Professor Richard Ormondroyd

Background

I was an undergraduate (1971) and PhD student (1975) at Sheffield University in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.  My PhD research was in the area of the electrical properties of amorphous chalcogenide glass.

Prior to joining Cranfield University, I worked in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Bath for 23 years from 1975, first as a lecturer and ultimately as a Reader.  My main research interests at Bath were concerned mostly with spread-spectrum technology of cellular radio, including their pioneering use in bandsharing systems to reduce congestion in cellular radio frequency bands and the development of novel spread-spectrum synchronisers.  I also worked on novel semiconductor laser devices such as beam-steering and optical logic gates as well as active integrated optics components. I also carried out work on the use of Orthogonal Frequency. Division Multiplexing (OFDM) in highly dispersive environments, including the underwater acoustic environment.

Current activities

My teaching interests lie in the areas of communications systems, tactical data links, electronic warfare, satellite communications and networks for a number of MSc courses and professional short courses offered by CDS.

I have a broad range of research interests focussed mainly in the areas of:

• broadband communication systems operating in heavily dispersed environments, such as underwater acoustic communications, future generation cellular radio systems
• electronic warfare and passive emitter geolocation methods
• passive radar and passive coherent location
• use of overlay bandsharing techniques for potential cognitive radio applications
• other interesting work includes the use of novel approaches to frequency estimation, mitigating multipath effects in doubly-spread channels (i.e. delay-spread and Doppler-spread channels) and interference cancellation techniques in sonar systems.

The most recent work I have been involved with has been in the area of modelling avionics data busses.

Publications

• Articles in journals
• Conference papers