Welcome to the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory

“Wireless Innovations for Tomorrow”

We are an experimental wireless communications research group focused on applying techniques from many different disciplines to develop new wireless technologies.

  • Grid Software Defined Radio Testbed

Mission

The primary mission of the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory (DWSL) is to take a systems-centric view of new and emerging wireless technologies using a combination of interdisciplinary researchadvanced simulations, and hardware prototyping. DWSL is focused on experimental wireless communications for a diverse set of applications including: 6G technologies, wireless network cybersecurity, medical cyberphysical systems, smart cities, UAV based communications, and the Internet of Things.

Ongoing projects at DWSL encompass a wide ranging number of research areas that reflects its systems level approach to studying and solving problems in wireless communications. The lab is also working with faculty members across the university to extend its research impact into diverse areas such as medicine and functional fabrics for biomedical applications, 6G and IoT applications, UAV-based communication and sensing, smart cities, and augmented reality for wireless communication education.

Kapil R. Dandekar, Ph.D.

Work in the Media

2023

Kapil Dandekar Inducted into the 2023 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows
American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, March 2023

2022

VIP Project Helps Student Make Connections
Drexel Engineering, Jan 2022

2021

Students Aim for New Functionality for Smart Fabric Band
Drexel Discoveries, Fall 2021

Universities should transform their methodology
Mail and Guardian, May 2021

Coronavirus: How to boost your WiFi performance when everyone’s at home
Philadelphia Inquirer, January 2021

2020 and earlier

West Chester firm lets you tag and track your suitcase, lands first contract with a major airline
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2019

Meet the 17 people tasked with advising Philly on smart city best practices 
Technical.ly Philly, April 2019

Drexel’s Spray-On Antennas Could Be the Tech Connector of the Future
Drexel News Blog, September 2018

Streetwise: How a smart Philadelphia would embrace transformational technologies
Philadelphia Business Journal, June 2018

Diplomacy In The Battle For Bandwidth
Drexel News Blog, May 2017 

New Research Labs Foster Collaboration at Drexel’s 3101 Market St.
Drexel Now, April 2017 

Amid Privacy Concerns, Wearable Tech Grows in Health
Athletic Business, January 2017 

Wearable tech gaining in health care, but privacy is a concern
Philly.com, January 2017 

These Smart Threads Could Save Lives
NSF Science Nation, September 2016 

CoE Students at the Democratic National Convention
Drexel News, August 2016 

Drexel in the Top 50 of Worldwide List for Patents
Drexel News, July 2016 

Demand for jobs high in cyber security
Philly.com, August 2015 

Retooling Locator Systems for Mobile 911 Calls
Govtech.com, August 2014 

Adant, a technology company cofounded by DWSL alumnus Daniele Piazza, is showcasing its amazing beamshaping antenna technology at CES 2013.
December 2012

Smart fabric could be cheap, non-invasive way to monitor complications in pregnancy
MedCity News, November 2012 

Drexel engineers may soon replace E-Z Pass box with transparent antennas
DrexelNOW, October 2010

Spirent Teams Up with Drexel University to Expand Research into Advanced Wireless Antenna Technologies
BusinessWire, October 2010

Community Service Program Expands
IEEE the institute article features our Senior Design activities, September 2010

News

2023

4/20: Congratulations to DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin and DWSL Post-doc Anim Kyei on the publication of their journal paper, “Incident power and relative phase distribution mapping in reconfigurable intelligent surfaces using energy harvesting” in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

4/5: Congratulations to Kapil Dandekar for being recognized by the College of Engineering for his installation as an endowed chair professor.

2022

2/22: Congratulations to DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin on the publication of his paper, “Anomalous Radio Frequency Conductivity and Sheet Resistance of 2D Ti3C2Tx MXene” in IEEE Access.

2/22: Congratulations to DWSL and DISCO Lab PhD student Ankita Paul, and DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin on the publication of their paper, “Energy-Efficient Respiratory Anomaly Detection in Premature Newborn Infants” which has been published in the journal Electronics as part of the Special Issue Neuromorphic Sensing and Computing Systems.

2/22: Congratulations to DWSL Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program student Abhi Adhikari his undergraduate senior design team (Sameer Parihar, Sujoy Das), DWSL researchers Marko Jacovic and Vasil Pano, and industrial collaborator from Lockheed Martin ATL, Anthony Trezza on the acceptance of their paper “Software-Defined Radar Testbed for Multi-Target Tracking” to the 2022 IEEE RADAR Conference.

