Contributor

Mahmoud Badi, Dinesh Rajan, Joseph Camp

Abstract

The next wave of drone applications is moving from repeatable, single-drone activities such as evaluating propagation environments to team-based, multi-drone objectives such as drone-based emergency services. In parallel, testbeds have sought to evaluate emerging concepts such as highly-directional and distributed wireless communications. However, there is a lack of intersection between the two works to characterize the impact of the drone body, antenna placement, swarm topologies, and multi-dimensional connectivity needs that require in-flight experimentation with a surrounding testbed infrastructure. In this work, we design a drone-flight-enabled isolation chamber to capture complex spatial wireless channel relationships that drone links experience as applications scale from single-drone to swarm-level networks within a shared three-dimensional space. Driven by the challenges of outdoor experimentation, we identify the need for a highly-controlled indoor environment where external factors can be mitigated. To do so, we first build an open-source drone platform to provide programmable control with visibility into the internal flight control system and sensors enabling specialized coordination and accurate repeatable positioning within the isolated environment. We then design a wireless data acquisition system and integrate distributed software defined radios (SDRs) in order to inspect multi-dimensional wireless behavior from the surrounding area. Finally, we achieve and demonstrate the value of measurement perspectives from diverse altitudes and spatial locations with the same notion of time.

Degree Date

Spring 5-16-2020

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

M.S.E.E.

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Advisor

Dr. Joseph Camp

Second Advisor

Dr. Dinesh Rajan

Third Advisor

Dr. Bruce Gnade

Number of Pages

59

Format

.pdf

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

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