Awards

Technical Recognition Award 2024

13th June, 2024: At the IEEE International Conference on Communications in Denver (USA), Prof. Andreas Knopp received the 2024 Technical Recognition Award from the Satellite & Space Communications (SSC) Technical Committee of the IEEE Communication Society for his outstanding research contributions to the use of multi-antenna technology for satellite communications. In her laudatory speech, Prof. Gunes Karabulut Kurt, Chair of the SSC Technical Committee, acknowledged the important contributions made by Prof. Knopp's research group at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich (UniBw M) over the past decade. Thanks to multi-antenna technology, the energy per transmitted bit can be reduced, making data transmission via satellites more energy-efficient and competitive. In addition to numerous publications, the research results have been published in important patents and transferred to a spin-off company. Knopp is currently leading one of the largest European initiatives for research into the next generation of multi-antenna systems based on distributed systems in the space and ground segment. The relevance of Prof. Knopp's research is confirmed by the fact that the satellite industry is considering multi-antenna technology for its future products and has transferred it to industrial research and usability.
Prof. Knopp's nomination was supported by numerous experts from research and industry. Overall, in all his years at UniBw M, Prof. Knopp has proven his ability to bring groundbreaking ideas from a low level of technological maturity to a level of maturity that enables knowledge transfer to industry. Building such a bridge between excellent academic research and industrial innovation is a challenging undertaking that Prof. Knopp's research group has mastered with great success.

Best Publication Award 2023

December 13, 2023. Our institute awarded the “Best Publication 2023 Award” to Kevin T. Li. The winning publication entitled “A Techno-Economic Assessment and Tradespace Exploration of Low Earth Orbit Mega-Constellations” has been authored by Christian A. Hofmann, Harald Reder, Andreas Knopp and Kevin T. Li.
This work presents a novel techno-economic framework, offering insights and quantifying the impact of changing parameters within the complex architecture of satellite constellations. The authors propose an enhancement to the existing framework using a common system engineering technique known as tradespace exploration. This approach provides clearer insights into the conceptual design of systems and a better understanding of the 'physics' behind proposed solutions. It enables a deeper analysis of key system parameters and performance indicators in such systems. Initially, the authors introduce key players in the ecosystem of mega-constellations, highlight recent advances leading to the rebirth of the concept of broadband LEO constellations, and develop initial rationale for key parameters in the cost model. Subsequently, they detail the applied techno-economic cost framework, extended through tradespace exploration. The authors present the optimal solutions derived from the exploration within the system, as indicated by the Pareto front of all results, and provide detailed insights into the interrelationships among specific key parameters. Overall, this work provides a comprehensive view of the intertwining possibilities within mega-constellations and lays the groundwork for further exploration of system design concepts for satellite constellations.

ASMS Best Paper Award

M.Sc. Eriserdi Mollaymeri, research assistant at the institute for information technology of Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Knopp was awarded the prestigious “Best Paper Award” on 9th September 2022 at the 11th “Advanced Satellite Multimedia Conference (ASMS)” held in Graz, Austria.
The paper of Mr. Mollaymeri, coauthored with his research group leader Dr.-Ing Thomas Delamotte, is entitled: “Timing Alignment of Distributed Gateways: Theoretical Analysis and Experimental Demonstration”. This work addresses one of the challenges encountered today in the design of very high throughput satellite (VHTS) systems: the synchronization of the gateway stations used to uplink signals to the satellite. Thanks to this study, which has also been based on an experimental verification, a better understanding of the basic design trade-offs in the gateway to satellite links has been acquired. The findings of this paper pave the way to more efficient ground segment infrastructures.
The “Advanced Satellite Multimedia Conference” is one of the most renowned conferences on satellite communications, this year organized by the DLR Institute for Communications and Navigation and supported by the European Space Agency (ESA). The conference was held in conjunction with the 17th “Signal Processing for Space Communications Workshop”.

