John Bunton
Senior Principal Research Scientist
Contact
ICT Centre
PO Box 76
Epping, NSW, 1710
Projects
Science Area
- Communications and Signal Processing
Biography
John D. Bunton became interested in electronics at an early age building radios and fixing TVs while in high school. This continued at Sydney University he completed a B.Sc.(1973) and B.E (Electrical) (hons) (1975). From 1975 to 1982, he pursued postgraduate studies at Sydney University leading to the awarding of a Ph.D. for a dissertation on “Loudspeaker Characterisation and Measurement”. The work required the construction of a measurement system connected to a minicomputer, investigations into measurement techniques and the use of the measured data and digital signal processing to understand loudspeaker behaviour.
In 1983 he joined Sydney University’s “Fleurs Radio Telescope”, then the highest resolution radio telescope in the southern hemisphere. The telescope had undergone a major upgrade but suffered from chronic unreliability. He uncovered the causes for this, such as antenna and encoder structural problems and improperly designed and debugged equipment. Design work include upgrades to the RF, IF and LO systems and converting the telescope to automatic unattended operation. He also contributed significantly to the post correlation processing packages and the astronomy program. During the last three years at Fleurs Radio Telescope, 1986 to December 1988 he was Engineer-in-Charge with responsibility for all aspects of telescope operation.
Since 1989 he has worked for CSIRO at the Division of Radiophysics, now the ICT Centre. Starting as an Experimental Scientist he has risen to Senior Principal Research Engineer in the Wireless Technology Lab. He has maintained his interest in all areas of electronics and has been a principal investigator or project manager for projects in:
• Detection of mine roof incompetence,
• The applications of the A4 audio processor chip
• Improvements to the Australian Broadcasting Corporations DCART system
• NASA DSN array beamformer contract
• Thomas Marconi Ultrasonic imaging system contract.
• Gigabit Wireles
• ELF through rock communications,
• ASKAP digital systems
• The correlator for the University of Sydney SKAMP, and MWA (an Australian-US university collaboration)
• Boeing contract
Work on the last three continues, in particular in the $100M ASKAP project he is Project Engineer and Leader of Digital Systems. In his time at CSIRO he has also made significant contributions to, in-mine collision avoidance system, Adaptive Wireless hardware, mm-wave imaging, still and video image compression projects. A special area of interest is the development of the next generation radio telescope concept SKA, a one-billion-euro international instrument that is planned as the next generation radio telescope. Contributions have been in the areas of antenna concepts (cylindrical reflectors), antenna configurations, beamforming, correlators, interference mitigation, system constraints, and hybrid concepts. One major impact of this work was introduction of wide field of view capabilities at the 2003 Geraldton Conference. As a result of this wide field of view is now written into the SKA specifications and is a major driver for much of the SKA science.
John is currently ASKAP Project Engineer and leader of the digital systems.
Academic Qualifications
| 1982 |
PhD University of Sydney, Electrical Engineering
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| 1975 |
BE(Hons) University of Sydney
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| 1973 |
BSc University of Sydney
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Recent Professional Experience
| 2008- |
ASKAP Project Engineer
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| 2007- |
ASKAP Team Leader, Digital System,
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| 2006- |
Team Leader, ICT Centre
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| 2006-2007 |
Project Leader, ICT Centre
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| 2004-2007 |
Project Engineer, ASKAP Digital System,
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| 2004-2005 |
Project Leader
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| 2001- |
Senior Principal Research Scientist
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| 1995-2001 |
Principal Research Scientist |
Achievements & Awards
| 2008 |
NASA Space Board Award 'Deep Space Array Based Network'
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| 2007 |
CSIRO Chairmans Medal, Gigabit Wireless Project
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| 2007 |
Engineering Excellence Award, Engineers Australia 'Multi-Gigabit, mm-wave Wireless'
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| 2000 |
Australian Coal Industry’s Research Program, Excellence Award
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| 1992 |
CSIRO Medal, Development of FFT Technology
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Summary of Science & Technical Output
| Books/Book chapters |
4 |
| Journal |
44 |
| Refereed Conference/Workshop |
30 |
| Technical/Client Reports |
64 |
| Invited Presentations |
6 |
| Patents |
6 |
Grants
| 2010- |
SKA Liason Engineer
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| 2007- |
Adjunct Professor, Macquarie University
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| 2007- |
Research Associate, University of Sydney
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| 2002 |
Associate Inestigator, University of Sydney Sesqui R&D Grant "A pathway to high dynamic-range imaging in Radio-Astronomy using digital correlation techniques" |
Number of citations
| ISI |
480 |
| Google Scholar |
837 |
Links
