Welcome to Website of Prof. Saraju Mohanty

My research is on Smart Electronic Systems, the backbone of which is a combination of AI/ML, Data Analytics, Security at the Edge of IoT (not just at the Cloud of IoT) in the Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) that make the smart cities. Examples of CPS include healthcare CPS (H-CPS), energy CPS (E-CPS), and transportation CPS (T-CPS). The key aspects of the smart electronics are Energy-Smart, Security-Smart, and Response-Smart. Energy-Smart ensures that energy consumption of electronic-systems is minimal for longer battery life and reduced energy costs. Security-Smart deals with the security/protection of electronics systems as well as that of the information/media that these systems capture, process, or store. Response-Smart refers to accurate sensing, intelligent processing (Data Curation and Analytics), and fast decision/actuation/response (based on the AI/ML Models). My Smart Electronic Systems research can be grouped into the following inter-related thrusts:

• Security-by-Design (SbD) for Internet of Things (IoT) or Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)
• IoT-friendly Approaches for Smart Healthcare and Smart Agriculture
• IoT-enabled Electronics for Smart Cities and Smart Villages

External funding is the backbone of a high quality, sustainable and productive research program. Funding is used to attract high-quality students and hiring researchers, which is vital for research productivity and output. My research has been funded by many agencies including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC), the US Air Force, the IUSSTF, and the Mission Innovation. Various Federal agencies and departments such as the National Science Foundation (NSF), Air Force Research, Department of Energy, and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) provide funding for research. Moreover, it is of importance to approach various industries for their support and collaboration directly as well as through consortiums, such as the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Breadth and depth are essential in order to establish a sustainable, active, and high impact research program with strong scholastic output. Depth in research is necessary to explore the underlying fundamental principles and breadth is needed to broaden knowledge and skills so as to remain vigilant and versatile for the ever-changing science and technology trends. While individual identity is crucial, interdepartmental, interuniversity, and university-industrial collaborations are essential for high-impact cutting-edge energy efficient, secure, high-speed electronic systems research that essentially deals with the fastest growing technologies humankind has known.

A. Description of Current Research Interests

- Security-by-Design (SbD) for Internet of Things (IoT) or Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS)

I have made several fundamental contributions the security aware Internet-of-Things (IoT) and CyberPhysical Systems (CPS) design. While most of the existing hardware solutions introduce energy overheads to the system which use these solutions, my research presents solutions that introduce no energy overheads. In an IoT/CPS environment, software as well as hardware-based mechanisms are used for security, privacy, and ownership protection. Either of these types of the mechanisms affect energy consumption, battery life, latency, performance, and weight of systems in which these are deployed. Software based solutions has impact on IoT/CPS performance while needing heavy computing resources. Hardware based solutions can be fast, but can’t be upgraded as new threats appear in the IoT from time to time. I have developed “Hardware-Assisted Security (HAS)” mechanisms as an optimal solution. I define hardware-assisted security (HAS) is the security provided by hardware for: (1) information being processed, (2) hardware itself, and (3) overall system. The hardware-assisted security may involve: (1) use of additional hardware components, (2) modification of hardware design modification, and (3) modification of system design. HAS methodologies need to be incorporated right during the design phase of the systems, so that no retrofitting is required after the system is built. This is the essence of emerging concepts of Security-by-Design (SbD) and Privacy-by-Design (PbD) which can be together called Security and Privacy and by Design (SPbD). I had envisioned SbD/HAS more than a decade ago through the concept of “Secure Digital Camera” that I introduced in 2004, and have been researching since then as evident from my publications’ history. I am now researching PUF/blockchin based system/data security for Internet-of-Everything (IoE).

