Wireless, RF & Smart Dust

Contemporary counter-unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) defense systems have become increasingly inadequate against coordinated swarm attacks, as evidenced by recent conflicts in Ukraine, in the Middle East, and over the Red Sea. The growing disparity between low-cost threat platforms and expensive interceptors, such as the \$2 million SM-2 missiles currently being deployed against Iranian Shahed-136 drones, creates an economically unsustainable defense posture, particularly for naval assets. We propose using hierarchical interceptors, where standard low-cost rockets are repurposed to carry...

The high fracture strength of polydiamond has enableda 167-MHz polydiamond disk resonator with a self-aligned polysilicon stem anchor to attain a velocity of 83 m/s, which is 56 times larger than the typical ~1.5 m/s [1] velocity employed by MEMS based sensors, such as gyroscopes. The key to this performance is the use of hot-filament chemical vapor deposited (HFCVD) diamond structural material with a fracture strength from 50-120 GPa [2] many times larger than the ~2.6 GPa average of polysilicon [3]. The resonator design herein further concentrates energy in the diamond resonator...

We have previously demonstrated electrochemical circuits for measuring the concentration of various biomolecules and drugs using structure-switching aptamers. Structure-switching aptamers are single-stranded nucleic acids that can be sequenced to exhibit conformational changes when bound to specific biomolecules. By conjugating aptamers with a redox reporter, voltammetry or amperometry-based measurements can be applied and signals in the nano to pico-amp scale can be captured using transimpedance amplifiers (TIA). Because the signals of interest are very small, noise-cancellation...

Since drones can be flown remotely or autonomously and can navigate dangerous environments without any risk to human operators, they are attractive for military applications, including surveillance, reconnaissance, and combat missions. At the same time, enemy drones pose a growing serious threat to civilians and soldiers. Current anti-drone warfare is either inaccurate, expensive, or large in size, so this project aims to build a low-cost, crayon-sized radar-guided microrocket to target drones up to 100 meters away.

To effectively and tractably counter hundreds of threats, we...