Thales UK hosts a workshop for local schools - posted November 2011 
On 1st November 2011, Thales UK held a workshop with three of its Thales Partnership Schools at their Research and Technology facility in Reading. Groups of 12 Year 8 pupils from The Holt School in Wokingham, Blessed Hugh Farringdon School and Maiden Erlegh in Reading, joined in a combined workshop centred around the theme of robotics and unmanned vehicles.
First, pupils were separated into mixed school groups to encourage collaboration and team-working skills. During the morning they participated in a number of 'hands-on' workshops exploring the application of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) topics in real-world technology examples. In the afternoon the emphasis changed to a more pupil-led focus, when the groups were given the challenge to design, build and test a remote controlled vehicle, constructed from LEGO Mindstorms. As well as a good design, careful planning and an effective test strategy were also key factors for success. All of the groups impressed their teachers and Thales engineers with their innovative creations. The challenge culminated in each group taking it in turns to clear an area of LEGO pieces against the clock using their remote controlled vehicle.
Graeme Burden, a Chief Engineer at Thales UK and one of the facilitators for the day commented: "The way the pupils engaged with such enthusiasm in the challenge was amazing to see. Strangers at the beginning of the day, were soon working together seamlessly and there was a real buzz between them”. Technology is the heart of what we do and it is important to encourage young people to the possibility of engineering as an exciting career for their future. The highlight was when one student commented: "You have a great job!"
The event was organised as part of the Thales Schools Partnership, which aims to help schools maximise their potential. Through the partnership, Thales provides employee volunteers who engage with schools to deliver curriculum enriching activities. Particular emphasis is placed on activities that support the school curriculum in the areas of literacy, numeracy and STEM subjects. | TRT Prize 2011 to Reading University - posted July 2011 
On Wednesday 6 July 2011 Ricardo Mendoza was presented with the TRT Prize for the best BEng/MEng Project in the School of Systems Engineering at Reading University. His project, "Little Owl nest box surveillance system", was concerned with the design and development of a tailor-made solution for field-deployed nest boxes.
The implementation used off-the-shelf digital recording equipment and incorporated several enhancements to a previous system. These were at the request of Emily Joachim, of the University of Reading, to help with her study of the Little Owl species in the English countryside.
The new system operates with the help of a motion sensor to trigger the start of recordings.It provides a user interface for Emily to access and control the system efficiently. Compared with the previous system, it performs a larger set of activities and uses only a fraction of the power consumption. Emily and the new nest box, along with some Little Owls, appeared in the BBC Springwatch programme on 31st May 2011.
The photograph shows Edward Stansfield, a Visiting Industrial Professor at Reading, presenting Mr Mendoza (right) with the TRT Trophy. He also received a Certificate and a cheque for £150. | Thales UK contributes two chapters to QoS book - posted July 2011
Recent Advances in Providing QoS and Reliability in the Future Internet Backbone’ edited by Ning Wang (University of Surrey, Surrey, UK) has recently been published by Nova. Hamid Asgari, Thales UK Research and Technology has contributed two chapters to this book:
- Chapter 6: An Architectural Framework for Inter-domain Quality of Service Monitoring to Support Service Assurance and Resource Management
- Chapter 7: Interconnection Models for QoS-based IP Service Offering (co-authored with M. Boucadair, D. Griffin, P. Georgatsos and G. Pavlou).
More information can be found at https://www.novapublishers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=18032
| Future Internet Report - posted June 2011
The UK Future Internet Strategy Group (UK FISG) has published a report on the Future Internet. It provides a consolidated view from industry and academia of what the Future Internet may encompass. About 20 individuals were interviewed for the report and this included a contribution from Richard Egan at Thales UK Research & Technology.
The UK FISG was established under the sponsorship of the Technology Strategy Board. It is chaired by Nick Wainwright of HP Labs and is coordinated by the ICT Knowledge Transfer Network. The group comprises senior representatives from industry and academia who are closely involved in the sector. The Business Information and Skills Department and the Technology Strategy Board are also represented and provide guidance to the group on the definition of the Future Internet.
The report can be downloaded from: https://ktn.innovateuk.org/c/document_library/get_file?p_l_id=3001521&folderId=861750&name=DLFE-34705.pdf | Thales UK Host STEM Workshop for Hawkedon Primary School - posted June 2011
On the 15 June 2011 a group of Thales UK Research and Technology engineers hosted a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) day for Year 6 pupils from Hawkedon Primary School in Reading, a Thales Partnership School.
