Invited and Keynote Speakers

Invited and Keynote Speakers

Keynote Speakers

Prof. Nader Engheta, University of Pennsylvania, USA

Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, with affiliations in the Departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. He received his BS degree from the University of Tehran, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees from Caltech. His current research activities span a broad range of areas including optics, metamaterials, electrodynamics, microwaves, photonics, nano-optics, graphene photonics, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, microwave and optical antennas, and physics and engineering of fields and waves.

He has received several awards for his research including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics (UK), the 2020 Max Born Award from the OPTICA (formerly Optical Society), the 2019 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the 2018 IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology, the 2022 Hermann Anton Haus Lecture at MIT, the 2015 SPIE Gold Medal, the 2014 Balthasar van der Pol Gold Medal from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the 2017 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the Canadian Academy of Engineering as an International Fellow, the Fellow of US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the IEEE Electromagnetics Award, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Award from DoD, the Wheatstone Lecture in King’s College London, 2006 Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology, and the Guggenheim Fellowship.

He is a Fellow of nine international scientific and technical organizations, i.e., IEEE, OPTICA, APS, MRS, SPIE, URSI, AAAS, IOP and NAI. He has received the honorary doctoral degrees from the Aalto University in Finland in 2016, the University of Stuttgart, Germany in 2016, and Ukraine’s National Technical University Kharkov Polytechnic Institute in 2017.

Metastructures as Computing Machines

In order to structure and control waves, we need materials. By judiciously engineering material media, one can manipulate and tailor waves to achieve novel functionalities. One of the interesting thrusts in exploring the utility of structuring waves is in ultrafast computing. Can one envision specially designed metamaterials that can function as analog computing machines? The answer to this question is indeed “yes”. In recent years, we have been exploring how such metamaterials and metasurfaces can be designed and constructed in order to provide wave-based, material-based, ultrafast analog computation. We have shown, theoretically and experimentally, how such metastructures can solve integral and differential equations, can invert matrices and can indeed achieve optimization when waves enter into them. In this talk, I will give an overview of our recent work in this area, will discuss some of the results, will explain physical insights into their functionalities, and finally will forecast possible future research directions in this field.

Prof. Rashaunda Henderson, University of Texas at Dallas, USA

Rashaunda M. Henderson received the BSEE degree from Tuskegee University in 1992 and the MS and PhD degrees, also in electrical engineering, from The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1994 and 1999, respectively. She joined Motorola Semiconductor Product Sector in Tempe, AZ and worked as a research and development device engineer focusing on passive circuits integration in the microwave and mixed-signal technology labs for wireless embedded systems. She joined The University of Texas at Dallas in 2007 as an Assistant Professor in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. She is now a Professor in the ECE Department and Interim co-Department Head. Dr. Henderson is co-founder of the High Frequency Circuits and Systems Laboratory, which facilitates millimeter-wave design and development of components, circuits and integrated packages and antennas for wireless communication systems. Dr. Henderson is a Senior Member of the IEEE and served as the 2022 President of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S).

Millimeter Wave Integration and Packaging Strategies Using Antenna-in-Package

Affordable and high performance front end modules (FEMs) have been identified as key research challenges for next generation millimeter wave communications. While the design of active components and sub-systems has been explored by many research groups, there is still a need to provide integration and packaging strategies that can meet system requirements and not inhibit the performance obtained at the wafer level. This poses challenges on the front-end modules (FEM) to deliver innovative packaging solutions which can fulfill the FEM integration requirements to maximize performance. Antenna-in-package (AiP) is a key technique that will enable the realization of 6G FEMs. The talk will discuss AiP solutions from a multi-disciplinary research team and will highlight the design, modeling, and characterization of planar antennas integrated into enhanced quad flat no-lead (eQFN) packages in WR8 and WR5 frequency bands. Further, the design, modeling, and simulation results of chip-to-package transitions, transmission line structures, and antenna feed elements are discussed. The simulated bandwidth and gain of the integrated antennas is compared with their standalone versions. To facilitate accurate design of the antennas and packaging transitions, high frequency material characterization has been conducted to obtain dielectric properties of the over mold materials. A workflow to characterize fatigue failure under board level vibration will be introduced with simulation results indicating the potential locations of solder failure under vibration. Validation of simulation results is conducted using fringe projection to directly measure the vibration mode when a printed circuit board is under vibration.

