PhD student · Started in 2025
Denis FESTA
Reverse engineering and development of RF functionalities in network interface cards.
CurriculumTelecommunication Engineering
AdvisorFrancesco Gringoli
Research groupTo be confirmed
This research investigates how commodity Wi-Fi network interface cards, found in smartphones and access points, can be repurposed as software-defined radios (SDRs). By reverse-engineering and patching the firmware of Broadcom/Cypress FullMAC chipsets, the project exposes PHY-layer primitives—such as arbitrary IQ transmission and channel state information extraction—normally hidden from users. A SoapySDR-compatible driver will make these devices usable with standard tools like GNU Radio. The outcome is an open-source framework that democratizes PHY-layer experimentation in wireless security, sensing, and protocol design, at a fraction of the cost of dedicated SDR equipment.
Profile
Short Bio
Denis Festa is a PhD student in Telecommunication Engineering (cycle 41) at the University of Brescia, supervised by Francesco Gringoli. He holds a degree in Computer Engineering, and during his MSc thesis he reverse-engineered the Wi-Fi functionalities of the ESP32-C6 microcontroller, gaining low-level control over the transmission of IEEE 802.11 frames. His interests center on low-level software, firmware reverse-engineering, and the physical layer of wireless systems. His doctoral research explores how commodity Wi-Fi chipsets in smartphones and access points can be turned into software-defined radios, aiming to make PHY-layer experimentation more accessible to the wireless research community.
