Ceremonial farewell of Prof. Dr. Christoph Günther

In 2003, Christoph Günther took over the Institute of Communications and Navigation, which had been merged in this constellation only a few years earlier - groups from the fields of navigation, antenna technologies and ionosphere research had been assigned to the former Institute of Communications. This resulted in a new broad range of topics - and a distribution over two different locations and additionally over several buildings. Thus, a major task for the new director in the early days was to create ONE institute with a common culture and with a unified organizational structure.

Some topics were abandoned and other promising topics were taken up - out of Christoph Günther´s clear conviction that the institute should not only conduct excellent research, but should also have a real impact on technologies and make significant contributions to applications that are actually adopted in society. To this end, the institute increasingly focused on experimental work - not only in the labs, but especially in realistic environments, demonstrating a wide range of new technologies. Numerous measurement campaigns were carried out - with the institute's own measurement vehicles, with DLR's fleet of aircraft, on various trains, and also with the Institute´s own ship and others from partners.

Research Highlights and perosnal Thanks

In the eight lectures of the farewell colloquium, employees of the institute presented scientific highlights from their research. In the morning, the focus was on communication topics such as laser-based satellite links, quantum key distribution via satellites, and the future integration of satellite communication into terrestrial mobile networks. During the lunch break, the guests from science and industry had the opportunity to further explore these topics during laboratory tours. The afternoon was dedicated to navigation with topics such as the Kepler concept for 3rd generation navigation satellite systems, the mitigation of jamming and spoofing in navigation receivers, the use of multipath propagation of signals for positioning, and autonomous exploration of areas with cooperating swarms of robots or drones.

At the final farewell ceremony, Christoph Günther's achievements were also acknowledged in a very personal way in a series of contributions. Dr. Florian David, current director of the Institute of Communications and Navigation, illustrated how Christoph Günther had succeeded over almost 20 years in inspiring his institute to ever new heights of achievement - true to his motto "Be first, be best!"

Prof. Dr. Alin Albu-Schäffer spoke on behalf of the institute directors of the DLR site Oberpfaffenhofen about the exemplary role of Christoph Günther in this management circle. He was followed by Thomas Reinartz, CEO of Tesat Spacecom, who emphasized the merits of Christoph Günther in the field of laser communication technology and the successful partnership of his company with the institute.