Drexel University

Politecnico Di Milano

Adant Technologies, Inc.

University of Pennsylvania

University of Oulu

Kapil R Dandekar

Prathaban Mookiah

Daniele Piazza

Cem Sahin

Michele D'Amico

Nikhil Gulati

Nagarajan Kandasamy

Danh H Nguyen

John Kountouriotis

David Gonzalez

Marko Jacovic

Damiano Patron

James J Chacko

Adam K Fontecchio

Ioannis Savidis

Kyle Juretus

Timothy Kurzweg

John MacLaren Walsh

Rachel Greenstadt

Vasil Pano

Yury Gogotsi

Genevieve Eugenie Dion

Baris Taskin

Dwight L Jaggard

Harri Saarnisaari

Moshe Kam

Richard Anthony Primerano

Kristy A Jost

David J Dorsey

Ibrahim Tekin

Cole Gindhart

Rohit Bahl

Boris Shishkin

Oday Bshara

Logan J Henderson

Md Abu Saleh Tajin

Xaime Rivas Rey

Yuqiao Liu

Michael N Le

Jonathan W Fisher

Stephen J Watt

Anton Paatelma

Andrea C Cook

Low latency beamforming using phased antenna arrays is the key for practical deployment of envisioned millimeter wave (mmWave) Gbps mobile networks. This work aims towards reducing the overhead of the exhaustive sector-level sweep phase of the analog beamforming adopted in the IEEE 802.11ad standard. This system uses a reconfigurable antenna single RF chain in the sub-6 GHz new radio (NR) band to aid codebook-based beam selection in the mmWave band of the NR. The system exploits the congruence between the spatial propagation signatures of signals at both mmWave and sub-6 GHz frequencies to reduce the beam search space.

Millimeter wave coarse beamforming using outband sub-6GHz reconfigurable antennas

A key-based interleaver for enhancement the security of wireless communication includes a physical layer communication channel key to provide security even when the software encryption key is compromised. A method of creating a secure communication link using a physical layer interleaving system includes implementing a key policy implementation that utilizes temporal dependency and interleaving bits using a flexible inter and intra-block data interleaver.

Physical layer key based interleaving for secure wireless communication

On-chip wireless links offer improved network performance due to long distance communication, additional bandwidth, and broadcasting capabilities of antennas. A Through-Silicon Via (TSV)-based antenna design called TSV_A establishes multi-band wireless communication through the silicon substrate medium with only a 3 dB loss over a 30 mm on-chip distance. Simulation results show an improvement in network latency up to &#x2dc;13% (average improvement of &#x2dc;7%), energy-delay improvements of &#x2dc;34% on average, and an improvement in throughput up to &#x2dc;34% (average improvement).

TSV-based on-chip antennas, measurement, and evaluation

A physical layer based technique secures wireless communication between a transmitter and receiver. The technique involves obfuscating the preamble data of the baseband signal through unique keys that are generated at the transmitter and the receiver based on channel characteristics known only to them.

Physical gate based preamble obfuscation for securing wireless communication

A reactive jamming software defined radio (SDR) apparatus to target Frequency Hopping Spread-Spectrum (FHSS) signals includes a peripheral module for SDR processing; a reactive jamming hardware IP core that implements time-sensitive operations on a field programmable gate array (FGPA); and a host computer that implements non-time-critical operations, such as jammer configuration, logging, and strategy composition.

Energy-efficient reactive jamming of frequency-hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) signals using software-defined radios

A learning protocol for distributed antenna state selection in directional cognitive small-cell networks is described. Antenna state selection is formulated as a nonstationary multi-armed bandit problem and an effective solution is provided based on the adaptive pursuit method from reinforcement learning. A cognitive small cell testbed, called WARP-TDMAC, provides a useful software-defined radio package to explore the usefulness of compact, electronically reconfigurable antennas in dense small-cell configurations. A practical implementation of the adaptive pursuit method provides a robust distributed antenna state selection protocol for cognitive small-cell networks. Test results confirm that directionality provides significant advantages over omnidirectional transmission which suffers high throughput reduction and complete link outages at above-average jamming or cross-link interference power.

Adaptive pursuit learning method to mitigate small-cell interference through directionality

Ultrasonic through metal communication systems are an effective solution for transmitting data across a metal barrier when the structural integrity of the barrier cannot be compromised by physically penetrating it. Substantial improvements in through metal communication systems have been made in recent years, enabling high speed communications of up to 15 Mbps, as well as power transmission up to 30 W across flat walls. A system is described that allows for ultrasonic through metal communication across the wall of a steel tube. Primary challenges of 1) transducer contact, 2) curvature effect on echoes, and 3) alignment are analyzed and addressed through the use of radial mode piezoelectric transducers, transducer 'horns', and Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATs). The resulting system shows no significant loss due to changes in alignment, allows for the use of either piezoelectric transducers or EMATs externally, and achieves max data rates of approximately 600 kbps without echo equalization.

System for ultrasonic communication across curved metal surfaces

Presenting a visualization of antenna radiation patterns may include sending a request to a server for up-to-date information regarding an antenna mode; receiving the request at the server and reading a register value for the antenna mode; responding, by the server, with updated antenna mode information; and overlaying antenna radiation patterns on an image based on the mode information.

