Optical wireless communications research and testing facility

Eligibility

• —We expect the applicants to take responsibility for a community-led coordination approach during the application process.
• —It is encouraged that the community should self-organise and submit a unified consortium application where possible that represents the strongest possible national capability to host this optical wireless communications facility.
• —The collaborative application should bring together the relevant expertise, capability and governance required to deliver the facility set up and long-term sustainability vision.
• —Applications that duplicate effort, represent only a subset of the community, or fail to demonstrate effective community engagement may be judged non-competitive.
• —You can apply if you are a resident in the UK and meet at least one of the conditions below: are employed at the submitting research organisation at a level equivalent to lecturer or above hold a fixed-term contract that extends beyond the duration of the proposed project, and the host research organisation is prepared to give you all the support normal for a permanent employee hold an EPSRC, Royal Society or Royal Academy of Engineering fellowship aimed at later career stages hold fellowships under other schemes (please contact EPSRC to check eligibility, which is considered on a case-by-case basis)

About this grant

Apply for funding to establish an optical wireless communications research and testing facility. You must be based at a UK research organisation eligible for Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) funding. This facility will support communications research and convergences among terrestrial networks, non-terrestrial networks, high altitude platform stations, inter-satellite links, free space optics, ground-to-ground networks and so on. The full economic cost (FEC) of your project can be up to £7.13 million . EPSRC will fund 100% of the FEC for facility and 100% of the FEC for resources. This funding is subject to business case approval.