Michael J. Medley

United States Air Force Research Laboratory

Papers

Total Citations

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About

Michael J. Medley is a researcher at the forefront of autonomous networked systems, with a primary focus on unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm communications and advanced signal processing. His work addresses critical challenges in enabling reliable, high-speed connectivity for next-generation robotic platforms operating in the air, on the ground, or in space. Medley’s major contributions include the development of RF-SITL, a pioneering software-in-the-loop channel emulator that integrates GNU Radio with the UB-ANC emulator to realistically simulate multi-UAV network performance. This tool, published in 2022 with 5 citations, allows researchers to test communication protocols under authentic radio frequency conditions before costly field trials. Additionally, Medley has advanced direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation techniques for mm-wave and future THz bands, introducing a novel single-sample method based on Hankel-matrix decompositions. This work, with 4 citations, enables rapid and effective signal localization essential for maintaining high data-rate links in dynamic autonomous swarms. By bridging the gap between simulation and real-world deployment, Medley’s research is instrumental in pushing the boundaries of autonomous aerial networking and high-frequency communications.