This project investigates the effects of extreme conditions on marine energy generators when installed as a single device or in arrays or farms. By combining the results of experiments, computer predictions and real life expertise, the research will enable the industry to produce, design and manufacture better tidal stream turbines that can be optimised to suit the prevailing sea conditions. Once these devices are deployed there will be a need to remotely monitor their condition and manage their operation during their life time. This research will deliver a system that will allow the owners of the devices to remotely monitor their condition and performance to ensure they achieve optimal energy production whilst maximising their life span. This will enable the electricity suppliers using this source of renewable energy to achieve the best possible long term economic performance. Finally, the environmental impact of such installations will be considered to ensure the positioning of these devices is not detrimental to the surrounding sea, coast and seabed.

We are living in an exceptional age for discoveries in particle physics and particle astrophysics with potential for producing step changes in understanding of the composition of matter and the structure of the Universe. The research we plan with this consolidated grant in particle physics and particle astrophysics at Sheffield is at the core of these discoveries. Firstly, we appear to be near answering the fundamental question of what gives particles mass. In this field Sheffield will continue to play a leading role in the ATLAS experiment that now looks to be on the verge of solving the mystery by detecting the famous Higgs Boson. Our ATLAS work, where we are currently the only UK group heavily involved in the flagship 4-lepton channel Higgs search, will aim to confirm the first evidence for excess reported in Dec. 2011. Simultaneously work will continue in the equally fundamental hunt to find supersymmetric particles and on radiation modeling and detector tests for the ATLAS upgrade anticipated as the next experiment. We currently provide the UK spokesman for ATLAS. A second recent major advance, made by the T2K experiment in 2011, reports evidence for a non-zero third neutrino mixing angle. This potentially unlocks progress to experiments in so-called charge-parity (CP) violation to answer the mystery of why the Universe contains matter and virtually no anti-matter. Our T2K and neutrino group will focus on contributing further analysis to confirm the new results but also, using our membership of the LBNO and LBNE collaborations, progress key new detector technology towards a next generation long baseline neutrino experiment to see CP violation. For this our focus will be with liquid argon technology, our pioneering work on electroluminescence light readout for that, and our simulation work on backgrounds from muons. The latter is key also to our on-going work towards an experiment to see if the proton decays, an issue at the core of understanding Grand Unified Theories of physics. Closely related and vital for our neutrino programme is continued participation in SNO+, aimed at understanding solar neutrinos, and the MICE experiment with its related R&D on high power particle beam targets for future neutrino beams. Technological developments recently led to significant improvement in sensitivity of detectors to WIMP dark matter with key contributions from the Sheffield group towards EDELWEISS and DRIFT. Exploiting our leadership in background mitigation strategy, calibration and data analysis, our future work will concentrate on EDELWEISS operation and data analysis, as well as on developments towards ton-scale cryogenic experiment EURECA. The group is also uniquely well positioned to contribute through new work aiming to see, or exclude, a definitive galactic signature for the claimed low mass WIMP events. Our pioneering work on directional WIMP detectors will see a new experiment installed at the UK's Boulby underground site, DRIFTIIe, while our continued analysis of data from DM-ICE17 at the Antarctic South Pole, for which we supplied the NaI detectors, will seek an annual modulation galactic signature and inform design of a new experiment there planned for 2013. Our generic detector R&D is vital to underpinning the group, closely related to a vigorous knowledge exchange programme that now includes funded projects involving 15 different companies. Highlight activity here will include development of particle tracking technology in liquid argon relevant to neutrino physics and astrophysics, new gas-based directional neutron programmes with relevance for homeland security, and new muon veto R&D. The latter links to our KE programme on CO2 underground storage technology. We plan first deployment of test detectors at 760m depth by 2013. This is part of the group's contribution to key social agendas in climate change and crime prevention.

Wireless communication and energy networks have enabled a plethora of novel applications in the last years. Both make use of the same and unique RF medium, but have been so far designed independently from each other. This visionary project conducted at Imperial College under the supervision of the PI Dr. Bruno Clerckx aims at challenging the current design by designing and proving the feasibility of a disruptive wireless network technology that wirelessly transfers energy jointly with information in wireless networks (shortly denoted as JWIET for Joint Wireless Information and Energy Transfer). The project will create a new paradigm shift in future capacity and energy efficient wireless communication and energy networks, by viewing them as a single network designed under a unified framework and by overcoming the energy constraint of wireless devices through the transfer of energy. Contrary to current wireless communication networks, interference is viewed as a source of energy that is to be harvested rather than mitigated. However, because interference in a wireless network influences dynamically the information rate and the amount of energy to harvest, finding the fundamental performance limits and effective interference management techniques is challenging and unexplored so far. In the last two years, Dr. Clerckx has successfully addressed this problem in a two-user and K-user narrowband MIMO interference channel and broadcast channels, under the assumption of an ideal energy harvester for which the RF-to-DC energy conversion efficiency is 100% irrespectively of the input waveforms. This project aims at extending and leveraging past achievements to solve the problem of JWIET in 1) wideband channels, and 2) in the presence of realistic RF energy harvesters accounting for actual RF circuitry and the fact that the RF-to-DC energy conversion efficiency of RF energy harvesters depends on the input waveforms. To put together this novel wireless network solution in a credible fashion, this project focuses on 1) identify theoretic rate-energy trade-offs for general wideband MIMO interference and broadcast channels accounting for realistic RF energy harvester models, 2) investigate the associated transmission strategies, 3) validate the feasibility of JWIET through experiment. The project and its experiment will be performed in partnership with National Instruments and Vodafone. The project demands an interdisciplinary study and it is to be conducted in a unique research group with strong track records in wireless communication, signal processing, numerical analysis, and JWIET. With the above and given the novelty and originality of the topic, the research outcomes will be of considerable value to design future wireless networks supplied by wireless energy transfer and give the industry a fresh and timely insight into the development of practical JWIET system, advancing UK's research profile of both RF energy transfer and communication in the world. Its success would change the broad ICT/Engineering landscape in developed but also emerging markets with applications in a large number of sectors, e.g. building automation, healthcare, telecommunications, smart grid, structural monitoring, consumer electronics, etc.

