Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe wireless radio channel is typically thought of as a means to move information from transmitter to receiver, but the radio channel can also be used to detect changes in the environment of the radio link. This dissertation is focused on the measurements we can make at the physical layer of wireless networks, and how we can use those measurements to obtain information about the locations of transceivers and people. The first contribution of this work is the development and testing of an open source, 802.11b sounder and receiver, which is capable of decoding packets and using them to estimate the channel impulse response (CIR) of a radio link at a fraction of the cost of traditional channel sounders. This receiver improves on previous implementations by performing optimized matched filtering on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) of the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), allowing it to operate at full bandwidth. The second contribution of this work is an extensive experimental evaluation of a technology called location distinction, i.e., the ability to identify changes in radio transceiver position, via CIR measurements. Previous location distinction work has focused on single-input single-output (SISO) radio links. We extend this work to the context of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio links, and study system design trade-offs which affect the performance of MIMO location distinction. The third contribution of this work introduces the "exploiting radio windows" (ERW) attack, in which an attacker outside of a building surreptitiously uses the transmissions of an otherwise secure wireless network inside of the building to infer location information about people inside the building. This is possible because of the relative transparency of external walls to radio transmissions. The final contribution of this dissertation is a feasibility study for building a rapidly deployable radio tomographic (RTI) imaging system for special operations forces (SOF). We show that it is possible to obtain valuable tracking information using as few as 10 radios over a single floor of a typical suburban home, even without precise radio location measurements

RSSI-Based direction-of-departure estimation in bluetooth low energy using an array of frequency-steered leaky-wave antennas

This paper presents a novel advanced Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacon, which is based on an array of frequency-steered leaky-wave antennas (LWAs), as a transmitter for a Direction-of-Departure (DoD) estimation system. The LWA array is completely passive, fabricated in a low-cost FR4 printed-circuit board and designed to multiplex to different angular directions in space each one of the three associated BLE advertising channels that are used for periodically transmitting the ID of the beacon. This way, the use of more expensive hardware associated to electronic phased-array steering/beam-switching is avoided. Four commercial BLE modules are connected to the four ports of the array, producing an advanced BLE beacon that synthesizes twelve directive beams (one per each port and advertising channel) distributed over a wide Field of View (FoV) of 120 degrees in the azimuthal plane. Then, any BLE enabled IoT device located within this FoV can scan the messages from the beacon and obtain the corresponding Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) of these twelve beams to estimate the relative DoD by using amplitude-monopulse signal processing, thus dispensing from complex In-phase/Quadrature (IQ) data acquisition or high computational load.We propose an angular windowing technique to eliminate angular ambiguities and increase the angular resolution, reporting a root mean squared angular error of 3.7º in a wide FoV of 120º.This work was supported in part by the Spanish National projects TEC2016-75934-C4-4-R and TEC2016-76465-C2-1-R, and in part by the 2018 UPCT Santander Research Grant

Living IoT: A Flying Wireless Platform on Live Insects

Sensor networks with devices capable of moving could enable applications ranging from precision irrigation to environmental sensing. Using mechanical drones to move sensors, however, severely limits operation time since flight time is limited by the energy density of current battery technology. We explore an alternative, biology-based solution: integrate sensing, computing and communication functionalities onto live flying insects to create a mobile IoT platform. Such an approach takes advantage of these tiny, highly efficient biological insects which are ubiquitous in many outdoor ecosystems, to essentially provide mobility for free. Doing so however requires addressing key technical challenges of power, size, weight and self-localization in order for the insects to perform location-dependent sensing operations as they carry our IoT payload through the environment. We develop and deploy our platform on bumblebees which includes backscatter communication, low-power self-localization hardware, sensors, and a power source. We show that our platform is capable of sensing, backscattering data at 1 kbps when the insects are back at the hive, and localizing itself up to distances of 80 m from the access points, all within a total weight budget of 102 mg.Comment: Co-primary authors: Vikram Iyer, Rajalakshmi Nandakumar, Anran Wang, In Proceedings of Mobicom. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 15 pages, 201

