South Australian Defence technology company Consunet has attracted global attention by pushing the boundaries of AI and machine learning in the mission-critical area of Electromagnetic Spectrum (EMS) management.

Dr Don Gossink, Consunet’s Chief Scientist, will present Consunet’s breakthrough spectrum management technologies at the Military Communications and Information Systems (MiLCIS) Conference being held in Canberra this week.

It follows his recent involvement on a panel of Radio Frequency Spectrum experts invited to discuss EMS challenges at the DARPA Electronics Resurgence Initiative Summit (ERI 2.0) in Seattle. ERI 2.0 is one of the foremost conferences for professionals working in the field of cross-functional, next-generation microelectronics research, development, and manufacturing.

At the summit, Dr Gossink shared the company’s world-leading research, which has resulted in a suite of Distributed aUtonomous Spectrum managemenT innovations, code-named ‘DUST’.

“EMS is known as the invisible, critical enabler of manoeuvre in multi-function autonomous RF systems – but malicious technologies that can disrupt and deny spectrum access have developed almost in lockstep with the surge in spectrum-dependent innovations,” Dr Gossink said. “That makes EMS a massive potential vulnerability for military operations.”

Headquartered in Adelaide, Consunet saw the need to overhaul antiquated manual spectrum management processes and exploit the opportunities of AI and machine learning to give Australia’s allies an advantage in the highly contested and congested spectrum environment.

DUST is currently being used in Defence settings, successfully closing the gap between simulation and real-world applications, and mitigating problems that have seemed unsolvable.

“It is exciting to see our research become reality and to find ourselves at the forefront of autonomous spectrum management internationally,” Dr Gossink added.