Organizationally, STARLab is a research group within the Department of Electrical Engineering of Stanford University. The Laboratory is composed of four regular faculty, two research faculty, a number of emeritus faculty with active research programs, two consulting professors, several research associates, and more than sixty graduate students and staff.
Research areas in the STARlab share a common basis in the study and exploitation of electromagnetic wave phenomena. Electromagnetic waves are used in remote sensing systems, communications systems, and other applications.
Research in electromagnetics and remote sensing offers a variety of means for learning about the natural environment. Measurements using radio signals traveling between the ground and NASA planetary spacecraft are used to study planetary atmospheres, ionospheres (the ionized gases that surround planets), surfaces, and ring systems, resulting in an important, precise source of information on these objects. The geophysical properties of planetary surfaces are inferred from carom signals traveling between orbiting spacecraft and the earth via the surfaces of the planets. Professors and students are active in many of NASA's current planetary missions. The experimental program motivates and is supported by ongoing theoretical work in advanced theories of wave propagation and scattering. These theoretical and experimental programs are supported by active research in the area of signal processing and efficient techniques in using digital processors.
Several members of the laboratory are active in the newly established Center for Telecommunications. Work in the telecommunications area includes space, mobile radio, and optical fiber communication systems. Digital switching and signal processing studies, together with VLSI implementation, are an important part of these activities. Faculty and students also participate with others in the School of Engineering in the research of the NASA/Stanford Center for Aeronautics and Space Information Systems (CASIS).
In recent years, the Ultra Low Power Group has developed technology that allows processors to operate 100 to 1000 times more efficiently than standard CMOS. Work is being done at the algorithm, architecture, circuit, device, and VLSI processing levels to achieve these high efficiencies. As an example, the group recently produced the world's most energy-efficient 1024-point FFT processor.
Members of the laboratory are also engaged in very low frequency research into the origin and properties of electromagnetic signals in the Earth's environment, their interactions with the energetic particles in the earth's radiation belts, their effects on the ionosphere, and their relation to other phenomena on and below the Earth's surface, in the upper atmosphere, and in interplanetary space. Of particular recent interest is the investigation of lightning discharges and their effects on the earth's near space environment. Both natural and man-made signals are studied in this research. Measurements are taken at a number of locations around the world, including Alaska, Greenland and the Antarctic.
Measurements in the Ultra Low Frequency (ULF) range have recently led to the discovery that major earthquakes may be preceded by low-frequency electromagnetic signals. As a result, additional measurement systems are being built and installed along the San Andreas fault in California. This research has become a cooperative effort with the School of Earth Sciences.
Research, pioneered at Stanford, is also ongoing in the further development of radar remote sensing of ocean waves and current systems. Cooperative research in this area is underway with faculty members in the School of Earth Sciences.
STARLab maintains a variety of experimental research laboratories equipped with state-of-the-art test and measurement equipment including systems and workstations for use in signal and data analysis. Several of these machines are equipped with graphics capabilities as well as software tools for system and VLSI hardware design.