Short courses

Please click on the session for more information.

If you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact the EuCAP 2010 Organisers at secreatriat@eucap2010.org.

SC1: Advances in the Design of Electrically Small Antennas

Monday April 12, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 129)

Chair: Steven R. Best, MITRE Corporation

Optimizing the performance properties of electrically small antennas represents a significant design challenge for the antenna engineer.  As wireless devices decrease in size, there is an increasing demand for physically smaller antennas, yet the performance requirements are rarely relaxed.   This ½-day short course provides a detailed discussion on the theory, challenges, performance trade-offs and fundamental design approaches associated with electrically small antennas. 
The short course begins with an overview of the basic theory and fundamental limitations of small antennas.  The presentation focuses on providing an understanding of small antenna performance in terms of impedance, radiation patterns, bandwidth, efficiency, and quality factor (Q).  Techniques used to design self-resonant electrically small antennas are described and compared.  The relationship between the antenna’s performance characteristics and its physical properties is discussed in detail.  The performance of the small antenna on small finite ground planes is considered with a particular emphasis on how the antenna’s location on the ground plane affects impedance, pattern and polarization properties.  This short course also presents and describes practical approaches for the design of PIFA, RFID antennas and medical implanted antennas.  A number of practical antenna miniaturization techniques are also discussed.  Techniques used in the design of small, multiband device integrated antennas are described.  In addition, determination of the small antenna’s radiation efficiency is discussed by several measurement methods.

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SC2: Radio Network Planning and Optimization of 3G,3.5G and 4G mobile networks

Monday April 12, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 130)

Chair: Francisco Falcone, Universidad de Navarra, Spain

The aim of this course is to explain the procedures and tools required for the planning and further optimization of high speed 3.5G, 3.75G and future LTE mobile networks. Coverage-capacity relations are described, related to radio channel characteristics as well as to system level considerations. Link simulation as well as system level simulation techniques are described in order to fulfill a realistic planning and optimization procedure.
Topics to be described within the short course are:
- Network topology and radionetwork attributes
- Coverage-capacity relations
- Radiopropagation (frequency and time) considerations
- Case Studies

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SC3: MIMO measurements made simple: From antenna design to success in 4G

Monday April 12, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 131)

Chairs: David A. Sanchez-Hernandez, EMITE Ing, Spain
            Gert F. Pedersen, Aalborg University, Denmark

With the first 4G trials scheduled for 2010 and the compulsory use of MIMO into both WiMAX and LTE standards, MIMO technology has finally exploded. Mobile Internet Peripherals and Devices are said to take a market share of 30% of all handsets and non-handsets wireless devices by 2013. In this complex scenario, antenna engineering has gained a tremendous importance. While the use of multiple antennas in the base station or access point (AP) is usually feasible, user terminals have size and weight restrictions that make the use of conventional antenna elements such as dipoles or patch antennas problematic. Thus, novel array topologies and antenna elements for multi-antenna systems are of great interest.  But not only new geometries and designs are required, but also the antenna engineer is faced with a novel way to evaluate performance. While the parameters to characterize antennas in general are well defined and worldwide accepted, the way to evaluate the performance of an antenna array for MIMO is still an open issue, since multiple new concepts have to be considered, such as pattern diversity, correlation among elements, fading environment or polarization diversity, among others. Several new parameters have been proposed to characterize antennas for MIMO systems, including diversity gain and MIMO capacity. In this short course, these new antenna parameters will be described in detail. The basics of MIMO testing will be explained from the antenna engineering point of view. The concepts will be reviewed by case studies with some MIMO testing tools in life demos. The course is an ideal getting started document for antenna engineers that are first faced with the novel MIMO testing tools for antennas, which will become a must for any 4G antenna technology onwards.
 
