“There is no better test of a new technology than integration into a working system.”
This is the overriding theme of the Brown research group at UCSB and is exercised in a number of technology fronts, including ultra-high-frequency (THz) electronics, and ultra-high-frequency ultrasonics (Gigasonics). By keeping an eye on the system application, Dr. Brown’s group carries out one of the most creative and satisfying endeavors in all of engineering: architecting. In the past, much of technology had to be tailored to a particular system, a good example being cellular wireless communications.
But more and more, engineers are tailoring the system to the technology. A good example is ad-hoc networking using ultra-low-power (CMOS) electronics and MEMS sensors.
In the Brown group:
• We are developing a new THz source technology and photoconductive switches – ultrafast photoconductive mixers (photomixers) – to create THz spectrometric systems having unprecedented bandwidth and frequency agility.
• We are developing a new THz detector technology– semimetal-semiconductor rectifier junctions – to create upper-mm-wave and THz 2D focal plane arrays for imaging at room-temperature (no cryogenics !)
• We are developing a thin, flexible, conformal transducer array and imaging system that can be wrapped around extremities and curved surfaces of the body.
• We are developing advanced THz biomedical systems and investigating biomedical phenomenology in collaboration with UCLA CASIT.