Northeastern University

Kaushik Chowdhury

Yousof Naderi

Ufuk Muncuk

M Yousof Naderi

Srinivas Sridhar

Ozgur Yavuzcetin

Yury Petrov

Kunal Sankhe

Dheryta Jaisinghani

Sensing and charging of electronic devices using coils. A software-defined collaborative sensing approach can allow detection and location of multiple electronic devices with respect to a charging surface to allow for wireless charging thereof. Systems and methods can measure the interaction of devices with a generated magnetic field through a network of nested sensing coils that can sense the location of devices located around the network of coils based on their interaction with magnetic fields. Once the location of a device to be charged is determined, charging energy can be directed to the device based on its location on the charging surface. The charging surface can include one or more sensing nodes having a combination of nested active, or driven, and passive coils. These coils can be configured to transform existing two-dimensional (2D) surfaces or three-dimensional (3D) areas into a multi-device contactless wireless charger.

Device sensing and charging using networked coils

Provided herein are systems and methods for implementing an over-the-air neural network (OANN) including by receiving, at a relay receiver of a relay node, a signal of interest from a transmitter, directionally re-transmitting the signal of interest from each of a plurality of relay transmitters of the relay node to a corresponding one of a plurality of programmable reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), reflecting, by each of the plurality of RIS, the corresponding re-transmitted signal of interest, and adjusting, by a neural network controller, a reflection angle of each of the plurality of RIS to direct the reflected signals of interest to combine in a deterministic manner at the relay receiver.

Method and apparatus for over-the-air neural networks via reconfigurable intelligent surfaces

Provided herein are reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) including a surface, a source tile positioned on or proximate a first side of the surface and including a source power layer including a power amplifier and a transmitter coil configured to generate an electromagnetic field and a radio frequency (RF) layer configured to receive power from the source electromagnetic field, and a patch antenna grid for reflecting a RF signal, and a plurality of extender tiles positioned on or proximate the first side of the surface, the extender tiles each including an extender power layer including a passive transceiver coil for receiving the source electromagnetic field and relaying the source electromagnetic field as an extender electromagnetic field and an extender RF layer configured to receive power from the extender electromagnetic field, and an extender patch antenna grid for reflecting at least one of the RF signal or a second RF signal.

Self-powered reconfigurable intelligent surfaces with wireless power transfer

The presently disclosed embodiments generally relate to systems, devices, and methods for sensing and charging of electronic devices using coils. In some embodiments, the presently disclosed system can include a pad, a charging foot, and a backpack. The pad can include one or more nested coils therein that can sense one or more corresponding receiver coils of an unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) that landed thereon. The nested coils of the pad can provide charging energy to the UAV independent of the location along the pad in which the UAV landed, and no precise alignment between the receiver coils and the charging coils is required. The charging foot can be attached to one or more legs of the UAV, and can include a receiver coil and circuitry to regulate energy received by the coil to a charging voltage level that can be provided to the battery.

Wireless charging of unmanned aerial vehicles

Provided herein are methods and apparatus for a self-synchronizing software defined radio apparatus wherein the method includes instructing, by a leader module of an RF clock module of the software defined radio apparatus and via a controller module comprising a central coordinator operative to provide a data bridge, a radio frequency (RF) transceiver to transmit a two-tone frequency signal at fand fover air, separated by a desired input clock frequency, the RF transceiver operative to receive and transmit RF signals, receiving, at a follower module, a transmitted signal, extracting, by the follower module, an envelope of the received signal, and passing the received signal through a filter to obtain a reference clock without modifying existing physical/link layer protocols.

Method and apparatus for software defined radio with timing, phase, and frequency synchronization

Systems, devices, and methods for access point discovery in a wireless network are provided. An access point device embeds into a preamble of a transmission packet discovery information including modifications determined by passing in-phase quadrature (IQ) symbols through a finite impulse response (FIR) filter to introduce a phase shift in selected ones of the IQ symbols. The phase shifts are encoded into bits in selected ones of a plurality of subcarriers, bounded by a maximum phase shift and a maximum number of the subcarriers to limit the packet error rate. A convolutional neural network can learn channel state and other information to determine the maximum phase shift and number of subcarriers. A client device can select from among a plurality of modified transmission packets to send a discovery request.

Method and apparatus for access point discovery in dense WiFi networks

A distributed wireless radio frequency-based charging system includes hardware and software platforms. The hardware platform includes adaptive energy harvesters and programmable energy transmitters. The software platform manages the hardware profiles, resources (e.g., energy waveforms and transmission powers), schedules the beams of the energy transmitters, and switches between modes of wireless charging and data access point. This allows the energy transmitters to be configured adaptively based on the ambient energy availability, energy needs and number of energy-requesting devices in the network. Under the software control, the energy transmitters can cooperatively form focused beams of energy and power for transmission to energy harvesters in the energy-receiving devices, such as sensors, Internet of Things (IoT) enabled appliances, and mobile/wearable equipment. The energy harvesters can utilize the energy contained within the transmitted beams, as well as ambient RF sources, for directly powering their operation or charging a battery/capacitor for subsequent use.

Distributed wireless charging system and method

The disclosed apparatus and methods can be used to provide an energy efficient Internet of Things (IoT) communication method that can be deployed on a city-wide scale using existing infrastructure and that can target individual sensors or devices. An example apparatus is a decoder including an energy detector and a processor. The energy detector is configured to detect average subframe energy levels of a plurality of subframes during reception of at least one frame of data defined by a first communications protocol (e.g., Long-Term Evolution (LTE)). The average subframe energy levels of the plurality of subframes form a pattern of relatively higher and lower energy levels. The processor is configured to interpret, according to a second communications protocol, the pattern of energy levels to decode a block of data represented by the pattern of energy levels. Another embodiment is a method producing index modulation signals of the second communications protocol.

Encoding and decoding data in communication frames of a communications protocol

A sensor system and process for measuring electromagnetic activity of a brain are provided. The system and process employ a sensor assembly having a plurality of electrodes arranged in a closely spaced arrangement and a processor to determine a weighted average of the signals indicative of an electric field generated by electromagnetic activity of the brain. The system provides a medical body area network of a subject including one or more of the sensor assemblies and one or more additional sensors, which may be within a smartphone or other wearable device.

Growing community of inventors

Boston, MA, United States of America

Kaushik Chowdhury