The grant was awarded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which is a basic research funding agency. The office focuses on military assets like communication equipment and computers and how they would react if they were attacked using electromagnetism, said Edl Schamiloglu, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher of the project.
Intentional Electromagnetic Interference, or IEMI, is what happens when intense electromagnetic fields are generated by a repeatable, non-explosive, high-power generator, and are then directed to a target by an antenna. These fields can have devastating effects on power grids, military equipment, or anything powered by electricity or controlled by computers, according to a paper by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
“The whole idea of electromagnetic threat is a big problem. This is something that concerns not just military, but the banking systems, the internet, airports, hydro-electric dams and the power grid,” Schamiloglu said.
UNM is the leading institute in this project and the University of Maryland is a subcontractor, he said.
Schamiloglu is beginning the research by studying how smaller, less catastrophic electromagnetic events can stress electronics by overloading them, causing unexpected and unpredictable behavior, according to UNM News.
“Basically, we are studying how everyday electronics can function when they are slightly stressed. By stressed, I mean when they are operating at voltages that are a little higher than what they are supposed to,” he said.
Schamiloglu wants to understand what happens when, for example, there is a voltage fluctuation on a power line and computer chips suddenly operate at six or seven volts instead of the normal five volts, he said.
“We are trying to understand how, at the chip level and the system level, failures might occur,” he said.
Earlier approaches to this issue centered on creating databases that were used to calculate the probability of system failures using statistics. Schamiloglu wants to create models that can actually predict when and how a system will fail, and come up with ways to prevent these failures, he said.
“The idea here is to have a first-principle, science-based approach and try to understand how, at chip and board levels, voltage surges can lead to failure in electronics,” he said. “We want to come up with predicted models so that one can then asses their facilities, their equipment and see whether or not they need to protect them to prevent such failures from happening.”
There are concerns about how dependent the world is on electronics today, he said.
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Modern automobiles have numerous computers onboard, and if something were to influence those electronics it would disable the car, he said.
The results of the research could eventually help prevent disasters and systems failure in many other areas besides military equipment, Schamiloglu said.
“Some of our work could lead to published standards which could guide manufacturers when they make their products in the future to make them better, so they are less vulnerable to potential threats,” he said.
Schamiloglu said he plans to involve several graduate students in the research.
Sayyed Shah is the assistant news editor at the Daily Lobo. He can be contacted at assistant-news@dailylobo.com or Twitter @mianfawadshah.
