ION Alberta Lunch Meeting – Wednesday June 12th, 2013

Dr. Michel Clénet from DRDC presented GAJET, a DRDC Evaluation Testbed for Navigation Electronic Warfare. [download here]

Abstract
Situational awareness is essential in theatres of operations, particularly the positions of blue and red troops and military platforms. This is provided to command and control systems through various fixed or mobile surveillance platforms and data links that relay position information acquired mainly from GPS receivers. Due to the extremely low power of the signals coming from the satellites, GPS receivers are highly sensitive to interference and jamming, and electronic protection is necessary to operate in electronic warfare environments. One possible method of protection of existing GPS receivers is to use a controlled reception pattern antenna (CRPA). To investigate and develop this technology, DRDC Ottawa designed a GPS anti-jam electronic test bed, named GAJET. GAJET is a CRPA where each hardware and software component can be individually modified resulting in a customizable system that can be used to test improvements to any sub-system or combination of sub-systems. The presentation will provide the description of GAJET and a couple of result examples.

Speaker’s Bio
Michel Clénet received the Master in Sciences and Technology (MST) degree in signal processing and the Diplôme d’Études Approfondies (DEA) degree in telecommunications from the University of Rennes I, France, in 1991 and 1992 respectively, and the PhD. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Nantes, France, in 1997.   In 1993, he joined the Electronic and Computer Systems (SEI) Laboratory at IRESTE, Nantes, France, where he was involved in research on antenna systems for mobile communications. He developed several prototypes for adaptive antenna applications.  From 1997 to 1999, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, where he worked on microstrip antennas, arrays and horns.  Since 1999, he has been with Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), Ottawa, Canada, where he has been working on array signal processing, RF systems, planar antennas, arrays and related technologies, for satellite communication applications. Since 2006, he is leading DRDC activity on controlled reception pattern antenna systems for GPS applications and related technologies.   Michel Clénet is an IEEE senior member, and is currently the Canadian representative for URSI Commission B.