Thales Systèmes Aéroportés (TAS), France
The Thales Aerospace Division is N°1 in Europe and N° 3 worldwide and provides all the capabilities demanded by our Customers from onboard equipment, sub-systems, systems, prime contracting and high value-added services, both in civil and military markets. As prime contractor in its areas of expertise, Thales plays a pivotal role in many of today’s most ambitious aviation programs: A380, 7E7, A400M, etc. It has 12,900 employees (3,300 outside France). The division generates annual sales of €2.1 billion, with spending on Research & Development equal to 17% of sales. The recently revamped Aerospace Division combines TAS, Thales Avionics, Thales Computers, Thales Microelectronics and Thales MESL. Thales Aerospace has gathered the skills of more than 5 000 engineers within an industrial and technological core that is unique in Europe, and benefits from this accumulated know-how for the design, development and manufacturing of electronic equipment, particularly mastering the following techniques and technologies: power electronics, antennas and radomes, microelectronics, analogue and microwave circuits, manufacturing technologies, information systems and digital data processing. Its technological lead in these fields naturally is compounded with the best production solution at the lowest cost.
Two groups are involved, the Microwave Photonics Laboratory and the Telecom Research Lab. Its MPL concentrates on the development of very high data rates links and has the experience of the Telecom domain in the high-end of data rates.
Role in NANO-RF:
TAS will participate in this project as a potential integrator of the developed technologies in its systems. TAS will give end-user requirements at the beginning of the project. TAS will then participate to the antennas testing and the demonstrator’s realisations and testing.
Laboratory resources:
Testing and characterizing facilities: TAS will be able to provide microwave testing facilities up to 40 GHz with microwave generators, a vectorial network analyser and an electrical spectrum analyser. This bandwidth is extended to 77 GHz thanks to a microwave mixer. TAS can also realise thermal characterisations as it has got a thermal chamber.
Key personnel:
Yves Mancuso got his engineering diploma from Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Génie Physique de Grenoble in 1979. He has been working within Thales Systèmes Aéroportés from 1981 until now, building all the T/R modules and active antennas programs within THALES Aerospace division, in the radar field (combat, surveillance), space (wideband receivers, Radarsat) and electronic warfare (jammers). Establishment of proposals and implementation of all the component and technology projects, for example KORRIGAN (biggest components european project ever financed), etc. He is now a Thales expert and an authority in the field of microwaves and active antennas, mainly the components, the technologies, the design, the architectures ,the simulation and the test. He is considered by the DGA (French MOD) as one of the world experts in the microwave field
Pierre Nicole, R&D project manager, is Head of Advanced Technologies Department at the Technical Directorate. He has more than 25 years of experience in the fields of Optoelectronics and Microwave Functions and Systems R&D. He received the Eng. Degree from INPG (ENSERG) in 1980 and joined SAT where he participated in the first projects in France on optical links for Telecommunications. In 1984, he joined the technical Directorate of DASSAULT ELECTRONIQUE (now TAS) where he continued works on digital and microwave optical links for harsh aeronautical systems. He then began the development of the new field of Microwave Wireless Sensor Networks in 1994, where he particularly developed demonstrators of wireless sensors embedded in concrete, and patented different aspects of “Abandoned Sensors” energized through microwave, optical, and acoustical waves. He holds several patents, mainly in the optical field. His current R&D activities are related to millimetric optical links, microwave MEMS, wireless sensors, contactless active connectors.
Loïc Ménager received the ph.D. degree from Université Paris-Sud (Orsay, France) in 2000 for his studies on the optical processing of RF-signals. Since 2001, he has been with "Thales Systèmes Aéroportés" (Elancourt, France) as a Research & Development engineer. Within the frame of the "Thales Photonics Laboratory", he is currently involved in the designs and realisations of opto- and micro-electronic systems for microwave processing. In particularly, he has worked for various European projects, like the EC-funded programs “Labels” (for telecom application studies) and "Newton" (dedicated to photonic component developments), or the Network of Excellence "Isis".