- IoT-friendly Approaches for Smart Healthcare and Smart Agriculture

I have made significant contributions to IoT based Smart Healthcare (IoT in this application is called Internet-of-Medical-Things i.e. IoMT or Internet-of-Health-Things i.e. IoHT) in last few years. IoT enabled smart healthcare can have significant impact on the quality of life by helping in various ways including healthy living, home care, acute care, remote healthcare. The role of IoMT/IoHT includes real-time monitoring, better emergency response, easy access of patient data, remote access to healthcare, and connectivity among stake holders. I have worked to develop various IoMT-enabled healthcare solutions for automatic food intake monitoring, physiological activity monitoring, stress detection, seizure detections. For example: I have developed machine learning model drive Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) based systems for automated diet monitoring and prediction. I developed a novel 5-layer perceptron neural network and a Bayesian Network based accurate meal monitoring and prediction algorithm. Our algorithm performs the following tasks: (i) Extracts the features of food nutrients and categorize the food based on highest nutrient value, (ii) Identifies the relationship between the consumed food and deficient nutrition, and (iii) identifies the deficient nutrients and suggest replacements. We have developed a computer vision-based approach to automatically identify food from a plate and quantify the calorie intake automatically. The approach is fully automated with large datesets of 8000+ food items, and is portable to different datasets. The approach also integrated methods that distinguished normal eating versus stress eating of an individual. Similarly, I have developed ML based systems that detects seizure from electroencephalography (EEG) in couple of seconds and can inject a fast acting anti-convulsant drug at the onset to suppress seizure progression. We are expanding the smart healthcare research to include Pharmaceutical Supply Chain under a bigger umbrealla of Healthcare Cyber-Physical System (H-CPS) to eneusre that medicine that is consumed is traceable in terms of quality and safety.

Agriculture and healthcare have a strong connection. Good food in itself is a good healthcare. I have introduced the concepts of Internet-of-Agro-Things (IoAT) as well Agriculture Cyber-Physical Systems (A-CPS) to present a bigger concept of smart agriculture alongwith the food supply chain. We are working in AI/ML methods for automatic plant growth monitoring and automatic plant disease analysis as well as cattle healthcare.

- IoT-enabled Electronics for Smart Cities and Smart Villages

I have introduced many applications-specific systems smart cities. To handle the population migration trend that suggests 70% of world population will be urban by 2050, smart city concept has been envisioned to improve sustainability and quality of life with limited resource. Smart city can have diverse IoT based smart components including smart energy, smart infrastructure, smart healthcare, and smart transportation which are essenitally Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). It is estimated that sensors, social networks, web pages, image and video applications, and mobile devices generate more than 2.5 quintillion bytes data per day. This will be much worse in fully functional smart cities with billions of “Things” connected in IoT. There is an urgent need for application-specific sensor, edge-devices, and systems to meet the demand of these diverse applications. IoT is deployed in buildings, energy-grids, transport-systems, and health-care system, which need not be inherently smart, to make them smart (thus making them Cyber-Physical Systems or CPS) through the use of sensors, and information and communication technology (ICT) is the key for building smart cities. IoT/CPS frameworks may consist of various diverse components including sensors, electronics, communication networks, middleware, firmware, and software which enable the interactions of many diverse types of things for providing increasingly smart, reliable and secure services. Thus, the realization of IoT/CPS systems for smart cities needs the combination of several factors such as security, privacy, energy efficiency, high performance, reliability, and flexibility, which can be drivers of rigorous academic and industrial research. These factors impose significant hardware, software, and system design challenges while keeping the design cost as minimal as possible and meeting the time to market demand. For example, a video processing unit of a portable electronics needs to be energy efficient due to the battery source while at the same time needs to have high performance to process high definition video. The research on smart cities includes exploring IoT-enabled consumer electronic solutions for envorionmental monitoring, civil structure health monitoring, waste-management system, smart parking, and smart street lighting.

