PHOOD consortium

Although RADAR and LIDAR technologies are widely used in many industrial sectors, a combined RADAR-LIDAR sensor is yet to be developed. Moreover, the PA requirements for timely, precise, and heterogeneous remote sensing with reduced SWaP for mobile units have not been completely addressed yet.

Stepping from recent results of PHOOD Principal Investigator, with the Institute of Communication, Information and Perception Technologies (TeCIP) of the Advanced Studies Sant’Anna School (SSSA) and the National Inter-university Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), on innovative photonics-based RADARs and multi-frequency coherent LIDARs, and merging the competences in precision agriculture of the Institute of Life Sciences (ISV) of SSSA and of the University of Milan (UNIMI) and those in signal processing of the Institute for the Environment Electromagnetic Sensing (IREA) of the National Research Council (CNR), PHOOD will return a combined system including LIDAR and RADAR designed to improve the crop and soil status analysis. All the required expertise is included in the PHOOD consortium.

The coordinating SSSA involves two institutes: TeCIP and ISV. The first, with skills in photonics, includes a world-level PIC fabrication and packaging facility (silicon photonics platform). The latter has long expertise in agricultural sciences, especially on soil analysis. The sub-unit CNIT, where the PI developed the photonics-based RADAR and innovative LIDAR, makes available all these acquired competences and PIC design skills. The other Units are IREA-CNR with strong competence in RADAR and LIDAR DSP also for PA, and UNIMI with skills on crop analysis, and complementary to ISV-SSSA.