A major Lancaster University-led international research project that will deliver unprecedented high-speed wireless data coverage has been shortlisted for a national award.

The ULTRAWAVE programme is a European Union Horizon 2020 funded project that is developing cutting edge technologies to make ubiquitous wireless data speed of up to 100 gigabits per second possible by exploiting the millimetre wave spectrum up to 300 GHz.

The programme has been shortlisted in the ‘Information, Data and Connectivity’ category in 2018 The Engineer magazine’s Collaborate to Innovate awards.

The ULTRAWAVE concept is to create an ultra-capacity wireless transmission layer that is flexible and easy to deploy. This layer would feed data to a mesh of hundreds of small cells, for providing high speed internet to smartphones and tablets in high density city areas, solving the huge increase of data demand.

The ULTRAWAVE system will provide, for the first time, wide area coverage at millimetre waves by using significant transmission power that can only be generated through novel millimetre travelling wave tubes. The ultra-high data rate wireless layer will be enabled through the convergence of three technologies – vacuum electronics, solid-state electronics and photonics.

Professor Claudio Paoloni, project coordinator of ULTRAWAVE and Head of Engineering at Lancaster University, said: “I am delighted that ULTRAWAVE has been shortlisted for this prestigious award. It rewards the high standing and collaborative effort of the eight international project partners to overcome the actual technology barriers for providing ubiquitous and unprecedented high speed internet to our smartphones.”

The award winners will be announced at a ceremony in London on November 6.