“Advanced systems engineering comes from having built many different systems across different markets. And that is what TTP does, pulling together all of these different threads to deliver custom solutions from sensing to communications within sensible timeframes and costs.”
By Sam Cranny-Evans, editor of Calibre Defence, published on May 15, 2026.
In 1945 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery and the British 21st Army Group was fighting its way across Northwest Europe. Churchill, so the stories go, would pressure Montgomery to move faster. The Field Marshal would resist, insisting that he needed his logistics to catch up before another advance could take place. It is probable that many of those difficult conversations took place with the help of a No. 10 wireless relay from Pye, a company based in Cambridge. Pye had a huge impact on the Allied war effort, developing radar, proximity fuzes, tank radios, and the technology that eventually led to the first mobile phone.
After the war, the company continued to form a part of Cambridge’s rich heritage of companies specialising in radio frequency (RF) technology. Sadly it no longer exists, but there are several companies keeping the county’s RF legacy alive. One of them, described sometimes as Cambridge’s best-kept secret is TTP. The company is a specialist technology consultancy, with a long history of working on challenging product developments in different markets.
TTP’s role in the defence industry
TTP collaborated with Viasat Government to develop the Enhanced LAISR Communications on the Move (COTM) terminal shown here. It is a compact, low-profile satellite terminal designed to provide high-speed, reliable connectivity for land and maritime vehicles in motion. Credit: TTP.
TTP has long had a presence in the defence industry, partly through Awerian – an entity within the TTP Group that works on specialist platforms for the UK MoD. But the commercial side of the defence business, now headed up by Vidhya Sridhar, has its own proud history. Their team of RF, digital signal processing (DSP) and antenna engineers are a rare and sought after capability, “RF engineering is like the dark arts nowadays,” Vidhya told me on a call. The team works on a wide array of product development challenges, from sensing through to automation and artificial intelligence.
“TTP has been working in MILSATCOM for some time, and our specialist comms projects include clients like Viasat government, whose ultimate customers include the US DoD,” Vidhya explained. The company has a broad range of capabilities including everything from DSP, waveforms, RF front ends, antennas to system engineering.
Speaking to their engineering process, she told me that: “We take building blocks that are available as well as a deep knowledge of those blocks and their failure modes.” This was in reference to increasingly OTS hardware like antennas and software defined radios becoming available. But it is TTP’s specific expertise in RF engineering that takes these building blocks through to a useful product.
“One of the reasons people are approaching us now is that defence customers are looking for things that can get into the battlefield quickly. Partners that can move from TRL2 to 7 at pace,” she continued. The GENSS radio developed with Spectra is one example, going from concept to production ready in 12 months. But the team at TTP is working on many other RF applications, particularly for attritable platforms that pose challenges in size, weight, power and cost
RF engineering and product development
When a client first approaches TTP, the first meeting is often a frank conversation. “The most successful relationships have come from when clients come to us quite early in their product journey,” Vidhya explained. “It could be that they have spotted a market opportunity, or that their competitors are doing something and they want to get ahead,” she added.
However, the company is clear about its role and the value it can bring. Vidhya went on to tell me that if the development of a product is core to a company’s (often start-ups’) offering, they will often work with the client to work out the value or advantage of outsourcing to TTP. “Often when a client says they want to build something; we start by checking that there aren’t off-the-shelf options. We will always tell them if this is the case, we don’t want to waste their time.”
“If they need to achieve a particularly challenging use-case for example, latency with low bandwidth and power constraints at a certain price point, then a custom development is needed,” Vidhya said, and that’s where TTP’s RF engineering, DSP and antenna capabilities come into product development.
“You have to start thinking out of the box, moving away from off-the-shelf. You might still use COTS, but you have to use the right type of COTS. For example: if you have a specific stringent latency requirement on your communication system, you might think of a specialist protocol that sits on top of an OTS waveform block.,” she added.
In a nutshell, there can be a lot of complex engineering involved in developing a radio frequency system. Vidhya and her team work with their clients to streamline the process and make sure that the complexity is managed.
“Generally, it is when a customer wants to achieve something special – cost or design constrained that clever RF & system engineering becomes critical. The Spectra waveform needed to be custom, for example, because it needed to be LPI/LPD, as well as operate within strict leased satellite channels whilst offering the ability to handle data, voice, and be scalable for future operational scenarios.” The GENSS radio for spectra involved custom waveforms (which is the way that a radio encodes the user’s voice or data onto the radio waves), as well as other core building blocks. This is partly what TTP provided for the product’s development.
Why TTP?
“Advanced systems engineering comes from having built many different systems across different markets, and that is what TTP does.” Credit: TTP.
“An important aspect of trust is our independence. We are not selling a thing or trying to push a product. This means that we are truly able to provide an independent opinion on what is put in front of us,” Vidhya told me. Over and above that, is TTP’s approach to intellectual property (IP).
“Around 80% of our projects result in the IP going back to the client, they reap the rewards of that project, we just ask for the freedom to operate. So, we aim to reuse our know-how for future projects…In turn, the clients are getting all of the previous experience from other projects,” she added. And that applies to TTP’s broader experience across different industries. This includes its presence in the medical industry as well as RF engineering.
“The commercial sector has always been cost-sensitive, and the fact that we can bring that engineering approach into defence really helps,” she added. Over and above that, Vidhya told me that TTP commits to the client’s success, recounting one project for a US client:
“One client was encountering a lot of interference across a network we had developed terminals for. We flew out in an airplane with a spectrum analyser looking for the source of interference. It turned out somebody was running an illicit 3G network to provide fixed wireless access. I remember looking at the logs and finding signatures that mapped to an outdated CDMA waveform configured for operation in a country with different spectrum assignments.”
In that case, the 3G network was jamming the client’s network, and it was TTP’s knowledge of wireless standards that helped get the capability back up and running. “I think we’re Cambridge’s best-kept secret, customers often find us because we worked with an individual at their previous company. So, they might go to a new company and they remember us and want to come back to a trusted partner,” Vidhya concluded by saying.
Calibre comment: The UK’s RF legacy, alive and strong
The UK has had a long history of RF development and thought leadership. From radio to radar, much of that development occurred in Cambridge. Cooperation with TTP and companies like Spectra – amongst others – suggests that the UK’s legacy is alive and well. It is an important legacy to maintain because the skills needed for complex RF engineering are hard won, and can be easily lost. As the British found during the Second World War, it was the strength of the nation’s ingenuity and engineering in radio frequency applications that often gave their forces an edge. It follows that this new era of global competition will continue to drive the need for expertise in this field like that provided by TTP.
If you would like to read more about TTP’s project with Spectra, or other sovereign technological developments, check out the links below:
The lead image shows a soldier with the GENSS radio from Spectra UK, which was designed in collaboration with the TTP team. Credit: Spectra UK.
