Research Projects

Beamforming and millimeter wave communication is poised to play a vital role in future generation Muti Gbps communication systems. However, the mm-wave communications suffer from sensitivity to blockage due to weak diffraction capability, huge propagation loss due to the high carrier frequency, high losses due to atmospheric oxygen and water vapor. These characteristics set new challenges which require choosing new signal processing, circuit, antenna and communication technologies. The solution to the high propagation loss is the use of a highly directional antenna and steerable antenna beams. The multiple antenna technology helps in producing highly directive and steerable beams via beamforming that improves the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver. For the implementation of low-cost mm-wave systems, the antenna array is desired to be integrated with other RF circuitry and beamforming module. The microstrip antennas are preferred due to the attractive features e.g. light weight, low profile, low production cost, ease of integration with other components etc. However, they have several disadvantages e.g. narrow impedance bandwidth, low gain, substrate loss etc. Also, at millimeter-wave frequencies the dielectric loss and feedline loss, mutual coupling between the elements highly influences the performance of the antenna array. For the accurate design of a microstrip phased array antenna, all these issues need to be addressed properly. For large-scale antenna millimeter-wave systems, digital baseband beamforming is prohibitively complex and costly due to the requirement of a dedicated radio frequency (RF) chain for each antenna element and higher dynamic range for analog front-end RF circuitry. Also, sophisticated adaptive beamforming methods have not been extensively used thus far due to increased signal processing overheads and latency. Thus, low complexity analog beamforming methods are attractive to explore. This project aims at the design of a suitable phased array antenna with the desired gain performance which can be combined with other components in the RF front end and analog beamforming module for the application in the millimeter-wave wireless communication system. As 60 GHz band is presently unlicensed in several countries including the US, the project targets to design the phased antenna array and beamformer in 60 GHz band. Moreover, the design will be also possible to extend for 77 GHz in near future for automotive applications which are also commercially an emerging area. Investigators aim to develop the prototype of a phased array antenna with beamformer as a key deliverable apart from patents and papers.