“This technology fosters ambience in intelligence and sensing that is critical to many applications, both military and public use,” added Chandra Kambhamettu, professor in the Department of Computer and Information Science and a co-investigator in UD-WISE. “For instance, it can be robust to environmental disturbances and energy efficient under dense, or congested, circumstances.”

Thanks to their new funding from ONR, the UD-WISE team will be able to work on developing and refining their photonics-based devices for ISAC applications. For this grant, the primary focus will be on developing ad-hoc wireless networks for expeditionary forces. Prather, a Navy veteran, cites the notable and impactful communication outages during the ongoing war in Ukraine while explaining the need for a highly reliable communications infrastructure given the challenging, dynamic and unpredictable nature of military operations.

As a co-PI of this grant, DSU’s Rana, professor of physics and engineering, will be developing novel transistors made of an aluminum nitride ferroelectric material to achieve the low-power needs of these advanced wireless communication devices.

The researchers said that in order to succeed with this project, UD-WISE will need to successfully bring together experts in a wide range of fields — and with students and collaborators working in the fields of devices, electron-to-photon conversion, wireless communications, sensing, and artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML). The “S” part of UD-WISE will be key to integrating everything into a collective system-level application, Prather said.

“The exciting part of this work is the cross-disciplinary approach we bring to the table, one that couldn’t be solved by individual domain expertise alone,” Qi said. “We are talking about the synergy between AI and machine learning, electromagnetics, information theory and wireless communication. Each one of them has traditionally been working towards their own ends, and we're bringing them all together to address real-world problems.” 

From idea to real-world application

Along with their years of knowledge across both research and industry, Prather and Qi will be leveraging their experience and leadership in this field thanks to research initiatives supported by the CHIPS and Science Act. 

“We also have dedicated facilities through small businesses that are also supported by the State of Delaware to actually begin manufacturing some of these technologies,” Prather said. “We are taking it upon ourselves not only to do the research but to become a supplier at the manufacturing level for this technology.”

This new grant also supports collaboration with the Delaware Department Technology and Information to directly apply these new technologies in order to provide high-speed Internet to rural areas of the state. 

“We need to make sure the networks we are deploying are future-proof and scalable to advances in the tech-comm space,” said Delaware Broadband Office Executive Director Roddy Flynn. “By collaborating with the visionaries at the University of Delaware, we can plan not just to connect Delawareans to the best networks today, but make sure Delaware is at the cutting edge of connectivity for a generation.” 

For Qi, long-term success for this project would mean seeing autonomous, intelligent wireless networks that can adapt and respond to their surroundings deployed broadly. 

“The driving vision for us is that 10 years from now we will see wireless networks that know where its users are and what their needs are and are self-regulating in an adaptive and intelligent way,” he said.

Prather added that because of the newness of this technology, it’s challenging to predict exactly what the future might hold — which is in part what makes this area so exciting to work in.

“ISAC involves bringing each of these technical worlds together: communications, where we exchange information; sensing, where we have an awareness of the environment; AI/ML, where can interpret information and make decisions; and wireless/integrated technologies that enable the high-speed/low-power transmission and processing of that information,” Prather said. “With ISAC, we’ll be able to communicate based on our situational awareness and couple that to an optimal assessment of immediate and long-term requirements, which opens up a new dimension of what our devices can do for us. Even though we can't put our finger on all the amazing things that it's going to be able to eventually do, one thing's for sure — unless we build it, they will not come.”