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Security Programmable Metamaterial Antenna for Physical Layer Security

Week 2:

By: Prachi Patel and Dylan Turner

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Introductions:

Dylan Turner

Prachi Patel

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Overall Goal Recap:

A Metamaterial Leaky Wave Antenna Array allows us to preserves a signal in one direction.
Problems arise due to our antenna array being frequency dependent.
We are investigating a method called Symbol Precoding (SP) to fix this.
Previous interns were unable to implement SP using pre-existing signal blocks.
We will modify the source code of the OFDM block to allow this.

First of all, we wanted to expand a bit on the current main goal of our project now that we have become more familiar with it. We mentioned last week that in general we are working toward a simpler wireless security method that could result in energy savings for tens of billions of devices.

To be more specific, in our system, we have a Metamaterial leaky wave antenna array that is time modulated with a periodic sequence of codes such that our signal is preserved in only our desired direction.

The problem comes when we try to transmit large amounts of data, which requires more bandwidth. It turns out that the arrays behavior is frequency dependent so the carrier waves with large differences in frequency ranges will react differently to the antenna.

The method that we are investigating to negate this is called symbol precoding.

Previous researchers on this project attempted to implement this using already existing signal blocks in GNU Radio, but were unable to. ��Our current objective is to dive into the source code of the OFDM transmitter block modify it to allow this.

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Weekly Progress:

Further discussed key topics and overall goal of our project.

Learned the fundamentals of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM).

Began looking into source code for the block requiring modification.

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Weekly Progress:

Downloaded GNU Radio on our local devices.

Experimented with creating basic flowgraphs.

Completed a tutorial with our mentor involving Sandbox 2, transmitting and receiving OFDM signals from two Software Defined Radios (SDR).

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Goals for Next Week

Gain more extensive understanding of OFDM Modulator Source Code.

Learn to interface with Metamaterial Antenna prototype and use it with our GNURadio flowgraphs.