Rice University has received a $15 million award from the U.S. Army Research Office to establish a five-year research center dedicated to advancing secure sensing, imaging and communications. The Center for Large Aperture Secure Sensing, Imaging and Communications, or CLASSIC, brings together researchers from universities and national laboratories across the country to develop advanced antenna technologies for future wireless systems.
Led by Edward Knightly, the Sheafor-Lindsay Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice, the center combines expertise in wireless networking, antennas, radar, artificial intelligence, circuits and physics to address growing demands on wireless systems. The research team will investigate how extremely large-scale antenna arrays (ELSAAs) can expand the capabilities of wireless systems in environments where today’s technologies are limited.
“This award demonstrates Rice’s leadership in tackling complex national research challenges through collaboration across disciplines and institutions,” said David Sholl, executive vice president for research.
The center supports Rice’s broader commitment to advancing interdisciplinary research with the potential to address complex national and global challenges.
“CLASSIC reflects the kind of ambitious, collaborative research Rice is advancing,” said Rice Provost Amy Dittmar. “By bringing together leading researchers across institutions and disciplines, the center will lay the groundwork for discoveries that could shape the future of secure communications and sensing.”
Knightly said the center will give researchers the resources and collaborative framework to pursue advances that would be difficult to achieve through individual projects.
“This center gives us the opportunity to develop the science and engineering needed for a new generation of wireless networks with radically new capabilities, resilience and security,” Knightly said.
Advancing wireless systems
At the center of the research are ELSAAs, which use thousands of coordinated antenna elements to precisely direct radio waves. The technology could help maintain reliable communications when signals are blocked or disrupted while improving the ability to detect concealed objects and produce detailed images in challenging environments.
The work focuses on five areas: advancing the science behind ELSAAs, developing sensing techniques for threat detection, building resilient high-speed wireless networks, studying wireless jamming and validating the technology through laboratory and field testing.
The center also will develop an AI-driven modeling framework that can simulate complex electromagnetic environments in real time. By reducing the computing power needed to design and evaluate advanced antenna systems, the framework could accelerate the development of new wireless technologies.
To evaluate the technology under realistic conditions, the researchers will conduct laboratory experiments and drone-based field trials. The tests will measure how the systems perform outside controlled laboratory settings.
National collaboration
Knightly leads a team of co-principal investigators that includes Ashutosh Sabharwal of Rice; Sensen Li of the University of Texas at Austin; Hou-Tong Chen of Los Alamos National Laboratory; Danijela Cabric of the University of California, Los Angeles; Josep M. Jornet and Tommaso Melodia of Northeastern University; Daniel M. Mittleman of Brown University; and Willie Padilla of Duke University. Industry partners include Booz Allen Hamilton, Intel, Keysight, Lockheed Martin, MITRE, Northrop Grumman, Qualcomm and Raytheon.
“The challenges we’re tackling require advances that span physics, hardware, communications and computing," Knightly said. “By combining those strengths in a single center, we can accelerate the development and demonstration of technologies that would not be possible through individual efforts alone.”
The center will build on existing experimental platforms to validate antenna arrays ranging from hundreds to tens of thousands of radiating elements while working with academic, national laboratory and industry partners to help transition the technology into practical applications.