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Finland wins the European Defence Agency’s Defence Innovation Prize

Defence Forces
Publication date 3.12.2020 12.30 | Published in English on 3.12.2020 at 14.16
Press release

The proposal of Tampere University regarding the use of radio technology for countering swarms of UAVs has won the European Defence Agency ‘s Defence Innovation Prize Contest.

At Tampere University, the development of the contest-winning innovation is related to the ongoing research projects of Assistant Professor Taneli Riihonen’s research team on electronic means of countering unmanned aerial vehicles and Radio Shield against Malign Wireless Communication. They are funded by the Scientific Advisory Board for Defence (MATINE) and the Academy of Finland. 

The English title of the winning initiative is “Full-Duplex Radio Technology for Enhanced Defence Capabilities Against Drone Swarms”. The prize was awarded on 3 December at the high-level Annual Conference of the European Defence Agency, EDA held as a virtual event in Brussels. The proposal for the contest came up in cooperation with Rantelon Ltd., an Estonian company focused on radio frequency electronics.  The Finnish Defence Research Agency is involved in the research work in a guiding and supervising capacity. 

“The key methods for intercepting UAVs and UAV swarms are directed at radio frequency emissions from aerial vehicles and ground stations controlling them.  The innovation we proposed for the contest involves developing and applying full-duplex radio technology against UAV swarms, but on a wider scale, this is just one example of how multifunction full-duplex military radios will provide supremacy in the battle for the control of the radio frequency spectrum and thus boost the capability of C5IS systems and electronic warfare, Riihonen says. 

The research team’s earlier Scientific Advisory Board project Full-Duplex Radio Technology in Military Applications and the team's international research cooperation within the framework of the NATO Science and Technology Organization (STO) have contributed to Riihonen’s team becoming forefunners in the domain.  

Read more in a more extensive article in Ruotuväki (In Finnish)
 

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