Following a tour of Thales UK’s Reading facility, around 40 pupils from Hawkedon Primary School took part in 4 workshops. They gained ‘hands-on’ experience of technologies such as satellite navigation, indoor positioning, unmanned vehicles and Microsoft’s Kinect. After the workshops, pupils were guided through a task to design the logic to drive a digital display.
The goal of the day was to provide an insight into the world of technology and engineering and encourage interest at an early age. Judging by the excited response from both pupils and teachers, the day was a huge success.
The event was organised as part of the Thales Schools Partnership, which aims to help schools maximise their potential. Through the partnership, Thales provides employee volunteers who engage with schools to deliver curriculum enriching activities. Particular emphasis is placed on activities that support the school curriculum in the areas of literacy, numeracy and STEM subjects. | Thales UK leads Trusted Services research collaboration - posted May 2011
TEASE (Trust Enabling Augmented-Reality Support For Information-Environments) forms part of the Technology Strategy Board's Trusted Services Competition and the Research Councils UK Digital Economy Programme . The project is a collaboration between the International Digital Lab at the University of Warwick, HW Communications Ltd and Thales UK Research and Technology.
In our interactions with people in the real world we have an opportunity to use our experience to judge how much we can trust someone. In the online world we have no way of knowing who or what we are communicating with and therefore no means of assessing how much trust to have in them.
The objectives of the TEASE project are to consider how the provenance of information can be used to provide a measure of the confidence we should have in information or the source of information and to investigate how to present the provenance data to best inform a user. We will also be developing a framework that will allow us to combine provenance data with the outputs from other trust enabling technologies to enhance our ability to determine trustworthiness. | Thales UK wins award for best CCTV Monitoring - posted April 2011 Thales's robust motion detection system (RMDS) picked up the award for best CCTV Monitoring at this year's Counter Terror Expo (CTX 2011). The RMDS, developed by Thales UK Research and Technology, analyses and monitors data captured by CCTV cameras. It automatically detects changes in the environment where a camera is operating, allowing an operator to look at changes without needing to spend hours looking at all the footage.
CTX 2011 was held at Olympia with the awards presentations on 19th April at the Royal Garden Hotel, Kensington, London. Further information on the Expo can be found at http://www.counterterrorexpo.com/ and details on the awards at http://www.ctssawards.com/pages/cat11.cfm. | Sponsorship for Warwick Mobile Robotics - posted April 2011
Thales UK continues its support for the University of Warwick through sponsorship for the Warwick Mobile Robotics project, which is a student research project of the Warwick Manufacturing Group (WMG). The group is dedicated to improving organisational competitiveness through the application of technological innovation.
The Thales sponsorship will help the team compete in the Robocup German Open 2011 championship. This will see them using their innovative search and rescue technology to hopefully win a place in the world final of Robocup Rescue in Turkey this summer.
RoboCup Rescue is an international competition that tests robots’ search and rescue abilities in a simulated disaster environment. The WMR team has chosen to enter this competition as it provides not only an exciting engineering challenge, but a socially significant real world application for mobile robotics. | Thales UK embarks on new collaboration project - posted April 2011
PAL (Personal and Social Communications for Health and Lifestyle Monitoring) is a TSB (Technology Strategy Board) and EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) funded project forming part of the TSB's Assisted Living Innovation Platform (www.innovateuk.org). The project is a collaboration between the University of Cambridge, the University of Essex, HW Communications Ltd, Multiple Access Communications Ltd and Thales UK Research and Technology. The team’s objectives are to consider how an individual’s health and welfare needs can be supported while maintaining an independent lifestyle at home and in the community.
We are investigating the ways that technology can help individuals to collect, use and share information about their health and daily life. This information will be used to identify improvements or early signs of problems. Thales UK Research and Technology are using their expertise in information security to address the security issues surrounding the sharing of sensitive information. For more information on PAL visit www.palproject.org.uk. | Streaming Multimedia over WMSNs: An Online Routing Protocol - posted March 2011
Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) are generally used for surveillance applications, intrusion detection, environmental and building monitoring, etc. Routing has become an important challenge to WMSNs from the standpoint of supporting multimedia applications. This is due to the energy and computational capability constraints of sensor nodes, and acquiring the global network knowledge for disseminating to nodes for packet forwarding purposes. In this paper an online multipath routing protocol is proposed for use in WMSNs.