Research Director Marco Di Renzo, Paris-Saclay University – CNRS and CentraleSupelec, France

Marco Di Renzo is a CNRS Research Director (Professor) and the Head of the Intelligent Physical Communications group in the Laboratory of Signals and Systems at Paris-Saclay University - CNRS and CentraleSupelec. He serves as the Coordinator of the Communications and Networks Area of the Laboratory of Excellence DigiCosme, and as a Member of the Admission and Evaluation Committee of the Ph.D. School of Paris-Saclay University. He is a Fulbright Fellow at City University of New York, USA; a Fellow of IEEE, IET, AAIA, Vebleo; an Ordinary Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and the Academia Europaea; as well as a Highly Cited Researcher. He serves as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Communications Letters. He is a founding member and the Academic Vice Chair of the Industry Specification Group on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, where he serves as the Rapporteur for the work item on communication models, channel models, and evaluation methodologies. He is the recipient of the 2022 Michel Monpetit Prize from the French Academy of Sciences.

Intelligent Surfaces for Wireless Communications: Living at the Interface of Electromagnetic and Communication Theories

In wireless communications, the term intelligent surface is referred to a planar metamaterial structure that is capable of generating an arbitrary current density distribution, so as to ensure the highest flexibility in generating a specified electromagnetic field and in shaping the propagation of the electromagnetic waves in large-scale networks. This presentation is aimed to report the latest research advances on analytical modeling, evaluating the ultimate performance limits, and optimizing intelligent surfaces for application to wireless communications, with focus on the synergies between electromagnetic and communication theories.

Invited Speakers

Division Head Piero Angeletti, European Space Agency, The Netherlands

Dr. Piero Angeletti received the Laurea degree in Electronics Engineering from the University of Ancona (Italy) in 1996, and the PhD in Electromagnetism from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy) in 2010. His 25+ years experience in RF Systems engineering and technical management encompasses conceptual/architectural design, trade-offs, detailed design, production, integration and testing of satellite payloads and active antenna systems for commercial/military telecommunications and navigation (spanning all the operating bands and set of applications) as well as for multifunction RADARs and electronic counter measure systems. Dr. Angeletti is currently member of the technical staff of the European Space Research and Technology Center (ESTEC) of the European Space Agency, in Noordwijk (The Netherlands). He is leading the Radio Frequency Payloads and Technology Division of the ESA Directorate of Technology, Engineering and Quality which is responsible for RF payloads and technologies for space and ground applications and associated laboratory facilities. In particular he oversees ESA R&D activities related to flexible satellite payloads, RF front-ends and on-board digital processors. Dr. Angeletti authored/co-authored over 300 technical reports, book chapters and papers published in peer reviewed professional journals and international conferences’ proceedings; he holds more than 20 international patents on mutlibeam antennas and analogue/digital beamforming networks. Together with Dr. G. Toso he is the co-organiser of the EurAP-ESoA course on Active Antennas and instructor of the short courses on Multibeam Antennas and Beamforming Networks during international conferences (which has been attended by more than 1000 participants).

European Developments on Antenna and RF Technologies for Space Application

This presentation provides an overview of some of the recent antenna and RF technology developments and R&D activities supported by the European Space Agency in the areas of Earth Observation, Satellite Communications and Navigation. In particular, recent technology developments on active antennas, MMICs, on-board array processing, deployable reflectors, and end-to-end payload/antenna testing will be reported.