One can argue what is difference between smaer cities and smart villages research from IoT/CPS/Electronic point of view. There are some commonalities such as use of sensors, use of communication, and use of AI/ML. However, the details present the differences. Design and operation costs of smart cities is way high as compared to the smart villages. Smart cities have obviously much more data as compared to smart villages. Smart cities solutions may be IoT-cloud based, whereas smart villages solutions should be IoT-edge based as villages may not have good connectivity. Smart cities may use heavy duty AI/ML models, whereas smart village solutions need to assume resource/energy/computation constraints and rely on light-duty TinyML.

1. New Distributed Ledger or blockchain based frameworks for data management in smart agriculture (agroString, G-DaM, IncentiveChain).
2. A new distributed ledger or blockhcain based framework called PharmaChain for robust Pharmaceutical Supply Chain in Healthcare Cyber-Physical System (H-CPS) (PharmaChain, PharmaChain 2.0, PharmaChain 3.0).
3. Exploring new primitives for integrated cybersecurity in complex Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) using Security-by-Design (SbD) principle (Eternal-Thing, Eternal-Thing 2.0, Fortified-Edge).
4. Blockchain based security, privacy, and access-management solutions for Internet-of-Medical-Things (IoMT) based smart healthcare (Fortified-Chain, SaYoPillow, Fortified-Chain 2.0).
5. Novel framework for video and image deepfake detection (iFace 1.1, Deepfake-Video-Detection, Deepfake-Vs-Morphing).
6. AI/ML based solutions for plant growth and disease monitoring in Internet-Agro-Things (IoAT) based Agriculture CPS (A-CPS) for smart agriculture (sCrop, eCrop, aGROdet).
7. AI/ML based novel framework for cattle healthcare in smart agriculture (LiveCare).
8. An new intelligent device called iLog for automatic food intake monitoring in the IoMT (Smart-Log, iLog, iLog 2.0).
9. First-ever PUF integration blockchain called PUFchain and a new consensus algorithm called Proof of PUF-Enabled Authentication (PoP), which is 1,000X faster than Proof-of-Work (PoW), for simultaneous device and data security in the Internet of Everything (IoE) (PUFchain, PUFchain 2.0, PUFchain 3.0).
10. First ever Kriging based approach for early detection of seizure from EEG signal considering brain as a spatial map (Kriging, Hierarhical-Kriging, Distributed-Kriging).
11. First ever IoMT-enabled security-assured near infrared (NIR) based blood serum calibrated glucometer called iGLU for painless noninvasive accurate glucose monitoring and control (iGLU, iGLU 2.0, iGLU 3.0).
12. A PUF based new robust, light-weight, and energy-aware authentication system called PMSec for IoMT (PMSec).
13. A IoT-friendly cryptography based new consensus algorithm called Proof-of-Authentication (PoAh), which is 200X faster than Proof-of-Work (PoW), for fast, scalable and light-weight blockchain (POT-2019-Jan, ICCE-2019).
14. A new device called iTour for independent mobility and personal safety (iTour, iTour 2.0).
15. New systems for secure contactless payment with or without mobile phones (CEM-2017-Apr, CEM-2017-Jan).
16. An earliest Trojan-secured architecture synthesis method for trusted consumer electronics hardware (TCAD-2017-Apr).
17. Low-cost architecture synthesis methods for intellectual property (IP) protection consumer electronics digital hardware (TCE-2017-Nov, CDT-2017-Mar, ISCAS-2016).
18. First ever energy-efficient, secure Better Portable Graphics (BPG) compression architecture for trusted, high-quality, high-speed image and video communications in Internet-of-Things (IoT) (IEEE-Access-2016, ISVLSI-2016, iNIS-2015).
19. Kriging metamodel based fast and accurate methods for process variation aware AMS design optimization (ISQED-2015, TVLSI-2014-Apr, ISVLSI-2014, ISQED-2014).
20. iVAMS or intelligent metamodel-integrated Verilog-AMS for circuit-accurate system-level simulation (iVAMS, iVAMS 1.0, iVAMS 2.0).
