BELFAST BRIEFING:Award winning idea that could consign the satellite dish on the side of your house to the bin

A TEAM of scientists from Queen’s University Belfast might be about to change some aspects of your life in the near future – particularly if you are a satellite television fan.

The team, which have set up university spin-out company Flish, have developed an innovative antenna that can pick up satellite signals automatically – potentially consigning the satellite dish on the side of your house to the bin.

According to Flish, the “high-gain antenna” has the ability to “point” to distant signals such as a satellite. Currently satellite dishes have to be aligned; many are bulky and have moving parts.

But Flish, which worked with the European Space Agency to fine-tune its design, has produced an “analogue circuit design”, which means satellite dishes could be replaced with flat panels on walls or rooftops that need no set-up or calibration.

According to Flish’s Dr Neil Buchanan, the global market for antennas was estimated to be $10.1 billion (€7.6 billion) in 2009 and could grow to $13.3 billion by 2014.

Buchanan believes his team’s innovation “has the potential to be a real game changer for the industry”.

“The work is especially exciting because it has involved taking a piece of pure university research and bringing it into the real world,” he says.

“We believe that self-tracking antennae offer the prospect of much simpler and more cost-effective alternatives to other current approaches. That, we believe, makes them ideally suited to a variety of end uses.”

Buchanan highlights the example of satellite broadband aircraft antennae, which he says are extremely complex.

“They need to be linked into the plane’s onboard navigation system in order to find the satellite. In trains and road vehicles, they consume a lot of power and they require mechanical parts for tracking purposes,” he says.

It is hoped the research being carried out by the Flish team will lead to a “one-size-fits-all” satellite solution that could be used for all types of technology from broadband to television.

The commercial potential of Flish’s research has just helped it win one of the North’s most hotly contested entrepreneurial competitions – the £25k Award.

The annual award pitches 10 of the North’s most promising high-tech stars against each other for a prize fund of £25,000 (€29,000) and the opportunity to showcase their talents to international investors.

The competition has proved to be a launch pad for companies such as LenisAer, which develops technology for the aviation sector, and Tactility Factory, which came up with the “Girli Concrete” concept that enables textiles to be integrated into the surface of concrete.

This year Flish collected a cheque for £13,000 as the overall winner of the award organised by NISP Connect – a partnership between the Northern Ireland Science Park, Queen’s, the University of Ulster, and the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute.

But the Flish team faced a serious challenge from the nine other shortlisted startups and, in particular, the three category winners, who each received a cheque for £2,500.

These included OncoTech, which has developed a Ran Biomarker – a “diagnostic assay suitable for both tissue and blood that can identify cancer patients at high risk of metastasis”.

CleanTech, another Queen’s spin-out, and Future Healthcare NI were also close contenders for the overall prize.

But Steve Orr, the director of NISP Connect, said it was Flish that promised the most.

Buchanan and the Flish team hope their success with the 25k Award will help them turn their business dream into a reality – they are planning “to seek funding to see the business through to profitability”.

But Flish is not the only team of ambitious entrepreneurs celebrating a major success this week in Northern Ireland.

Belfast-based healthcare technology company Intelesens has just got the green light to introduce its health monitoring device in the US.

Intelesens, a spin-out from the University of Ulster, develops non-invasive vital signs monitoring equipment.

The US Food and Drug Administration has granted the Belfast firm regulatory approval for its Aingeal device for use in US hospitals and healthcare organisations.

Intelesens chief executive Michael Caulfield says the firm hopes to launch the product in the US early next year.