AFCEA Master Thesis Award

May 12, 2022: The master thesis of First Lieutenant Jonas Hofmann was awarded a 3rd Prize at the AFCEA Symposium in Bonn. The thesis “Cyclostationary Signal Detection and Doppler Rate Correction for LEO Nanosatellites in the ISM Band” tackles the problem of detecting the presence of communication signals after transmission over a low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite channel. Especially the severe Doppler effects in LEOs, the low transmit power of small satellites and an environment of strong interference render this a challenging problem. The results can be used for a variety of applications such as civil cognitive radio tasks and or military signal intelligence. The thesis was supervised by Prof. Andreas Knopp and written as a research collaboration at the Naval Postgraduate School’s Space Systems Academic Group (SSAG) in Monterey, CA. The SSAG has been a pioneer in building and operating small satellites for many decades. Ongoing follow-up work of Hofmann’s thesis was partially published at IEEE conferences and will be part of the dtec.bw project SeRANIS.

Best student paper award

April 08, 2022: The paper „Capacity Analysis of a MIMO Laser Link from Lunar Surface to Earth” won the Student Best-Paper-Award in the IEEE International Conference on Space Optical Systems and Application (ICSOS 2022). The paper was written by the authors group from University of Bundeswehr Munich (UniBw M) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR): Hung Le Son, Robert Schwarz, Marcus Knopp, Dirk Giggenbach and Andreas Knopp. In this paper, a precise calculation was built to investigate the fluctuation of channel capacity of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) laser link from lunar surface to Earth. Using the results of this calculation, the authors proposed the methods to mitigate the fluctuation and maximize the channel capacity. The paper also showed the potential of the MIMO technology in the laser communications. It increases not only the capacity and, thus, the data transfer rate, but also the reliability of the communication channel. The UniBw M cooperates with the DLR and especially its research center in the field of space travel and space communication. The cooperation has been intensified since 2021 in the dtec.bw project SeRANIS.

Best Publication Award 2021

December 21, 2021: The Institute for Information Technology awarded the “Best Publication 2021 Award” to the authors of the paper entitled “Emergency 5G Communication on-the-Move: Concept and field trial of a mobile satellite backhaul for public protection and disaster relief”. The paper was written by Florian Völk, Robert Schwarz, Mario Lorenz, and Andreas Knopp and has been published in the International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking. The paper is part of the Special Issue 2021: “Satellite Networks Integration with 5G”. In their publication the authors report the results of an over-the-air test campaign intended to prove the feasibility of mobile 5G satellite backhauls for government agencies and emergency responders. The authors propose and investigate architectures for mobile Public Protection and Disaster Relief (PPDR) networks with satellite backhaul to ensure Communication on-the-Move. The results show that already existing interfaces of the 3GPP standard allow satellite-based 5G networks tailored to the needs of government authorities.

Best Publication Award 2020

Dezember 23, 2020. The Institute for Information Technology awarded the “Best Publication 2020 Award” to Kai-Uwe Storek. The winning publication entitled “Multi-Satellite Multi-User MIMO Precoding: Testbed and Field Trial” has been authored by Robert Schwarz and Kai-Uwe Storek. The paper, which was presented at the flagship conference IEEE International Conference on Communications 2020, demonstrates a complete satellite transmission scenario applying full frequency reuse – an upcoming technique for V/UHTS satellites to further improve the spectral efficiency of satellite systems. The impressive demonstration involved two co-located geostationary satellites that jointly utilize a common frequency band as well as two COTS DVB-S2x receivers. With on-ground MU-MIMO precoding for spatial multiplexing and advanced synchronization algorithms, the authors prepared and implemented an end-to-end testbed for the next generation of UHTS and fractionated satellite systems.
Congratulations to Kai and Robert!