Prof. Filippo Capolino, University of California, Irvine, USA

Filippo Capolino received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florence, Italy, in 1997. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. Previously he has been an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Siena, Italy from 2002 to 2008. From 1997 to 1999, he was a Fulbright Scholar and Postdoctoral Fellow with the Department of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering, Boston University, MA, USA. From 2000 to 2001, part of 2005 and in 2006, he was a Research Assistant Visiting Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, TX, USA. He has been a short-term Visiting Professor at the Fresnel Institute, Marseille, France (2003) and at the Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal, Bordeaux, France (2010). In 2022 he has been the recipient of the Cathedra of Excellence from the University of Carlos III, Madrid, Spain.

His research interests include applied electromagnetics in general, sensors in both microwave and optical ranges, photonics, microscopy, metamaterials and their applications, traveling wave tubes, antennas, propagation, wireless systems, chip-integrated systems, etc. He is an IEEE Fellow, and he is the editor of the two volume “Metamaterials Handbook”.

Applications of exceptional points of degeneracy in RF

We discuss an important class of degeneracies that occur when two or more eigenstates of a system fully coalesce. Such exceptional degeneracies happen in circuits, resonators, and multimode waveguides. These exceptional points degeneracies (EPDs) involve the polarization states and occur in a surprisingly large number of systems, like fully passive systems or in systems that include gain elements.

We provide various experimental verifications of the occurrence of EPDs in circuit resonators and waveguides. We discuss possible applications in antennas, antenna arrays, oscillators, delay lines, etc. Important applications are in extreme sensitivity for sensing, extreme tunability, purity and robustness of oscillation in circuit oscillators, very high-power generation, etc.

We discuss how EPDs are useful to conceive highly sensitive sensors. Indeed, it has been apparent that resonant frequencies in a system with EPD are extremely sensitive to a perturbation. Therefore, the detection of a large frequency shift in a resonator or in an oscillator is an indicator of an applied physical, chemical or biological perturbation. Systems of EPDs can be realized using gain and loss (usually referred as EPDs induced in PT symmetric systems), time modulation of a component, etc. We will provide the experimental demonstration of such extremely sensitive systems.

Prof. George V. Eleftheriades, University of Toronto, Canada

George V. Eleftheriades is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto Canada where he holds the Velma M. Rogers Graham Chair in Engineering. Prof. Eleftheriades introduced the concept of using transmission lines to realize negative-index metamaterials in 2002. More recently he pioneered Huygens' metasurfaces, 2D analogues of metamaterials, and their antenna applications. Professor Eleftheriades received the 2008 IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Technical Field Award, the 2015 IEEE AP-S John Kraus Antenna Award and the 2019 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society's Distinguished Achievement Award. He is an IEEE Fellow and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Sciences). His research interests include electromagnetic and optical metamaterials, metasurfaces, antennas and components for broadband wireless communications, novel antenna beam-steering techniques, far-field super-resolution imaging, radars, plasmonic and nanoscale optical components, and fundamental electromagnetic theory

Huygens’ Metasurfaces for Precise Antenna Beamforming and Beamsteering

We will describe the concept of the Huygens' metasurface which comprise co-located electric and magnetic dipoles forming an electrically dense array of Huygens' sources or scatterers. These engineered surfaces can be designed to control electromagnetic waves at will. Unlike traditional antenna transmitarrays, Huygens' metasurfaces can be made sub-wavelength thin and deprived of spurious Floquet modes, while preserving excellent matching characteristics. Huygens' metasurfaces can be used to manipulate the phase, magnitude and polarization of incident electromagnetic waves, including those from nearby elementary antennas, for a variety of applications. For example, Huygens' omega bi-anisotropic metasurfaces enable wave refraction at extreme angles without any reflections. We will review progress of such Huygens’ Metasurfaces for antenna beamforming and beamsteering. Examples to be discussed include high aperture efficiency/low-profile antennas, antenna aperture beamforming with simultaneous magnitude and phase control, and electronic beam steering.

Programme Manager Jeff Guerrieri, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA (AMTA Invited Speaker)

Jeff Guerrieri is a Program Manager for the National Voluntary Laboratory Accreditation Program (NVLAP) in the Calibration Laboratories Accreditation Program. He has worked at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) since 1986. Before transferring to NVLAP in 2020 he worked in what is now the Radio Frequency Technology Division. Starting as an antenna measurements engineer, then Project Lead for the Antenna Calibration Service and manager of the lab quality system. He was also responsible for the implementation of new antenna measurement facilities and techniques, and finally RF Fields Group Leader.

