The explosion in wireless data usage across the world has been one of the great economic drivers of the last decade, and the global need for cheap, high-data-rate wireless access is expected to continue to grow rapidly for at least another decade. The new EFRI awards will build upon recent advances in materials science and engineering research. For example, last year, Columbia University engineering researchers invented integrated circuits that can allow radios to simultaneously transmit and receive on the same frequency, instead of requiring two separate frequencies as is typically the case.

Credit: Harish Krishnaswamy, Columbia University

Gaurav Bahl and his team at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been exploring the nonreciprocal propagation of light through resonant microsystems. This image visualizes their demonstration of speeding up, slowing down, and blocking light propagation in a waveguide using an acousto-optic induced transparency. As part of their NewLAW project, Bahl and colleagues at the University of Oregon and Duke University plan to achieve similar feats for sound waves. This work could generate improvements in ultrasound control and imaging, nondestructive testing of materials, and new signal processing techniques for communication systems.

Credit: JunHwan Kim and Gaurav Bahl, UIUC

Harish Krishnaswamy of Columbia University, one of eight recipients of the NSF EFRI award, will investigate novel approaches to radio frequency non-reciprocity in semiconductor systems.

Credit: Harish Krishnaswamy, Columbia University

Two of the most fundamental concepts in wave propagation and signal transmission are the closely related principles of reciprocity and time-reversal symmetry. A team lead by Andrew Norris of Rutgers University-New Brunswick has developed new paradigms for non-reciprocal acoustic and elastic wave behavior. Non-reciprocal phenomena have the potential to fundamentally alter the way signals are detected, impacting technologies based on acoustic and ultrasonic measurement such as structural health monitoring and biomedical ultrasound. Shown here is the representation of a pump wave generating a momentum bias, which leads to non-reciprocal behavior of a signal wave between receivers marked R1, R2 and R3.

Credit: Michael R. Haberman, Applied Research Laboratories and Department of Mechanical Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin

The EFRI NewLAW topic is inspired in part by the recent emphasis on uncovering classical materials that mimic atomic systems and condensed matter phenomena, such as quantum effects and topological insulators. Notable examples are innovations in metamaterials, artificial materials that allow electromagnetic waves to bend around them.

Credit: Andrea Alu, University of Texas at Austin