VDE Bayern Award Ceremony

Dezember 01, 2020. The renowned VDE Bayern Award has been granted to Dr.-Ing. Thomas Delamotte for his doctoral thesis „MIMO Feeder Links for Very High Throughput Satellite Systems“. His work has been selected as one of the most significant works published in the last year by bavarian universities in the domain of electrical, electronic and information engineering. As part of his research, Dr.-Ing. Delamotte has developed an innovative multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) approach for high-speed communication links between ground stations and geostationary Very High Throughput Satellites (VHTS).
The VDE Bayern Award ceremony was originally planned to be held at the prestigious Bayerischer Hof on November 12, 2020. This event was, however, cancelled in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, the director and the spokesman of the VDE Bayern, Peter Rief and Klaus Bayer, visited the Bundeswehr University to hand over the VDE Bayern Award to Dr.-Ing. Delamotte in person. The ceremony took place in presence of the university president, Prof. Merith Niehuss, and the vice-president for Research, Prof. Eva-Maria Kern.
The VDE is the German engineering society for electrical, electronic and information technologies. In Bavaria, it counts around 5000 individual members and 170 member companies.

Tesat Spacecom Science Award 2019

September 11, 2019 Thomas Delamotte, a PhD student of Prof. Andreas Knopp, has received the Tesat Spacecom Science Award 2019 for his PhD thesis entitled „MIMO Feeder Links for Very High Throughput Satellite Systems“. This prize is granted biannually by the market leader in the field of satellite payload equipment, Tesat Spacecom, for scientific innovations with high practical applicability. In his research works, Thomas Delamotte has developed a novel multi-antenna feeder link architecture to address the bandwidth bottleneck encountered in current high throughput systems. To guarantee a high link availability, his solution also includes advanced diversity schemes to mitigate strong rain fades in the frequency bands (e.g. Ka/Q/V-bands) currently used for feeder links operation. The proposed multi-antenna approach represents a serious alternative to other candidates for future system designs such as optical feeder links.

Award „Next Generation meets Satcom“

May 15, 2019: Dipl.-Ing. Tony Colin has been honoured with the award “Next Generation meets Satcom”, at the 6th biennial “German National Conference on Satellite Communications” in Bonn, Germany. More than 300 experts from industry, government, and academia were invited to give their vote for the most relevant and trendsetting technology under the motto “satellites in future communication networks”.
The competitors had to present their topics and ideas in a three-minute pitch in front of the audience, followed by the two-day conference where the voters were able to ask questions and discuss.
In this context, the work presented by Tony Colin, selected among 19 proposals and entitled “Machine Learning for Resource Allocation in High Throughput Satellite Systems”, tackles the potential role that machine learning could play in future satellite systems. Through its adaptivity, learning capability and low complexity, machine learning appears now as a key enabling technology to improve further the utilization of satellite resources and the capacity distribution to the users.
Note that this award has been generously sponsored by Dr.-Ing. Walther Pelzer, Member of the DLR (German Aerospace Center) Executive Board and Head of the DLR Space Administration.

ICSSCBest Student Paper Award

October 18, 2018: M. Sc. Ovais Bin Usman, a research assistant for Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Knopp, was awarded the “Best Student Paper Award” on 18th October 2018 at the 36th AIAA “International Communications Satellite Systems Conference (ICSSC)” held in Niagara Falls, Canada. The paper was titled “Adaptive Onboard Compensation of Non-Linear HPAs and Imperfect Butler Matrices in Multiport Amplifiers (MPAs) for High Throughput Satellites”. The results presented at the conference outlined two major issues which degrade the optimal MPA performance, i.e. the non-linear effects of high power amplifiers (HPAs) and the hardware imperfections in implementing input/output-hybrid Butler matrices (INET/ONET). Furthermore, a novel technique to improve MPA performance was presented. The “International Communications Satellite Systems Conference” of The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world´s most significant technical conference on satellite communications and was held in conjunction with the prestigious 24th Ka and Broadband Communications Conference.

Award for PhD student Matthias G. Schraml

December 23, 2017 The Institute for Information Technology awarded the “Best Publication 2017 Award” to Matthias Schraml who authored the publication entitled “Blind Estimation of the HPA Operating Point in Multicarrier Satellite Transponders”. The paper, which appeared in the renowned journal ‘’IEEE Communications Letters’’, proposes a novel method for the estimation of the operating point in satellite transponders when the input signal is of multi-carrier type and unknown to the measurement device. Operating point estimation has always been a problem if high practical relevance because satellite operators want to drive their transponders close to saturation for maximum power efficiency while preserving a distinct back-off to limit the intermodulation noise. The novel method opens up a strategy to measure the operating point without any a-priori knowledge about the signal and from any position within the satellite beam. Congratulations to Matthias!

