Drones with Software-Defined Radios

MIT Lincoln Labs Engineering/Physics, 2021–22

Liaison(s): Dr. Alexia Schulz
Advisor(s): Jason Gallicchio, Peter Saeta
Students(s): Domenico Ottolia (TL-S), Noah Haig (TL-F), Harry Sanchez, Kaanthi Pandhigunta (S), Mason Wray (S), Nandini Garg (F), Sean Wu (F)

The MIT Lincoln Labs team is developing an autonomous fixed-wing drone to identify radio sources. The drone will be used for so-called “blue force awareness,” allowing the military to monitor their own radio emissions, such as cell phones and handheld radios, and geolocate unexpected emitters. Using software-defined radios on an FPGA board, the drone will return the GPS position and properties of these loud radio sources.