New partnership will help drones coordinate in all weathers

UCL and Plextek are working together on a 30-month Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) worth £270,000.

Plextek are market leaders in communications, radar and sensor systems for small, lightweight and low-power drones and other autonomous vehicles. 

The KTP will allow Plextek to access the latest expertise on radar sensing and communication technology from UCL’s Electronic and Electrical Engineering department. The partnership will help Plextek further develop new technologies to allow drones and other autonomous vehicles better understand their environment and communicate and collaborate with each other.

Dr Matthew Ritchie (Associate Professor) is the lead academic on the project, working alongside Professor Christos Masouros, Professor of Signal Processing and Wireless Communications. The team are currently recruiting a Research Associate to work on the project.

Tapping into UCL’s specialist expertise in Radio Frequency (RF) communications

Matthew, academic supervisor on the KTP, explains: “Currently the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum is being used for more and more tasks such as communicating (Wi-Fi, mobile phones, satellites, TV signals, etc.) as well sensing the environment (radar systems). 

“The number of devices using the spectrum has been increasing exponentially, along with increasing demands for wider parts of the spectrum. This has resulted in a congested and contested RF environment that requires novel concepts to allow both communications and radar systems to jointly exist in the cramped space available.”

The KTP aims to help address these issues and generate real world solutions that will help Plextek remain at the forefront of RF innovation by delivering new products and services. 

Helping Plextek to innovate autonomous vehicles

UCL has been developing a number of novel RF communications and sensing concepts over the past few years, focusing on RF system-on-a-chip technology. This KTP will see UCL’s research used to develop novel real-world systems that are able to both sense the environment around them and communicate on the same waveform.

Matthew explains: “Future applications of this work include drones that can navigate all day/night in different weather conditions while co-ordinating with each other using a single transmitted signal. It could also help self-driving vehicles avoid collisions with obstacles while communicating with all the other vehicles on the road to share information about the road ahead.”

Dr Aled Catherall, Chief Technology Officer at Plextek, explains: “We’re seeing a growing need for novel RF communication and sensing technology for autonomous platforms, particularly those that are constrained in size, weight and power and operating inside highly congested RF environments. 

“This KTP will help to realise a novel multifunctional RF technology which Plextek can commercialise to solve sensing and communication challenges in emerging remote and autonomous platform applications.”

Links

Find out more about:

• UCL’s Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering 
• growing your business through a KTP
• applying your research through a KTP
• Dr Matt Ritchie
• Professor Christos Masouros
• Plextek

Photo is of a directional 60 GHz radio module. This device can electronically steer narrow beams on both transmit and receive, making it extremely resilient to interference. © Plextek