Electronics – Telecommunications – Computer science laboratories

Research policy in the Electronics – Telecommunications - Computer science (ETI)

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The CPE Lyon Electronics – Telecommunications - Computer science (ETI) research policy consists of attaching its lecturer researchers to existing structures.

Consequently the electronics – microelectronic team (6 people), formerly attached to the Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière (LPM) [physics of matter laboratory] at lNSA in Lyon, is at present attached to the heterogeneous system design team at the Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon (INL).
The image team (3 people) is attached to the Laboratoire Hubert Curien at the Université de Saint-Etienne.
Finally the telecommunications and embedded computing team (2 people) is in the process of being attached to the Centre d’Innovation en Télécommunications et Intégration de Services (CITI) at INSA in Lyon.

For further information :

Contact: Nacer ABOUCHI
Email : abouchi@cpe.fr

"Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon" (INL)

Consult website : http://inl.ec-lyon.frinl_192

The Institut des Nanotechnologies de Lyon (INL)
UMR n° 5270 CNRS – ECL – INSA de Lyon – UCB Lyon 1, was created on 1 January 2007 by the merger of several laboratories in Lyon:

  • the LEOM at the Ecole Centrale de Lyon (formerly UMR 5512)
  • the LPM at INSA de Lyon (formerly UMR 5511)
  • the LENAC at the Université Claude Bernard, Lyon 1 (formerly EA 3730) and CPE Lyon, associated as a partner. It is a basic and applied research laboratory in the field of micro and nanotechnologies.

Its aim is to undertake research extending from materials to systems that will enable the emergence of complete technological subjects with several sectors of application: semiconductors and microelectronics, telecommunications, energy, health, biology, industrial inspection, defence, the environment etc.

Research at the Institut des Nanotechnologies in Lyons (INL) covers 4 domains :

  • Materials: heteroepitaxy, nanostructuring, nanostructures, Si multifunctional integration and nano-characterisation.
  • Electronics: micro-nanoelectronics, the design of circuits and on-chip systems, TCAD, MEMS-NEMS, etc.
  • Photonics-photovoltaics: micro and nano-photonic, optoelectronics, M(N)OEMS, thin-layer Si solar cells, etc.
  • Biotechnologies, health: nano-biotechnologies, micro-nano-biosystems, biomedical sensors, smart clothing, etc.

     

The laboratory is split over the sites of the Ecole Centrale de Lyon, INSA de Lyon, Université Lyon 1 and CPE Lyon. It has 106 permanent staff and around 90 temporary staff. Its annual budget excluding salaries is in the region of 3 million euros.

The management team is made up of G. HOLLINGER (director), G. GUILLOT (deputy director, responsible for the INSA’s Lyon site), P. MORIN (deputy director, responsible for the UCB Lyon 1 site) and I. O’CONNOR (deputy director, responsible for the ECL site). Nacer ABOUCHI, director of the ETI field at CPE Lyon is responsible for the CPE Lyon site.

The CPE Lyon site team (N. ABOUCHI, T. TIXIER, M. CHIOLLAZ, J.M. GALVAN, R.DAVIOT, F. JOLY), a satellite of the INL heterogeneous system design team, focuses on circuit and analogue and mixed integrated systems design

The activities of the CPE Lyon involve 6 individuals and include the mixed microelectronics design branch of the INL. These activities focus on the design of mixed and analog built-in circuits and systems.

This branch has 2 main targets:

  • The development of innovative methodologies to assist in modelling and design (multi-field simulation).
  • The automation of design, the optimisation of architectures and the automatic synthesis of built-in structures, particularly for the interfacing of sensors. Target applications relate to the health, biomedical, human engineering, environmental and telephony sectors, etc.

There exists some scientific constrictions, such as:

  • The management of the complexity (new types of architecture) and the heterogeneity of the application devices (sensors, analog, digital, radiofrequency, power, optics, …)
  • The need for new architectures that rely on evolving technologies (CMOS) and emerging technologies (multi-field compatible with Si). Identifying the limit of new technologies efficiency is to be defined then.

We are currently working on various projects in partnership with industrial actors.
To give an example, the company Contrôle Mesure Régulation (world n°1 for temperature sensors for large diesel and gas engines) enables us to apply our research in the field of smart wireless sensors for extreme environments and the company ST Microelectronics enables us to apply our design methods in the field of embedded audio systems.

We are also working on an ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche - National Research Agency) project known as "Sécuridose" whose main focus is the validation and optimisation and/or pre-industrialisation of biosensors and biomedical instruments. The aim of this project is to develop a real-time dosimetry system which can be implanted and extracted in vivo to monitor complex irradiations in radiotherapy for the treatment of cancer. This project is organised in partnership with the Joseph Fourier university of Grenoble and the radiology and medical physics teams of the CHU of Grenoble. Results are protected by a patent filed on 30 January 2007.

We have created a grant to finance a doctorate thesis on the application of nanotechnologies to reconfigurable electronics and electronic circuits based on nano-components for September 2008, to ensure the future of nano-technologies." .

