AERPAW team participated in NC State’s Packapalooza which was a vibrant all-day block party and street festival that caps off Wolfpack Welcome Week on Saturday, Aug. 26, 2023. In particular we flew our helikite during the event. The payload for the helikite included a DJI drone with a camera attached to it so that we use the camera to monitor the crowd and take pictures and videos for security reasons. We also had a portable node with 2 USRPs as additional payload. The USRPs were used to monitor the spectrum usage during the event. One of the USRPs did not include any front end and it was used to monitor the whole band from 100 MHz to 6GHz that the USRP supports. The other USRP included the AERPAW 3.5 GHz front end and it was used to monitor the 3.2 GHz- 4 GHz band. We also recorded IQ data for the 3.2 GHz- 4 GHz band. Initial results from the two spectrum measurements are shown below. The measurement starts when the helikite was on the ground and there were not many signals present and we start to see signals after measurement index 200 and the helikite is again lowered after around measurement index 350 where the signals are not visible again. This measurement will provide data to understand the coverage of base stations as a function of altitude. We also plan to compare our results from last year’s event to understand how spectrum usage changed over time. In particular we see increasing 5G activity in the 3.5 GHz band.
