As technology improves, the capacity for malicious radio frequency traffic to interfere with communication channels and abuse bandwidth grows. Thanks to a Carleton student’s Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology innovation, however, there’s an effective solution.
Alex Craig, a Carleton PhD student in Software Defined Networking, has developed a set of modules that form a mobile architecture for spectrum sensing that, because of its customizability and affordability, fills a fundamental requirement in society.
Carleton Systems and Computer Engineering professor Dr. Ioannis Lambadaris believes we need equipment of this caliber – equipment that is portable, easy-to-configure, and can do this kind of sensing.
“[The] application ranges from law enforcement to security applications and military applications in the battlefield…it’s a very broad area.”
Doing what can usually only be done in FPGA (field-programmable gate array) circuits, Craig’s mobile architecture splits aggregate digital signals into sub-bands to allow for quick processing; all in an off-the-shelf, easy-to-use package.
“The main benefit is that systems that would have previously been custom-designed expensive hardware are now just a software module that you can run on an off-the-shelf Linux server,” he explains. This makes the systems much faster to develop, more flexible, cheaper, and easier to extend.
The project came about as part of Craig’s graduate studies, where he was working one day a week at D-TA Systems, a company chaired by Carleton alumnus Dr. Dipak Roy that offers reconfigurable box level radio, radar, signals intelligence, and sonar products that can be reconfigured for any application. Dr. Roy is committed to supporting the university and the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, and promoting the area of Digital Signal Processing (DSP). Recently, Roy sponsored the development of an advanced sonar processing laboratory housed in Carleton’s Canal Building.
Established in November 2011 through a generous donation by Dr. Roy and his wife, also a Carleton alumna, The Dipak and Tara Roy Advanced Sensor Processing Laboratory enables students and researchers to collect and study sensor data to help focus research and develop the next generation of radio frequency and acoustic multichannel applications.
“The Advanced Sensor Processing Lab was set up to do graduate research and develop expertise and skills in the complex field of sonar, radar, communication, and test and measurements systems. The goal is to create a centre of excellence in an area of national interest with broad industry and academic participation. The lab is off to a good start, in a short time of less than three years, five students have already received their Master’s degree working on various research topics of significant relevance to the defence and security communities. There is a lot more to come as the interest in this sector of the economy is growing steadily and the Carleton lab is the only one of its kind in the country,” says Dr. Roy, founder of the Advanced Sensor Processing Lab.
Craig worked closely with Dr. Roy on this project, and credits him for bringing him up to speed on the operations and theory of DSP.
Moving forward, this incredibly promising post-graduate student says the modules can be integrated to build a complete spectrum analyzer product. As for how this development will impact the community, Dr. Lambadaris points to cybersecurity.
“This area is so advanced…we should have equipment that will be able to immediately capture traffic and analyze it in real time in order to locate criminals and terrorists. This is a fundamental requirement in any society to have a peaceful and reliable existence.”