Multifunctional Systems and Additively Manufactured Antennas

Abstract

Distributed networks of wirelessly connected intelligent cyber-physical systems have become indispensable tools in science, industry, and defense. From chaotic swarms of autonomous vehicles to dense IoT sensor networks in smart infrastructure, the overarching role of these platforms is to serve as information transducers that perform complex sensor fusion tasks in physically hostile or extreme environments. Advances in software defined radios, machine learning techniques, and distributed control algorithms have coalesced to create new operational paradigms and application spaces for these systems, but critical technology gaps remain when considering their physical interaction within the electromagnetic spectrum. The impact of these gaps extends from complex cybersecurity vulnerabilities to maintaining basic wireless connectivity for emergency command and control. This talk will discuss recent advances in applied electromagnetics that seek to improve physical resiliency and integrate context awareness into these wireless systems, and provide some perspective on the development of educational content that seeks to bridge knowledge gaps within the multidisciplinary landscape that is required to synthesize and deploy these systems.

Bio

Gregory H. Huff (S'03–M’07–SM’11 IEEE) majored in Electrical Engineering (BS'00-MS'03-PhD'06) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the faculty at Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Electrical Engineering in 2018 after serving on the faculty at Texas A&M University from 2006-2018.