The full paper will be available at http://www.inderscience.com/ soon. | National Science and Engineering Week - posted March 2011 
On the 14 March 2011 a group of Thales UK Research and Technology staff hosted an engineering workshop on the theme of "communication" for a group of 30 students from years seven to ten.
Tying the NSEW (National Science & Engineering Week) theme of "communication" in with the national curriculum, the students were put through their paces undertaking problem solving exercises and cooperative tasks based on binary, digital communication, encryption and positioning systems. Teams made up of all four years competed against each other throughout the event, impressing both the teachers and the Thales staff with their progress.
Mrs Daley, a Science teacher at Maiden Erlegh School said "Thales provided a stimulating and challenging day for the pupils. The activities sparked animated discussion on topics ranging from the speed of light to conventions for reading numbers, measuring the height of mountains, and how Microsoft's Xbox Kinect can detect everyone in the room. Many thanks to all concerned." Mr Wilkinson, a Design Technology teacher, also described the opening introduction, as "awe inspiring, the scale of the impact that Thales has on our built environment was beyond our expectations." | National Science & Engineering Week - posted March 2011
On the 14th of March Thales UK Research & Technology will be hosting a visit from thirty students and staff from Maiden Erlegh secondary school. The year seven to ten students all have an interest in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM). This event is part of National Science & Engineering Week, which this year focuses on the field of Communication.
We will be running an afternoon of hands-on demonstrations and workshops, focusing on electromagnetic spectrum, digital to analogue conversion and encryption. These topics form part of the national curriculum. | Wokingham area INSET Day - posted March 2011 
On the 4th March 2011, Professor Edward Stansfield gave a talk on the future of science in the 21st Century and how science is applied in Thales. The talk was given to a group of 86 science teachers from the Wokingham area on their INSET day. Rachel Morfil from National Grid and Dr Dave Hughes from Syngenta also gave talks at the same event. The photo shows Edward, Rachel and Dave after they had delivered their talks. | Dave Harvey elected to IOP Committee - posted March 2011
David Harvey has been elected to the Engineering Physics Group Committee of the Institute of Physics. The group provides a network and support for those with a physics background who work in an engineering environment. More details can be found at http://www.iop.org/activity/groups/subject/eng/index.html. | ECOTAXE - posted February 2011 | Thales UK presents paper at PSATS (Personal SATellite Services) Conference - posted February 2011
Thales UK Research & Technology presented a paper at the Personal SATellite Services (PSATS) 2011 conference, held in Malaga, Spain. The paper was titled: "The SANDRA Communications Concept - Integration of Radios".
The predicted growth in air traffic communications will introduce new communications systems alongside existing ones. To limit the resultant increase in size, weight and power of the new equipment, new radio architectures will be required. This paper describes the concepts behind the SANDRA integrated communications system, including improved modularity using high-speed digital links, security, redundancy and certification. The specific requirements of the SANDRA programme and details of the proof-of-concept demonstrator, are also outlined in the paper.
A full copy of the paper will be available at: www.psats.eu | Navigation by the numbers - posted December 2010
Edward Stansfield from Reading based Thales UK Research & Technology, has written an article ‘Navigation by the numbers’ for the Mathscareers web site. The article explains how maths is fundamental to the design and development of navigation systems. The full article can be found at http://www.mathscareers.org.uk/viewItem.cfm?cit_id=383123. | Thales UK supports coursework at local school - posted November 2010 
On Wednesday 3rd November 2010, Graeme Burden and Tim Masterton, engineers with Thales UK's Reading-based research & technology facility, visited year 9 pupils at Maiden Erlegh School, Reading. The Thales engineers delivered several presentations that provided students with an overview of Thales and the activities of the research centre. The presentations focussed on how Information and Communication Technology systems help Thales to achieve its business objectives. The students will use the information to produce a written report as part of their coursework.
The event was organised as part of the Thales Schools Partnership, which aims to help schools maximise their potential. Through the partnership, Thales provides employee volunteers who engage with schools to deliver curriculum enriching activities. Particular emphasis is placed on activities that support the school curriculum in the areas of literacy, numeracy and the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects. | "Robust Positioning in Difficult Environments" IET EC3 presentation - posted November 2010 
On 28 October 2010 Phil Harris from TRT gave a lecture to the IET Specialised Section for Electronics, Communications, Control and Computing at Cantley House Hotel in Wokingham, The title was "Robust Positioning in Difficult Environments" and discussed the problems of using GPS-based positioning in urban environments. The lecture was well received by an audience of 44, including both IET members and the public.
