Public Funding for Bae Systems Applied Intelligence Limited

POLIIICE vision is to advance European LEAs to a novel lawful-interception (LI), investigation and intelligence era in which they will be able to effectively prevent, detect and investigate crime and terrorism amid the new age of communication (5G&Beyond, end-to-end encrypted communication and Quantum based encryption). These new age technologiesturn legacy LIsolutionsto totally in-effective and therefore put significant risk on Europe’s fight against crime and terrorism. POLIIICE will offer, research, validate and demonstrate array of innovative LI measures at cloud & network level as well as at edge device level that together will enable LEAs to efficiently overcome the new age challenges and enable high throughput of its LI. In addition, POLIIICE will research and model QUDDaaS (Quantum unlock, detection and decryption as a service) as an envisaged central service, potentially outsourced at pan EU level, which will harness quantum computing for decryption of lawfully intercepted encrypted communication (which is vulnerable to Quantum’s Shor algorithm), for brute force detection of target-user’s credentials/tokens needed to access encrypted cloud-native apps and for Quantum unlock of lawfully seized edge devices. QUDDaaS may also detect and classify LI communications that are resistant to Quantum decryption power and therefore can’t be decrypted. POLIIICE also aims to improve the information exchange and cooperation among European LEAs by proposing and implementing a mechanism and procedure for exchanging pseudo-anonymized suspect identifiers. POLIIICE is designed for ensuring the cost-effectiveness, security and integrity of the new age LI and will provide the legal and ethical framework for each of its measures while strictly complying with privacy preserving and ethics rules of operation. POLIIICE will contribute to the LI standardization and will recommend EU regulation changes for effective adaptation of POLIIICE vision and innovative LI measures.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are well established and applications are expected to increase in the foreseeable future. Applications include navigation and positioning for a very wide variety of vehicles, people and high-value commercial goods. However, systems such as GPS and Galileo operate at microwave frequencies around 1GHz where the wavelength of signals is about 30cm. An antenna is an essential component in any GNSS system. The antenna size should be comparable with the wavelength to work efficiently. Typically, a conventional GNSS receive antenna might measure around half a wavelength (15cm) which is too large for many applications such as man-worn or electronic tagging systems. Smaller GPS antennas are available, but have reduced sensitivity. Also, as alternative GNSS systems such as Galileo become available there is a need to work with services operating on multiple frequencies from a single antenna. The challenge is to make an affordable antenna with a small physical size and high sensitivity. This proposal is for a project to demonstrate a highly compact antenna for GNSS applications covering the 1176MHz (GPS L5/ Galileo E5a) to 1575MHz (L1/E1) frequency range. The project will be led by BAE Systems Applied Intelligence Laboratories (AI Labs) who have over 50 years experience in antenna design, navigation techniques and electromagnetic (EM) simulation. AI Labs develops technologies for BAE Systems product units (Military Air, Maritime and Land Systems) and so is well placed to bring a military systems perspective, environmental qualification and exploitation route to the GNSS solution. MoD is currently funding AI Labs to design both wideband antennas and body-worn antennas manufactured using conducting textiles. AI Labs will be supported by Liverpool University (LU) who are one of the leading Universities in the UK for innovative research into novel antennas, electronics and measurement techniques. This proposal is for a follow-on to the Phase 1 study in which we developed a highly-compact crossed dipole antenna design which receives circularly polarised waves across the required frequency bands (1176, 1227 and 1575MHz). The design is compatible with the target size of 50mm and may be used both for body-worn and vehicle mounted applications. The aim of Phase 2 is to demonstrate a prototype antenna. The work will comprise 3 phases: Optimise existing design, manufacture prototype units and evaluate the RF performance characteristics. The RF performance characteristics will be evaluated with the antenna isolated in free space, above a ground plane and installed on the DSTL "phantom" (a manikin representative of the human body). Measurements will be carried out in the AI Labs anechoic chamber and the LU reverberation chamber and techniques for manufacture. Recent research at LU has demonstrated a compact (50mm x 50mm x 2mm) antenna design which receives circular polarisation over the desired three frequency bands (1176, 1227 and 1575MHz) with low rejected power (VSWR<1.5). This design, which is described in this proposal and is subject to a patent application, achieves a performance close to that required by SBRI. However, Phase 1 will investigate further size reduction, use of alternative materials and sensitivity of the design to near by materials. Following Phase 1, a prototype antenna will be built and demonstrated in Phase 2 which is outlined in this proposal.