Thales operates in highly specialized fields such as air traffic management, avionics, secure military communications and large-scale information networks for governments and administrations. Designing and developing the mission-critical information systems that underpin the company’s leadership in aerospace, defence and security markets calls for comprehensive expertise in increasingly sophisticated technologies and the ability to integrate these technologies with large-scale software driven systems.
TRT comprises four research entities in France, the UK, the Netherlands and Singapore, as well as laboratories managed jointly by corporate research and Group subsidiaries and a network of research departments in operating units. TRT France, located since 2006 on the campus of the Ecole Polytechnique engineering school, employs 220 full-time staff, and some 40 doctoral students and 50 outside researchers are present on site at any one time.
TRT research comes under three main headings:
Hardware systems and components research is mainly conducted by TRT France and includes microwave systems for land-based, naval and airborne radars and electronic warfare, optronics systems for detection and countermeasures, and security systems to protect people and property: identity cards, gas and explosive detection, biometrics, site security,
Software technology research aims both to reduce risk and raise the productivity of software engineers working on software-intensive systems and embedded software, and to provide a technological edge in the systems Thales sells. Research is devoted to four areas: new technologies for system engineering and software with a high standardization component; software and middleware architectures; hardware and software environments for high-performance data and signal processing; and smart software systems for autonomous management, control and decision-making in critical situations,
Software system research, mainly conducted in the UK, focuses on four major system functions: communications technology, positioning and navigation services (particularly for security systems), signal processing and data fusion, and virtual office technologies for collaborative working environments.