GPS-based positioning generally works well for most applications, however it's ability to provide sufficient confidence for liability-critical applications is marginal. In urban environments GPS faces poor availability and reduced accuracy, while for some use-cases the GPS system may be attacked directly by the nominal 'user' to generate false or misleading information.
Future applications, particularly for Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), will require significant improvements to the level of both confidence and resilience in the positioning subsystem. The presentation described approaches to mitigating the weaknesses of GPS through the use of sensor fusion and map matching techniques, with a particular focus on ITS applications. In particular it provided details of the research work done under the VEER project at TRT for integrating inertial measurement units and other sensors to overcome these problems, followed by the results of experimental trials in difficult environments around Reading. The talk concluded with some insights into future research directions, including ideas on how vision systems may also be incorporated into navigation systems to augment GNSS.
Details of future IET EC3 events can be found at http://www.theiet.org/local/uk/thames/ec3/ | TRT Hosts Graduate Induction Day - posted October 2010
On 21st October, 51 Thales graduates came to Reading for the Thales UK Graduate Development Programme (GDP) Induction Day.
The graduates were introduced to the activities of Thales UK by Alvin Wilby (VP, Technical and Strategy). Terry O'Sullivan (TRT Technical Director), provided an overview of the work conducted at Thales UK Research & Technology (TRT), and an overview of the GDP was also presented.
Graduates participated in Q&A sessions with existing graduates, mentors, HR, and members of the GDP review committee. The day was a success, with many participants expressing their thanks for the opportunity to attend. | Thales takes part in local Careers Fairs - posted October 2010
Staff from Reading based Thales UK Research & Technology, participated in two local careers fairs organised by the Central Berkshire Education Business Partnership (CBEBP). The first fair was for Wokingham Schools and took place on the 6th October 2010 at the Loddon Valley Leisure Centre. The second fair for Reading Schools took place on the 13th October at the Rivermead Leisure Centre.
The CBEBP were pleased to report that this, the first careers fair for Wokingham Schools, was a huge success, with over 1500 people coming along to speak to over 60 employers from industry(see www.cbebp.co.uk).
Thales staff answered lots of questions about engineering in general and within Thales, and with the aid of our Nuva collaboration tool, were able to engender some understanding of the role of engineers. "Engineering is cool", was one satisfying response. | VEER Project Open Day - posted September 2010 
On 21 September 2010 TRT hosted an open day event for the VEER (Vincenzio in End-to-End Road user charging project) where members of the project consortium presented results from the project to an invited audience from the transport community. This event marked the culmination of the 2 year VEER project which was partially funded by the UK Technology Strategy Board.
The VEER project was focused on demonstrating the benefits that can result from the introduction of new technologies into Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) systems. More specifically, enhanced GNSS positioning coupled with inertial sensor measurements are proposed for improved positioning accuracy, advanced security solutions suitable for highly asymmetric communications are proposed to ensure the secure exchange of information, and satellite communications are proposed in order to improve the efficiency and reduce the cost of the system's communications.
TRT's role in VEER was the development of advanced inertial navigation algorithms and their combination with Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) algorithms to produce a tightly-coupled hybrid position solution. Through trials TRT demonstrated significant increases in the reliability of the hybrid solution in terms of availability, continuity, and integrity over that of stand-alone GNSS. | Thales contributes chapter to the I3CON handbook - posted September 2010
I3CON is a collaborative research project that is part funded by the EU and coordinated by the Spanish civil engineering contractor Dragados. The project aims to enable the transformation towards a sustainable European construction industry delivering technologies for an integrated smart building services system. This system uses distributed control systems with embedded sensors, wireless connections, ambient user interfaces and autonomous controllers.
I3CON published the last of three handbooks in September 2010, which includes a chapter contributed by Abolghasem (Hamid) Asgari and Chee Yong, both engineers with Thales UK’s Reading-based research & technology facility. The chapter is titled "Practicalities and Lessons Learnt from Design and Development of a SOA-Based Wireless Sensor Network System". It provides an overview of a SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) based WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) system and discusses some of the successes, challenges and lessons learnt during design, implementation and use of the system. The handbook was published in collaboration with BISRIA and is available to download from the I3CON web site (ISBN 9780860226994). | Local MP visits Thales's Reading site - posted September 2010 
Thales UK's Reading-based research & technology facility hosted a visit by Alok Sharma MP, the Member of Parliament for Reading West on Friday 3rd September 2010. Mr Sharma is a new MP and this was his first visit to Thales. The visit was hosted by Alvin Wilby, Thales UK’s Technical Director, and included a tour of the site.
