Prof. Hugh Griffiths
Prof. Hugh Griffiths, University College London, UK /President, IEEE AES Society
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Biography:
Hugh Griffiths holds the THALES/Royal Academy Chair of RF Sensors in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London, England. From 2006–2008 he was Principal of the Defence Academy of Management and Technology. He received the MA degree in Physics from Oxford University in 1975, then spent three years working in industry, before joining University College London, where he received the PhD degree in 1986 and the DSc(Eng) degree in 2000, and served as Head of Department from 2001 – 2006.
His research interests include radar and sonar systems and signal processing (particularly synthetic aperture radar and bistatic and multistatic radar), and antenna measurement techniques. He has published over four hundred papers and technical articles in the fields of radar, antennas and sonar. In 1996 he received the IEEE AESS Fred Nathanson Award (Radar Systems Panel Award), and in 2012 he was awarded the IET A.F. Harvey Prize for his work on bistatic radar. He has also received the Brabazon Premium of the IERE and the Mountbatten and Maxwell Premium Awards of the IEE. He is a Fellow of the IET (previously IEE), Fellow of the IEEE, and in 1997 he was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
He serves as President of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society for 2012/2013, and he is an IEEE AES Distinguished Lecturer. He has been a member of the IEEE AES Radar Systems Panel since 1989, serving as Chair from 2007 – 2009, and chaired the Working Group which revised the IEEE Radar Definitions Standard P686 and reaffirmed the Radar Letter Band Standard.
Title: The Challenge of Waveform Diversity
Abstract:
Waveform Diversity is defined in the IEEE Std 868-2008 as ‘Adaptivity of the radar waveform to dynamically optimize the radar performance for the particular scenario and tasks. May also exploit adaptivity in other domains, including the antenna radiation pattern (both on transmit and receive), time domain, frequency domain, coding domain and polarization domain’. In other words, modern digital technology now allows us to generate precise, wide-bandwidth radar waveforms, and to vary them adaptively – potentially even on a pulse-by-pulse basis.
This opens up many new possibilities, including ultra-low range sidelobe waveforms, orthogonally-coded waveforms for MIMO radar applications, waveforms with spectral nulls to allow co-existence with other transmissions without mutual interference, and so-called target-matched illumination, where a waveform may be matched to the impulse response of a specific target at a specific aspect angle. We may also learn from natural systems such as bats, whose acoustic signals are sophisticated and are used in an intelligent, cognitive manner.
The lecture will describe the design of these waveforms and their applications, and the prospects for the future.
