PREPARE · PRE-industrial Photonic-based Radar dEsign

The aim of PREPaRE is the design and the IPR selling of a radically new pre-industrial photonics-based radar for industrial exploitation. It steps from the ERC project PHODIR which aim was to demonstrate the feasibility and advanced properties of the photonics-based radar. PREPaRE will focus on a specific application, the integrated traffic control (air-side and land-side) in airports, where the advances of photonics will be of practical interest in a short-medium term, and it will: i) study the technical and regulatory requirements and the current limitations, in order to define the required technical specifications; ii) accordingly modify and patent the PHODIR results, choosing the correct technological photonics solutions; iii) propose the patented pre-industrial design of each single subsystem to companies for encouraging an IP transfer through patent selling.Nowadays the air-side and land-size traffic control in airports needs several systems. PREPaRE will concentrate all the required functionalities in a single revolutionary radar system. Air-side traffic control will exploit simultaneously the required S and X bands for short and long range coverage. The land-side traffic (taxiing planes, vehicles, and persons) that currently is not controlled by radars to avoid interfering emissions, (complex video analysis is used instead), will be assured through a passive detection exploiting the reflected echoes of already present WiMax and DVBT sources, so that no further electro-magnetic pollution is generated.The team will collaborate with radar final users (local airports) for the specification definition, with radar system vendors for the radar market analysis, and with photonics components suppliers for the identification of the available mature technologies.The radar architecture has already gained the attention of a radar system vendor and of a company involved in data processing (see support letters), which could be interested in exploiting the related IPRs.