EAGER: SARE: Dynamic Phase Center Antennas for Secure Sensing and Communications

无线设备在用于传感和通信的商业产品中的使用迅速增加，导致了显著的社会进步。然而，每个无线连接，无论是用于传感还是通信，都代表着安全威胁的潜在接入点，无论是恶意的还是意外的。军事感应界众所周知的漏洞，如干扰、干扰和欺骗，正日益成为商业传感器的潜在漏洞，从汽车网络和雷达，到家用传感器，再到穿戴在身上的手势识别雷达。除此之外，黑客威胁一直在演变，研究人员展示了通过现代车辆上的无线通信通道远程控制车辆的能力。为了应对这些新出现的无线安全挑战，本项目将研究一种新的方法，通过使用动态天线来缓解物理层的漏洞。通过在空间和时间上动态移动天线的相位中心，天线发送和接收的信息可以在物理层进行过滤，显著降低恶意信号进入无线系统之前的影响。这项研究的目的是研究通过动态调制天线相位中心来实现传感和通信系统物理层安全的新方法。主要研究人员的前期工作已经证明了动态天线阵支持定向调制的能力；本研究将从天线层面探索这一概念，并开发具有相位中心动力学的新型天线结构。这项工作有以下目标：1)探索天线中相位中心动力学的理论基础；2)结合无线系统中的信号处理设计和开发新的动态天线；3)展示动态天线在传感和无线通信中提供的额外安全性。这项研究将为动态天线发展新的理论基础，潜在地在应用电磁学领域带来新的设计概念和新的研究领域。通过一种内在的跨学科方法，这项工作将从整体的角度关注无线系统安全设计，包括电磁孔径、收发系统和信号处理，从而带来潜在的新方法来设计和表征无线系统。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The rapid increase in the use of wireless devices in commercial products for sensing and communications has led to significant societal improvements. However, every wireless connection, whether for sensing or communications, represents a potential access point for security threats, whether malicious or accidental. Vulnerabilities that are well-known to the military sensing community, such as jamming, interference, and spoofing, are increasingly becoming potential vulnerabilities for commercial sensors, from automotive networks and radar, to in-home sensors, to body-worn gesture recognition radars. Beyond this, hacking threats have been evolving, with researchers demonstrating the ability to control vehicles remotely through the wireless communications channels on modern vehicles. To address these emerging challenges of wireless security, this project will investigate a novel approach to mitigate vulnerabilities at the physical layer by using dynamic antennas. By dynamically moving the phase centers of antennas in space and time, the information transmitted and received by the antenna can be filtered at the physical layer, significantly reducing the impact of malicious signals before they enter the wireless system. The goal of this research is to investigate new methods of physical layer security of sensing and communication systems through dynamic modulation of antenna phase centers. Prior work by the principal investigator has demonstrated the ability of dynamic antenna arrays to support directional modulation; this research will explore the concept at the antenna level and develop novel antenna structures with phase center dynamics. The effort has the following objectives: 1) explore the theoretical foundations of phase center dynamics in antennas; 2) design and develop new dynamic antennas jointly with signal processing in wireless systems; 3) demonstrate additional security in sensing and wireless communications provided by dynamic antennas. This research will develop new theoretical foundations for dynamic antennas, potentially leading to new design concepts and new areas of study in the field of applied electromagnetics. Through an inherently interdisciplinary approach, the work will focus on wireless system security design from a holistic viewpoint, including the electromagnetic aperture, the transceiver system, and signal processing, leading to potentially new ways of designing and characterizing wireless systems.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.