- India
- International
Chandan Kumar Jha, a PhD scholar in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology Gandhinagar (IITGN), has won the first prize in the ‘Dare to Dream DRDO Innovation Contest’ organised by the Defence Research and Development Organisation.
He received this award in the challenge area of ‘Wearable Communication Technologies for Special Operations Soldiers’ for his project titled, “An optical fibre-based microphone with very high background noise suppression capability for use in combat zones”. The fibre-based contact microphone innovated by Chandan picks up the signal from the neck region and greatly suppresses the ambient noise with very little signal processing, official release from the institute said.
The award ceremony was held at DRDO Bhawan, New Delhi, on October 15, 2019, on the occasion of India’s former President, Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s birth anniversary.
Chandan is working on his PhD research with Dr Arup Lal Chakraborty in the Photonic Sensors Lab, IITGN. “This award has become a great encouragement to me. It has given me confidence that our innovation can be useful for defence and has motivated me to develop it further into a reliable product that can be readily used by our army. The mentoring and support assured by the DRDO in developing this product has further boosted my enthusiasm…,” Chandan said in a statement.
The PhD scholar conceived the project along with his supervisor Professor Chakraborty while attempting to record the human voice from the throat using a fibre-optic sensor.
This optical fibre-based contact microphone picks up the human voice with high sensitivity even in the presence of very high background noise, typically encountered in combat situations.