1/22: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate, Marko Jacovic on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Securing wireless communication systems at the physical layer”, and the start of his new job at Lockheed Martin.

1/22: Congratulations to DWSL researchers Marko Jacovic, Mike Liston, and Vasil Pano on the publication of their journal paper, “Experimentation framework for wireless communication systems under jamming scenarios” in IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory and Applications.

1/22: Working in collaboration with Drexel Professors Steven Weber and Spiros Mancoridis, DWSL is kicking off a new project for the FAA ASSURE program.

2021

12/21: DWSL Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program student Rei Balabani was showcased for his undergraduate research to develop a campus-wide Internet of Things (IoT) testbed as part of the Drexel Areas of Research Excellence (DARE) program.

10/21: Congratulations to DWSL and DISCO PhD student Ankita Paul, DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin, and our team for winning the Best Poster Award in the AI Systems and Applications session of the 2021 IBM-IEEE AI Compute Symposium (AICS2021).

8/21: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate, Oday Bshara on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Millimeter wave beamforming techniques for future wireless communication applications”, and the start of his new job at Toyota North America.

8/21: Best wishes to DWSL alum Xaime Rivas Rey for the start of his career at Comcast.

7/21: Congratulations to former DWSL undergraduate researcher Rob Ross on the publication of his paper “An adaptively parameterized algorithm estimating respiratory rate from a passive wearable RFID smart garment” in the 2021 IEEE COMPSAC conference.

6/21: Best wishes to DWSL post-doc Vasil Pano on his new job at Intel.

4/21: Congratulations to DWSL part-time PhD student Mike Liston, on the publication of his paper, “Entropy based exploration in cognitive radio networks using deep reinforcement learning for dynamic spectrum access” in the 2021 IEEE WAMICON conference.

4/21: Congratulations to our team for the publication of a book chapter, “Wearable smart garment devices for passive biomedical monitoring” in Springer Signal Processing in Medicine and Biology.

1/21: Working in collaboration with the Center for Functional Fabrics, DWSL is kicking off a new project for the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) Institute.

2020 and earlier

9/20: Congratulation to DWSL MS student, Martin Kraus on the successful defense of his thesis, “Semi-supervised machine learning based RF node authentication using properties of the wireless channel” and best wishes on your new job at Broadcom.

7/20: Several patents involving DWSL researchers and research projects have been granted, including: “Adaptive pursuit learning method to mitigate small-cell interference through directionality” (US 10694526 B2), “TSV-based on-chip antennas, measurement, and evaluation” (US 2020/0212538 A1), and “System for ultrasonic communication across curved metal surfaces” (US 10594409 B2).

6/20: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate Yuqiao Liu on the successful defense of his dissertation “Novel antenna technology for internet of things applications” and the start of his career at Maxlinear.

10/23/19: Geoffrey Mainland, Alex Lackpour, and Kapil Dandekar of Team Dragon Radio attended the final DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge event at 2019 MWC. The team placed 8th globally in the final competition. The final competition was live streamed at the following link.

5/19: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate Simon Begashaw on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Enhancing multi-user networks with pattern reconfigurable antennas” and the start of his career at Apple (joining a number of other DWSL alumni).

4/23/19: Marko Jacovic and Oday Bshara presented papers on physical layer security and UAV radar cross section measurements, respectively at the 2019 IEEE WAMICON conference.

1/23/19: Dr. Kapil Dandekar was named the recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Innovation Award from the Drexel College of Engineering.

12/13/18: DWSL Team “Dragon Radio” placed eighth globally in the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. The team consists of faculty and students in the College of Engineering and the College of Computing and Informatics.

9/21/18: In a collaboration between the Drexel Nanotechnology Institute and DWSL members Yuqiao Liuand Kapil Dandekar, a paper on “spray-painted” antennas was just published in Science Advances.

05/31/18: Xaime Rivas Rey won Continued Excellence in Teaching Assistance award at the 2018 Graduate Student day.

11/07/17: DWSL Director Dr. Kapil Dandekar featured on a panel discussion titled Emerging Directions in Communications at the 2017 Texas Wireless Summit at UT Austin.