Investigation of Antennas Integrated Into Disposable Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

The integration of antennas into disposable paper drones using inkjet printing technology is presented. These drones or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are developed using origami folding structures. Two vertical monopole antennas based on the same design concept are proposed and their performance assessed for two different conditions. The conditions relate to the placement of the other electronic components and circuits on the origami drones as reported in the literature. The first is when the electromechanical components and corresponding metallic layers are located in the wings. In this case, the effect of the possible location of the antenna as well as the deformation of the wings on S 11 is discussed. The second is a more general case scenario which includes when the components and motors are placed at the tail and lower part of the body of the drone. The antenna elements are directly printed onto a photo paper substrate using silver nanoparticle conductive ink. Subsequently, the substrate is folded to create a paper drone. Low-cost desktop inkjet printing equipment is used to deposit the metallic tracks of the antenna. The designs target the current frequency bands employed in the control and wireless communication of commercial drones (2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands). The purpose of this work is to investigate potential antenna scenarios for disposable drones which may one day be fully fabricated using inkjet printing technology. All antenna designs and studies have been simulated using CST Microwave Studio and compared well with experimental results

Additive Manufacturing for Antenna Applications

This thesis presents methods to make use of additive manufacturing (AM) or 3D printing (3DP) technology for the fabrication of antenna and electromagnetic (EM) structures. A variety of 3DP techniques based on filament, resin, powder and nano-particle inks are applied for the development and fabrication of antennas. Fully and partially metallised 3D printed EM structures are investigated for operation at mainly microwave frequency bands. First, 3D Sierpinski fractal antennas are fabricated using binder jetting printing technique, which is an AM metal powder bed process. It follows with the introduction of a new concept of sensing liquids using and non-planer electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is investigated. Such structure can be fabricated with inexpensive fuse filament fabrication (FFF) in combination with conductive paint. As a third method, inkjet printing technology is used for the fabrication of antennas for origami paper applications. The work investigates the feasibility of fabricating foldable antennas for disposable paper drones using low-cost inkjet printing equipment. It then explores the applicability of inkjet printing on a 3D printing substrate through the fabrication of a circularly polarised patch antenna which combines stereolithography (SLA) and inkjet printing technology, both of which use inexpensive machines. Finally, a variety of AM techniques are applied and compared for the production of a diversity WLAN antenna system for customized wrist-worn application

Development of a Drone-Mounted Wireless Attack Platform

The commercial drone market has grown rapidly due to the increasing utility and capabilities of drones. This new found popularity has made it possible for inexpensive drones capable of impressive carry capacities and flight times to reach the consumer market. These new features also offer an invaluable resource to wireless hackers. Capitalizing on their mobility, a wireless hacker can equip a drone with hacking tools to surpass physical security (e.g. fences) with relative ease and reach wireless networks. This research seeks to experimentally evaluate the ability of a drone-mounted wireless attack platform equipped with a directional antenna to conduct wireless attacks effectively at distances greater than 800 meters. To test this hypothesis, the “skypie v2” prototype conducts computer network attacks against a target network and captured data is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the platform. Results showed that capture of a WPA2 handshake was possible at a RSSI of -72 dBm or 2400 meters from a network located in a open field. Additionally, nmap scans were conducted with a RSSI value of -74 dBm or nearly 3000 meters from the target network

DRONE DELIVERY OF CBNRECy – DEW WEAPONS Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD)

Drone Delivery of CBNRECy – DEW Weapons: Emerging Threats of Mini-Weapons of Mass Destruction and Disruption (WMDD) is our sixth textbook in a series covering the world of UASs and UUVs. Our textbook takes on a whole new purview for UAS / CUAS/ UUV (drones) – how they can be used to deploy Weapons of Mass Destruction and Deception against CBRNE and civilian targets of opportunity. We are concerned with the future use of these inexpensive devices and their availability to maleficent actors. Our work suggests that UASs in air and underwater UUVs will be the future of military and civilian terrorist operations. UAS / UUVs can deliver a huge punch for a low investment and minimize human casualties.https://newprairiepress.org/ebooks/1046/thumbnail.jp

Facilitating Internet of Things on the Edge

The evolution of electronics and wireless technologies has entered a new era, the Internet of Things (IoT). Presently, IoT technologies influence the global market, bringing benefits in many areas, including healthcare, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment. Modern IoT devices serve as a thin client with data processing performed in a remote computing node, such as a cloud server or a mobile edge compute unit. These computing units own significant resources that allow prompt data processing. The user experience for such an approach relies drastically on the availability and quality of the internet connection. In this case, if the internet connection is unavailable, the resulting operations of IoT applications can be completely disrupted. It is worth noting that emerging IoT applications are even more throughput demanding and latency-sensitive which makes communication networks a practical bottleneck for the service provisioning. This thesis aims to eliminate the limitations of wireless access, via the improvement of connectivity and throughput between the devices on the edge, as well as their network identification, which is fundamentally important for IoT service management. The introduction begins with a discussion on the emerging IoT applications and their demands. Subsequent chapters introduce scenarios of interest, describe the proposed solutions and provide selected performance evaluation results. Specifically, we start with research on the use of degraded memory chips for network identification of IoT devices as an alternative to conventional methods, such as IMEI; these methods are not vulnerable to tampering and cloning. Further, we introduce our contributions for improving connectivity and throughput among IoT devices on the edge in a case where the mobile network infrastructure is limited or totally unavailable. Finally, we conclude the introduction with a summary of the results achieved

