CENS Technical Seminar Series

Wireless Propagation Studies for Near-Ground Communication with Directional Antennas

Presentation Slides (pdf)

Invited Speaker: Dr. David Browne, MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Date: July 24, 2007
Time: 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
Venue: CENS Main Conference Room, 3551 Boelter Hall, UCLA

Abstract

Radio communication between sensor nodes deployed near the ground in a wilderness environment poses a very challenging wireless propagation scenario because of the high path loss experienced by radio waves as they propagate over the ground and through vegetation. Directional antennas have great potential for alleviating this path loss but there is currently very little quantitative evidence of the benefit they provide in these deployment scenarios.

This presentation will summarize the results from a set of experiments conducted in UCLA's botanical garden in which path loss and multipath directionality were studied for near-ground nodes communicating in the 2.4GHz ISM band. It will be shown that multipath causes situations in which the optimal antenna alignment is not along the line-of-sight direction between nodes. Results will also be presented to show the path loss advantage that directional antennas have over omnidirecitonal antennas.

The radio testbed and signal processing techniques used to execute these experiments will be explained in brief. The talk will be focused for an audience interested in applying these results to the planning and deployment of near-ground sensor networks in wilderness environments.

Biography

I received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Ohio State University in 2000 and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2007.

I was a Research Engineer at Ericsson, Sweden before starting graduate school at UCLA in 2002. I am currently at MIT Lincoln Laboratory working in the Advanced Sensor Techniques group.