Dr Matthew Ritchie, University College London

This Research Fellowship looks to advance systems in the emerging area of distributed multi-function radio frequency (RF) sensors. The research has applications in the defence and security domain: modern airborne platforms need to be able to navigate, communicate and sense their environment. These capabilities need to be robust to interference and jamming, otherwise they will fail in their mission. The experimental outputs of this research will help inform how to provide all these capabilities in challenging RF environments. The current state of the art is to use many different devices to send and receive signals for different purposes. This project proposes a single advanced digital hardware solution, which can operate like a Swiss Army knife, replacing many devices with one. We will create a flexible research testbed using cutting-edge hardware, as well as innovative system architectures. The system’s planned capabilities include communications, radar detection and electronic warfare (EW) modes.

The research will investigate:

• How can different modes be performed by a single adaptive device?

• If an intelligent sensor can adapt the roles its takes, when should it operate in each mode?

• How can collections of these sensing platforms operate in unison to deliver more than the sum of their parts?

These key questions are currently unanswered and have only been partly theoretically simulated. By moving this research forward, the work will improve the connectivity and security of the UK.