Jeff received the Department of Commerce Bronze medal in 2009 for creating the World’s first extrapolation range for measuring the on-axis gain and polarization of antennas for frequencies from 50 GHz to 110 GHz. He also received the Department of Commerce Gold medal in 2007 for creating and implementing the rigorous testing protocols and benchmarks needed to ensure the security and integrity of the of the new U.S. ePassport, and the Department of Commerce Bronze medal in 2009 for the analysis and certification of the U.S. Passport Card architecture resulting in a mitigation of security threats and privacy concerns. In 2016 he received the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for development of the world’s first “Configurable Robotic Millimeter-Wave Antenna” (CROMMA) Facility.

Jeff is a member of the IEEE Antenna and Propagation Standards Committee and participated on the working groups for standards 149, 145, and 1720. He is an Antenna Measurements Techniques Association (AMTA) Fellow and recipient of the AMTA Distinguished Service Award.

Metrological Traceability

Metrological traceability requires a documented, unbroken chain of calibrations to specified reference standards, including the stated measurement uncertainties. Ideally the references are national or international standards that are realizations of the measurement units of the International System of Units (SI). This makes the calibration traceable to the SI through an organization or laboratory, and not traceable to the organization or laboratory. Requirements and methods for establishing metrological traceability are defined in international: standards, laboratory accreditation cooperatives, and metrology organizations. With the intent to provide confidence in consistency and comparability of global measurements. The methods used for establishing traceability will be presented.

Prof. Yang Hao, Queen Mary - University of London, England

Professor Yang Hao is QinetiQ/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair at Queen Mary University of London. He also serves in the management team of Cambridge Graphene Centre since 2013. Prof. Hao was the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS. He founded a new open access journal and is now the Editor-in-Chief of EPJ Applied Metamaterials.

His work has been recognised both nationally and internationally through his books “Antennas and Radio Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications” and “FDTD Modeling of Metamaterials: Theory and Applications,” (Artech House, USA) and highly cited papers published in leading journals, including Nature Communications, Advanced Sceince, Physical Review Letters, Applied Physics Letters, IEEE Proceedings, and Transactions.

His research on transformation optics and metamaterials have led to many tangible benefits for a range of industrial products. One example is metalens antenna designs for satellite communications. This technology has been fully scoped and is currently commercialized under a startup of Isotropic System Limited (All.Space).

Prof. Hao won many accolades, including the prestigious AF Harvey Prize in 2015, the BAE Chairman’s Silver Award in 2014, and the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2013. He was the AdCom Member and currently serves as the Chair of Publication Committee for IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. Prof. Hao is an elected Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering, IEEE and IET.

Unlocking potentials of LIS via new material and antenna technologies

A key technical challenge arising from industry is to develop autonomous and reconfigurable systems which integrate communication, sensing and computing functionalities, operating and delivering effects in contested domains. The talk will provide a summary of scientific research related to above objectives. I will describe our research in three themes, namely, material discovery and machine learning; smart materials fabrication and characterisation; large intelligent surface (LIS) and new antenna theories.

Especially one of limiting factors in the design of LIS is the use of tunable materials. Currently, almost all LISs are designed based on conventional PIN diodes/varactors, a technology developed in 1970s, which cannot be readily scaled up for 6G. We have proposed a new concept of formula graph that unifies structure-based and structure-agnostic materials descriptors enabling us to design a general GNN architecture for materials property prediction.

Finally, the current design strategy of LIS and large antenna arrays was restricted to the topology with periodic, aperiodic, and random distributions. We have theoretically and experimentally reported that the array with hyperuniform disorder exhibits extraordinary directive emission and scanning features, while being scalable for extra-large arrays without any additional computational effort.

