Florida Tech Receives New Research Grant for Design of Resilient Airborne Networks

MELBOURNE, FLA.—Florida Institute of Technology’s Associate Professor of Computer Science Marco Carvalho is at work on the design of resilient airborne networks and communication systems under a new, $275,000 research grant from the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). These systems are highly critical to supporting the U.S. Air Force’s missions and are important for numerous civilian applications, including general transportation, disaster recovery and surveillance. Carvalho leads a team of researchers at Florida Tech’s Intelligent Communication and Information Systems (ICIS) Laboratory.

The contract is to design and evaluate new adaptive communications infrastructures that can autonomously coordinate and optimize resources to support dynamic application demands and mission requirements. The research focus is on resilience, which refers to a communication system’s ability to withstand, recover, adapt and evolve to localized disruptions, faults and attacks.

Carvalho and his team are using a set of robotic aerial drones and ground vehicles to design and experiment with distributed coordination and airborne communication protocols. Testing will be indoors.

As part of this research effort, the protocol and algorithms developed at Florida Tech will also be tested and evaluated in collaboration with the AFRL in larger scale airborne experiments and exercises at Stockbridge, N.Y.