AESs for Spaceborne Platforms

AESs are useful on the space segment of satellite communication systems owing to the fact that their radiation characteristics can be easily tailored over multiple frequency bands and polarizations. They also can easily achieve wide-angle scanning capability, and can be made deployable in small satellite platforms. Our group is developing various AES-derived antenna solutions for space in conjunction with our partners (MDA, Thales Alenia Space, Kepler Communications, and the European Space Agency).

(Inverse) Design Methods for AES Unit Cells

The design of AES unit cell constitutes an "inverse design" problem whereby desired scattering characteristics must be mapped to the geometric topology of the scatterers. Our group is investigating design methods based on machine learning networks (particularly generative networks), as well as topological optimization techniques.

AES Synthesis Methods Using Optimization

The macroscopic design of AESs involves defining how the topology of the surface should be varied in order to achieve a specific electromagnetic function. Designing antennas using AESs involves application of constraints to their radiation characteristics, which creates a challenging problem to synthesize AESs given only characteristics of the radiated fields are known (instead of the fields themselves). Our group develops optimization frameworks to make this possible. Together with the AES unit cell techniques described above, these methods enable a complete end-to-end synthesis procedure for AESs.

Reconfigurable Apertures and Intelligent Surfaces

Reconfigurable antennas are essential for realizing electronic beam-steering capability. They can be realized by integrating electronically controllable elements and/or materials within antennas and AESs. Our group investigates a number of reconfigurable antenna implementations, including leaky-wave antennas, AESs, and handset antennas.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are a class of AESs used for manipulating the propagation characteristics of radio channels. They are of particular interest in emerging 6G wireless systems, given their ability adaptively adjust their scattering characteristics to improve performance of SISO and MIMO communication schemes. Our group is applying its heritage in reconfigurable antenas to develop channel-informed RIS designs.

AESs and RF Signal Processing Techniques for Radio Astronomy

AESs can be highly useful for realizing components of radio telescopes. In collaboration with researchers at Virginia Tech, we are developing AES-derived apertures for mitigating interference in radio astronomy. We are also devising signal processing techniques to further mitigate the impact of interference at the receiver level.