Drone Radio-Telescope Calibration

We will fly a large hexacopter drone with a weak radio transmitter to calibrate the beam pattern of a radio telescope. We will design a signal to be transmitted out of a fast FPGA-controlled digital to analog converter, basically making our own software defined radio (SDR). We will receive the signal with a fast analog to digital converter and perform digital signal processing to compare the two signals. Our on-campus “telescope” will be an antenna on an amateur astronomy telescope mount that can point it in different direction to map out its beam pattern. Pieces of the project include:

Two or three students will participate. You must be willing to commit 4, 8, or 12 hours/week on this project in the spring and/or 10 weeks in the summer.

Name of research group, project, or lab

Drones and SDRs

Why join this research group or lab?

Drones and software-defined radio are fun and emerging technologies. The project will help radio astronomy research. My group also does optics and quantum entanglement work, but this project is unrelated.

Representative publication

A Digital Calibration Source for 21 cm Cosmology Telescopes.pdf

Logistics Information:

Engineering

Physics

Astronomy

Circuit Design

Mechanical Engineering

Robotics

Signal Processing

Student ranks applicable

First-year

Sophomore

Junior

Senior

Student qualifications

Please reply with a description of any relevant experience: drones, flying, radio, astronomy, FPGA, DSP, electronics, soldering.

Applicants will be selected based on their ability to independently read relevant documentation and figure out how to make the FPGA, electronics, and software work together.

Please list your own relevant experience, detailing your particular contribution to any group projects.

Spring - Part Time

Summer - Full Time

Compensation

Academic Credit

Paid Research

Techniques learned

FPGA work in Verilog to send samples out of a GHz digital-to-analog converter (DAC) and retrieve samples from a GHz analog-to-digital converter (ADC), store them and analyze them.
Radio frequency (RF) work with amplifiers and antennas.
Programming flight paths of the drone and analyzing the data that comes out (python).
Synchronizing the radio samples with the drone GPS and orientation data.
Design and build a mount for the antenna and transmitter on the drone, along with a mount for our test "radio telescope" antenna on the ground. (Laser cutter or 3D printing).
Making the electrical system of the drone and radio robust and reliably running on battery power (Circuits and reliable soldering).
All software runs on Linux, so experience in Linux, especially with things like serial ports and networking is relevant.

Project start

For summer, as soon as finals or over or with a 1 week gap

Contact Information:

Mentor

Jason Gallicchio

jason@hmc.edu

Physics Professor

Name of project director or principal investigator

Jason Gallicchio

Email address of project director or principal investigator

jason@hmc.edu

2 sp. | 24 appl.

Spring - Part Time (+1)

Robotics (+6)