PhD Studentship: Marine Environment Characterisation from Autonomous Platforms Using High-fidelity Radar Sensing

Small, agile and rapidly manoeuvring marine crafts as well as large vessels demand new sensing capabilities to provide situational awareness (SA) of their local environment. The requirements are to detect small boats, which might carry a threat or represent a danger to the vessel, or themselves, such as humans or sea animals, flotsam, jetsam, or large swells, with additional identification of their intent, motion direction etc. Future higher frequency microwave and mm-wave radar can bring key capabilities unavailable in traditional marine radar, including:

1. imagery that is closer to familiar video, able to exploit the vast legacy of image processing algorithms;
2. greatly improved cross-range resolution leading to significant improvements in detection and classification of small objects;
3. 3-D shape assessment that can highlight objects;
4. sensitivity to surface texture which will facilitate image segmentation and, ultimately, enable detection of anomalies within the mapped scene;
5. adaptability of the waveform for enhanced scene assessment in the spatio-temporal domain;
6. compact sensors for small platforms.

The purpose of the project is to identify and develop radar imaging system concepts to allow high resolution imagery of small marine objects from commercial Unmanned Aerial or Surface Vehicles (UAVs/USVs). Such systems will comprise both hardware and signal processing approaches to acquire data and obtain high resolution images of small targets.

The PhD project will include a number of fundamental and experimental studies related to the ability to generate focused radar imagery in sea conditions, by developing environment-specific algorithms and machine learning approaches. At the end of the project a technology demonstrator will be built using UAV- and USV- mounted radar sensors, and it will be tested in real world conditions at various seaside locations.

The prospective candidate will join the acclaimed Microwave Integrated Systems Laboratory (www.birmingham.ac.uk/misl), one of the largest radar research groups in Europe, and will work alongside a community of PhD researchers, research staff and academics in a vibrant and creative atmosphere. This is an EPSRC ICASE award with Thales UK as the industrial sponsor. The ICASE provides competitive PhD scholarship with additional top-up from the industrial partner and has a budget for attending advanced training courses, conferences and other expenses relevant to the subject of PhD.

The successful candidate will have an excellent background in Engineering, Physics or a related subject area (first class degree or equivalent). We invite applications from highly motivated individuals, able to master complex subjects and eager to undertake research in a system- level approach with both theoretical and experimental thrusts of activities, publish research papers and advance research as part of a team of researchers working in the area. For more details, please see: https://www.ukri.org/what-we-do/developing-people-and-skills/epsrc/studentships/industrial-case/

For further queries, please feel free to email Profs. Mike Antoniou (m.antoniou@bham.ac.uk) and Marina Gashinova (m.s.gashinova@bham.ac.uk). Applications are made through the university online admissions portal.

Funding Details

Additional Funding Information 

The scholarship is open to Home (UK citizens) students only. Funding is via ICASE (EPSRC/Thales UK), commencing October 2025.

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