We have done recent work on modeling of the air-ground wireless channel in multiple ground site environments, and will be looking at the aeronautical-satellite channel as well. Past work has been on measurement/modeling for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) channels, airport surface area channels, atypical indoor channels such as within stairwells and elevator shafts for public safety communications, and the wireless “microchannel” for wireless links withIN integrated circuits.
This involves modulation (sometimes error control coding), spectrum spreading, multicarrier signaling, equalization, diversity combining, and all the processing required at transmitter and receiver for effective signaling in a variety of channels. An example of recent work is filterbank multicarrier (FBMC) signaling for aeronautical applications.
This area includes duplexing, multiplexing, and multiple access scheme analysis and design for multiple network topologies (relay, mesh, and ad hoc). Our recent work has addressed comparison of Mux/Duplexing/MA techniques across multiple domains for these networks, and MA/Duplexing designs for wireless networks on chips (WiNoCs).
We are investigating communication techniques for UAVs. This includes work for NASA, and also work with small UAVs, where we are exploring the use of compact software defined radios. With several other faculty (Wang from our group, and Xu and Nelakuditi from CSE) we will be expanding this to include UAV networking
We are just launching work on millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless, with potential applications being indoors, at airports, and on UAVs.
A senior design group is working at installing a direct-broadcast TV antenna on the roof of our building. We plan to downconvert the signal, sample, and store samples for analysis, with the goal to record K-band signal strength over time to quantify attenuation due to precipitation. A future project may install a receiver for monitoring VLF transmissions due to lightning, as part of the World Wide Lightning Location Network.