Electrical engineering research at UofSC falls within four major areas of focus: communications and electromagnetics, decision and control, electronic materials and devices, and power and energy systems.
Active areas of research include broadband metamaterials; low-profile antennas; microwave and RF technology; signal integrity; switched frequency systems; pattern and polarization arrays; wireless channel modeling; physical layer waveform analysis and design; medium access control.
The focus of this group is on analysis, optimization, and design of advanced controls for broad categories of systems, including safety-critical systems, unmanned vehicles, and robots. Networked, cooperative, distributed controls for large-scale systems, and controls that consider system health -- condition-based maintenance, prognostics, and health management – and risk management are all important areas.
This group considers the design and micro-fabrication of electronic components that are used in many electronic and biomedical devices and systems. A focus is on use of wide bandgap and ultra wide bandgap materials, such as AlGaN, in fabricating photonic devices, microwave transistors; power electronics, MEMS, nanowire, and nanomagnetic sensors; implantable sensors for biomedical applications; and radiation detection.
Our research focuses on transformative applications of power electronics in power and energy systems. The strongly interdisciplinary research addresses problems in design and operation of microgrids, renewable energy, design and control of electronic power converters, thermal management of power electronics. It also touches on energy storage systems, motors and drives, and development of computational environments for design and virtual prototyping of power and energy systems.