Meet Oliver Leisten, the innovator driving autonomous vehicle safety forward
Electronics expert Oliver Leisten, CTO at Helix Geospace turns his focus to develop antenna technology for driverless cars.
In addition to developing satellite-based communication systems for unmanned aircraft safety, Oliver Leisten is extending this technology to ground level to enable accurate communication of positions between connected autonomous vehicles to prevent collisions. To further this objective, Helix Geospace became part of an Intelligent Mobility Accelerator, facilitated by Connected Places Catapult and Wayra UK, the innovation division of Telefonica.
“Connected Places Catapult creates leadership for the UK market and allows for the exchange of ideas among stakeholders.” Oliver Leisten, CTO Helix Geospace
Helix focuses on high performance antenna technology for satellite communications and resilient PNT (Position, Navigation and Timing). With variants for GPS, Galileo GNSS constellations and the Iridium LEO satcomms constellation, Helix antennas are multifrequency resonant devices with tightly targeted frequency discrimination. They utilise multiple helical conductor filaments on a high dielectric constant ceramic core. The selective nature of the design assures integrity of data delivered to the receiver enabling positional accuracy to 10cm to be computed, and high levels of resilience against environmental and deliberate disruption. The helical antenna resonance means that troublesome reflected signals, typical of modern cities’ ‘urban canyons’ are ignored, while the on-frequency accuracy makes the system resilient to ‘noisy neighbour’ spectrum interference and deliberate jamming. All this comes in a compact and robust form factor light enough for drones and small enough for vehicle aesthetics. Using this best-in-class antenna technology enables the CRPx anti-jamming/spoofing systems deliver the optimum defence against malicious attempts to undermine satellite navigation and communications with the best SWaP-C.