Contents:
MIMO techniques: Basics and fundamentals
MIMO testing
    - The physical structure of the channel
    - The radiation and configuration characteristics of the MIMO antenna array
    - The MIMO algorithm at transmit and receive modules
MIMO test beds
Handset MIMO characteristics
MIMO antenna design, development and compliance testing with the MIMO Analyzer
    - MIMO antenna performance parameters
    - MIMO fading parameters
    - MIMO physical parameters
    - MIMO active power parameters
MIMO case studies

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SC7: Mobile to Mobile Communications

Wednesday April 14, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 131)

Chair: Werner Wiesbeck, Universität Karlsruhe, Germany

Mobile automotive communications, including broadcast, is one of the fastest growing areas in communications. Mobile phone, Wireless LAN, data transfer, radio, TV and many other candidates require the installation of numerous antennas on the vehicles. To overcome the fading, most services require multiple antennas for Diversity or MIMO operation, which multiplies the number of antennas by a factor of 2 to 4. The design, placement and test of these antennas causes enormous efforts in man-power, time and cost. It is the intention of the course to make the attendees aware of favorite solutions and available design products.
The course offers all C2C communication prerequisites, including antenna and propagation channel lectures. Special attention is paid to the characterization of multiple antennas for MIMO and Diversity. Based on these lectures a complete system description and simulation is presented, including RF front-ends, transmit antennas, the propagation channel, the receive antennas and the RF receive front-end. The complete simulation is integrated in a real mobile simulation with an evaluation of the channel characteristics. This solution to overcome many of the C2C communication problems is called Virtual Drive. The idea is very simple and intends to model the complete system electromagnetically. This procedure has the following steps:

1. model the complex, vehicle integrated antennas
2. model the environment were to drive the vehicle
3. model the vectorial coverage by the communication transmitter
4. simulate driving the vehicle in the covered area and sample the received signals of all antennas

The modeling of the vehicle integrated antennas requires the knowledge of the vehicle structure and material composition. The antennas have to be integrated in their intended positions. The calculation of the complex antenna characteristic may be by standard EM tools or better by hybrid tools, because of the vehicle size. These hybrid tools combine the Method of Moments f.e. with ray-tracing.

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SC8: The Art and Science of Antenna Near-Field Measurements and Diagnostics: From Fundamentals to Recent Developments

Wednesday April 14, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 132)

Chair: Yahya Rahmat-Samii, University of California, Los Angeles

This short course will provide the participants with a novel way to understand the fundamental concepts behind modern antenna near field measurement and diagnostic techniques. Starting from basic electromagnetic principles, the underlying concepts governing simulations, designs and operations of planar near field measurements and diagnostics techniques will be reviewed. Modern measurement schemes such as plane-polar and bi-polar scanning will be highlighted. Advances in applying these techniques to millimeter-wave measurements will be reviewed. Representative measurement results of reflector and array antennas will be presented. The importance of near field diagnostic techniques will be discussed through some unique test cases.  Finally, the topic of phaseless measurement techniques and algorithms will be presented demonstrating the potential applications of these techniques in modern antenna measurements. The following topics will be presented: (a) Fundamental of EM concepts for antenna characterizations including antenna radiated fields, ideal dipole, solution of wave equations and special functions, (b) fundamentals of various near-field measurement techniques including equivalence theorem, spectral formulation and probe corrections, (c) Understanding antenna near-field diagnostic techniques including simulation models, back-projections, sampling theorems, (d) Case studies of several reflector and array antenna measurements and diagnostics, and (e) Phaseless measurements and recent advances including why phaseless measurements, phase retrieval algorithms and measured results.

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SC9: Physics of Multiantenna Systems and Their Impacts on Wireless Systems

Thursday April 15, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 130)

Chairs: Tapan Sarkar, Syracuse University 
          Magdalena Salazar-Palma: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

The objective of this presentation is to present a scientific methodology that can be used to analyze the physics of multiantenna systems. Multiantenna systems are becoming exceedingly popular because they promise a different dimension, namely spatial diversity, than what was available to the communication systems engineers: The use of multiple transmit and receive antennas provides a means to perform spatial diversity, at least from a conceptual standpoint. In this way, one could increase the capacities of existing systems that already exploit time and frequency diversity. In such a scenario it could be said that the deployment of multiantenna systems is equivalent to using an overmoded waveguide, where information is simultaneously transmitted via not only the dominant mode but also through all the higher-order modes. We look into this interesting possibility and study why communication engineers advocate the use of such systems, whereas electromagnetic and microwave engineers have avoided such propagation mechanisms in their systems. Most importantly, we study the physical principles of multiantenna systems through Maxwell’s equations and utilize them to perform various numerical simulations to observe how a typical system will behave in practice. There is an important feature that is singular in electrical engineering and that many times is not treated properly in system applications: namely, super position of power does not hold, but the principle of superposition does hold for voltages and currents. This is why another name for electromagnetic theory is field theory as the voltages and currents are reflected in the fields and their superposition provides the complete picture. Hence, we need to be careful when comparing the performance of different systems in making value judgments. In addition, appropriate metrics which is valid from a scientific standpoint should be selected to make this comparison. Examples will be presented to illustrate how this important principle impact certain conventional way of thinking in wireless communication.

