Antennas out for a PhD student

 Project description

The Danish company SpaceCom A/S is keen to participate in training new researchers at Aalborg University - and perhaps also to employ them afterwards.

The large yellow disc with brown spots certainly doesn’t resemble the kind of antennas we used to see fixed to the rooftops in the old days - but that’s because these antennas, which are made by SpaceCom A/S, Hobro, are not at all ordinary. They are specially designed to be placed on moving objects - mainly ships, but also military vehicles or trucks. Whatever their purpose, they must be in constant and unfailing contact with the communications satellite.

“In the old days we could get away with having an HF radio on board the ships, and the radio operators knew that there would be periods of blackout where they would have no contact. Today, a modern ship handles just as much data communication as a land-based industry,” explains Johannes Christensen, Director and General Manager of SpaceCom A/S.

The purpose of the antennas produced by the 41 employees at SpaceCom is to ensure reliable contact with the nearest communications satellite, similar to the way an ISDN modem works, in order to ensure that the ship can receive and send telephone, fax and data communication. This has to be possible even when the ship is rolling in high seas.

“It is for this reason that we have become specialised in the manufacture of moveable tracking antennas. Typically, they are equipped with three axles and a number of sensors which can register the way the ship is moving. The reason we are interested in hiring a PhD student from CISS is that we would like to see whether we can eliminate one axle by allowing a part of the mechanical movement to be taken over by artificial intelligence. This would have the effect of making the antennas both cheaper and smaller,” Johannes Christensen points out.

Unaware of possibilities
At CISS, Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi, Associate Professor, has found a suitable PhD student for SpaceCom - Seyed Mohsen N. Soltanie. It is Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi who has been in contact with SpaceCom since the company first approached CISS in connection with another problem.

“We had a meeting where CISS told SpaceCom about the possibility of hiring a PhD student, and we agreed that this would be a good way to do it. Bearing in mind the grant and the tax advantages which exist for small and medium sized companies, it is an inexpensive solution. The reason why there aren’t more companies hiring a PhD student like SpaceCom is, I believe,  that they simply don’t know that this possibility exists. If they knew how inexpensive this is, I am sure that many more especially small-sized companies would take advantage of it,” points out Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi.

A good investment
Johannes Christensen is in complete agreement.
“It’s a brilliant idea! A company like SpaceCom would not normally be in a position to have someone concentrating exclusively on research for three years, and apart from developing our product we also give a great deal of our knowledge to him so that, in this way, we give something back to CISS,” explains Johannes Christensen and continues, “Naturally, we ourselves have to invest time and energy in this - but we’re quite happy to do that. It is a good scheme.”

The SpaceCom director makes no secret of the fact that there is yet another reason for them hiring a PhD student. “We will, without a doubt, want to offer the person a job afterwards. At that point, we will also have played a major part in shaping his education,” says Johannes Christensen.

Important to work together
This new PhD project is not the only collaboration existing between Aalborg University and SpaceCom.

“At the moment we have two groups of people from the Intelligent Autonomous Systems specialization (IAS), under the Department of Control Engineering who are working with an thesis concerned with solving a problem we have had. Peter Nielsen, SpaceCom’s founder and Managing Director, is himself a qualified engineer, and for him it is essential that future engineers not only possess academic knowledge, but that they are also capable of converting that knowledge into something which can be sold. It is for this reason that he wants his company to collaborate with CISS and with Aalborg University in as many areas as possible,” explains Johannes Christensen, who at the same time praises CISS, and especially Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi, for their ability to collaborate with industrial partners.

Software takes over

Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi is a specialist in fault-tolerant system design, and his enthusiasm for the subject is apparent when he explains how the sensors, on the one hand, ensure that SpaceCom’s antennas point in the right direction but also how, on the other hand, the software can “take over” in the event that a sensor, for some reason, fails. The software can, in fact, simulate that the sensor is working, while at the same time send a message notifying the system that something is not right. As a result of this, the ship is not cut off from the outside world even though an individual component may have failed.

Half of the world’s merchant ships are sailing the seas equipped with antennas from Hobro, Denmark. No one can see this however as it is encapsulated in a white glassfibre bubble that carries the name of the company which has produced the signal terminal - the router - which is below deck.

The sailors of today take reliable communications for granted - thanks to a company in Hobro and a little research assistance from CISS.