Junming Diao
Mississippi State University, MS·Engineering·Early-career
Radio telescopes collect faint radio waves from space. Bigger and more widely spread arrays see finer detail, but large telescopes cost a great deal to build.
- Fields
Engineering
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Computer Science
- Topics
radio astronomy
radio telescope
Internet of Things
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2031
What they work on
- Build an Earth-scale distributed radio telescope by synchronizing large numbers of IoT devices, such as smartphones and laptops, as sensor nodes, using embedded signal processing and distributed digital beamforming.
- Develop eigenvalue-based and satellite-based calibration methods that allow coherent astronomical observations without precise knowledge of each device's location or extreme timing accuracy.
- Design scalable multi-layer signal processing that removes radio-frequency interference in real time and protects privacy, so the system works in crowded radio spectrum.
- Enable real-time spectrum sharing between communication services and scientific observations, and release open-source hardware and software reference designs for citizen science.
More about the research
They also face growing interference from phones, satellites and other wireless signals. This project asks whether the billions of everyday Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as smartphones and laptops, could be linked into one Earth-scale radio telescope. It also aims to let the public take part in astronomy as citizen scientists.
Why it matters
A telescope built from everyday devices could make radio astronomy cheaper and open it to citizen scientists. Its methods for sharing radio spectrum and removing interference could help astronomy coexist with wireless communications. The same networked sensing design could also inform future communication networks, environmental monitoring, disaster response and smart infrastructure.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Neal Patwari
Washington University in St Louis, MO·Engineering
Develop RF watermarks that embed random pseudonyms in wireless signals so that passive radio receivers, such as radio telescopes, can identify any interfering transmitter.
Guevara Noubir
Northeastern University, MA·Engineering
Analyze threats to spectrum sharing from adversaries who use software-defined radios and machine learning to evade detection, including colluding transmitters.
Laura Newburgh
Yale University, CT·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Develop modeling frameworks and analysis pipelines for cross-correlating CHIME 21cm hydrogen maps with galaxy surveys, and integrate improved models of the telescope beam into the analysis.
The school
Mississippi State University: 9 labs on PI Pages, $342M a year on research, 168 research doctorates a year.
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