Gereon Such honored for his Master Thesis

December 9, 2017 Master student Gereon Such receives the 2017 “Best Master Thesis Award” issued by the Neubiberg based research funding society “ITIS e.V.”. The award has been presented to Gereon by Prof. Dr. Christian Thienel, the University’s Vice President for research matters. In his laudatory speech Prof. Thienel pointed out that Gereon’s thesis entitled “Performance gain Analysis of a Volterra Series Equalizer for Tactical Satellite Communications” impressively shows how a complex mathematical theory can be systematically tailored and applied to practical systems without loss of exactness and generality. “It is especially this kind of competence that sets apart a great engineer” the Vice President added. Congratulations to Gereon!

Best Publication 2016 Award for “Spatial MIMO over Satellite”

December 8, 2016: The Institute for Information Technology awarded the “Best Publication 2016 Award” to the authors of the paper entitled “Spatial MIMO over satellite: A proof of concept”. The paper has been written by Christian Hofmann, Robert Schwarz, Kai-Uwe Storek and Andreas Knopp and has been published in the proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2016).
In their publication the authors report the results of a test campaign intended to prove the feasibility of MIMO transmission via geostationary satellites. After several years of theoretical research on MIMO over satellite it has now been possible to confirm the predicted MIMO channel capacity by channel measurements. Accompanied by the world’s first spatial MIMO transmission via satellite the campaign resolved any doubts about the feasibility of this still controversially discussed technology. MIMO is a potential technique to increase the throughput of satellite communications, meeting the abiding demand for higher data rates. The awarded publication has been considered a milestone in research on MIMO over satellite.

Best Student Paper Award

September 8, 2015: Dipl.-Ing. Thomas Delamotte and Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwarz, both research assistant for Prof. Dr.-Ing. Andreas Knopp, have been honored with the „Best Student Paper Award“ on the 8th of September 2015 at the „33rd AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference“ in Gold Coast, Australia. The results presented by Thomas Delamotte, entitled „On the Accuracy of Simplified Volterra Series Models for Multicarrier Systems Using Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling“ deal with the mathematical modelling of nonlinear satellite transmission chains. The core of the matter is to point out which level of mathematical detail is required to accurately model such nonlinear chains. The proposed modeling represents a starting point for the design of new algorithms complying with the high data rate requirements of next generation “High-Throughput-Satellites”.
The „International Communications Satellite Systems Conference” of The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the world´s most significant technical conference on satellite communications.

“Next Generation Meets SATCOM” Award

March 25-26, 2015: The SATCOM research group receives the “2015 SATCOM Advancement Award of the German Space Agency (DLR)” for their poster “MIMO SATCOM Demonstrator: A Frequency Reuse Technology to Increase the Data Rate under Power Constraints”. The award has been handed over to Kai-Uwe Storek and Christian A. Hofmann by the DLR board member Dr. Gruppe at this year’s National Conference on Satellite Communications in Bonn. The winners have been selected by the audience in terms of novelty of their idea, practical usefulness / applicability, and quality of presentation. The award includes a financial incentive enabling the authors to present their results at a major international conferences on satellite communications.

Award for Innovators

January 1, 2015: The innovators Prof. Andreas Knopp, Dipl.-Ing. Robert Schwarz and Prof. Berthold Lankl have been honored by the president of the Universität der Bundeswehr München Prof. Merith Niehuss on behalf of the minister of defense Dr. Ursula von der Leyen because of a patent, which has been granted in November 2013. The basic idea of this patent, which is entitled „Verfahren und Einrichtung zur MIMO-Datenübertragung mit einer Höhenplattform“, is an approach that increases the security against eavesdropping of satellite communications links with high data rates. As a main benefit of this approach commonly applied ciphering algorithms, which are bandwidth consuming in general, are no longer required. This innovation is based on long year scientific research activities in the area of “security in information transmission”, which is a focus of research across all faculties of the Universität der Bundeswehr München.

More information can be found here. (in German only)