CNIT is a non-profit, university-generated consortium of 37 Italian universities. CNIT brings together member and partner staff and facilities to the aim of coordinating innovation in the field of telecommunications. CNIT aims at promoting and coordinating research in telecommunications; fostering partnerships among industries, operators, public and private research centres; providing training programs, stimulating initiatives of scientific research and divulgation. The CNIT annual turnover exceeds 10M€ and the main fundings sources are the European Commission, the European Research Council, the National Government and industrial partners.
As reported in the figure below, the operating structure of CNIT is based on Research Units (RUs) within the involved universities, and National Laboratories (NLs) operated directly by CNIT through its own research and administrative personnel. Three NLs currently exist: the NL of Multimedia Communications in Naples, the Radar and Surveillance Systems (RaSS) and the NL of Photonic Networks &Technology National Lab (PNTLab), both sited in Pisa.
The PNTLab and the Communication group at the Institute of Communication, Information and Perception Technologies (TeCIP) of the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna jointly operate within the Integrated Research Center for Photonics Networks and Technologies (IRCPhoNeT) with more than 140 people skilful in optical communications, microwave photonics, photonics for sensing, photonic integration and packaging. The activity of IRCPhoNeT encompasses all research aspects of CNIT and SSSUP related to implementing the various types of very high speed communication networks with partial or total use of photonic technologies to perform various operations, such as transmission, amplification, signal processing, switching, and so on.
From 2009, the Digital & Microwave Photonics group led by Prof. Antonella Bogoni has begun studying photonics in application to microwave systems. In particular, the group has pioneered the concept of photonics-based radar, developed within the ERC funded project PHODIR and published on the international journal NATURE in 2014. They also demonstrated the use of photonics for coherent multiband radar prototypes and they already have tested their prototypes in real scenarios in collaboration with the Italian Navy and Italian radar companies. The same group is currently working on the development of a 0.5-40 GHz electronic warfare scanning receiver based on photonics, in collaboration with Elettronica S.p.A. in Italy. They already obtained a first prototype working on 0.5-12 GHz.
Role in CLARIFIER:
CNIT will take care of the coordination.
Moreover, CNIT will provide all the expertise on microwave photonics for radar systems, and it will take care of the system architecture and PIC layout design, developing the PC of the CLARIFIER subsystems, and it will be responsible of the demonstrator set up and field trials in Italy