmanned Helicopter
This Australian Research Council (ARC) funded
project aims to develop high bandwidth control
methods and advanced dynamic modelling for
Rotorcraft Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (RUAVs).
Figure 1: Vario XLC Gas turbine helicopter used for experiments into High-Bandwidth Control
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Virtual Environments
& Simulation
SEIT Academics
Dr Michael Barlow
Prof. Hussein Abbass
Dr Sameer Alam
Mr. Mike Ford
Dr Ed Lewis
Dr Chris Lokan
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Dr Ruhul Sarker
Dr Kamran Shafi
Dr Rob Stocker
Other Collaborators
University of Newcastle
Dr Ning Gu
SimCentric Technologies
Dr Adam Easton
Research Description
Virtual Environments (virtual reality) and simulation
are technologies undertaking increasing roles in the
areas of education, industry, defence, government,
and entertainment. As tools for a military commander
to quantify whether a Course Of Action is feasible,
a means for government to assess the impact of a
change in health care policy, or a physics teacher to
convey and illustrate a dry mathematical formula taken together simulation and VEs offer the ability to
model any scenario or problem and see that situation
play out in immersive 3D.
Work in VEs and simulation within SEIT proceeds along
several major axes or themes the technology of multiagent systems; the application of commercial games for
training, teaching, and decision-support; the application
of high fidelity simulations to answer questions about
change in policy or introduction of technology in a
complex system (e.g., air traffic management); the value
of and task-dependent choice of level of immersion;
visualisation techniques for rich and complex data;
the analysis of strategy and evolutionary games; and
models of human decision-making, leadership morals,
ethics, and teamwork. All are viewed with a complex
systems lens; interconnecting work in this area with that
in other groups such as Transportation Modelling and
Automation, Computational Intelligence, Modelling &
Cognition, Machine Learning & Developmental Robotics,
and Social Networks. Indeed, a number of projects
straddle more than a single group and may be found
listed under one of the groups previously mentioned.
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Simulation run
Model
Simulated
Data
Similarity
Abstraction
Target
(Visible
Social
processes)
Collected
Data
Data
Gathering
Social structures (
Simulation,
Generative experiments
Model
Generated
Data
Abstraction
Target
(Social
processes)
Data
Gathering
Similarity
Proxy
Data
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S1
M1
W1
R1
S2
M2
W2
R2
S3
M3
W3
R3
Sn
Mm
Wk
Rp
Market
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Research
Facilities
The School of Engineering and Information Technology
occupies five adjacent buildings at UNSW Canberra,
located at the Australian Defence Force Academy.
Building 15 houses most of the Computer Science
and Information Systems components of the School.
It also contains:
Control Laboratory
Robotics Laboratory
Communication Laboratory
VESL Laboratory
Optics Laboratory
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Anechoic Chamber
Fluids Laboratory
Vibrations Laboratory
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Hypersonics Laboratory
Fog Room
Figure 3. Autoclave
Figure 7. Telescope
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2011 SEIT
Academics
Dr Chris Lokan
Deputy Head of School
(Administration)
Dr Alan McLucas
Deputy Head of
School (Teaching)
Dr Safat Al-Deen
Lecturer
Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
Senior Lecturer
Dr John Arnold
Professor
Deputy Rector
Dr Michael Barlow
Senior Lecturer
Mr Craig Benson
Senior Lecturer
Dr Lawrie Brown
Senior Lecturer
Ms Sue Burdekin
Senior Lecturer
Mr Martin Copeland
Lecturer
Dr Daryl Essam
Senior Lecturer
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Mr Alan Fien
Senior Lecturer
Michael Frater
Professor
Rector
Dr Matt Garratt
Senior Lecturer
Dr C.T. (Rajah)
Gnanendran
Senior Lecturer
Dr Haroldo Hattori
Senior Lecturer
Dr Rik Heslehurst
Senior Lecturer
Professor Jiankun Hu
Professor
Dr Xiuping Jia
Senior Lecturer
Ms Bronwyn L. Jones
Associate Lecturer
Dr Amar Khennane
Senior Lecturer
Dr Andrew Lambert
Senior Lecturer
Dr Edward Lewis
Senior Lecturer
Mr Raymond Lewis
Senior Lecturer
Dr Jong-Leng Liow
Senior Lecturer
A/Prof Robert Lo
Associate Professor
Dr Michael j Maher
Senior Lecturer
Dr Abdun Nasser
Mahmood
Lecturer
Dr Kathryn Merrick
Lecturer
Dr Gregory Milford
Senior Lecturer
Dr Gary Millar
Lecturer
Dr Robert Niven
Senior Lecturer
Dr Sean OByrne
Senior Lecturer
A/Prof Valeri
Ougrinovski
Associate Professor
Mr Heath Pratt
Lecturer
Dr Tapabrata Ray
Senior Lecturer
Dr Mark C. Reed
Senior Lecturer
Dr Michael Ryan
Senior Lecturer
Dr Kamran Shafi
Lecturer
Dr Krishna Shankar
Senior Lecturer
Dr Warren Smith
Senior Lecturer
Dr Murat Tahtali
Senior Lecturer
Dr Tim Turner
Senior Lecturer
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Mr Trevor Wheatley
Lecturer
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Mr Alan White
Senior Lecturer
Mr Eric Wilson
Senior Lecturer
Dr Weiping Zhu
Senior Lecturer
Dr Kathryn Wilson
Senior Lecturer
Dr John Young
Senior Lecturer
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Editor: Dr Sreenatha Anavatti
School of Engineering and Information Technology
Design: Creative Media Unit
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