As RadioHound Gets Smaller, It’s Becoming More Visible

Professor Bertrand Hochwald was recently invited to address a group of spectrum research and development (R&D) stakeholders representing 19 federal agencies at the Networking and Information Technology R&D (NIRTD) Wireless Spectrum R&D (WSRD) Interagency Working Group. He provided an overview of RadioHound, one of the Wireless Institute’s distinctive research platforms, that fits within WSRD’s strategic priorities for enabling widespread monitoring of the radio-frequency spectrum in real-time across geographic areas. 

Hochwald shared the vision, successes, and lessons learned from this multi-year project. Originally conceived by faculty members Hochwald, Jonathan Chisum, J. Nicholas Laneman, and Aaron Striegel, RadioHound provides low-cost, persistent spectrum sensors suitable for mobile deployments as well as a cloud backend for data collection, analytics, and visualization. Multiple sensors can be deployed over a geographic area to scan spectrum from 25 MHz to 6 GHz, and the cloud software creates a “spectrum heatmap” and other displays through a web-based graphical user interface. Faculty led a team of graduate students and staff in designing and demonstrating the first two versions of the platform. The third version, which will be released later this Spring, is the smallest and lowest-power version yet, and is unique in that it has been designed and implemented predominantly by a team of graduate students.

About the ND Wireless Institute

The Wireless Institute at the University of Notre Dame was founded in 2010 within the College of Engineering to provide a unique cooperative research environment for faculty, students, visitors, and industry partners. The Institute maintains state-of-the-art laboratories, builds shared platforms to demonstrate new technologies, and provides opportunities to lead teams that address complex projects involving all aspects of wireless sensing, communications, and networking.