Ole Miss Engineer Lands NASA Grant for Antenna Research

The grant is part of NASA's Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research program. Hutchcraft is working to find ways to reduce interference caused when antennas for different communication systems are placed too close together.

"Communication systems are ubiquitous in our lives and operate at different frequencies, such as VHF and UHF for over-the-air television, Wi-Fi, satellite TV and cellular networks," he said. "You often see many antennas on water towers or tall buildings; when antennas are placed too close together, they can interfere with each other, which hurts their performance."

Hutchcraft described the research idea as "Star Trek's cloaking."

"Let's say you have two antenna systems that you want to operate close to each other," the Ole Miss researcher said. "You have to put a cloak on each antenna, and with this cloak, the idea is that each antenna operates the same as an uncloaked version of the antenna, but in complete isolation from the other antenna.

"In other words, it is as if each antenna does not know the other antenna is there."

Most of the antenna research in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering – as well as many manufacturing processes – use destructive techniques, he said. These include milling or etching, where a designer uses milling machines or caustic chemicals to eat away copper from a layered plate to form antennas, feed lines or circuits.

But for this project, Hutchcraft and his team are using 3D printing, which is an additive technique.

"The advantages of 3D printing are that it offers flexibility, but the disadvantages are that it does not print with precision, and printing metal layers can be difficult," he said. "These are both areas that we are looking into in this research."

Hutchcraft is working with Junming Diao, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Mississippi State University. Diao, who is a co-principal investigator on the project, tests whether the entire cloaking device works as intended when all the pieces are assembled.

He also builds simplified electrical models to adjust and improve how well the cloaking surface performs.

"MSU focuses on testing cloaked antennas in practical sensing systems to ensure they deliver real-world performance gains," Diao said. "I am excited to see advanced electromagnetic theory and technology translated into real-world applications that can enhance NASA's Earth science and space missions."

Besides applications for space missions, this technology will benefit the aviation and automotive industries, Hutchcraft said. Modern cars and airplanes are built with a variety of communication systems and the number of complex systems in each vehicle is increasing, he explained.

"This grant illustrates that cutting-edge research can be done in the state of Mississippi," Hutchcraft said. "It shows that while sports have universities competing against each other on the field, they can collaborate effectively for the advancement of technology."

"It will also be great to show our students that they can work on such an important project."

This material is based on work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's EPSCoR grant no. 80NSSC25M0002.

Top: Antennas from different types of communications networks can interfere with each other if they are place too closely. A NASA-funded study at the university aims to develop a way to 'cloak' each antenna so they both operate without interference. Illustration by John McCustion/University Marketing and Communications