Goals:

This area is aimed at the in-flight testing of functions for autonomous vehicles (UAV) and/or remotely piloted vehicles (RPAS), both in aeronautics and space applications.

Main goals are increasing knowledge and proposing solutions on:

system (architectural and detailed) design of RF communication systems based on telemetry standards for internal programs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, UAV and Unmanned Space Vehicle, USV) for telemetry (downlink) and telecommands (uplink);
design and implementation on FPGA of communication-related functional modules:

waveform generation – modulation/de-modulation functions based on waveforms such as, for example, CP-FSK, QPSK, CDMA,
bit-stream processing – randomizer and de-randomizer, BER-Tester and Pseudo Random Sequence Generator,
antenna electronic beam forming and beamsteering;

rapid-prototyping of communication systems using FPGA-based COTS demo-boards for the base-band section and RF boards for the up/down conversion.

Research topics:

The expertise of this area covers:

design, integration, test and characterization of radiofrequency communication systems;
development by model-based methods of digital signal processing algorithms based on Software Defined Radio (SDR) paradigm;
implementation of SDR algorithms in VHDL on FPGA;
antenna system design – definition through electromagnetic simulation of antennas number, type and position on flying vehicles.

Activities