Prof. Thomas Kürner, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Germany

Thomas Kürner (Fellow IEEE) received his Dipl.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1990, and his Dr.-Ing. degree in 1993, both from University of Karlsruhe (Germany). From 1990 to 1994 he was with the Institut für Höchstfrequenztechnik und Elektronik (IHE) at the University of Karlsruhe working on wave propagation modelling, radio channel characterization and radio network planning. From 1994 to 2003, he was with the radio network planning department at the headquarters of the GSM 1800 and UMTS operator E-Plus Mobilfunk GmbH & Co KG, Düsseldorf, where he was team manager radio network planning support responsible for radio network planning tools, algorithms, processes and parameters from 1999 to 2003. Since 2003 he is Full University Professor for Mobile Radio Systems at the Technische Universität Braunschweig. In 2012 he was a guest lecturer at Dublin City University within the Telecommunications Graduate Initiative in Ireland. Currently he is chairing the IEEE 802.15 Standing Committee THz and the ETSI Industrial Specification Group THz. He was also the chair of IEEE 802.15.3d TG 100G, which developed the worldwide first wireless communications standard operating at 300 GHz. He was the project coordinator of the H2020-EU-Japan project ThoR (“TeraHertz end-to-end wireless systems supporting ultra-high data Rate applications”) and is Coordinator of the German DFG-Research Unit FOR 2863 Meteracom (“Metrology for THz Communications”). In 2019 and 2022 he received the Neal-Shephard Award of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) and also in 2022 the Best Teacher Award of the European School on Antennas and Propagation (ESoA).

Channel Modelling for THz Communications

THz communications is one of the physical layer candidates for the upcoming 6th generation of wireless systems. Although the propagation channel at sub-THz frequencies has similarities to those at Millimeter waves, the higher path loss, the required higher antenna gains and the smaller wave lengths and the operational environments coming along with new applications are calling for specific channel models. For the standardisation process appropriate channel models for the various applications are required. Corresponding channel modelling activities are ongoing at ITU-R, IEEE 802 and in the recently established ETSI ISG THz. In this talk a brief overview on the status of channel models for THz communications focussing on the needs for standardisation bodies will be provided. This includes a review on relevant propagation phenomena, results from measurement campaigns, already existing channel models and a summary of requirements on channel models for future applications.

Prof. Buon Kiong Lau, Lund University, Sweden

Buon Kiong Lau (IEEE Fellow) is a Professor and the Head of the Communications Engineering Division at the Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University, Sweden. Dr. Lau is best known for his contributions to various aspects of multi-antenna systems in wireless communications. Dr. Lau was an Associate Editor (AE), Senior AE and Track Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (TAP) (2010-2016). He received an award from TAP for exceptional performance as an Associate Editor during 2014-2015. He was also a Guest Editor of the 2012 TAP Special Issue on MIMO Technology, the Lead Guest Editor for the 2016 TAP Special Issue on Theory and Applications of Characteristic Modes, and a Guest Editor of the IEEE TAP Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence in Radio Propagation for Communications. He was the Lead Guest Editor of the 2013 Special Cluster on Terminal Antenna Systems for 4G and Beyond for the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, as well as the Lead Guest Editor of the 2022 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine Special Issue on Characteristic Modes – Into the Mainstream and the Path Beyond. Dr. Lau is an Education Committee Member in the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), where he served as the Student Design Contest Coordinator (2013-2015). He was an AP-S Distinguished Lecturer (2017-2019) and he is with the AP-S New Technology Directions Committee. Dr. Lau initiated the international Characteristic Modes Special Interest Group (CM-SIG) in 2014 to promote new breakthroughs and foster collaboration in CM research.