During his visit, Mr Sharma met with employees and was given a number of demonstrations by recent graduate recruits of some of the research projects being undertaken in the UK.
The brief demonstrations included:
- A Virtual Collaboration Desk (nuVa) that allows a secure, shared working environment for teams split across many sites;
- Indoor Position using frequency-hopping ultra wideband (UWB) techniques allowing accurate location of personnel such as first responders within buildings;
- Through-Wall Radar with the ability to detect motion within buildings, right down to a person's rate of breathing;
Mr Sharma was also shown a number of unmanned air and ground platforms with innovative sensors that were used in the Ministry of Defence’s (MoD’s) Grand Challenge 2008, a series of proving trials and equipment demonstrations at the MoD’s Copehill Down Village in Wiltshire. The Grand Challenge initiative combined industry and academia to develop innovative autonomous solutions to detect, identify, monitor and report a range of military threats with the ultimate aim of supporting and protecting the UK armed forces in urban environments.
As a global business Thales devotes almost 20% of its revenue in R&D, and each year it files hundreds of patents. In the Reading facility Thales employs around 80 engineers, mathematicians and scientists that collaborate with various government agencies, universities and private organisations, investing in UK intellectual property. This is important as it supports the UK economy directly though Thales’s UK customer base and supply chains, and also indirectly by increasing the company’s export potential. | Thales hosts first Earley Schools cluster group - posted June 2010 
Thales UK’s Reading-based research facility hosted the first Earley Schools cluster group meeting on 1 July 2010. In conjunction with seven local schools - Hawkedon Primary School (a Thales Partnership School), Aldryngton Primary School, Loddon Primary School, Whiteknights Primary School, Hillside Primary School, Radstock Primary School and Earley St Peters Primary School - Thales hosted a ‘Partnership Day’ to enhance pupils learning across the curriculum.
The day consisted of six Year 4 children from each school being put into teams and being set a challenge. The children were asked to investigate features of a variety of bridges, work as a team to design a bridge and then make a model bridge that was then tested for its strength.
Neil Symons-Chan, Primary School teacher at Hawkedon Primary School, says: "The collaboration and team work involving schools and industry expertise was amazing to see today at the Thales UK-hosted day. It gave the children a different perspective and approach to using and applying their skills." “This was clearly a valuable opportunity that should be explored and utilised more often. It was a positive experience for everyone involved, which highlighted the effectiveness of learning out of the classroom."
Victor Chavez, Deputy Chief Executive Thales UK, says: “Thales UK employs 8,500 throughout all regions of the UK, with a high proportion of staff being involved in science, technology and engineering. The themes of technology and education are at the heart of what we do, which is why we are so enthusiastic about supporting such activities. “We believe very strongly that this type of activity is crucial in raising the profile of engineering in the minds of young people as an exciting career for their future.” | TRT University of Reading prize 2010 - posted June 2010 
On 30 June 2010 Edward Stansfield joined in the graduation procession for the School of Systems Engineering at Reading University, where he is a visiting professor. Edward later presented Christopher Ollerenshaw with the TRT Prize for the best BEng/MEng final year Electronic Engineering Project 2010, which was entitled “Real Time Kinematic Algorithms". | Best paper award at IEEE SoSE conference - posted June 2010
A paper co-written by TRT and LJMU (Liverpool John Moores University) has won the award for best paper presented at the IEEE 5th International Systems of Systems Engineering Conference, which was held at Loughborough University, 22-24 June 2010. The paper was titled "System-of-Systems Boundary Check in a Public Event Scenario". There was a strong focus on systems of systems engineering at the conference, with much less emphasis on network/systems of systems security, but Bret Michael (General Co-Chair), said the paper was chosen because it's a difficult area that we're nonetheless making progress in.
For the past two years, TRT has been liaising with the team based at LJMU as part of an EPSRC Knowledge Transfer Project (KTP). This partnership has been researching security issues for systems-of-systems and has lead to the development of new IP and several academic papers.
Further details of the paper can be found at Technical Publications 2010. | 'Tabletops - Horizontal Interactive Displays' book chapters - posted June 2010
The book 'Tabletops - Horizontal Interactive Displays' which brings together the most important international current research in the domain of tabletops was published in May by Springer in their Human-Computer Interaction series (ISBN-13: 978-1849961127).
It describes various aspects of interactive tabletops, from low-level implementation issues, to high-level social theories of collaborative use.
