Research Programme

INTRODUCTION

The DTC consortium has defined a domain definition for Electro-Magnetic
Remote Sensing to make the subject area more accessible for potential
science providers who may lack background in military Electromagnetic
Remote Sensing. The ideas presented in the domain definition should not
be regarded as definitive, nor inhibitive of allied ideas that science
providers may wish to propose for inclusion in the programme.

The research programme is planned and co-ordinated by the Research Theme Leader IPT under the leadership of the Research Director. Research topics are pursued by the most appropriate Research Theme Leader on behalf of the IPT, and as such all research work is openly visible to all Consortium members.

RESEARCH THEMES

The objectives of the DTC programme in Electromagnetic Remote Sensing are to research and demonstrate innovative and cost-effective sensor technologies in any parts of the EM spectrum that can improve substantially the capability to detect and/or identify and/or locate military targets, at longer range and in adverse weather. The research is potentially applicable to air, land, sea or space-based sensing systems.

The DTC Consortium has structured the research around four broad technical themes covering devices to systems and addressing a very wide region of the EM spectrum.

These themes are:

	RF Systems: covering active and passive sensors from HF to THz
	EO Systems: covering active and passive systems in the EO and IR bands
	Transduction Devices and Materials: covering critical enabling technologies for sensor systems, with a strong emphasis on cost-effectiveness
	Transducer Embedded Processing: covering processing-intensive sensor improvements

Technical priorities are to drive detection ranges and resolutions in all weather conditions and to offer solutions in active and passive domains. The second key driver is to improve cost-effectiveness. These technical themes are a convenient way of managing the research, but they are not prescriptive and cross-fertilisation is a fundamental tenet of the IPT structure.

Cross-fertilisation between different sensing technologies involves both investigating areas of commonality and exploiting multi-function and multi-sensor techniques to improve sensing capabilities. The proposed research work described here includes some initial work in this important area, and it is anticipated that this will become an increasingly important part of the DTC research in future years. Work in this field clearly needs to be closely aligned with the future work of the Data and Information Fusion DTC and this will be achieved by the planned close liaison described in Section 3.9. The content of the research themes is described in more detail in the following sections.

DTC resources are allocated to SMEs and Universities, and Defence related Research Centres as described in the chart below. Approximately 30% of DTC resources are targeted at SMEs and Universities.