abstract: RF convergence of radar and communications users is rapidly becoming an issue for a multitude of stakeholders. To hedge against growing spectral congestion, research into cooperative radar and communications systems has been identified as a critical necessity for the United States and other countries. Further, the joint sensing-communicating paradigm appears imminent in several technological domains. In the pursuit of co-designing radar and communications systems that work cooperatively and benefit from each other's existence, joint radar-communications metrics are defined and bounded as a measure of performance. Estimation rate is introduced, a novel measure of radar estimation information as a function of time. Complementary to communications data rate, the two systems can now be compared on the same scale. An information-centric approach has a number of advantages, defining precisely what is gained through radar illumination and serves as a measure of spectral efficiency. Bounding radar estimation rate and communications data rate jointly, systems can be designed as a joint optimization problem. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2017

abstract: Limited spectral access motivates technologies that adapt to diminishing resources and increasingly cluttered environments. A joint positioning-communications system is designed and implemented on \acf{COTS} hardware. This system enables simultaneous positioning of, and communications between, nodes in a distributed network of base-stations and unmanned aerial systems (UASs). This technology offers extreme ranging precision ($<$ 5 cm) with minimal bandwidth (10 MHz), a secure communications link to protect against cyberattacks, a small form factor that enables integration into numerous platforms, and minimal resource consumption which supports high-density networks. The positioning and communications tasks are performed simultaneously with a single, co-use waveform, which efficiently utilizes limited resources and supports higher user densities. The positioning task uses a cooperative, point-to-point synchronization protocol to estimate the relative position and orientation of all users within the network. The communications task distributes positioning information between users and secures the positioning task against cyberattacks. This high-performance system is enabled by advanced time-of-arrival estimation techniques and a modern phase-accurate distributed coherence synchronization algorithm. This technology may be installed in ground-stations, ground vehicles, unmanned aerial systems, and airborne vehicles, enabling a highly-mobile, re-configurable network with numerous applications. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2019

abstract: Spectral congestion is quickly becoming a problem for the telecommunications sector. In order to alleviate spectral congestion and achieve electromagnetic radio frequency (RF) convergence, communications and radar systems are increasingly encouraged to share bandwidth. In direct opposition to the traditional spectrum sharing approach between radar and communications systems of complete isolation (temporal, spectral or spatial), both systems can be jointly co-designed from the ground up to maximize their joint performance for mutual benefit. In order to properly characterize and understand cooperative spectrum sharing between radar and communications systems, the fundamental limits on performance of a cooperative radar-communications system are investigated. To facilitate this investigation, performance metrics are chosen in this dissertation that allow radar and communications to be compared on the same scale. To that effect, information is chosen as the performance metric and an information theoretic radar performance metric compatible with the communications data rate, the radar estimation rate, is developed. The estimation rate measures the amount of information learned by illuminating a target. With the development of the estimation rate, standard multi-user communications performance bounds are extended with joint radar-communications users to produce bounds on the performance of a joint radar-communications system. System performance for variations of the standard spectrum sharing problem defined in this dissertation are investigated, and inner bounds on performance are extended to account for the effect of continuous radar waveform optimization, multiple radar targets, clutter, phase noise, and radar detection. A detailed interpretation of the estimation rate and a brief discussion on how to use these performance bounds to select an optimal operating point and achieve RF convergence are provided. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2018

abstract: The following document describes the hardware implementation and analysis of Temporal Interference Mitigation using High-Level Synthesis. As the problem of spectral congestion becomes more chronic and widespread, Electromagnetic radio frequency (RF) based systems are posing as viable solution to this problem. Among the existing RF methods Cooperation based systems have been a solution to a host of congestion problems. One of the most important elements of RF receiver is the spatially adaptive part of the receiver. Temporal Mitigation is vital technique employed at the receiver for signal recovery and future propagation along the radar chain. The computationally intensive parts of temporal mitigation are identified and hardware accelerated. The hardware implementation is based on sequential approach with optimizations applied on the individual components for better performance. An extensive analysis using a range of fixed point data types is performed to find the optimal data type necessary. Finally a hybrid combination of data types for different components of temporal mitigation is proposed based on results from the above analysis. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Computer Engineering 2020

abstract: Unmanned aerial systems (UASs) have recently enabled novel applications such as passenger transport and package delivery, but are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattack and therefore difficult to certify. Legacy systems such as GPS provide these capabilities extremely well, but are sensitive to spoofing and hijacking. An alternative intelligent transport system (ITS) was developed that provides highly secure communications, positioning, and timing synchronization services to networks of cooperative RF users, termed Communications and High-Precision Positioning (CHP2) system. This technology was implemented on consumer-off-the-shelf (COTS) hardware and it offers rapid (<100 ms) and precise (<5 cm) positioning capabilities in over-the-air experiments using flexible ground stations and UAS platforms using limited bandwidth (10 MHz). In this study, CHP2 is considered in the context of safety-critical and resource limited transport applications and urban air mobility. The two-way ranging (TWR) protocol over a joint positioning-communications waveform enables distributed coherence and time-of-flight(ToF) estimation. In a multi-antenna setup, the cross-platform ranging on participating nodes in the network translate to precise target location and orientation. In the current form, CHP2 necessitates a cooperative timing exchange at regular intervals. Dynamic resource management supports higher user densities by constantly renegotiating spectral access depending on need and opportunity. With these novel contributions to the field of integrated positioning and communications, CHP2 is a suitable candidate to provide both communications, navigation, and surveillance (CNS) and alternative positioning, navigation, and timing (APNT) services for high density safety-critical transport applications on a variety of vehicular platforms. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2020