Brent Maundy

Professor

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Contact information

Email

bmaundy@ucalgary.ca

Phone

Office: 403.220.6177

Location

Information and Communications Technology Building : ICT 442

Courses

Fall

Analog Filter Design (ENEL 559)

Active RC and Switched-Capacitor Filter Design (ENEL 659)

Electric Circuits II (ENEL 343)

Digital Electronic Circuits (ENCM 467)

Research

Research areas

• Microelectronic Circuits
• Fractional Circuits and Systems

Research activities

My research is in the design of analog linear circuits and fractional order systems, including bioimpedance measurement techniques. It is divided into two main areas aimed at: A) Continuing the design and development of new circuits capable of performing mathematical functions using analog circuits. Several of these functions include filtering, amplification, multiplication, oscillators, and general signal processing; B) Continuing the development and exploration of fractional order systems and bio-impedance measurement methods. The two areas are linked by the common thread of being processed in the analog domain with one being integer order and the other being fractional order. Bio-impedance measurement is often modelled using fractional systems, but is processed in the analog domain.

Research area A: In the analog processing of signals is filter design which, in the last several years my colleagues, students, and I have made use of two port network concepts to generate novel single and fully differential active filters using the power of symbolic math. The flexibility of this method is relatively new and previously unknown filters have been designed, tested, and implemented in silicon and shown to work. Note: this work is not meant to replace conventional filter design using standard building blocks, but there is a need to formulate a circuit theoretic approach that systematically shows what types of single or fully differential filters that can be built around the simplest possible one or two-transistor core. The advantages to be gained are low power consumption, miniaturization, and simplicity of design.

Research area B: In the area of fractional order systems, modelling, and bio-impedance measurement methods my research looks at the following subject areas: 1)Bioimpedance measurement techniques, 2)Design and implementation of portable impedance analyzers, 3)Use of fractional capacitors in filter structures and modelling of supercapacitors and, 4)Modelling of fruits and food characterization. In the subareas of bioimpedance measurement techniques and analysis, our research aims to develop new means and measurement of bioimpedance in general. Already we have developed low-cost monitoring devices using indirect measurement techniques that can be used for monitoring physiological changes in tissues, agriculture, and food characterization and a provisional patent has been granted to my group for a low cost bioimpedance analyzer. In the subarea of fractional (super)capacitors and their modelling this element has been used by our group to produce unusual asymmetric characteristics in filters not available through commercial capacitors. More recently, we have been working on advanced techniques to model supercapacitors and better predict their behavior under charging and discharging conditions.

Biography

Brent J. Maundy (M’97) received the BSc degree in electrical engineering and the MSc degree in electronics and instrumentation from the University of the West Indies, St. Augustine, Trinidad, in 1983 and 1986, respectively, and the PhD degree in electrical engineering from Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada, in 1992. He completed a one-year Postdoctoral Fellowship at Dalhousie University where he was actively involved in its analog microelectronics group. Subsequently, he taught at the University of the West Indies, and was a visiting Professor at the University of Louisville for seven months. He later worked in the defense industry for two years on mixed signal projects. In 1997, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Calgary, Canada, where he is currently a Professor. His current research is in the design of linear circuit elements, high-speed amplifier design, fractional circuits and systems, active filters and CMOS circuits for signal processing applications. He is a past Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON CIRCUITS & SYSTEMS II:–EXPRESS BRIEFS

Publications

A. Al-Ali,  A. S. Elwakil,  B. J. Maundy and T. J. Freeborn, "Extraction of phase information from magnitude-only bioimpedance measurements using a modified Kramers-Kronig Transform," Circuits Systems and Signal Processing, vol. 37, no. 8, pp. 3635-3650, August, 2018.

A. M. AbdelAty, A. S. Elwakil, A. G. Radwan, C. Psychalinos and B. J. Maundy, "Approximation of the Fractional-Order Laplacian $s^\alpha$ As a Weighted Sum of First-Order High-Pass Filters," in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems II: Express Briefs, vol. 65, no. 8, pp. 1114-1118, Aug. 2018, doi: 10.1109/TCSII.2018.2808949.

Elwakil A., Maundy, B., Elamien, Mohammed Balla; Belostotski, Leonid, “A four-quadrant current multiplier/divider cell with four transistors”, Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing, v 95, n 1, p 173-179, April 1, 2018.

B. J. Maundy, A. S. Elwakil, and C. Psychalinos, “CMOS Realization of All-Positive Pinched Hysteresis Loops,” Complexity, vol. 2017, Article ID 7863095, 15 pages, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1155/2017/7863095.

Maundy BJ, Elwakil A, Psychalinos C. Simple MOS-based circuit designed to show pinched hysteresis behavior. Int J Circ Theory Appl. 2018;46:1123–1128. https://doi.org/10.1002/cta.2452.

Bertsiasa P., Costas Psychalinosa C., Elwakil A, Maundy B. (2017). “Current-mode capacitorless integrators and differentiators for implementing emulators of fractional-order elements”, AEUE - International Journal of Electronics and Communications.

A. S. Elwakil, A. G. Radwan, J. T. Freeborn, A. Allagui, B. J. Maundy, and M. Fouda, “Low-voltage commercial super-capacitor response to periodic linear-with-time current excitation: A case study,” IET Circuits, Devices and Systems, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 189 – 195, 2017.