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 also perhaps in employing them afterwards.

The large yellow disc with the brown spots certainly doesn’t resemble the kind of antennas we used to fix to the roof 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 able to home in 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 an HF radio on board the ships and the radio operators knew that there would be periods of blackout where there would be no contact. Today a modern ship handles just as much data communication as a landbased 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 fixed contact with the nearest communications satellite, corresponding to an ISDN modem, in order 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 moving trackingantennas. Typically they are equipped with three axles and a number of sensors which can register the way the ship is moving. The reason why we would like to hire 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 just 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 approached CISS about six months ago 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 compa-nies, it is an inexpensive solution. The reason why there aren’t more companies hiring a PhD student like SpaceCom is, I believe, based in the fact that they simply don’t know that this possibility exists. If they knew how little this costs I am sure that many more smallsized 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 us would not normally be in a position to have a man just concentrating on research for three years, and apart from enhancing 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, “We must of course invest time and energy ourselves 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 doubt, want to offer the person a job afterwards,” says Johannes Christensen.

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

“Right now we have two groups of people from the Intelligent Autonomous Systems specialization (IAS), under the Department of Control Engineering who are working with an examination project 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 the coming 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 work 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 work closely together with industry.

Software takes over

Roozbeh Izadi-Zamanabadi is a specialist in faulttolerant 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 at the same time as it sends a message telling 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 around equipped with an antenna from Hobro, Denmark. No one can see this however as it is encapsulated in a white glassfibre bubble which 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.