Sensing the Earth, from soil to space.

Radars, sensors and imaging methods that measure soil, snow, rivers and permafrost, from buried sensor networks to satellites, and bring the same physics to medicine.

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From rivers to permafrost

The MiXIL team
The MiXIL team
Bathymetry experiment in the Sacramento River, CA
Bathymetry experiment in the Sacramento River, CA
SoilSCAPE — the Soil Moisture Sensing Controller And oPtimal Estimator project
SoilSCAPE — the Soil Moisture Sensing Controller And oPtimal Estimator project

The Microwave Systems, Sensors and Imaging Lab (MiXIL), part of the Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical Engineering within the Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California carries out a diverse range of research involving microwave systems and sensors, environmental and medical imaging, electromagnetic and acoustic scattering and inverse problems, non-contact medical therapy, and ultra-low-energy wireless sensor networks.

Research projects
11
Publications
839+
Members & alumni
37
Years of research
14

What we work on

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01 — AUTONOMOUS

Autonomous Multi Agent Motion Tracking

In this project we are aiming to introduce an alternative method for localizing mobile antenna nodes beyond GPS, IMUs, and camera-based systems,…02 — SUBSURFACE

Subsurface and Subcanopy Soil Profile Characterization

Our group has established a long track record of expertise in forward and inverse scattering models for subcanopy and subsurface characterization for…03 — ENVIRONMENTAL

Environmental Mapping

We create multi-scale environmental maps from microwave airborne and spaceborne remote sensing platforms, including SARs, GNSS-Reflectometry, and radiometers. , Our team builds…04 — REAL-TIME

Real-Time Microwave Imaging of Thermal Therapies

We have built a GPU-accelerated 3D microwave imaging system that reconstructs tissue permittivity and conductivity in near real time from S-parameter data…05 — GNSS

GNSS Reflectometry

We use Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS)-reflectometry (GNSS-R) to estimate land surface properties from satellite signals, such as GPS, reflected off the…06 — MOTION

Motion Tracking using Magnetic Induction Sensors

In this project we are using magnetic induction (MI) sensors to track human body movements. This system offers a low-power, secure, and…07 — SOILSCAPE

SoilSCAPE

The Soil moisture Sensing Controller and oPtimal Estimator (SoilSCAPE) technology, developed in our group, uses wireless sensor networks to collect high-temporal-resolution soil…08 — SNOW 

Snow 

In this project we have built a field-ready UAV based software-defined radar (SDRadar) system that measures snow depth and snow layer structure…09 — BATHYMETRY

Bathymetry

River bathymetry, or submerged topography of riverbeds, is a critical variable in many hydrological, operational, and environmental applications. We have developed an…10 — PERMAFROST

Permafrost

We have pioneered the retrieval of arctic permafrost active layer soil profile properties, such as active layer thickness (ALT) and soil moisture…11 — SOFTWARE

Software Defined Radar

Software-defined radar (SDRadar) is a highly reconfigurable radar based on software-defined radio technology that can be adopted for different applications. Our radio-frequency…

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Build the next generation of microwave sensing with us.

We welcome prospective PhD students, postdocs and collaborators working on radar, remote sensing, electromagnetics and medical imaging.

About the lab
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