Mark Ashdown (TRT wrote the chapter entitled 'High-Resolution Interactive Displays', which is about combining multiple projectors and pen input devices. Phil Tuddenham, whose PhD at Cambridge was supported by TRT and completed in 2008, wrote the chapter entitled 'Coordination and Awareness in Remote Tabletop Collaboration', which is about how multiple people collaborate when co-located or remote. | RTIC 2010 conference CEDAR paper - posted May 2010
CEDAR (Charging Electronically by Distance And Road) was a technology and behavioural trial of distance-based road user charging in urban areas of Southern England. Thales provided GPS-based On-Board Equipment (OBE) to improve transport logistics and reduce congestion.
A paper "The CEDAR project: time, distance, place (TDP) road pricing" co-authored by TRT, Transportation Research Group, University of Southampton and Thales Transport and Security was presented at the RTIC 2010 - better transport through technology conference organised by IET and ITS, 25-27 May 2010.
The Partners in the project were Thales, the Transportation Research Group at Southampton University and Swindon Borough Council. It extended the successful trials Thales previously carried out for Transport for London. The CEDAR project ran from May 2008 to December 2009, with the trial running during the latter 6 months of 2009, and was a successful demonstration of the technology.
The conclusion is that the technology is close to being acceptable for commercial use in real urban road pricing schemes.
Further details of the paper can be found at Technical Publications 2010. | I3CON second handbook published - posted May 2010
The second I3CON (Industrialised, Integrated, Intelligent sustainable Construction) handbook has been published by BISRA, with a chapter from TRT's I3CON team.
I3CON, an industry-led collaborative research project, part funded by the EU under Framework 6, has published its second handbook to disseminate work carried out within the area of sustainable construction to a wider audience.
Abolghasem (Hamid) Asgari and Mark Irons from TRT have contributed a chapter "A health monitoring application for wireless sensor networks" which discusses security issues for wireless sensor networks and the implementation of an access control service mechanism. This I3CON 2 Handbook was published in collaboration with BISRIA in May 2010, ISBN 9780860226987, available from I3CON web site. | IET Technology visit for the Radar, Sonar and Navigation Network Network on Indoor Positioning - posted May 2010
On Thursday, 6th May, Thales UK R&T lab hosted an IET technology visit for the Radar, Sonar and Navigation Network. The event consisted of lectures and live demonstrations of Frequency Hopping UWB for precise indoor positioning and through wall radar.
During the well attended visit, Dave Harmer gave a presentation of our patented Frequency-Hopping Ultra Wideband (FH-UWB) technology and its applications. The attendees had the opportunity to discuss the detail of the technologies with the designers, discuss applications, participate in live demonstrations and engage in a lively Q&A session.
The Indoor Positioning System (IPS) demonstrated its unique features, such as operating at much longer range than conventional solutions (up to 1KM), operation through walls, the use of a very sparse infrastructure, simple deployment, and delivering high accuracy. A second demonstration showed an enhanced FH-UWB positioning system integrated with inertial sensors to give accurate positioning and repeatable pointing capability. These features open up a whole new world of applications and opportunities.
This same technology also has application as a compact, low-cost radar with greater sensitivity. Mike Newman demonstrated the FH-UWB radar operating through walls, detecting the movement of personnel and even the breathing of a stationary individual.
For further details on the technology, see Indoor Positioning. | I3CON Publication “Building services and IT integration through enterprise architectures” - posted May 2010
I3CON aims at enhancing the sustainability of the European construction industry by delivering industrially produced, integrated processes and intelligent building systems. The project devised distributed control systems with embedded sensors, ambient user interfaces, and autonomous controllers.
TRT (UK) devised and implemented a Service Oriented Architecture for developing an enterprise networking environment. This is used for integrating building management systems and applications with other operational enterprise functions for the purpose of information sharing and monitoring, controlling, and managing the enterprise environment. We focused on Wireless Sensor Networks which are viewed as an information providers, not only to building management systems but also to wider applications in the enterprise infrastructure. The four-year FP6 project, was partially funded by the Commission of the European Union.