Analysis of Channel Measurements Using a Very Large Antenna Array

Accurate wireless channel models are crucial to simulate the effect of radio wave propagation in a channel on wireless communication systems. By calculating physical processing effects that signal undergoes while traveling from transmitter to the receiver, channel models help to analyze performance of wireless systems. State of the art channel model such as WINNER and COST 2100 are able to model the characteristics of conventional MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) systems (where moderate number of antennas is used at the two sides of the link) with sufficient accuracy. However, model extensions are needed for the current models in order to be able to capture new propagation characteristics result from having massive number of antenna elements at one or both ends of the communication link. In this thesis work, a measurement campaign is performed using very large antenna array (about 7.5m long) in order to study key propagation characteristics for massive MIMO. The channel measurements are performed using two frequency bands (2.6 GHz and 5.1 GHz), vertical and horizontal antenna polarizations, directional and omni-directional antennas. Effect of aforementioned setup parameters on cluster delay and angle spreads, power slope and shadowing, number of clusters and their observation lengths are studied in this work. Also correlation among estimated cluster parameters is presented. It was observed, that antenna polarization does not have significant effect on estimated cluster parameters. On the other hand, some estimated parameters like delay and angle spread, shadowing achieve higher values using 2.6 GHz band. Impact of antenna directivity was not very significant. Results of this thesis work are important while implementing extension for cluster-based COST 2100 channel model for massive MIMO case

Radio Frequency Interference Impact Assessment on Global Navigation Satellite Systems

The Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen of the EC Joint Research Centre (IPSC-JRC) has been mandated to perform a study on the Radio Frequency (RF) threat against telecommunications and ICT control systems. This study is divided into two parts. The rst part concerns the assessment of high energy radio frequency (HERF) threats, where the focus is on the generation of electromagnetic pulses (EMP), the development of corresponding devices and the possible impact on ICT and power distribution systems. The second part of the study concerns radio frequency interference (RFI) with regard to global navigation satellite systems (GNSS). This document contributes to the second part and contains a detailed literature study disclosing the weaknesses of GNSS systems. Whereas the HERF analysis only concerns intentional interference issues, this study on GNSS also takes into account unintentional interference, enlarging the spectrum of plausible interference scenarios.JRC.DG.G.6-Security technology assessmen

Development of wideband radio channel measurement and modeling techniques for future radio systems

This thesis discusses the development of micro- and millimeterwave wideband radio channel measurement and modeling techniques for future radio networks. Characterization of the radio channel is needed for radio system, wireless network, and antenna design. A radio channel measurement system was designed for 2.154, 5.3 GHz and 60 GHz center frequencies, and completed at the two lower frequencies. The sounder uses a pseudonoise code in the transmitter. In the receiver, first a sliding correlator, and later direct digital sampling, where the impulse response is detected by digital post processing, were realized. Certain implementation questions, like link budget, effects of phase noise on impulse response and direction of arrival estimation, and achievable performance using the designed concept, are discussed. Measurement campaigns included in this thesis were realized at 5.3 GHz frequency in micro- and picocells. A comprehensive measurement campaign performed inside different buildings was thoroughly analyzed. Propagation mechanisms were studied and empirical models for both large scale fading and multipath propagation were developed. Propagation through walls, diffraction through doorways, and propagation paths outside the building were observed. Pathloss in LOS was lower than the free space pathloss, due to wave guiding effects. In NLOS situation difference in the pathloss models in different buildings was significant. Behavior of the spatial diversity was estimated on the basis of spatial correlation functions extracted from the measurement data; an antenna separation of a fraction of a wavelength gives sufficient de-correlation for significant diversity gain in indoor environments at 5.3 GHz in NLOS.reviewe

Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression