Bruce Cockburn

Area of Study / Keywords

Computer Engineering Communications Engineering Integrated Circuits and Systems Signal and Image Processing

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About

Bruce F. Cockburn completed a BSc degree in Engineering Physics (Electronics and Communications option) in 1981 from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario. In 1985 and 1990 he completed M Math and PhD degrees, respectively, in Computer Science at the University of Waterloo. His doctoral thesis considered the design and analysis of provably optimal test algorithms for classes of faults in semiconductor memories.

Dr. Cockburn is presently a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Alberta. From 1981 to 1983 he worked as a test engineer and software designer at Mitel Corporation, Kanata, Ontario, Canada. His research interests include VLSI design and test, parallel signal processing algorithms and architectures, novel applications of field-programmable gate arrays, iterative decoder architectures, MIMO decoder architectures, fading channel simulators, and applications of heterogeneous parallel computer hardware for accelerating communications system verification, data compression & decompression, and DNA sequence alignment.

Dr. Cockburn is a member of the IEEE Computer Society, the IEEE Communications Society, the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society, the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and the Association for Computing Machinery. He is a registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Alberta, Canada.

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Research

Please note that Dr. Cockburn is retired and his research is focussed on completing the investigations of his existing PhD students.  He is also involved in the co-supervision of MSc students with Dr. Duncan Elliott.  He is no longer in a position to accept new, solely supervised graduate students.

Past Research Interests

My research interests lie in a variety of areas in Computer Engineering, Communications, Signal Processing, and Bioinformatics. A general theme is the efficient hardware implementation and/or acceleration of computationally-intensive algorithms using heterogeneous parallel digital hardware. For example, the signal processing that must be performed within a cellular telephone requires computational resources that used to be considered the domain of supercomputers. It is a challenging problem to efficiently exploit modern semiconductor technology to ensure that all of the required computation is completed within strict time constraints. Ensuring the lowest possible energy consumption is also important since many modern communications devices are battery-powered.

Recent Research

My research group is currently investigating the efficient hardware acceleration, using multicore CPUs, FPGAs and GPUs, of computationally demanding problems in a variety of application areas including DNA short read alignment (Bioinformatics), data compression and decompression (Computer Communications), and wireless channel modelling for multiple-antenna systems (Wireless Communications). For example, wireless fading is the phenomenon that causes received wireless signals to vary rapidly in strength due to constructive and destructive interference between the many possible propagation paths between the transmitting antenna(s) and the receiving antenna(s). The conventional practice is to use wireless fading channel models implemented as software programs. Implementing those same channel models in hardware allows system simulation times to be reduced by several orders of magnitude. The resulting faster simulation times are permitting my group to more rapidly and effectively investigate new parallel hardware designs for the decoder circuits that are used to accurately decode the radio signals arriving at the receiver antenna(s).

Recruitment from Underrepresented Groups

When in a position to recruit new graduate students, Dr. Cockburn actively reached out to students from underrepresented groups to encourage their involvement in summer research and postgraduate studies. He was a frequent participant as both a mentor and activity participant in the SET and CHOICES conferences for girls organized by Women In Scholarship, Engineering, Science, and Technology (WISEST).

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Teaching

For the last decade of his career Dr. Cockburn's teaching was primarily involved with the senior undergraduate courses ECE 315 "Computer Interfacing and Embedded Systems" and ECE 410 "Advanced Digital Logic Design", and the graduate course ECE 512 "Digital System Testing and Design for Testability".  He is no longer teaching courses at the University of Alberta.

Territorial Acknowledgement

The University of Alberta, its buildings, labs, and research stations are primarily located on the traditional territory of Cree, Blackfoot, Métis, Nakota Sioux, Iroquois, Dene, and Ojibway/Saulteaux/Anishinaabe nations; lands that are now known as part of Treaties 6, 7, and 8 and homeland of the Métis. The University of Alberta respects the sovereignty, lands, histories, languages, knowledge systems, and cultures of First Nations, Métis and Inuit nations.

Stefan Damkjar, Junqi Zhu, Bruce F. Cockburn, Duncan G. Elliott

IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine. 2026 April; 10.1109/MAES.2025.3638725

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Jun Hu, Tingting Zhang, Kambiz Moez, Bruce F. Cockburn

IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. 2026 January; 10.1109/JETCAS.2026.3702595

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Zijing Niu, Tingting Zhang, Honglan Jiang, Bruce F. Cockburn, Leibo Liu, Jie Han

IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems I: Regular Papers. 2024 January; 10.1109/TCSI.2023.3326329

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Mohammad Saeed Ansari, Bruce F. Cockburn, Jie Han

IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing. 2022 January; 10.1109/TETC.2020.2989699

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Mohammad Saeed Ansari, Bruce F. Cockburn, Jie Han

IEEE Transactions on Computers. 2021 April; 10.1109/TC.2020.2992113

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Mohammad Saeed Ansari, Vojtech Mrazek, Bruce F. Cockburn, Lukas Sekanina, Zdenek Vasicek, Jie Han

IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems. 2020 February; 10.1109/TVLSI.2019.2940943

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Yuanzhuo Qu, Bruce F. Cockburn, Zhe Huang, Hao Cai, Yue Zhang, Weisheng Zhao, Jie Han

IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology. 2018 November; 10.1109/TNANO.2018.2873970

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Mohammad Saeed Ansari, Honglan Jiang, Bruce F. Cockburn, Jie Han

IEEE Journal on Emerging and Selected Topics in Circuits and Systems. 2018 September; 10.1109/JETCAS.2018.2832204

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Yan Li, Yufeng Li, Han Jie, Jianhao Hu, Fan Yang, Xuan Zeng, Bruce Cockburn, Jie Chen

IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems. 2018 August; 10.1109/TVLSI.2018.2819896

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Michael Shoniker, Oleg Oleynikov, Bruce F. Cockburn, Jie Han, Manish Rana, Witold Pedrycz

IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design of Integrated Circuits and Systems. 2018 June; 10.1109/TCAD.2017.2748027

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