Michael Street

Michael Street began work on software defined radio in 1992 as part of research funded by the UK MoD. This work resulted in a fledgling software defined radio which was used to test new protocols for beyond line of sight air-ground communications, with the radio (but not the developer) being flown around the world during long range trials in 1995.

After several years in academe, government and industry, Michael joined NC3A in 1999 to investigate the military use of commercial radio technologies such as GSM and TETRA. During this time he introduced secure GSM to NATO operations (in SFOR, KFOR and ISAF) and introduced GSM operators to the problems of military security. This work led on to the multi-national NATO secure communication interoperability protocol (SCIP) programme, providing NATOs future, network-agnostic, secure voice equipment. Since 2005 he has co-chaired the SCIP test and integration working group and has established the multi-national SCIP test facility at NC3A, which hosts its first formal tests this month.

Michael has led work at NC3A to investigate and exploit SDR technology within NATO; developing the NATO tactical wireless architecture, producing SCA-structured versions of current NATO radio standards and exploiting commercial SDR technology to support the development of the NATO future tactical waveform. He supports the NATO HQ C3 Staff on many aspects of wireless technology.

In 2008 Michael joined the Chief Technology Office at NC3A, with responsibility for communication systems. The CTO ensures technical coherence of NATO C3 systems throughout their development, validation, verification and procurement by NC3A and in their subsequent operation.

Michael Street holds a B.Eng in electronic engineering, an M.Eng in satellite communications and a Ph.D in beyond line of sight radio. He is a Chartered Engineer, a fellow of the IET and has been awarded the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Foundation medal of engineering achievement. He has written over 30 papers on wireless communications, security and voice coding. (In 1998 his paper "Software radios: what are they and how do I write one?" won the IET written premium - a prize which resulted in the author being flown round the world, some years after his radio.)