Design Challenges and Opportunities in Car Antenna Systems

For many years, car antennas simply imply protruding wires on car bodies that are used for receiving broadcast radio signals. In recent years, many more antenna systems are packed into cars to support new applications and services, including GNSS, Wi-Fi, LTE, SDARS, long/mid/short-range radar, etc. These antennas are challenging to design due to a wide variety of design requirements and constraints. To make things worse, industrial designers want antennas to disappear from the car body altogether. In this talk, I will overview the evolution of car antennas and how the design of these antennas become increasingly challenging. I will then introduce some recent innovations in car antenna design to address the challenges in different use cases. As a representative example of an interesting research problem that benefits from an innovative approach, I will detail the systematic design procedure of a Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) antenna system that can provide the required line-of-sight coverage, despite being a hidden antenna solution. Going higher up in frequency, I will also introduce our recent design of a 79 GHz series-patch array, which is intended for future cars’ multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) radar.

Technical Fellow Dennis Lewis, Boeing, USA (AMTA Invited Speaker)

Dennis Lewis received his BS EE degree with honors from Henry Cogswell College and his MS degree in Physics from the University of Washington. He has worked at Boeing for 34 years, and is recognized as a Technical Fellow, leading the enterprise antenna measurement capability for Boeing Test and Evaluation. Dennis holds eleven patents, and is the recipient of the 2013 & 2015 Boeing Special Invention Award. He is a senior member of the IEEE and several of its technical societies, including the Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S), the Antennas and Propagation Society and the Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) Society. He actively contributes to these societies as a member of the IEEE MTT-S Subcommittee 3 on Microwave Measurements, and as a Board Member and past Distinguished Lecturer for the EMC Society. He is a Senior Member and served as Vice President on the Board of Directors for the Antenna Measurements Techniques Association (AMTA), and chaired its annual symposium in 2012 and 2023. Dennis developed and taught a course on Measurement Science at North Seattle College, and is a past chairman of its Technical Advisory Committee. His current technical interests include aerospace applications of reverberation chamber test techniques as well as microwave and antenna measurement systems and uncertainties.

Recent Advances in Robotic Antenna Measurements

Traditional antenna test facilities are typically designed with a specific measurement application in mind, and as a result these facilities tend to be comprised of single fixed measurement geometry. However, modern antenna measurement ranges employing multi-axis robotic positioners provide a near limitless degree of re-configurability in terms of measurement types and scan geometries. This drives an ongoing need to evaluate each unique setup and application. This previously unimaginable flexibility offers new opportunities for the improvement of safety, measurement quality and reduction of measurement uncertainties. These new robotic systems are capable of acquiring large amounts of special data allowing for the implementation of advanced post processing techniques. Model based Systems Engineering and development (MBSE/MBD) approaches can be employed to dramatically reduce the time, effort and cost associated with the test development and validation phases of a given program. MBSE tools can also be used to optimize test configurations to greatly reduce measurement uncertainties and simulate measurements. This presentation provides an overview of how these engineering techniques are being harnessed during the implementation of a new dual multi-axis robotic antenna test system.

Prof. Cathryn Mitchell, University of Bath, England

Professor Cathryn Mitchell studied at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Her PhD research pioneered the use of radio tomography to image the Earth’s ionosphere and won the Royal Astronomical Society Blackwell Prize in 1997. She has developed new algorithms for different application areas in tomography and data assimilation. She has successfully transferred radio science technology from academia into UK industry.

In 2009/2010 Prof. Mitchell was the lead scientific investigator on a large fieldwork expedition with the British Antarctic Survey in Antarctica, which included building and setting up radio equipment at Rothera, Halley, and remote deep field work at the Shackleton Mountains and at the US South Pole station.

Currently Prof. Mitchell is a radio science professor at University of Bath Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, where she teaches satellite navigation systems to final year undergraduates. She was the recipient of the IoP Appleton Medal (2019) and the RAS Chapman Medal (2020), in recognition of her investigations of outstanding merit in the science of the Sun, space and planetary environments or solar-terrestrial physics.

In 2022 Professor Mitchell ended her 5-year term as the Academic Director of the University of Bath Doctoral College and started a Royal Society Industry Fellowship on the future of navigation systems with Spirent Communications.