For more information see I3CON. | INTERSECTION (INfrastructure for heTErogeneous, Resilient, SEcure, Complex, Tightly Inter-Operating Networks) project Final Review - posted April 2010
INTERSECTION was a European Framework 7 collaborative project with ten industrial and academic partners from six countries across Europe. Led by Elsag Datamat (Italy) the consortium has shown how an effective network security system can be constructed from a set of loosely coupled components (probes, intrusion detection systems, decision engines, reaction and remediation functions) with standards based interfaces. TRT(UK) developed a flexible visualisation component to assist in understanding the vast amounts of information provided by the various components of the system and led the Integration workpackage, bringing the various components together and verifying the operation of the system. More information on the project and its consortium can be found at www.intersection-project.eu. | I3CON Project Review - posted April 2010
I3CON aims at enhancing the sustainability of the European construction industry by delivering industrially produced, integrated processes and intelligent building systems. The project devised distributed control systems with embedded sensors, ambient user interfaces, and autonomous controllers.
TRT (UK) devised and implemented a Service Oriented Architecture for developing an enterprise networking environment. This is used for integrating building management systems and applications with other operational enterprise functions for the purpose of information sharing and monitoring, controlling, and managing the enterprise environment. We focused on Wireless Sensor Networks which are viewed as an information providers, not only to building management systems but also to wider applications in the enterprise infrastructure. The four-year FP6 project, was partially funded by the Commission of the European Union.
For more information see I3CON | IiP silver gained by TRT (UK) - posted February 2010
Thales Research & Technology (UK) Ltd has now gained re-accreditation by Investors in People, (IiP) this time at the higher Silver level. This is a fantastic achievement as to date, there are only 147 organisations in the UK who have achieved Silver status. | Mathematics in the Wider World talk - posted February 2010
On 11 February 2010, Edward Stansfield gave a talk entitled 'Mathematics in the Wider World' to an audience of over 150 students aged between 16 and 18. His was one of 3 talks at a Science and Maths Seminar organised by the independent North London Collegiate School, under the Thales Employee Volunteering Scheme, and was attended by pupils from this and surrounding schools. | Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (OCIAM) presentation - posted February 2010
On 30 October 2009, Doug Watson presented a seminar on "Graph Optimisation Problem for Signal Sorting" at the Oxford Centre for Industrial and Applied Mathematicss (OCIAM). The aim was to engage with the OCIAM mathematicians on the problem of maximum weighted matching of a bipartite graph for radar signal deinterleaving. | European Commission FP6 Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship reports - posted December 2009
Three European Commission FP6 Marie Curie Actions Outgoing International Fellowship 21743 reports from the "Distributed Crisis Management using Remote Collaboration Technologies" project have recently been published:
- "Design of Experiments for Asymmetric Distributed Collaboration"
- "User Experiences with Asymmetric Distributed Collaboration"
- "Escritoire 2 Project: Conclusions and Future Work"
The full text of these three reports can be found at Technical Publications 2009 and the two previous reports at Technical Publications 2008. | Mathematics in Defence conference sponsored by Thalesadministrator - posted November 2009 
Thales UK sponsored the first one-day conference on 'Mathematics in Defence' held by the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications (IMA) on 19 November 2009 at QinetiQ in Farnborough. The conference was attended by over 160 delegates who had the opportunity to listen to over 40 papers covering a wide variety of defence related mathematics. David Youdan, IMA Executive Director, said that this was "a fantastically successful conference" and that he "did not expect a first conference to be one of the larger IMA conferences that has ever been held".
The day began with a keynote address "Mathematics on the Front Line" by Dr Chris Mace (Director General, Science and Technology Operations, MOD), and in the afternoon a second keynote talk by Professor John McWhirter (Cardiff University) was entitled "Polynomial Matrix Decomposition with Engineering Applications".
Professor Edward Stansfield from Thales Research & Technology (UK) Ltd was a member of the technical organising committee, and two of the presented papers were from Thales Underwater Systems. Phil Cotterill (Stockport) gave a talk on "Modelling the impact of defects noise reduction treatments applied to underwater structures" and Peter Brazier-Smith (Templecombe) presented a paper entitled "A model for the acoustic properties of macro voided tiles". Details of all the presented papers can be found on the IMA conference website. | NAV09 Conference presentation - posted November 2009
Dave Harmer gave a presentation "Indoor Positioning" at the NAV09 - "Positioning & Location: Now and into the Future. Looking beyond the Horizon" Conference jointly organised by the Royal Institute of Navigation and the GNSS Research and Applications Centre of Excellence (GRACE), held at the University of Nottingham on 12 November 2009.
For more information about FH-UWB indoor positioning see our Publications | SANDRA project - posted November 2009 
The SANDRA (Seamless Aeronautical Networking through Integration of Data links, Radios, and Antennas) project started in October 2009 and over the next four years will design, implement and validate through laboratory tests and in-flight trials an integrated aeronautical communications system based on an open architecture and provide a common set of interfaces.