Beam visualization and using augmented reality for control and interaction

Channel based authentication schemes for intrusion detection that operates at the physical layer are described that apply the capabilities of a pattern reconfigurable antenna for improved performance. Performance gains are achieved by the schemes as a function of the number of antenna modes. The first scheme relies on a channel based fingerprint for differentiating between transmitters whereas another scheme poses the intruder detection problem as a generalized likelihood ratio (GLR) test problem that operates on the channel realizations corresponding to different modes present in a reconfigurable antenna. The benefits of these two schemes over single element antennas are demonstrated. General guidelines are provided on how to choose the different elements of the decision metric in order to realize better performance for physical layer based authentication schemes based on any diversity scheme.

Reconfigurable antenna based solutions for device authentication and intrusion detection in wireless networks

A planar reconfigurable antenna that is capable of generating omnidirectional and directional radiation patterns over a wide frequency band or over multiple frequency bands includes a substrate, one or more pairs of conductive elements on at least one side of the substrate, a common RF feed point, and respective switches that selectively connects one or all of the conductive elements to the common RF feed point. An omni-directional radiation pattern is generated when all of the conductive elements are connected to the common RF feed point, while a directional radiation pattern is generated when only a pair of conductive elements on opposite sides of the substrate are connected to the common RF feed point. In the directional radiation mode, the conductive elements that are not connected to the common RF feed point act as a reflector for other conductive elements that are connected to the common RF feed point.

Wide band reconfigurable planar antenna with omnidirectional and directional radiation patterns

Composite Right/Left Handed (CRLH) Leaky-Wave Antennas (LWAs) are a class of radiating elements characterized by an electronically steerable radiation pattern. The design is comprised of a cascade of CRLH unit-cells populated with varactor diodes. By varying the voltage across the varactor diodes, the antenna can steer its directional beam from broadside to backward and forward end-fire directions. A CRLH Leaky-Wave Antenna for the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi band is miniaturized by etching a Complementary Split-Ring Resonator (CSRR) underneath each CRLH unit-cell. As opposed to conventional LWA designs, the LWA layout does not require thin interdigital capacitors, significantly reducing the PCB manufacturing constraints required to achieve size reduction. The resulting antenna enables CRLH LWAs to be used not only for wireless access points, but also potentially for mobile devices.

Miniaturized reconfigurable CRLH metamaterial leaky-wave antenna using complementary split-ring resonators

A wearable power harvesting system includes a knitted fabric rectenna including an antenna adapted to receive radio-frequency energy within a desired frequency band and a rectifier circuit that converts received radio-frequency energy into a DC current and voltage. A knitted fabric load/storage unit stores DC power from the rectifier circuit. The power harvesting system is adapted to harvest the radio-frequency energy within the desired frequency band, which may include WLAN frequencies such as the standard 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WLAN standard frequencies.

Wearable power harvesting system

A method for selecting the state of a reconfigurable antenna installed at either the receiver or transmitter of a communication system is provided. The proposed method uses online learning algorithm based on the theory of multi-armed bandit to perform antenna state selection. The selection technique utilizes the Post-Processing Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PPSNR) as a reward metric and maximizes the long-term average reward over time. The performance of the learning based selection technique is empirically evaluated using wireless channel data. The data is collected in an indoor environment using a 2&#xd7;2 MIMO OFDM system employing highly directional metamaterial Reconfigurable Leaky Wave Antennas. The learning based selection technique shows performance improvements in terms of average PPSNR and regret over conventional heuristic policies.

Method for selecting state of a reconfigurable antenna in a communication system via machine learning

A method allows reconfigurable multi-element antennas to select the antenna configuration in MIMO, SIMO and MISO communication system. This selection scheme uses spatial correlation, channel reciprocal condition number, delay spread and average Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) information to select the antenna radiation pattern at the receiver. Using this approach, it is possible to achieve capacity gains in a multi-element reconfigurable antenna system without modifying the data frame of a conventional wireless communication system. The capacity gain achievable with this configuration selection approach is calculated through numerical simulations using reconfigurable circular patch antennas at the receiver of a MIMO system that employs minimum mean square error receivers for channel estimation. Channel capacity and Bit Error Rate (BER) results show the improvement offered relative to a conventional antenna selection technique for reconfigurable MIMO systems.

Systems and methods for selecting reconfigurable antennas in MIMO systems

Reconfigurable antennas in an ad-hoc network are provided where all nodes employ MIMO/SIMO/MISO communication techniques. Three types of reconfigurable antennas: Reconfigurable Printed Dipole Array (RPDA), Reconfigurable Circular Patch Antenna (RCPA) and Two-Port Reconfigurable CRLH Leaky Wave Antennas are used. The RPDA, RCPA and the CRLH Leaky Wave antennas have a different number of configurations as well as different degrees of pattern diversity between possible configurations. To effectively use these antennas in a network, the performance of centralized and decentralized antenna configuration selection schemes are quantified for reconfiguration at one or both link ends. The sum capacity of the network is used as a metric to quantify the performance of these antennas in measured and simulated network channels.

Reconfigurable antennas and configuration selection methods for AD-HOC networks

Growing community of inventors

Philadelphia, PA, United States of America

Kapil R Dandekar