The future challenges of ionospheric tomography and data assimilation with applications for communication and navigation systems

The ionosphere has been studied extensively; notably in the early days by Appleton who coined the term ‘space weather’. This term denotes the variability in the ionospheric propagation environment because the medium is driven, both electromagnetically and mechanically, by constantly changing solar and terrestrial activity. There are many electromagnetic sensing instruments that can measure the ionosphere and help to characterise it in an instant, however they are not sufficiently accurate, numerous or widely distributed to provide observations that can be interpolated into a highly accurate 3D specification.

There is no single instrument to provide a 3D specification of the Earth’s ionosphere at spatial scales of metres and temporal scales of seconds across a large region of continental/global scale. However, there are techniques to obtain electron density maps out of line-integral observations (tomography) or to merge models and observations together (data assimilation). The talk will describe the current state of the art and the upcoming requirements based upon the likely needs of future communication and navigation systems.

Prof. Ekaterina Shamonina, University of Oxford, England

Ekaterina Shamonina is Professor of Engineering Science and Fellow of Wadham College at the University of Oxford. She graduated in Physics from the Moscow State University, and received her PhD and habilitation degrees in Theoretical Physics from the University of Osnabrueck, Germany. She was awarded the Emmy Noether Fellowship from the German Research Council (2000-2007) and was the recipient of the Hertha-Sponer Prize 2006 of the German Physical Society for pioneering work in electromagnetic metamaterials. Her main research areas apart from metamaterials have been amorphous semiconductors, holography, photorefractive materials, antennas and plasmonics. She is a co-founder and a director of a university spinout company Metaboards developing metamaterial-based advanced wireless power and data technologies.

Wireless power transfer via magnetoinductive waves

The concept of magnetoinductive (MI) waves was introduced two decades ago in the context of the emerging field of metamaterials as slow waves that can propagate by virtue of magnetic coupling between individual meta-atoms. Changing the resonant frequency of the meta-atoms and the coupling between them, the dispersion of MI waves can easily be tailored enabling a large variety of applications of MI waves ranging from near-field guiding and imaging to superdirective antennas. In this talk we focus on wireless signal and power transfer in magnetoinductive structures. We look at a variety of scenarios, including power splitting and guiding, switchable unidirectional signal transfer, wireless power transfer in the presence of radiation, in the presence of a conducting environment, or via coupled evanescent magnetoinductive waves.

Prof. Jun-Ichi Takada, Tokyo Institiute of Technology, Japan

Jun-ichi Takada is the Dean and a Professor at the School of Environment and Society, Tokyo Institute of Technology.
He received a Doctor of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1992. After serving as a research associate at Chiba University during 1992-94, and an associate professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology during 1994-2006, he has been a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology since 2006.

He was also a part-time researcher at National Institute of Information and Communications Technology during 2003-07.
He has been working on radiowave propagation and wireless channels for almost 30 years. Some of the significant outcomes are the development and deployment of full-MIMO channel sounders, characterization of indoor UWB double-directional channel, application of physical optics approximation for non-specular propagation prediction, co-proposal of multi-probe OTA testing, and inter-system coexistence study in terms of radio propagation.
He has been participating series of European COST wireless actions starting with COST 273 until the current COST INTERACT. He served as the co-chair of SIG in Body Communications in COST 2100 during 2008-2010.
He also served as the chair of the measurement WG in ITU-R TG 1/8 on compatibility between UWB devices and radiocommunication services in 2005, the chair of ICICE Technical Committee on Software Radio in 2007-09, an assistant secretary of Japan National Committee of URSI during 2008-2017, and IEICE Director of Journal and Transactions in 2016-18.
He is a fellow of IEICE Japan, and a senior member of IEEE.

Site-Specific Radio Channel Modeling in Cyber-Physical Wireless Emulator

Design, evaluation, and verification of a large-scale wireless system with high accuracy is essential prior to the implementation. Stochastic channel models are utilized for the link level and system level simulations for the performance evaluation, and the exhaustive drive-testing method is deployed for the validation. The former technique can be applicable for intra-system evaluation, but not suitable for inter-system coexistence in the realistic scenarios. The latter technique is time and cost inefficient. A cyber physical wireless emulator is developed to overcome drawbacks of both of these approaches. It emulates the real-world wireless network scenarios in real-time, not only within cyber space but also with real or prototype radios via physical interface. Hence, scenario-based radio channel modeling framework is necessary for the implementation of the cyber-physical wireless emulator, which should have site-specific and system-independent features in either local/wide and stationary/dynamic scenarios, and which generates continuous and spatially-consistent channel responses.

