Rice University will create the Center for Large Aperture Secure Sensing, Imaging and Communications (CLASSIC), which will help to develop advanced antenna technologies for future wireless systems for the U.S. Army.
Through a $15 million award from the U.S. Army Research Office, CLASSIC will be a five-year dedicated research center to advanced secure sensing, imaging and communications. The project will be led by Edward Knightly, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University.
Edward Knightly, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Rice University, will lead the new CLASSIC research center. Source: Rice University CLASSIC will bring together national laboratories as well as universities and experts in wireless networking, antennas, radar, AI, integrated circuits and physics. The goal will be to address growing demands for military wireless systems.
Rice said the center will further its interdisciplinary research for national and global challenges.
“This center gives us the opportunity to develop the science and engineering needed for a new generation of wireless networks with radically new capabilities, resilience and security,” Knightly said.
Advancing wireless systems
One of the main goals for CLASSIC will be to investigate how extremely large-scale antenna arrays (ELSAAs) can expand wireless systems’ capabilities in regions where technologies are limited.
This would help the Army to maintain communications when signals are blocked or disrupted. The research would also focus on the ability to detect concealed objects and produce detailed images in challenging environments, Rice said.
Specifically, CLASSIC will focus on:
- Advancing ELSAA technology
- Developing threat detection sensing techniques
- Building resilient high-speed wireless networks
- Studying wireless jamming
- Field and lab testing
Rice said it will also use an AI modeling framework to simulate electromagnetic environments in real time and potentially accelerate the development of wireless technologies.
