03 / 06  /  Inventor

RadAround

A field-expedient direction finder for contested IoT sensing and EM situational awareness.

MILCOM
Published at IEEE MILCOM 2025
13.94 dBi
Boresight gain at 2.4 GHz
30°
3 dB beamwidth
< 1 day
To build and deploy

Overview

Research Lead, first author
November 2024 to December 2025

RadAround is a passive 2-D direction finder that maps electromagnetic emissions as a heatmap. One narrow-beam antenna is steered mechanically across a scene while a software-defined radio samples each point.

It is built from parts available in the field: a 3D printer, a HackRF One, an Arduino, residential wire, chicken wire, and stepper motors scavenged from an office printer. MATLAB coordinates antenna positioning and SDR sampling.

I designed the helicone antennas, the steered platform, and the signal pipeline, validated the antennas in a far-field anechoic chamber, and presented the paper as first author at IEEE MILCOM 2025 in Los Angeles.

Read the paper arXiv IEEE Xplore
RadAround scanning
Helicone antenna on the steered platform
Helicone antenna on the steered platform
Rotor and antenna
Rotor and antenna
Wi-Fi access point behind a wall, 2.4 GHz
Wi-Fi access point behind a wall, 2.4 GHz
Laptop behind a wooden door, 1.7 GHz
Laptop behind a wooden door, 1.7 GHz
PC scan overlaid on the optical photo, 1.7 GHz
PC scan overlaid on the optical photo, 1.7 GHz
Processor utilization detected at 1.7 GHz
Processor utilization detected at 1.7 GHz
Steered platform
Steered platform
2.4 GHz helicone antenna
2.4 GHz helicone antenna

Highlights

  • Detected a Wi-Fi router and a laptop through walls and doors
  • Mapped a PC's processor utilization from a distance, including in sleep mode
  • Two antennas: 2.4 GHz for the ISM band and 1.7 GHz for computing emissions
  • 360° azimuth and 90° elevation on a 3D-printed worm-gear rotor
  • Supported by the Embry-Riddle Office of Undergraduate Research
Next projectModuMotor LLC