Demonstrating Reflectarray Behavior At Infrared

Reflectarrays are traditionally passive, planar microstrip antenna devices designed for reflected phase manipulation at each individual antenna element making up the array. By varying the phase response across the surface with the antenna elements, reflectarrays allows a planar surface to exhibit electromagnetically an arbitrary geometry, such as a spherical surface. Initially proposed as a low-cost replacement for bulky parabolic reflectors, reflectarrays have been successfully developed and utilized at both RF and millimeter-wave frequencies. From the standpoint of an optical systems designer, adapting low-frequency reflectarray technology to develop a sub-millimeter and infrared reflectarray (SMIR) would provide a highly desirable alternative to similarly behaved polished or diffractive optical devices. Compared to traditional optical reflectors, SMIRs should be cheaper to fabricate, have a smaller physical footprint, allow for utility stacking, and encourage direct integration of aberration correction. To demonstrate the feasibility of utilizing reflectarray technology at infrared (IR), a simple SMIR proof of concept has been successfully designed, fabricated, and tested. The SMIR is comprised of three independent arrays or stripes of a single size element on a coated optical flat. Actual reflectarray elements consist of variable size patches that exhibit higher operating bandwidths than reflectarrays utilizing other types of elements and are easier to fabricate at small dimensions. For testing, each stripe element has been chosen to exhibit a unique phase shift for measurement using an IR interferometer. Preliminary investigation of future reflectarray development is also discussed. Emphasis is placed on improving operating bandwidth, development of a planar focusing element, and aberration correction. With further development, SMIR technology should present a powerful tool for low cost, flexible optical system design

Intelligent Portable Aerial Surveillance System

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are critical to modern military operations. They are generally expensive and require several people to use and maintain. This report presents the development of a UAV that is inexpensive, one-man operable, and capable of short range surveillance. Based on requirements provided by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the team established a set of specifications to guide the design. The UAV is lightweight, durable, and small when disassembled. It is tele-operated, and displays image data from multiple cameras

The future of Earth observation in hydrology

In just the past 5 years, the field of Earth observation has progressed beyond the offerings of conventional space-agency-based platforms to include a plethora of sensing opportunities afforded by CubeSats, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and smartphone technologies that are being embraced by both for-profit companies and individual researchers. Over the previous decades, space agency efforts have brought forth well-known and immensely useful satellites such as the Landsat series and the Gravity Research and Climate Experiment (GRACE) system, with costs typically of the order of 1 billion dollars per satellite and with concept-to-launch timelines of the order of 2 decades (for new missions). More recently, the proliferation of smart-phones has helped to miniaturize sensors and energy requirements, facilitating advances in the use of CubeSats that can be launched by the dozens, while providing ultra-high (3-5 m) resolution sensing of the Earth on a daily basis. Start-up companies that did not exist a decade ago now operate more satellites in orbit than any space agency, and at costs that are a mere fraction of traditional satellite missions. With these advances come new space-borne measurements, such as real-time high-definition video for tracking air pollution, storm-cell development, flood propagation, precipitation monitoring, or even for constructing digital surfaces using structure-from-motion techniques. Closer to the surface, measurements from small unmanned drones and tethered balloons have mapped snow depths, floods, and estimated evaporation at sub-metre resolutions, pushing back on spatio-temporal constraints and delivering new process insights. At ground level, precipitation has been measured using signal attenuation between antennae mounted on cell phone towers, while the proliferation of mobile devices has enabled citizen scientists to catalogue photos of environmental conditions, estimate daily average temperatures from battery state, and sense other hydrologically important variables such as channel depths using commercially available wireless devices. Global internet access is being pursued via high-altitude balloons, solar planes, and hundreds of planned satellite launches, providing a means to exploit the "internet of things" as an entirely new measurement domain. Such global access will enable real-time collection of data from billions of smartphones or from remote research platforms. This future will produce petabytes of data that can only be accessed via cloud storage and will require new analytical approaches to interpret. The extent to which today's hydrologic models can usefully ingest such massive data volumes is unclear. Nor is it clear whether this deluge of data will be usefully exploited, either because the measurements are superfluous, inconsistent, not accurate enough, or simply because we lack the capacity to process and analyse them. What is apparent is that the tools and techniques afforded by this array of novel and game-changing sensing platforms present our community with a unique opportunity to develop new insights that advance fundamental aspects of the hydrological sciences. To accomplish this will require more than just an application of the technology: in some cases, it will demand a radical rethink on how we utilize and exploit these new observing systems