Training Schools
GLITTER Schools are planned every 6 months, and cover the different technologies and techniques required to satisfactorily address the listed challenges, but also a complementary training module on Transferable skills. They are expected to improve the DCs’ research attitude and to boost their career opportunities The Schools will be open to PhD students from outside the Network, with a limited number of students.
School 1 : Remote sensors and small-satellites systems for Earth Observation
The first school will be organized in Barcelona (Spain) 6 months into the project. It will last four days and will be divided into a science phase and an engineering phase. In day one, the fundamentals of Remote Sensing and types of sensors will be reviewed. On day 2, the different satellite subsystems will be presented, as well as their inter-dependencies for the different types of missions, including satellite constellations and formations. Days 3 and 4 will be devoted to an in-depth design exercise, in which the student teams, will be guided towards a complete mission design, with a specific focus on day 4 on GNSS-R data analysis. At the end of the School, the designs will be presented to foster discussion on the design and performance aspects.
School 2 : Distributed antenna arrays
The second school will be organized in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium) 12 months into the project. It will focus on antennas and antenna arrays. The latter will however be viewed in a broad perspective, i.e., the training will include some aspects of circuits and processing. Day 1 will concern a general explanation of GNSS and GNSS-R technologies, as well as reminders about antenna theory and specifics regarding antennas for space. Day 2 will focus on beamforming both from hardware and software perspectives, with special interest on array pattern optimisation. During day 3, the students will exercise on a software devoted to array synthesis and on a hardware devoted to direction-finding. In the final day, more advanced topics will be addressed, such as interferometry, mutual coupling in arrays and inversion techniques.
School 3 : On-board electronics for Remote Sensing
The third school will be organized in Delft (The Netherlands) 18 months into the project. Day 1 will be dedicated to the needs of RF circuits for Remote Sensing, and for GNSS-R in particular. It will also comprise reminders about the main RF passive and active circuits. Day 2 will be devoted to the use of such circuits for sensing, localisation and imaging, with exercises on an interferometric localization system. Day 3 will focus on integrated (i.e., on-chip) RF electronics, allowing lower consumption and compactness, and Day 4 will describe different types of computing platforms and their qualification for space.
School 4 : Advanced data analysis techniques for Remote Sensing
The fourth summer school will be organized in Luxembourg 24 months into the project. In this event, trainees will obtain skills in signal processing so that DCs will also be able to identify potential applications of GNSS-R and compare the instruments to other remote sensing tools. Morning sessions will be used for classroom teaching and afternoons will be spent on exercises and hands-on experiments. Students will be assigned a small project, to be solved in teams, and presented at the end of the school.
Workshops
The workshops essentially consist of a collaborative project toward the demonstration of the interferometric GNSS-R observation mode based on a swarm of drones, followed by a full-scale satellite-based design. In a first instance, each of the four training schools is immediately followed by a short meeting providing preliminary steps: specifications, verification at components level, tests with GNSS-R from a drone and first synchronized acquisition. Then, the workshop themselves go from verification of the drone-based beamforming to a design for a full in-orbit system, including a final presentation at the end of the project.
Workshop 1
The first workshop will be organized in Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium). It will be dedicated to the realization of a first synchronized GNSS-R beamforming experiment with a swarm of drones. It will be followed by beginning discussion on in-orbit demonstration.
Workshop 2
The second workshop will be organized in Luxembourg. It will be dedicated to larger-scale experiment with drones and scaling to an in-orbit system.
Workshop 3
The third workshop will be organized in Brussels (Belgium). It will be dedicated to the presentation of the main project results and main achievements.
Dissemination
GLITTER will disseminate results through peer-reviewed open-access scientific journal publications, conference proceedings and presentations, through the project website. Training weeks, outreach events or press releases will be advertised to relevant target audiences such as the academic/scientific community, large industry and stakeholders via the website, social media, dedicated flyers or emails.