Research by IIT Roorkee’s INSPIRE faculty fellow can be used in defense sector

Debidas Kundu, INSPIRE faculty fellow from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee, is working on improved technology and satellite communication that can be used in the defense sector as well as for space research.

His work on a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a radar antenna can be utilised in defense and strategic sectors. In his project, he has designed two absorbers, which can provide stealth from surveillance radar while the latter can also support secure communication.

Kundu is also developing a broadband linearly polarized reflectarray antenna — a planar, low-profile, circuit board printed antenna that can provide high gain. His proposed design can be used in tiny light-weight satellites called CubeSats.

A constellation of CubeSats at low earth orbit (LEO) can be a potential solution for connectivity across the globe through the internet of things (IoT). Reflectarray antennas, such as the one he has proposed, can be useful to enable inter-satellite links (ISL) between the individual CubeSats to reduce the signal latency.

Kundu is an INSPIRE faculty at IIT Roorkee’s department of Science and Technology. He has been working on surface electromagnetics, an emerging area in the radio frequency (RF) and microwave discipline, and aims to augment the capabilities of existing RF and microwave devices and circuits with the help of surface electromagnetics.

He has set up a parallel plate waveguide measurement facility at IIT Roorkee for the broadband characterization of reflection-transmission responses.

Kundu will be filing patents on some of his work and taking forward his work on absorber and radome, which have applications in defense and strategic sectors, as well as his work on reflectarray, which can be used in satellite communications.