Facilities

Microwave Systems, Sensors, and Imaging Lab (MiXIL)

Microwave Systems, Sensors, and Imaging Lab (MiXIL) is an academic research unit in the Ming Hsieh department of Electrical Engineering – Electrophysics (EE-EP), headed by Moghaddam, performs research in a wide range of topics in electromagnetics including radar systems, scattering, inverse scattering, microwave remote sensing, antennas, computational electromagnetics, microwave circuits, medical imaging and therapy systems, and wireless sensor networks. MiXIL occupies a dedicated lab space of approximately 2000 ft² housing microwave test equipment, radar instrumentation, focused microwave heating and therapy systems, near-field measurement facilities, wireless sensor network instrumentation, and backscattering and bistatic scattering measurements. 

• For theoretical and computational developments, MiXIL is equipped with an array of computational environment and electromagnetic and multiphysics modeling tools (such as Ansoft HFSS, COMSOL) to support the proposed theoretical simulation tasks. The lab houses various data storage devices, commercial image- and data-processing software (such as PCI and Arc-GIS/ArcMap), and other specialized software packages for the geometric and radiometric processing and analysis of radio frequency (RF) data. Additionally, the PI group has developed an extensive set of radar scattering and retrieval models applicable to vegetated landscapes, including subsurface modeling of soils. All of these tools will be available to the proposed project.
• Radar and Pulse-echo systems for imaging applications are enabled by custom-built free-space and liquid emulsion transmit-receive bistatic measurement systems operating in the 900MHz – 4 GHz range. SDRadar modules based on Ettus technologies SDRs are also part of MiXIL’s suite of radar hardware systems available to this project. The lab also has a DJI Matrice 600 UAV that carries SDRadar instruments, namely the USRP Ettus 312 based systems and the Pynq RFSoC based systems. 
• Circuit Design is accomplished by use of a suite of commercial and in-house codes. Commercially available software packages such as Libra, HFSS, Sonnet and IE3D, are used for circuit simulation. For layout design, software tools such as Mentor Graphics’ IC Station and AutoCAD, as well as Cadence are available.
• Circuit Fabrication and Measurements are performed by a number of dedicated vector network and signal analyzers used to measure circuits in the desired frequency range. The lab includes network analyzers, spectrum analyzers, synthesized sweepers and sources covering 0.01-24 GHz, power meter and the necessary supporting electronics such as power supplies, low frequency generators and oscilloscopes (digital and sampling scopes). Equipment for mixer and amplifier measurements is available as well. Various microwave and mm-wave cables and components (phase shifters, power combiners & splitters, couplers, hybrids, circulators, bias-tees, etc.), waveguides, and horn antennas are also available.
• Antenna Pattern Measurements can be performed at the existing Ultra-wideband Radio Laboratory (UltRa Lab) 30-ft anechoic chamber and Paul G. Allen Wireless Test Facility. These are within the EE-EP department and may be shared with MiXIL. This facility additionally includes a wide array of RF equipment (such as fast sampling scopes, signal sources, spectrum analyzers, network analyzers).
• For customized machine work related to fabricating antenna array housing and other mechanical structures, the USC Viterbi School of Engineering has a fully equipped machine shop and 3 full-time experience staff. The machine shop has CNC mills and lathes and keeps a basic supply of metals and plastics. Additionally, there is an SLA High-Precision Fast Prototyping Machine.
• For field measurements of vegetation cover and soil properties, MiXIL is equipped with a comprehensive suite of measurement tools including multiple soil moisture probes, dielectric constant probe based on Agilent FieldFox network analyzer for tree dielectric measurements, and basic tools such as hypsometers, DBH meters, inclinometers, and hand-held GPS units.
• For soil sample measurements, MiXIL is equipped with tools for soil coring and sample collection, drying oven, precision digital scales, and dielectric probes.
• SoilSCAPE networks (soilscape.usc.edu): Wireless networks located in CA, AZ, CO, and AK.
• SoilSCAPE Receiving station/gateway for all locations of the sensor network is located in the lab and is monitored round the clock to ensure interrupted access to data and command of the network.

USC Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC)

Established in 2000, the University of Southern California’s Center for Advanced Research Computing (CARC) provides advanced computational research support to USC faculty and students. The CARC supports the computational exploration of over 100 research groups across campus (and their collaborators) from a variety of academic disciplines.

CARC launched its new high-performance computing cluster, Discovery, in August 2020. The new cluster marks a significant upgrade to the CARC’s cyberinfrastructure. The Discovery cluster consists of 2 shared login nodes and a total of around 11,000 CPU cores in around 500 compute nodes. The typical compute node has dual 8 to 16 core processors and resides on a 56 gigabit FDR InfiniBand backbone

Nearly 100 GB of storage space is provided for each user to store important code and configuration files in their home directories, and the BeeGFS/ZFS parallel project file system has a capacity of 8.4 PB of usable space, with a default storage quota of 10 TB per Principal Investigator across their projects. A rapidly growing fleet of state-of-the art multicore compute nodes is available for data-intensive research jobs, backed by two 800 TB, high-throughput scratch file systems. A low-latency, high-bandwidth InfiniBand network fabric facilitates intense research workloads on large data sets.

Discovery includes an array of scientific software packages, both licensed and open source, for engineering, molecular simulation, and computational chemistry. Researchers can also install software packages or develop their own code within their project’s allotted storage

Discovery is free to use for all USC faculty, research staff, and graduate students, as well as approved collaborators outside of USC.

Additionally, CARC offers consulting to help faculty and other campus researchers obtain access to and effectively use cloud computing resources through its relationship with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a preferred vendor. The CARC will be adding support for Microsoft Azure and the Google Cloud Platform in the near future.