Also, we examine the phenomenon of height-gain in wireless cellular communication, and illustrate that under the current operating scenarios where the base station antennas are deployed over a tall tower, the field strength actually decreases with the height of the antenna over a realistic ground and there is no height gain in the near field. Therefore, to obtain a scientifically meaningful operational environment the vertically polarized base station antennas should be deployed closer to the ground. Also, when deploying antennas over tall towers it may be more advantageous to use horizontally polarized antennas than vertically polarized for communication in cellular environments. Numerical examples are presented to illustrate these cases.

We next look at the concept of channel capacity and observe the various definitions of it that exist in the literature. The concept of channel capacity is intimately connected with the concept of entropy hence related to physics. We present two forms of the channel capacity, the usual Shannon capacity which is based on power; and the seldom used definition of Hartley which uses values of the voltage. These two definitions of capacities are shown to yield numerically very similar values if one is dealing with conjugately matched transmit-receive antenna systems. However, from an engineering standpoint, the voltage-based form of the channel capacity is more useful as it is related to the sensitivity of the receiver to an incoming electromagnetic wave. Furthermore, we illustrate through numerical simulations how to apply the channel capacity formulas in an electromagnetically proper way. To perform the calculations correctly in order to compare different scenarios, in all simulations the input power fed to the antennas needs to remain constant. Also conclusions should not be made using the principles of superposition of power. Second, one should deal with the gain of the antennas and not their directivities, which is an alternate way of referring to the input power fed to the antennas rather than to the radiated power. The radiated power essentially deals with the directivity of an antenna and theoretically one can get any value for the directivity of an aperture. Hence, the distinction needs to be made between gain and directivity if one is willing to compare system performances in a proper way. Finally, one needs to use the Poynting’s theorem to calculate the power in the near field and not exclusively use either the voltage or the current. These restrictions apply to the power form of the Shannon channel capacity theorem. The voltage form of the capacity due to Hartley is applicable to both near and far fields. Use of realistic antenna models in place of representing antennas by point sources further illustrates the above points, as the point sources by definition generate only far field, and they do not exist in real life.
The concept of a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna system is illustrated next and its strengths and weaknesses are outlined. Sample simulations show that only the classical phased array mode out of the various spatial modes that characterize spatial diversity is useful for that purpose and the other spatial modes are not efficient radiators.
Finally, how reciprocity can be used in directing a signal to a preselected receiver when there is a two way communication between a transmitter and the receiver is demonstrated. This embarrassingly simple method based on reciprocity, is much simpler in computational complexity than a traditional MIMO and can even exploit the polarization properties for effectively decorrelating multiple receivers in a multiple input single output (MISO) system.

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SC11: Antenna Measurement Techniques for Antenna Engineers

Thursday April 15, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 132)

Chair: Ed Joy, Georgia Institute of Technology

The fundamental principles of the commonly used antenna measurement techniques will be presented.  Practical details of each measurement technique will be presented including measurement set up, procedure, frequency range, accuracy, antenna size and required equipment.  Detailed mathematical analyses are minimized in order to concentrate on fundamental principles, practical aspects and application.  The focus of this course is antenna measurement techniques in the HF, VHF, UHF, microwave and millimeter-wave frequency ranges.  Each technique is demonstrated with measured results and photographs of facilities.  The course concludes with state-of-the-art techniques for antenna measurement facility characterization and compensation.
The lectures correspond to the following antenna measurement techniques:

1. Far-field
2. Anechoic Chamber
3. Compact
4. Near-field
5. Near-field Probe Arrays
6. Characterization and Compensation

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SC12: Printed Wideband Internal Antennas for Slim Mobile Devices

Friday April 16, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 130)