A hydrogen economy has been the focus of researchers and developers over the decades. However, the complexity of moving and storing hydrogen has always been a major obstacle to deploy the concept. Therefore, other materials can be employed to improve handling whilst reducing cost over long distances and long periods. Ammonia, a highly hydrogenated molecule, can be used to store and distribute hydrogen easily, as the molecule has been employed for more than 120 years for fertilizer purposes. Being a carbon-free chemical, ammonia (NH3) has the potential to support a hydrogen transition thus decarbonising transport, power and industries. However, the complexity of using ammonia for power generation lays on the appropriate use of the chemical to reach high power outputs combined with currently low efficiencies that bring up overall costs. This complex scenario is also linked to the production of combustion profiles that tend to be highly polluting (with high NOx emissions and slipped unburned ammonia). There is no technology capable of using ammonia whilst producing both low emissions and high efficiencies in large power generation devices, thus efficiently enabling the recovery of hydrogen and reconversion of stranded, green energy that can be fed back to the grid. Tackling these problems can resolve one of the most important barriers in the use of such a molecule and storage of renewable energies. Countries such as Japan have engaged in ambitious programs to resolve these issues, aiming for large power units to run on ammonia by 2030. Thus, European counterparts, led by UK innovation, need also to engage in these technological advancements to fully unlock a hydrogen, cost-effective economy. Therefore, this project seeks to establish fundamental results that will ensure the development of an improved combustor for the use of ammonia to produce low NOx emissions combined with low ammonia slip. Hydrogen production, which will be generated through the combustion process of NH3, will also serve to increase power outputs, thus enabling the production of large power in compact systems, raising efficiency and decreasing overall cost. Improvement techniques will be assessed in currently deployed systems (Siemens gas turbines) to determine the feasibility of implementation in these devices, cutting both costs and times for units that can be employed to use ammonia as fuel in the near future. The novel combustion system proposed will be also integrated into a new ammonia micro gas turbine. The system will be combined with novel thermodynamic principles that will lead into a trigeneration cycle (cooling, power and heat) to unlock all the potential benefits of ammonia, whilst raising even more the efficiency of the system, thus creating a unique, competitive technology that can be implemented to support the hydrogen transition with negligible carbon footprint and environmental penalties. The project will be supported by companies of international reputation (Siemens, Yara, National Instruments) and UK-European innovation enterprises looking for new areas of development (Hieta, Scitek, CoolDynamics) with the creation of unique, innovative products needed for the implementation of ammonia combustion systems and humidified ammonia-hydrogen cycles. Moreover, the outcome of the project will be ensured via Open Access documentation with bespoke numerical and experimental results that will be supplemented by series of high impact publications and seminars, thus increasing awareness of the importance of using ammonia as part of the energy mix of the following decades, having the UK as core of these developments.

High Performance Embedded and Distributed Systems (HiPEDS), ranging from implantable smart sensors to secure cloud service providers, offer exciting benefits to society and great opportunities for wealth creation. Although currently UK is the world leader for many technologies underpinning such systems, there is a major threat which comes from the need not only to develop good solutions for sharply focused problems, but also to embed such solutions into complex systems with many diverse aspects, such as power minimisation, performance optimisation, digital and analogue circuitry, security, dependability, analysis and verification. The narrow focus of conventional UK PhD programmes cannot bridge the skills gap that would address this threat to the UK's leadership of HiPEDS. The proposed Centre for Doctoral Training (CDT) aims to train a new generation of leaders with a systems perspective who can transform research and industry involving HiPEDS. The CDT provides a structured and vibrant training programme to train PhD students to gain expertise in a broad range of system issues, to integrate and innovate across multiple layers of the system development stack, to maximise the impact of their work, and to acquire creativity, communication, and entrepreneurial skills. The taught programme comprises a series of modules that combine technical training with group projects addressing team skills and system integration issues. Additional courses and events are designed to cover students' personal development and career needs. Such a comprehensive programme is based on aligning the research-oriented elements of the training programme, an industrial internship, and rigorous doctoral research. Our focus in this CDT is on applying two cross-layer research themes: design and optimisation, and analysis and verification, to three key application areas: healthcare systems, smart cities, and the information society. Healthcare systems cover implantable and wearable sensors and their operation as an on-body system, interactions with hospital and primary care systems and medical personnel, and medical imaging and robotic surgery systems. Smart cities cover infrastructure monitoring and actuation components, including smart utilities and smart grid at unprecedented scales. Information society covers technologies for extracting, processing and distributing information for societal benefits; they include many-core and reconfigurable systems targeting a wide range of applications, from vision-based domestic appliances to public and private cloud systems for finance, social networking, and various web services. Graduates from this CDT will be aware of the challenges faced by industry and their impact. Through their broad and deep training, they will be able to address the disconnect between research prototypes and production environments, evaluate research results in realistic situations, assess design tradeoffs based on both practical constraints and theoretical models, and provide rapid translation of promising ideas into production environments. They will have the appropriate systems perspective as well as the vision and skills to become leaders in their field, capable of world-class research and its exploitation to become a global commercial success.