Physical resiliency and context awareness in distributed wireless networks

Abstract: Distributed networks of wirelessly connected intelligent cyber-physical systems have become indispensable tools in science, industry, and defense. From chaotic swarms of autonomous vehicles to dense IoT sensor networks in smart infrastructure, the overarching role of these platforms is to serve as information transducers that perform complex sensor fusion tasks in physically hostile or extreme environments. Advances in software defined radios, machine learning techniques, and distributed control algorithms have coalesced to create new operational paradigms and application spaces for these systems, but critical technology gaps remain when considering their physical interaction within the electromagnetic spectrum. The impact of these gaps extend from complex cybersecurity vulnerabilities to maintaining basic wireless connectivity for emergency command and control. This talk will discuss recent advances in applied electromagnetics that seek to improve physical resiliency and integrate context awareness into these wireless systems and provide some perspective on the development of educational content that seeks to bridge knowledge gaps within the multidisciplinary landscape that is required to synthesize and deploy these systems.

Biography: Gregory H. Huff (S'03–M’07–SM’11) majored in Electrical Engineering (BS'00-MS'03-PhD'06) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined the faculty at Pennsylvania State University in the Department of Electrical Engineering in 2018 after serving on the faculty at Texas A&M University from 2006-2018. Professor Huff apprenticed professionally and attained the rank of Chef de Cuisine with specializations in French and Mediterranean fare prior to his academic career. He is the recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) through the Department of Defense ('08) and NSF CAREER award ('08). He has been awarded best paper and presentation awards as an author and co-author, including the IEEE AP-S H. A. Wheeler Applications Prize Paper Award ('04) and several teaching awards including the IEEE AP-S Donald G. Dudley, Jr. Undergraduate Teaching Award ('10). His primary areas of expertise are reconfigurable antennas, additive manufactured electromagnetic devices, and adaptive arrays. He is also engaged in transformative engineering education projects and convergent research focusing on smart infrastructure and the impact of next generation communication technologies on digital equity.