The article titled “Performance Analysis of Spectrum Sharing Radar in Multipath Environment” has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society (2023).

Gunnery Srinath, Bethi Pardhasaradhi, Ashoka Chakravarthi Mahipathi,
Prashantha Kumar H, Pathipati Srihari, and Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi, “Performance Analysis of Spectrum Sharing Radar in Multipath Environment,” has been accepted for publication in the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society (2023).

Keywords: Radar, Communication systems, Measurement, Wireless sensor networks, Wireless communication, Receivers, Interference cancellation

Abstract: Radar based sensing and communication systems sharing a common spectrum have become a potential research problem in recent years due to spectrum scarcity. The spectrum sharing radar (SSR) is a new technology that uses the total available bandwidth (BW) for both radar based sensing and communication. Unlike traditional radar, the SSR divides the total available BW into radar-only and mixed-use bands. In a radar-only band, only radar sensor signals can be transmitted and received. In contrast, radar and communication signals can both be transmitted and received in the mixed-use band. Taking such BW sharing into account, this paper investigates the performance of SSR in an information-theoretic sense. To evaluate performance, mutual information (MI), spectral efficiency (SE) and capacity (C) metrics are used. Initially, this paper considered a clean environment (no multipath) in order to evaluate performance metrics in the mixed-use band with and without successive interference cancellation. Following that, this paper addresses the performance of BW allocation by allocating low to high BW in mixed-band. Furthermore, the performance metrics are extended to account for the multipath environment, and the same analogy as in a clean environment is used. In addition, the MI and SE of traditional radar system is taken into account when comparing the performance of SSR with and without the use of the SIC. Finally, MI and capacity results show that using the SIC scheme in a mixed-use band yields performance comparable to traditional radar and communication system. In terms of SE, the SSR with SIC scheme outperforms traditional radar and communication system.

More details: DOI: 10.1109/OJCOMS.2023.3240116

Best Master’s Thesis in ICT 2019 (Supervised by Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi and Prof. Professor Magne Arild Hauglund)

Best Master’s Thesis in ICT 2019 (Supervised by Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi and Prof. Professor Magne Arild Hauglund)

Master Thesis: “Design and implementation of wake-up radios for long-range wireless IoT devices”

Best master thesis in ICT 2019 (Student and Professor).

Master Student Anders Frøytlog, did his Master’s Thesis under the main supervision of Professor Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi and co-supervision of Professor Magne Arild Hauglund. The project task is defined by Assoc. Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi. The solutions (especially DC-MAC protocol along with wakeup radio) proposed in the thesis greatly reduce the power consumption in long-range wireless IoT devices. A summary of the thesis can be found below.

Summary of the thesis: As the development within Internet of things (IoT) increases rapidly and the market starts to utilize its potential, an enormous effort is being made in both academia and industry to optimize solutions according to the market demands. The demands vary from case to case and some of them include high data rate, long battery lifetime, low latency, and long-range/area coverage depending on application scenarios. The numerous use cases and demands for IoT resulted in various IoT technologies.

System overview: Design and implementation of wake-up radios for long-range wireless IoT devices.

In many IoT applications, especially Wireless IoT applications, energy efficiency and battery lifetime are the most important performance metrics. The wireless access mechanisms used in current technologies utilize Duty-cycling (DC) to reduce power consumption. DC allows a node to turn the radio on and off in specific intervals in order to reduce power consumption. These DC-MAC protocols suffer from overhearing, idle listening, or unnecessary transmission of advertisement packets. The different protocols may also include long delay time caused by the inactive period in the MAC protocol. The recent research and development of Wake-up Radios (WuRs) address some of these problems. A WuR is a simple low-power radio receiver that always listens to the channel to detect a Wake-up Call (WuC). A wake-up radio receiver (WuRx) is attached to the main radio which is always OFF, except when it is supposed to send data. The WuRx and the main radio (MR) are two parts of an IoT node. The use of WuRx eliminates the unnecessary power consumption caused by idle listening and reduces the overhearing consumption as well as the latency. Many articles have been published about WuRs. However, most of the current WuR solutions focus on short-range applications. The objective of this thesis is to design a WuRx for long-range applications (10km to 15km range), implement a WuRx and evaluate the results and compare them to existing solutions.

Best Master’s Thesis in ICT 2018 (Supervised by Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi and Prof. Geir Jevne)

Master Thesis Title: Development, Deployment & Evaluation of Wireless IoT Devices with Energy Harvesting

Best master thesis in ICT 2018 (Students and Professors)

Students Rolf Arne Kjellby, Svein Erik Løtveit & Thor Eirik Johnsrud, did their Master’s Thesis under the main supervision of Professor Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi and co-supervision of Professor Geir Jevne. The project task is defined by Prof. Linga Reddy Cenkeramaddi. Students designed and developed self-powered and ultra-low-powered wireless IoT devices for indoor and outdoor applications. These nodes are tested and work up to 1.8 km and can be deployed in remote places where accessibility is limited. The nodes can also be deployed in harsh weather conditions without requiring any maintenance. Designed nodes are of professional market quality, market-ready, efficient, self-powered, and maintenance-free. Many possibilities for further research based on these nodes including a start-up company.

