Research Intern at National Institute of Technology (NIT) Rourkela (2026-05 – 2026-07)
Project: AI/ML-Based Secrecy Outage Analysis for Cooperative NTN/UAV Communication Systems (Guided by Prof. Vinay Bankey)
- Self-learned about UAV systems and independently assembled a quadcopter from raw components (Tarot frame, Pixhawk flight controller, Li-ion 8000mAh battery), configuring and troubleshooting wiring and flight controller integration without formal guidance
- Diagnosed and resolved a propeller-sizing issue affecting flight stability; conducted outdoor test flights, iterating on landing technique and flight control
- Integrated a Raspberry Pi on the drone using a buck converter to step down 16V battery output to 5V, enabling onboard image capture during live flight
- Established a network-based communication link between the Raspberry Pi and a ground-station laptop for real-time data/image transfer during flight
- Set up a two-node SDR communication testbed using USRP B210 devices in LabVIEW, achieving full-duplex loopback and successful transmission of text, numeric, and graph data which laid as groundwork for secrecy outage probability (SOP) analysis in physical layer security
- Authored two IEEE-format research papers: one on the UAV-based real-time object detection system, and one documenting the full internship's UAV/SDR communication work
- Presented a poster at an IEEE competition based on the research conducted during the internship
