Scientists will soon be able to produce more accurate global weather forecasts and gain new insights into climate change thanks to the School of Electrics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science's success in positively exploiting the commercial potential of work funded by EPSRC.
That initial project has enabled a team lead by ECIT's Robert Cahill to develop high performance electronic devices that are to be fitted to European Space Agency (ESA) satellites due to be launched later this decade to study the earth's upper atmosphere.
Known as dual polarized Frequency Selective Surface filters, they will give scientists access to completely new data on a range of phenomena including ozone depletion. Robert's team is now further exploiting the potential of the EPSRC project by developing much higher frequency versions for retrieving data from clouds. That work is being supported by the UK Centre for Earth Observation Instrumentation, Rutherford Appleton Laboratories, the European Space Agency and EADS Astrium, the largest spacecraft manufacturer outside the United States.
Robert says, "Up to now space borne remote sensing instruments have only been capable of separating either the vertically or horizontally polarized components of naturally occurring thermal emissions from gasses in the earth's atmosphere, but not both together at the same time. The new filters we have developed resolve this problem and enable complex imaging of clouds to be undertaken for the first time at very short wavelengths.
"The initial EPSRC project allowed us to acquire the highly specialised laboratory equipment we needed. It also enabled us to undertake the fundamental research, training, design and prototype fabrication required for this type of product. This helped to put us in an unrivalled position to bid for commercial contracts which we are now doing with great success.
"We are currently involved in most of the major European climate monitoring space programmes and we are the main supplier of this technology both to the UK space industry and to the ESA which is now our main research funder.
"In addition to these projects we are aiming to further develop the technology for application in other areas, including intelligent control of communication signals into and out of buildings."
Having previously worked for British Aerospace and Matra Marconi Space, Robert has extensive industrial experience of developing antenna and passive microwave device technology for space and defence applications. Aside from his professional interest in the technology he now specialises in, he also has a personal reason to remain deeply involved in its future application.
"The work I'm involved in at ECIT is particularly exciting for me as it was my PhD supervisor at the University of Kent who first worked on the technology back in the early 1970s."
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