Focused session:
„Sensor Data Fusion and Target Tracking”

Focus area overview

Target tracking and sensor fusion are the algorithmic means to infer higher level information from radar detections. They can be applied to mitigate false alarms, non-detections, noise-driven measurement errors, but they also address inference on situation level such as data association, ghost mitigation, and track extraction. Despite the fact that object tracking is still being improved by various research groups, data fusion for radar processing has conquered many applications beyond that. This session will focus on solutions to infer high quality information from single or multiple radar sensors.

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Focused session:
„Passive radars on moving platforms”

Focus area overview

Passive radars have gained increasing interest in the radar community over the last decade, due to their advantages in both military and civilian contexts. The increased understanding in passive radars together with the progress in miniaturized and powerful hardware components opened the way towards new potential applications. Among them, the possibility to operate passive radar systems on moving platforms such as small boats/ light aircrafts/ UAVs is definitely one of the most interesting. In fact, the implementation of classical airborne/shipborne radar applications such as GMTI, MMTI, SAR could be performed benefiting from the intrisic advantage of a passive radar. This session will focus on the challenges as well as on the most recent results in the field.

Session chair/organizer:

Focused session:
„Fully Adaptive & Cogntive Radar Systems”

Focus area overview

Fully adaptive and cogntive approaches to radar engineering offer exciting opportunities to improve radar performance and enable the use of radars in unconventional situations. Just as these approaches may be thought of a disruptive to radar engineering, they also provide a chance for radar to again become the disruptive technology it was in the 1930s. This session will explore current research into: radars with highly adaptive operating parameters; radar architectures inspired by human & animal cognition; and the use of deep learning approaches to radar signal processing.

Session chair/organizer:

Focused session:
„EM Effects of Wind Turbines and Wind Farms”

Focus area overview

During the last years, research in electromagnetic scattering of wind turbines turned out to be a „hot topic”, which many researchers are interested in. The increasing use of wind turbines as an alternative, renewable energy source is the motivation for studying possible interference effects against sensitive radar systems, such as weather radars, airport surveillance radars, or military radars, as well as developing solutions for mitigating such undesirable effects.

Preliminary plan of session

1.  TBD  – Influence of Off-shore WT on Coastal Surveillance Radar
2. A. Yarovoy (TU Delft) – Novel models of scattering from WT
3. Laith Danoon (University of Manchester) – Reducing the effect of offshore wind farms on the REWS CFAR detection threshold
4. C. Wasserzier (Fraunhofer FHR) – Implementation of a dedicated ornithological radar demonstrator in Ku-Band
5. Seif Ben Hassine, Alexandre Chabory, Rémi Douvenot, Christophe Morlaas (ENAC, France) – A propagation model including the receiver and scene dynamic effects to assess the impact of windfarms on VOR systems

We encourage proposing more papers – please contact the session organizers

Focused session:
„Emerging Terahertz Techniques”

Focus area overview

This Focused Session targets modern, emerging technologies that help bringing together optical and microwave achievements. Three main issues that will be addressed during the Session are: components, sensors and characterization methods.
They cover a wide range of novel subjects ranging from the physcial principles to practical applications with demonstration of major advantages over those already applied. This will allow the attendants to better understand all the aspects of the newly developed (sub-)terahertz systems that are designed to facilitate our daily work.

Focused session:
„SAR technology”

Focus area overview

Recent advances in SAR technology, new SAR applications and new ideas in this area are the subject of this session.

Focused session:
„RFID Systems”

Focus area overview

The radiofrequency identification (RFID) systems are currently widely used for identification of arbitrary objects, animals as well as people in industry (production process monitoring), logistics (acceleration of storing procedures), commerce (antitheft feature), health care (elimination of patient confusions), inventorying (e.g. books in libraries), public sport events with mass attendance of competitors, and entertainment industry. Despite the fact that RFID is already widespread its novel applications, technology improvements and innovations, i.e. integration with sensors of physical quantities, shifting to mm-wave and event THz bands, development of chipless transponders, are still emerging. RFID is also expected to have an important role in the internet of things, and wearable device technologies. Another opportunity for its further spreading is in commerce, which consists in optical barcode replacement by the RFID transponders (tags). The advantage of the RF and mm-wave tags consist in the possibility to be read without necessity of clear line of sight, which is essential for reaching higher level of automation. This session will present contributions from challenging fields of RFID technology and applications.