For further information :
Nacer ABOUCHI
Email : abouchi@cpe.fr

The "Laboratoire Hubert Curien" (LHC) 

Consult website : http://www.univ-st-etienne.fr/tsi/

The Laboratoire Hubert Curien, UMR CNRS 5516 has, since January 2007, been the new name of the TSI Laboratory. Its activity concerns information sciences and technology and communication.
Its research themes are: photonic systems, diffractive optics science and technology, laser processing, biophotonics, image processing as well as informatics and machine learning (formerly the EURISE team).

The LHC is organised into 2 departments :

  • Optics and Photonics: Micro-nanostructuring of materials (O. PARRIAUX), laser – materials interaction (R. STOYAN) and biophotonics (Aziz BOUKENTER).
  • Informatics and Image: image processing (M. JOURLIN) and machine learning (C. DE LA HIGUERA).

The team, officially called the “CPE Lyon LHC satellite”, with 3 permanent staff (C. MENNESSIER, L. DENIS and J.M. BECKER) and several PhD students is attached to the 2nd department - Informatics and Image - and to the “image processing” sub team.

The activities of the CPE Lyon LHC branch relate to the following areas of LHC :

  • With outside laboratories: the CRAL (Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon CNRS [astronomy research], UMR 5574) concerning blind deconvolution, the LSP (EPFL, Lausanne), for mathematical models for light diffusion, ENST Paris (radar imaging), the Ecole des Mines de Paris for stochastic methods of imaging, notably materials, and TIMC-IMAG for tomography.
  • With industry : Lafarge, Alliance Vision etc research centres.

In addition the CPE Lyon branch also collaborates:

  • With outside laboratories : the CRAL (Centre de Recherche Astronomique de Lyon CNRS [astronomy research], UMR 5574) concerning blind deconvolution, the LSP (EPFL, Lausanne), for mathematical models for light diffusion, ENST Paris (radar imaging), the Ecole des Mines de Paris for stochastic methods of imaging, notably materials, and TIMC-IMAG for tomography.
  • With industry : Lafarge, Alliance Vision etc research centres.

Starting in the academic year 2008 and to demonstrate the interest it has in developing image processing research, CPE Lyon is offering a bursary to fund a doctorate thesis on the topic of reconstruction (see above).

For more information contact :
Catherine MENNESSIER : mennessier@cpe.fr
Loïc DENIS : denis@cpe.fr
Jean-Marie BECKER : becker@cpe.fr

"Laboratoire Centre d’Innovation en Télécommunications et Intégration de services" (CITI)

Consult website : http://www.citi.insa-lyon.fr/

The Centre d’Innovation en Télécommunications et Intégration de services CITI [ innovation in telecommunications and service integration centre ] is interested in designing, modelling and validating the materials and software in mobile objects and ambient networks.

The notion of communicating objects and ambient networks where interactions between the parts of the network are spontaneous and transparent for the user, makes deploying these more complex. New models must be produced, new approaches validated and new architectures proposed for this technology: embedded and mobile communication systems.

The CITI undertakes work in the field of embedded systems, designing and adapting protocols and software components. A large amount of work is undertaken in the field of modelling: modelling the physical layer of radio communication (CDMA code, multi antennas, radio relay propagation), architecture modelling (embedded systems, energy, real time systems and systems on a chip) and also modelling networks (mobility, performance prediction, service quality analysis, ad hoc routing and mesh networks).

Software is far from absent from our concerns :

Research has been undertaken in the fields of middleware, the security and adaptation of operating systems. Ambient, pervasive, ubiquitous computing has started to spread and requires appropriate communication supports and software environments.
Through this work the CITI Iprepares the arrival of this new universe of information science and technology.

The CITI laboratory is organised into 2 teams linked with INRIA

Consult website : www.inria.fr

  • The A4RES team (Architectures of Wireless Networks & Systems) works more specifically on architectures for spontaneous wireless networks. The system approach developed in this team involves competencies in digital signals and antenna processing, protocol engineering modelling tools, evaluation and simulation tools.
  • L’équipe AMAZONES (AMbient Architectures : Service-Oriented, Networked, Efficient, Secure) travaille sur de nouvelles approches pour la conception de services à destination des objets mobiles et des passerelles de services. Elle développe une activité particulière dans le domaine de l’intergiciel, de la qualité de services et de la sécurité.

The activities of the CPE Lyon telecommunications and embedded computing team (currently being attached to the CITI) focus on communicating embedded systems and concern the ARES and AMAZONES project teams. The competencies relate to software architecture for embedded systems, development methodologies and radio communication. 

Radio- related aspects:

We are looking at aspects of embedded communication systems (nodes) in an ad hoc framework (that is in the absence of a pre-existing infrastructure). Recent work relates to joint modelling of the lower layers (MAC/Phy) for multi-jump ad hoc or hybrid radio networks.

Software-related aspects:

We are looking at the different modelling and analysis tools for embedded systems in such a way as to validate existing solutions or propose mechanisms that will improve consideration of constraints (time, energy etc).

Different mathematical formulae and modelling tools are employed to model the application, functional and material aspects of these systems. This work is put to the test in working groups on application design techniques (MDA and components approaches).

For more information contact :
Fabrice JUMEL : jumel@cpe.fr
Nikolaï LEBEDEV : lebedev@cpe.fr