Automation of indoor climate is becoming increasingly popular for both household and industrial use. Through automation, comfort increases and power consumption decreases. In order to deploy an automation system, sensors are required. This master thesis proposes two wireless sensor nodes based on ATmega328p along with the nRF24l01+ transceiver and nRF52840 with various capabilities in both star and multi-hop network configurations. The designed nodes are fully self-powered through energy harvesting, the nodes are completely self-sustainable with no wires, and no user intervention is required during the lifetime of the components. In addition, these nodes do not require any maintenance and can be deployed in remote places. The wireless sensor nodes can be deployed anywhere as long as they are in the range of a gateway or nodes that can forward towards a gateway, and as long as there is sufficient light level for the solar panel, such as indoor lights. Fully functional wireless sensor nodes are designed and tested and compared the performance of both star and multi-hop topologies. The developed nodes consume less power than what is harvested in both indoor and outdoor environments.

ACPS Research Group along with top the Indian Institutes lead the Low-altitude UAV communication and tracking (LUCAT) project

  • 2018 – The Low-altitude UAV communication and tracking (LUCAT) project funded by INDNOR programme jointly by the Norwegian research council (NFR) and the Department of Science and Technology (DST), Project Manager and PI: Professor Linga Reddy CenkeramaddiACPS Research Group, Department of ICT, UiA Grimstad, Project duration: 2019-2024.

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The LUCAT project aims to develop advanced and robust algorithms to detect and accurately trace rapidly moving UAVs, popularly called drones. The research takes place at the University of Agder’s ACPS Research Group, Department of Computational and Data Sciences (CDS), IISc Bangalore, India, the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems, IISc Bangalore, India, and the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India. This is the only project where the prestigious Indian University IISc collaborates with a Norwegian university in relation to the areas of signal processing, communication technology, and machine learning.

Full project name: Low-altitude UAV Communication and Tracking (LUCAT)

Funding: Researcher Project, IKTPLUSS INDNOR Program, Research Council of Norway

Principal Managers: Prof. Linga Reddy CenkeramaddiProf. Abhinav Kumar

and Prof. Phaneendra K. Yalavarthy.

Topic: The LUCAT project funded by IKTPLUSS-INDNOR (Joint Indo-Norwegian researcher projects within Information and Communication Technology) develops the technology for both communication and precise tracking of both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles operating in low-altitude corridors. The Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems (ACPS) research group at the University of Agder, Campus Grimstad, Norway in collaboration with the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India, and the Department of Computational and Data Science and Robert Bosch Centre for cyber-physical systems at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India, will jointly design, develop and implement the proposed technology. This project aims to detect and precisely track multiple rapidly moving unmanned aerial vehicles using smart radar sensors, as well as novel signal processing and wireless communication algorithms. New methods will be developed also to classify the objects in the flight corridors and the communication modules located within the unmanned aerial vehicles will be advanced software-defined radio modules with the ability to sense on-the-fly the radio-frequency environment, leading to the discovery of opportunities for communications (what is called spectrum cognizant communications). The tasks of tracking and communication will be cooperating and enhancing each other, improving substantially the performance of tracking and classification, as compared to the currently existing solutions.

Participant Institutions: ACPS-UiA, IISc Bangalore, IIT Hyderabad

Period: 2018 – 2024

Project details: In the near future, a large number of unmanned aerial vehicles, also known as drones, will pervade populated areas’ skies, serving millions of people worldwide for goods transportation, construction, agriculture, medical, surveillance, search-and-rescue operations, and a variety of other applications. Daily tasks such as food or packet delivery, grocery shopping, and surveillance, among others, will be carried out by autonomous UAVs in densely populated areas, resulting in profound changes in day-to-day human life. The LUCAT project, funded by IKTPLUSS-INDNOR (Joint Indo-Norwegian researcher projects in Information and Communication Technology by NFR and DST), is working to develop technology for accurate sensing, precise tracking, and communication of both manned and unmanned aerial vehicles operating in low-altitude corridors. We, the Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems Research Group at the University of Agder, Campus Grimstad, Norway, will design, develop, and implement the proposed technology in collaboration with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Hyderabad, India, and the Department of Computational and Data Sciences, & the Robert Bosch Centre for Cyber-Physical Systems Indian Institute of Sciences, Bangalore, India. Using mmWave radar sensors and other sensors, as well as novel signal processing and machine learning models, and wireless communication algorithms, this project aims to sense/detect and precisely track multiple rapidly moving unmanned aerial vehicles. New methods will also be developed to classify objects in flight corridors, and communication modules located within unmanned aerial vehicles will include advanced software-defined radio modules with the ability to sense the radio-frequency environment on-the-fly, leading to the discovery of communications opportunities (what is called spectrum cognizant communications). Sensing, tracking, and communication tasks will collaborate and enhance each other, significantly improving sensing, tracking, and classification performance when compared to currently available solutions for low-altitude traffic management systems. New techniques for the detection, localization, and classification of UAVs are developed using ground station mmWave radars. Hybrid communication schemes are explored for UAV-UAV and UAV-Ground station communications.

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