Focused session:
„Advanced III-V devices and circuits for high performance and high frequency/speed systems”

Focus area overview

Modern microwave and high speed mixed signal systems, such as 5G wireless and Terabit capacity optical communications, automotive radars, THz sources and detectors, need high performance devices with respect to various criteria. More demanding specifications in terms of resolution, bandwidth, power, dynamic range and noise are formulated for very high and ever increasing frequency or speed of operation. Accordingly, semiconductor processes are continuously progressing to answer these various requirements and applications.

Session chair/organizer:

Focused session:
„Mixed Analog, RF and Digital Design for Accelerators”

Focus area overview

Modern particle accelerators require state-of the art control, diagnostic and synchronization systems to properly accelerate particle beams and achieve target energy or radiation. Complex, mixed signal systems, such as analog front-end, down converters, vector modulators, multi-channel fast ADCs and DACs or advanced FPGA cards are implemented to control and monitor EM fields in accelerating cavities. Such large machines require femtosecond synchronization systems, frequently including extremely low phase noise and phase drift signal sources and signal distribution links. This session will address mixed signal electronic systems built for modern particle accelerators, such as MTCA.4 based LLRF controllers, low phase noise oscillators and low drift signal distribution links.

Session chair/organizer:

dr Krzysztof Czuba

Warsaw University of Technology
Institute of Electronic Systems,
Poland,
kczuba@elka.pw.edu.pl

Deputy Director for Research (since 2016), Institute of Electronic Systems, Warsaw University of Technology, Assistant professor (since 2006), Warsaw University of Technology, Microwave Circuits and Instrumentation Division.
Researcher and designer of RF and mixed-signal electronics, teaching electronic circuits theory and signal integrity. Project leader (since 2015) and technical coordinator for the MTCA.4. based LLRF control system (built by Polish Electronic Group) and project leader for the Phase Reference Line system. Both projects are realized within a Polish contribution to the European Spallation Source (ESS  ERIC) build in Lund, Sweden.

LLRF designer (since 2001), Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY), Germany – design of RF and mixed signal electronics for LLRF control systems, femto-second stable Master Oscillator and phase reference distribution systems for FLASH and European XFEL accelerators. Developed a concept of the MTCA.4 RTM Backplane. Research coordinator and project leader within a collaboration between  DESY and Warsaw University of Technology (WUT). Planning and managing projects, coordination of the WUT team work (more than 20 people) at DESY (since 2008).

Focused session:
„Six-Port Architecture as Generic Approach for a Huge Variety of Applications”

Focus area overview

Wireless technology is a big driver for emerging applications in the vision of Internet of Things (IoT). For the next years, there will be a tremendous increase in volume of deployed sensor nodes and mobile devices demanding for low power systems to reduce the overall power used for IoT and to extend the runtime of any battery driven system. In this framework, the Six-Port architecture rises from a niche application to a serious alternative to common heterodyne front-ends for a large variety of different applications. This session will review current research and discusses the benefits of Six-Port technology for exemplary applications spanning from wireless communications to interferometric radar and metrology and from low frequency up to optics.

Session chair/organizer:

Prof. Alexander Koelpin

Chair for Electronics and Sensor Systems,
Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg,
Germany,
alexander.koelpin@b-tu.de

Focused session:
„Infrared and terahertz devices and systems”

Focus area overview

Infrared and terahertz technologies are rapidly developing and highly promising for many life and scientific activities. Both are most frequently applied in spectroscopy, imaging and communications. Nowadays, different optoelectronic sensors provide performance unobtainable by other techniques. Such sensors can meet strict requirements and therefore they can be used in environmental monitoring, industry, chemical analysis, biology, security and medicine. Using these technologies, communication systems (Free Space Optics) can provide higher data rate links compared to microwave wave ones. Less susceptibility to targeted interception and disturbance also provide their ability for secure communications. That is why, this session will be convenient opportunity to become familiar with state-of-the-art research in the field of infrared and terahertz devices and systems.

Session chair/organizer:

Lt. Col. Norbert Palka Ph.D., D.Sc., Eng.

Head of the Security Systems Group
Institute of Optoelectronics, Military University of Technology
Gen. Witolda Urbanowicza 2 St., 00-908 Warsaw, POLAND
norbert.palka@wat.edu.pl

Lt. Col. Jacek Wojtas Ph.D., D.Sc., Eng.

Head of the Group of Optical Signal Detection
Institute of Optoelectronics, Military University of Technology
Gen. Witolda Urbanowicza 2 St., 00-908 Warsaw, POLAND
jacek.wojtas@wat.edu.pl