Extremely High Frequency RF Laboratory
Abstract
Over the past 6 years, the Hume Center at Virginia Tech has worked to integrate the educational objectives of the university with advanced research in support of our national defense partners. Key innovation areas at Hume include the use of software-defined platforms for a variety of missions, establishment of an academic SATCOM ground station for validating research, and a researchportfolio leveraging cleared student participation within Hume~s secure facilities.Hume researchers~ experience with and contributions to open source communities like GNU Radio and Redhawk are examples of our joint mission of education and Defense research, helping support the creation of new DoD mission capabilities while simultaneously preparing students to join thenational defense workforce. This DURIP proposal requests funding to establish an Extremely High Frequency RF Laboratory within the Hume Center. This laboratory will build on the already extensive RF laboratory of the Hume Center by expanding its capabilities into the millimeter wavelength bands. The millimeter bands, including the 60 GHz band (57 ~ 64 GHz), represent the nextfrontier in commercially available devices and are likely to dramatically transform vehicle and vehicle infrastructure design. This laboratory will build on and extend the extensive expertise Virginia Tech has in the wireless and communications communities with technical expertise in wireless networking, communication systems, applied signal processing, and dynamic spectrum access. The Extremely High Frequency RF Laboratory will allow the Hume Center to bring its wireless expertise into the high frequency, high bandwidth domain critical to military, intelligence, and commercial security. Commercial ~radar-on-chip~ and complete transceiver devices are rapidly becoming available including such devices as the RIC60A from Omniradar (Netherlands), BGT60 from Infineon (Japan), and the A111from Acconeer (Sweden). Manufacturers of these devices highlight that their high accuracy and low cost are likely to lead developers to include them in a myriad of devicesincluding proximity sensing in autonomous vehicles, fluid levels in high capacity tanks, consumer gestures (e.g., Google Gestures), and medical applications (heart rate, breathing, etc.). It is unclear at this time what security measures are in place in the devices and how multiple devices in close proximity might degrade their performance. Of critical importance is to identify the specific capabilities of the chips including the support for channelization or other interference mitigation, attack vectors for spoofing or corrupting measurement data, and the ability to include arbitrary waveform for communication (either covert or overt) via otherwise non-communication devices.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 15, 2019
- Source ID
- N000141912508
Entities
People
- Thomas Krauss
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Virginia Tech