Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics FKIE
NATO honors international team around FKIE scientists for pioneering research for the battlefield of the future
For their dedicated leadership and collaboration in the NATO STO Research Task Group “Full-Duplex Radio Technology for Military Applications” (IST-175-RTG) Fraunhofer FKIE scientists Prof. Dr. Marc Adrat, Dr. Markus Antweiler and Matthias Tschauner have been awarded the “NATO Information Systems Technology (IST) Panel Team Excellence Award.” In its statement, the jury emphasized the great importance of their research for NATO: The newly developed “in-band full-duplex” technology paves the way for the Alliance's military superiority in the electromagnetic spectrum. For essential key disciplines on the battlefield of the future, whether in communications or drone defense, the technology is of the highest practical relevance for future NATO missions.
“The core advantage of 'in-band full-duplex' technology is that two functions - transmitting and receiving - can be carried out simultaneously on the same frequency,” says Group Chairman Adrat, explaining the innovation of the new method. “Previously, both functions had to be performed either alternately one after the other or on different frequencies.” The new approach makes it possible to solve the problem of signal superpositions, known as self-interferences, and thanks to the simultaneous use of both functions, spectral efficiency and therefore data throughput can be doubled. As a concrete advantage in operations, this brings a clear optimization of military radio traffic and thus significantly improved and more reliable operational conditions for the soldiers.
Technological optimization of communication and electronic warfare capabilities
The technology also contributes to the latter in the detection and defense of drone signals. As the war in Ukraine has shown for over a thousand days now, drones are the decisive means of reconnaissance and effectiveness on the modern battlefield. The early and reliable detection and defense of drone signals is therefore an important instrument for maintaining tactical superiority. The new “in-band full-duplex” method can support this by enabling the real simultaneous sensing (detection) and jamming (jamming) of drone signals for the first time. Until now, it has been necessary to schedule look-through pauses to monitor the success of jamming.
Successor research group continues work
The NATO research task group ended its regular work in November 2023, but the important research strand is already being continued: The new Group “Cosite-Interference Cancellation for Military Systems and Defense Applications” (IST-222-RTG) has already taken over, with Adrat, Antweiler and Tschauner once again participating as chair, mentor and scientist. The new research task is to extend the results previously achieved for a single radio device to several collocated radio devices (Cosite interference). The fact that the research group has grown from eight to ten participating nations confirms the great interest in the topic.