21. A layout-aware metamodel assisted ultrafast design flow for AMS-SoC component layout optimization that iterates over the metamodels instead of netlists to achieve 10,000X speedup and needs exactly two-layout steps (TSM-2014-Feb, TSM-2012-Feb, JOLPE-2012-Jun, VLSID-2012, ISQED-2011).
22. A fast single-manual iteration design flow for AMS-SoC component layout optimization that needs exactly two-layout steps (VLSID-2010, TVLSI-2009-Sep).
23. An Universal Voltage-Level Shifter (ULS) or Universal Voltage-Level Converter (ULC) design that performs signal up-conversion, down-conversion, passing, and blocking for reconfiguration and energy efficiency of AMS-SoC (Springer-ALOG-2012-Aug, JETC-2010-Jun, ISQED-2009, ISQED-2008).
24. First ever simultaneous consideration of power, parasitics, process-variations, and performance in voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) design (TVLSI-2009-Sep, GLSVLSI-2009, ISQED-2008).
25. First ever study to correlate the impact of gate-oxide leakage on center frequency of a voltage controlled oscillator (VCO) (MEJ-2009-Jan).
26. First ever process variation aware optimization during high-level synthesis (VLSID-2007).
27. First ever high-level synthesis addressing gate leakage optimization (CDT-2008-Mar, VLSID-2006, IWLS-2005).
28. Introduction of secure digital camera (SDC) with built-in watermarking and encryption capabilities (IEEE-Access-2018, JSA-2009-Oct, SOCC-2006, TVLSI-2005-Aug, VLSID-2004).
29. Introduction of a novel memory allocator called hybrid memory allocator that uses software and hardware codesign to improve the speed of the software allocator for faster and low cost system implementation (CAL-2006-Jul-Dec, PDCS-2006).
30. Introduction of a novel metric called effective tunneling capacitance to quantify the transient gate leakage current in nano-CMOS (ICCD-2006, ISCAS-2006).
31. Development of a new approach called dual dielectric of dual thickness (DKDT) for the reduction of gate tunneling current in sub-65nm CMOS technology circuits. This research brought the nonclassical nano-CMOS technology (transistors made of non-SiO₂ dielectric) into automatic circuit synthesis flow (ICCD-2005, ISQED-2006, ISQED-2008).
32. Development of methodology for peak power optimization during behavioral synthesis (TCAS-I-2005-June, GLSVLSI-2003, ISVLSI-2003).
33. Development of fast analytical models for gate leakage calculation of architectural datapath components (VLSID-2006, IWLS-2005).
34. Exploration of a new design approach called dynamic frequency clocking (frequency scaling) along with multiple supply voltages during behavioral/high-level synthesis (TODAES-2005-Apr and VLSID-2003).
35. Design of the lowest power consuming watermarking chip available at present, which consists of 1.3M transistors and consumes only 0.3mW of power. This is also the first ever watermarking chip with both visible and invisible watermarking functionalities in the DCT domain (TCAS-II-2006-May, VLSID-2005).
36. A novel approach for simultaneous minimization of various forms of dynamic power datapath circuit, through the minimization of a novel measure, cycle power function (CPF) (TODAES-2006-Jan, TVLSI-2004-June, VLSID-2004, VLSID-2003).
37. Design of the first ever visible watermarking chip for copyright protection of publicly available images (TVLSI-2005-Aug, VLSID-2004).
38. A novel approach for power fluctuation minimization of datapath circuits using a new metric called mean power gradient (MPG) (ICCD-2003).
39. Introduction of a secure JPEG codec with built-in watermarking capability (SIPS-2003).
40. Development of one of the earliest visible watermarking algorithms, DCT domain image adaptive visible-transparent watermarking (ICME-2000).
41. Development of the first ever multiple watermarking scheme, called dual watermarking that uses an invisible watermark with a visible watermark (ACMMM-1999).

C. Research Citations