Chair: Kin Lu Wong, National Sun Yat-sen University

Mobile devices such as the handsets and laptop computers with a slim profile are becoming very attractive for mobile users. However, conventional internal mobile device antennas are generally with a three-dimensional bulk structure, which makes such antennas not attractive for application in the slim mobile devices. Recently, it has been demonstrated that the printed wideband or multiband antennas can be of small printed size and are promising to cover the WWAN bands of GSM850/900/1800/1900/UMTS, the LTE bands of LTE700/2300/2500, the 2.4/5.2/5.8 GHz WLAN bands, and the 2.5/3.5/5.5 GHz WiMAX bands in the mobile devices. These promising printed wideband antennas include using the l/8 printed PIFA, l/8 printed monopole, l/4 printed loop and l/4 printed slot; they are suitable to be directly printed on the system circuit board of the mobile device at low cost, allowing the mobile device promising to have a very thin profile.
In this short course, such promising printed wideband antennas for handset and laptop computer applications are presented. The design techniques for achieving smaller size yet wider bandwidth for such printed internal antennas are introduced. The SAR and HAC results of some promising printed internal handset antennas are discussed. Other promising designs such as the EMC (EM compatible) PIFAs, integrated PIFAs, small surface-mount antennas for internal mobile device antennas are also addressed. Some useful techniques to reduce the effects of the system ground plane on the internal mobile device antennas will also be presented; that is, ground-insensitive internal mobile device antennas can be obtained.

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SC13: Array Mutual Coupling: physical interpretation and numerical modeling

Friday April 16, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 131)

Chair: Christophe Craeye, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium

The course will focus on the electromagnetic interactions between elements of regular and non-regular arrays, which will be assumed to be made of identical elements of arbitrary shapes and composition. In particular, for the case of regular arrays, we show how the interactions can be efficiently computed with integral-equation methods and how to reconcile finite and infinite-array approaches.
Particular attention will be given to physical interpretation and to applications in the fields of antenna arrays and metamaterials, both devoted to communication and sensing functions. The students will have the opportunity to try out most of the taught concepts with the help of an open-source Matlab code.
Outline:

1. Mutual coupling between a few elements and in infinite arrays
2. Single-mode approximations versus full-wave approaches
3. Electric and Magnetic-field integral equations
4. Method of Moments for finite and infinite arrays
5. Eigenmode analysis and Array Scanning Method
6. Macro Basis Functions and Krylov-subspace methods
7. Mutual coupling correction
8. Metamaterials: applications of metasurfaces and metavolumes

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SC14: Small Antenna Design for Mobile Handsets, UWB, Sensors, RFID tags and other Applications, and their Performance Enhancement by using EBGs and Metamaterials.

Friday April 16, 14:30 - 18:20 (Room 132)

Chair: Raj Mitra, Pennsylvania State University

Antennas for the mobile industry have been evolving very rapidly in recent years, owing to the demands placed upon them by the users in terms of their functionalities.  For instance, an increasing number of non-cellular communication wireless standards are being introduced to the handset–such as FM radio, GPS, Bluetooth, WLAN, Wi-Fi, DVB-H, RFID and UWB. It is predicted that future mobile handsets would include even more integrated antennas for cellular and non-cellular bands, as well as for diversity and MIMO applications. A combination of the problem of integration and the requirement that the antennas designed for mobile terminals be visually attractive has made the task of practical design of antennas very challenging indeed.
This course will discuss some fundamentals of small antenna theory and antenna technologies for designing mobile handsets for multi-frequency bands; size reduction strategies; antenna integration techniques; antennas for GPS; multi-channel system; diversity, MIMO in the mobile terminals; human body effect; and, measurement techniques. Part 1 will deal with some fundamental issues of small terminal antennas. Part 2 will report on the progress of techniques for handset antennas covering multiple frequency bands. Part 3 will discuss the antenna integration methodologies and some practical engineering issues pertaining to the design of mobile terminal antennas. Next, Part 4 will describe the GPS and multi-channel antenna systems and will touch on the issues of diversity and MIMO. Part 5 will examine the use of metamaterials for handset antennas. Finally, in Part 6, the effect of the human body on antenna performance and some measurement techniques for small antennas will be discussed.

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