About
Overview
Bloomsbury DSP Ltd. designs high performance, low power, DSP solutions for underwater imaging using sonar. We specialise in Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) and can provide real time GPP, PC and FPGA based processing solutions, along with consultancy and custom development services.
The company's staff members draw on many years of experience in the sonar field, gained in both industry and academia. In the past they have worked on the design teams for a number of high profile sonar systems, seeing projects through initial design phase to sea trials and finished products.
The Company is a spin-out from the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at University College London (UCL). UCL is one of the UK's leading research led universities and has a track record of creating successful technology companies that capitalise on this world class research, with examples including Ark Therapeutics and Capteur Sensors.
Close links to the University help Bloomsbury DSP remain at the cutting edge of sonar and DSP technology.
Trading History
In 2004 the company successfully won support from the UK Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) which pump-primed the company 's initial development activities towards commercially viable real time SAS systems.
In 2005 the company obtained an equity funding round to enable the continued development of real time SAS processing technology.
The company has since won a number of prestigious contracts from the NATO Undersea Research Centre (NURC) to develop real time SAS processing for their up coming MUSCLE UUV (Unmanned Underwater Vehicle).
COTS Products and Services
Along with custom development of SAS systems for specific customers, the company is currently developing a number of SAS related technologies including its proprietary FIND acoustic motion estimation technique and QFI real time imaging algorithm.
Key People
Dr Simon Charles, Managing Director and founding member
DSP and FPGA expert with a background in telecoms and previous experience at Cambridge Consultants. Simon has been applying state of the art DSP and FPGA techniques and expertise to SAS systems for three years.
Dr Simon Banks, Technical Consultant and founding member
Simon has seven years experience of working in the SAS arena. This has included developing interferometric SAS processing techniques for QinetiQ Bincleaves (formerly DERA) for use on a rail mounted sonar system. Simon also spent a period of time working for NURC, where he implemented a new technique for SAS imaging. After completing a PhD at UCL, he was employed by Thales Underwater Systems as a Systems Engineer where he worked on the development of the SAS sonar payload for the MUSCLE UUV along with a second UUV for research purposes within Thales. Simon has also developed FPGA based MPEG decoders for the BBC R&D department.
Dick Stabbins, Director and Board Chairman
Dick Stabbins, an oil industry veteran and formerly exploration director of Goal Petroleum and chairman of the UK’s Petroleum Exploration Society, acts as the Board Chairman for Bloomsbury DSP.
Nick Wood, Director and Business Development Advisor
Nick has considerable experience and involvement with high-technology businesses, through his company daVinci Ventures. He provides Bloomsbury DSP with business development support.
Steven Schooling, Director and Business Development Advisor
Steven is the Director of Physical Sciences and Engineering at UCL Business. He acts as the UCL representative on the board of Bloomsbury DSP, as well as providing business development suppport.
Prof. Hugh Griffiths, Technical Advisor and founding member
Professor Hugh Griffiths, formerly the head of Electronic Engineering at UCL, is currently Principal of the Defence College of Management and Technology, Shrivenham, Cranfield University and a founder of Bloomsbury DSP. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and is widely acknowledged as one of the leading experts in Sonar technology development. Professor Griffiths is currently involved with a number of joint EPSRC and industry funded SAS research programmes including investigations into passive SAS, low frequency active SAS and classification techniques based on SAS images, as well as acting as a technical advisor to Bloomsbury DSP. He has published over 250 academic papers, many of which pertain to SAS processing.