The SANDRA programme involves 31 European partners including Selex, DLR and Thales Avionics (UK). TRT is leading six work packages and will work together with Thales Avionics (UK), GateHouse, Thales Alenia Space (Fr), Selex and The University of Bradford amongst others to develop a prototype proof of concept Integrated Modular Radio. | Thales shortlisted for iawards' Best Collaboration category - posted November 2009 
Thales UK, with its collaborative working tool, nuVa, joins the high-quality shortlist for the iawards, recognising some of the most innovative British businesses.
The iawards, in association with QinetiQ, were launched by Lord Drayson and James Caan in July. They aim to celebrate the best of British science, technology and innovation. As such, all entrants had to specify the British involvement in their innovation - demonstrating that innovative thinking and development came from a British organisation or team.
The ‘Best Collaboration’ category focuses on any industry that will demonstrate commercial success through collaboration with companies or public sector organisations. As with all categories each entry had to demonstrate how its innovative qualities relate to at least one of the following challenges:
- Increasing international security from tackling global poverty to minimising the threat of terrorism;
- Preserving finite natural resources in the face of population growth and climate change; and
- Delivering public services, which make best use of new technologies.
All of the winners will be announced at the iawards gala dinner on 16 November at the Science Museum.
For more information please visit http://www.iawards.org.uk. | Université Bordeaux 1 Guest Professor appointmentadministrator - posted September 2009
Hamid Asgari was nominated and has subsequently been appointed as “Guest Professor” of Bordeaux 1 University at its CNRS Lab (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - National Centre for Scientific Research in France). Hamid will visit the university for a period of one month (between Oct and Nov 2009). This appointment is aimed at promoting research collaboration and establishing links between university and industry, especially Thales research centres. Hamid will work closely with researchers at the university's CNRS Lab, identifying opportunities for research, and providing lectures in relevant subjects. | Thames Valley Economic Partnership Innovation eventadministrator - posted July 2009
On 21 July 2009, TRT together with The Thames Valley Economic Partnership (TVEP) held a business event on Commercialising Innovation, which included guest speakers from University of Reading and the Thames Valley Innovation Growth Team. TRT presented our approach to innovation using nuVa and FH-UWB as two case studies from the original idea to product and we summarized our experiences and lessons learned along the way. Following the formalities, many of our guests had hands-on time with nuVa, and networking went on until 8pm when our last guest left.
More information about nuVa and FH-UWB can be found here. | TRT (UK) University of Reading Prizeadministrator - posted July 2009 
Reading University student Joseph Smith won this year’s Thales Research & Technology (UK) Ltd prize for the best MEng/BEng final year project. Jo’s project concerned the design, development, implementation and testing of a prototype low-cost digital audio mixer for the amateur market. He carried out the work during a 6 month placement at Soundcraft in Potters Bar, Hertfordshire, who tasked him with investigating the potential benefit of using Oxford Digital’s “Tiny DSP Core” as an alternative to the SHARC processor used in professional mixers. After analysing the performance and feasibility of the Tiny DSP Core, Jo concluded that it was not cost-effective using the currently available hardware.
The photo shows Jo being presented with his prize on Graduation Day, Saturday 4 July 2009, by Edward Stansfield from TRT, a Visiting Industrial Professor in the School of Systems Engineering, University of Reading. Jo received a trophy (pictured), a certificate signed by John Howard, managing director of TRT (UK), and a cheque for £150. | Paper presented at SENSORCOMM 2009administrator - posted June 2009
Sarah Pennington participated in The Third International Conference on Sensor Technologies and Applications (SENSORCOMM 2009) in Athens on 18th–22nd June. Sarah chaired two sessions and presented a paper jointly authored by Sarah, Tim Baugé and Ben Murray. The paper, entitled, “Integrity-Checking Framework: an In-situ Testing and Validation Framework for Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks”, describing some of the wireless sensor and actuator network work done by TRT (UK) within the SENSEI project. The paper was commended and won an award as one of the best papers presented at the conference.
Further details of the paper can be found at Technical Publications 2009 | Institute of Mathematicsadministrator - posted May 2009
At the Institute of Mathematics AGM and Summer Lecture on 24 June 2009, Edward Stansfield was presented with a 'Certificate of Service' in recognition of 'dedicated service and contribution to the Institute as Vice President of Engineering and Professional Affairs'. Edward's term as Vice President finishes in December this year after the maximum allowed 4 years service. |
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