My Research Areas

My research interests cover three, sort of related, areas. My work in Control Systems has been accumulated over two decades of stubborn pursude of "good" methods for control design and analysis, mostly to do with dynamic systems with uncertainties in their models or unreliable communications. My latest interest in this area lies in three topics: control over communication networks , smart electricity networks and high precision control using micro-actuators.

I have also worked in Signal Processing for quite long. What facinates me about this area is that ad-hoc tools used by "engineers" can often be made rigorous and enhanced by using some simple mathematics. I work on model-based signal processing, studying estimation problems to do with dynamic systems. I am currently chairing a signal processing research program in a research centre specialised in complex dynamic systems. My recent interests include network-based state estimation, system identification with communication constraints and signal encoding with time delay constraints.

Digital Communications is an area I touched upon in recent years, but I am a slow learner here. Problems which catch my attention are the ones to do with fundamental limitations and those related to dynamic systems. I try to use my limited knowledge in Control Systems and Signal Processing to look at coding, decoding and equalisation problems with a different perspective. Once a while, something interesting pops up this way. My current/rencent interests are in communication networks for smart electricity grids, turbo decoding/detection and low-density parity-check codes.