Vuran receives DoD grant for EMS research and development

Mehmet Can Vuran, Dale Jensen Chair in Computing and director of the Cyber-Physical Networking (CPN) Lab, and his team have received a $430,000, three-year grant from the Naval Surface Warfare Center to address highly complex and evolving challenges for the Department of Defense (DoD) regarding use of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS).

Vuran is a National Strategic Research Institute (NSRI) Fellow, who along with colleagues, collaborators and students, is renowned for identifying solutions for sharing, sensing and leveraging the spectrum for several industries. Through this grant award, he is entering the national security space for the first time with this project - "Deep Complex-valued Convolutional Neural Networks for Joint Spectrum Sensing and Channel Estimation."

"This is a topic my group has been exploring for a long time, under the topic of dynamic spectrum sharing," Vuran said. "We are moving toward an era where wireless spectrum is scarce, and we need much more capable technology to share the spectrum. This is a much more challenging problem where we are looking at complex real-world scenarios for spectrum sensing and channel estimation.

"Our capabilities in both theoretical and practical evaluations are a great fit for national security. We are excited because we can tackle even more challenging problems."

The grant is administered through the NSRI at the University of Nebraska. NSRI serves as the DoD-designated University Affiliated Research Center sponsored by U.S. Strategic Command, which leads EMS operational advocacy for the DoD.