This invited talk presents the concept of cyber-physical wireless emulator in brief, and explains how the dynamic channels are modelled within the real-time emulator in site- and scenario-specific manner, considering antenna directivity, multipath fading, shadowing by moving objects, death and birth of clusters, and large scale path loss. The work has been conducted under the contract JPJ000254 with the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications of Japan.

Prof. John L. Volakis, Florida International University, USA

John L. Volakis is the Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing at Florida International University (FIU), and a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. He is an IEEE, AAAS, NAI, URSI and ACES Fellow. Prior to coming to FIU, he was the Roy and Lois Chope Chair in Engineering at Ohio State and a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Dept. (2003-2017). He also served as the Director of the Ohio State Univ. ElectroScience Laboratory for 14 years. His career spans 2 years at Boeing, 19 years on the faculty at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and 15 years at Ohio State. At Michigan he also served as the Director of the Radiation Laboratory (1998-2000).

Prof. Volakis has 39 years of engineering research experience, and has published over 445 journal papers, 950 conference papers, 9 books, 30 book chapters, and 32 patents/disclosures. He is also the editor of the Antenna Engineering Handbook, referred to as the “antenna bible.” In 2004, he was listed by ISI Web of Science as one of the top 250 most referenced authors, and his google h-index=76 with over 30,000 citations. He has mentored over 100 Ph.Ds/Post-Docs and has written with them 43 papers which received best paper awards. He is one of the most active researchers in electromagnetics, RF materials and metamaterials, antennas and phased array, RF transceivers, textile electronics, millimeter waves and terahertz, EMI/EMC as well as EM diffraction and computational methods. His research team is recognized for introducing and/or developing 1) hybrid finite method for microwave engineering, now defacto methods in commercial RF design packages, 2) novel composite materials for antennas & sensor miniaturization, 3) a new class of wideband conformal antennas and arrays with over 30:1 of contiguous bandwidth, referred to as tightly coupled dipole antennas, already garnering over 6 million citations, 4) textile surfaces for wearable electronics and sensors, 5) battery-less and wireless medical implants for non-invasive brain signal collection, 6) diffraction coefficients for material coated edges, and for 7) model-scaled radar scattering verification methods.

UWB Future 5G Transceivers & Wearable Electronics

Future communication links (future 5G) will require higher data rates, multiple beams, and higher transmit/receive gains, in addition to smaller weight, cost, and power. With the growing interest for reduced size platforms and the requirement for ultra-wideband (UWB) performance to address multi-functionality, there is a strong need for UWB RF front-ends with ultra flexible interfaces. The latter will include millimeter wave and THz capabilities to enable increased spectral efficiency, multi-functionality and security. Simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) transceivers are also becoming a focus for the coming decade.

Further, in recent years, a variety of flexible fabric-based electronics have been proposed. To this end, our team proposed a new class of conductive textiles that have demonstrated unique capabilities in terms of flexibility, durability and manufacturing-ease using standard automated embroidery machinery. These electronic threads (E-threads) have the capability to generate fully embroidered microwave circuitry that has the same electrical properties as traditional microwave circuits printed on PCBs. As such, a new class of wearable devices that are fully integrated and inconspicuously placed within clothing is possible.

This presentation will focus on innovative methods for handling UWB communications with RF front end and back-end capabilities having historically low power and game-changing frequency-independent operation. They will include low power MIMO and beamforming across large bandwidths, from MHz to millimeter wave bands. Challenges in realizing future textile-based electronic devices, including wearable wideband transceivers will be presented. Among them, reliable wearable interconnects, chipsets that are less bulky and integrated with the textile circuitry, and manufacturing challenges will be discussed.