Foreword

On behalf of the Supervisory Board of the Electromagnetic Remote Sensing Defence Technology Centre (EMRS-DTC), I would like to extend a warm welcome to all participants in our 6th Annual Technical Conference.

The primary objective of this Conference is to enable researchers working on EMRS-DTC funded projects to share the results of their activities and to inform you of progress within the limitations of this unclassified event. A valuable lesson learned from our previous Conferences has been the importance placed by you in being able to interact with the presenters and your fellow delegates, and we have structured our programme to facilitate this process. This year we are again scheduling both oral and poster presentations to support this level of interaction. We have also planned two keynote presentations, including one by Alistair Jolly highlighting aspects of the Defence Technology Plan related to sensors technology.

We have again taken the opportunity to share our Conference with the SEAS DTC to further the extent of the interaction process and to help in the transitioning of technology towards its exploitation in Defence Systems. Whilst many of our programmes are addressing work at a low technology maturity level, the EMRS-DTC is placing greater emphasis again in transitioning selected technologies to demonstrate their effectiveness in relation to current areas of military requirement. Thus you will see examples of remote sensing technologies that address challenges posed by operations in the urban theatre. We encourage you to use the Conference to interact with those researchers to stimulate ideas for future research direction, and to consider how the fruits of the research might be exploited to the benefit of the UK, in support of MoD's Defence Technology Strategy.

This year we are again emphasising the two key sensor system threads of the EMRS-DTC, by holding two parallel sessions for our RF and EO themes, each of which separately includes papers on relevant projects from the Transduction Devices & Materials (TDM) and Transducer Embedded Processing (TEP) themes. The Session Chairmen will endeavour to ensure that the start times of papers are strictly adhered to so that delegates can move freely between the two sessions, choosing projects that most interest them.

And, of course, we hope that you enjoy your stay in historic Edinburgh, including the conference dinner at The Signet Library..

Professor Keith Lewis
EMRS DTC Research Director