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This case study describes how spin-out company, Antrum Ltd (founded in 2001) realises the commercial potential of Loughborough University's extensive antenna research. Antrum has been consistently profitable typically turning over between £150K - £300K. Examples of how research projects, through industrial partnership, have evolved to commercial products illustrate the success of Antrum's business model and the effectiveness of the partnership between the University and its spin out company. The Case Study describes how the University's wireless communications research, between 1998 - 2011, consistently challenged accepted antenna design to meet demand for products that are more efficient, robust, smaller and commercially viable.
Increasing use of mobile phones and the consequent congestion of the original bands have meant that over the last decade, additional bands have been released, and all current mobile phones need to operate at up to five different frequency bands. Professor Hall's group supported by £160k from British Telecom Labs, showed how to design a multi-band planar inverted F antenna, using slots in the antenna top plate. The published papers have since been quoted in many industrial patents and widely acknowledged to be the first publications of the antenna. Nokia, who had the largest market share in the REF period, based their antenna designs on the slot concept, and hence a large proportion of the several billion phones in the world today use this antenna, with a financial value of many millions of pounds.
We have developed enabling technologies for the defence, automotive and identification industries, the health service and the wider community where our contributions enable end users to maximise performance for a given cost. Work on Frequency Selective Surfaces (FSS) produced sub-reflectors for aerospace (BAE Systems — mm/sub-mm satellite radiometers for earth observations). Small antenna and RFID work led to new products in the automotive industry (Harada Industries), on-line fuel management systems (Timeplan Ltd), wireless smoke detectors (EMS Group), connectors (Martec), antennas (Panorama Antennas Ltd) and for Digital TV (Mitsubishi). Millimetre-wave over fibre systems linked antennas have supported the acquisition of new astronomical data, through the international ALMA (Atacama Large Millimetre Array) project, facilitating deeper public understanding of the universe.
State-of-the-art radio systems require antennas that are a) able to cover an ultra-wide range of operating frequency bands, and b) compact and yet robust enough to be mounted in settings that range from satellites to the human body. Our pioneering work in this area has led to the significant contributions to the UK Ofcom Spectrum Framework Review and the developments of new products and business opportunities, new technologies for assessing the EM emission on the mobile handset and for smart meter deployment, and wearable antennas deployed in the battlefield to reduce the load and smart communications for dismounted soldiers.
Femtocells provide short-range (e.g. 10m) wireless coverage which enables a conventional cellular communication system to be accessed indoors. Their widespread and growing use has been aided by the work in UoA11 by the University of Bedfordshire (UoB).
In 2008, while the femtocell concept was still in its infancy, researchers at UoB with expertise in wireless networks recognised that coverage prediction and interference reduction techniques would be essential if the benefits of that concept were to be realised.
Collaboration with two industrial partners (an international organisation and a regional SME) resulted in tools that enable operators to simulate typical femtocell deployment scenarios, such as urban, dense apartments, terraced house and small offices, before femtocells can be reliably deployed by users without affecting the rest of the network (a benefit of the technology). These tools have been deployed by those partners to support their businesses. A widely-cited textbook, written for network engineers, researchers and final year students, has brought knowledge of femtocell operation to a wider audience.
The underpinning research has led to a methodology for cost-effective monitoring systems to interpret complex and emergent conditions in real-world applications. There are ten different organisations utilising the technology, benefitting the UK economy and health care provision, both nationally and internationally. These include MAST Group Ltd, Electricity North West Ltd, TMMHRC (India) and the Milestones Trust (Bristol). The impacts are (i) Economic: improving business capabilities and UK company profit margins (ii) Societal: benefiting health sector organisations in India and in the UK through improved diagnosis and care for the elderly and vulnerable; and (iii) Environmental: reducing waste and carbon footprint.
Two decades of radar research at The University of Birmingham have had profound impacts on automotive radar systems. This is demonstrated by specific Jaguar LandRover products: adaptive cruise control (ACC); blind spot monitoring; and lane change merge aid. The first two of these are now available across the Jaguar and Land Rover ranges while the third is ready for launch in 2014. Wider economic and road safety impacts are occurring as the technology cascades down from the luxury vehicle market and achieves wider adoption. Automotive radar makes a significant financial contribution to Jaguar LandRover (JLR). Birmingham research has been vital to the development of this industry, in establishing fundamental scientific feasibility and technological viability and in solving deep technical challenges.
WiFi technologies are integral to our internet-connected lives. Most of the world's wireless data passes over one of the global WiFi standards. For more than 20 years the University's Communication Systems & Networks (CS&N) Group has contributed towards the development of these technologies, and to products that conform to them.
The WiFi standards are vital since they ensure that computers, mobile phones, set-top boxes and tablets all use the same waveforms and protocols to wirelessly connect to the Internet. They ensure inter-operability between different products and manufacturers.
CS&N pioneered the use of multicarrier modulation and multiple antenna (MIMO) technologies. These underpin the current WiFi standards (802.11g/n), ratified in 2003/2009. Research on wireless and video communications led, via spin-out ProVision Communications, to a range of robust wireless-video products for high definition video transmission in the home. These products are now manufactured and sold by Global Invacom.
In partnership with Farncombe, the Group has developed a defacto WiFi test standard. This combines the Group's rigorous WiFi antenna validation & verification measurements with its system level in-home modelling and measurement tools. [text removed for publication]. To date, more than five million WiFi routers have benefited from the University's WiFi test process.
3D scanning technology has enabled multiple opportunities for innovation in diverse areas such as manufacturing, design, and the arts. However, full utilisation of this technology requires not just the scanning hardware, but accompanying software that can build meaningful, editable models. This development has been pioneered by research conducted in the School of Computer Science and Informatics, at Cardiff University. Innovative algorithms for reverse engineering and digital shape reconstruction were devised that enabled the reconstruction of complex computer aided design (CAD) models from data captured by 3D scanners. The algorithms have been endorsed by Geomagic Inc, a market leading American software corporation (recently acquired by 3D Systems), that has subsidiaries in Europe and Asia and global distributors, and incorporated into their software product suite. This is accessed by nearly 10,000 licensed users worldwide, who have applied the product for industrial applications including aerospace and automotive engineering, product design, cultural heritage preservation, and healthcare. Accordingly, the impacts claimed are twofold: a) economic gain manifesting in the benefits to Geomagic and a plethora of end users who have utilised the software, b) impact on practitioners and professional services in diverse domains.
The Advanced Signal Processing Group at Loughborough University has, since 2007, changed significantly the awareness and understanding of technical staff at QinetiQ, Malvern, a world leading defence and security company, in relation to signal processing for Polynomial Matrix Decompositions, Game Theoretic Methods and Cooperative Communications and Beamforming. This has helped QinetiQ, Malvern, to develop state-of-the-art products and solutions for the networked battlespace with unique performance advantages. This impact is being extended through a five-year £4.5M project awarded, in 2013, by the EPSRC and Dstl to Loughborough University, to aid in implementing the UK's Defence Technology Strategy for the 21st Century.