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In this edition, the winner of the 2024 Phyllis Montgomerie Commonwealth Award is Cameron Jones, a PhD candidate at the Australian National University and a member of the laser communication team in the Advanced Instrumentation Technology Centre.
Cameron’s project is involved in the development of advanced, ground-based instrumentation to meet increasing demand for faster Earth/Space satellite communications. This demand calls for communications technologies to operate at a higher bandwidth than the current radio frequency regime, in a high-noise, low-power environment, and deal with a range of issues such as atmospheric turbulence.
For this, the project will use Free Space Optical (FSO) communication because of its many advantages over radio frequency communications. The FSO technology uses light available in ‘free’ space to transmit data, wirelessly, for telecommunications or computer networking. Importantly, for the next generation of Earth-Space communication, FSO can leverage existing infrastructure and be free from licensing issues associated with radio frequency.
FSO can enable communication between spacecraft and bring internet connectivity to people in remote and isolated communities on earth, people for whom current physical connections are impractical or cost prohibitive. In June 2022, Internet World Statistics estimated that almost one-third of the world’s population lacked internet access. Rates in some Commonwealth countries are even higher. For example, in West Africa, 49 per cent of people in The Gambia are cut off from vital information that could save their lives. With the dangers to life and property that climate change is bringing, the importance of fast and secure satellite communications is crucial in tracking the movement of potentially disastrous weather events.
With the advent of quantum computing on the horizon, public and private organisations around the world are aware that traditional RSA encryption* will be easily compromised. FSO technology provides a promising means to enable Quantum Key Distribution, which will form the backbone of future quantum proof encryptions for global communication networks.
Cameron will use the $5000 award on a research trip to Durham University in the United Kingdom. There, he will collaborate with researchers at the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation who are working on a complementary line of research, investigating the application of Applied Optics for astronomy and communication.
*RSA encryption is named for the three inventors of the technology – Ron Rivet, Adi Shamir and Leonard Adelman.
Images from Space
Earthrise, Apollo 8 Mission
Photo: NASA
