Invited Speakers

Invited Keynote Speakers

Nader Engheta

Meta-Waves and Meta-Structures 

Winner of the 2012 IEEE Electromagnetics Award, Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He received  his B.S. degree from the University of Tehran, and his M.S and Ph.D. degrees from Caltech. Selected as one of the Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology in 2006, he is a Guggenheim Fellow, an IEEE Third Millennium Medalist, a Fellow of IEEE, American Physical Society (APS), Optical Society of America (OSA), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), and SPIE-The International Society for Optical Engineering, and the recipient of the 2008 George H. Heilmeier Award for Excellence in Research, the Fulbright Naples Chair Award, NSF Presidential Young Investigator award, the UPS Foundation Distinguished Educator term Chair, and several teaching  awards including the Christian F. and Mary R. Lindback Foundation Award, S. Reid Warren, Jr. Award and W. M. Keck Foundation Award. He has co-edited (with R. W. Ziolkowski) the book entitled “Metamaterials: Physics and Engineering Explorations” by Wiley-IEEE Press, 2006. He was the Chair of the Gordon Research Conference on Plasmonics in June 2012

Henrik Lind

How new active safety system and always connected vehicles leads to challenges on antenna design and integration in the automotive domain - Download slides -

Mr. Henrik Lind (MScEE) is a Technical expert on remote sensing within Volvo Car Corporation. Henrik has been working with advanced driver assistance technologies and technology research at Volvo Technological Development since 1997 leading research of GaAs MMICs and 77GHz radar technology for automotive. From the year 2001 Henrik became part responsible for the introduction of radar and radar related functions at Volvo Car Corporation with the aim to provide increased safety and comfort for drivers by introducing forward collision warning with emergency brake and adaptive cruise control.

Mikael Höök

Future of Radio Access - Download slides - 

In the future everything that benefits from being connected will be connected.In this networked society, communication will expand from today’s human-centric needs to a large variety of machines and ‘things’ being connected. Wireless connectivity will be a key enabler in the global communication infrastructure and will have to support not only the heavy increase in traffic but also a more diverse range of requirements. This imposes considerable technology challenges where advancements within areas like multi-antenna technologies, spectrum utilization, air-interface design and co-ordination techniques will be of utmost importance in order to fulfill the requirements on future wireless networks. Technology evolution has however to be tuned for and targeting the propagation characteristics that will dominate future deployments.

Mikael Höök has been Head of Radio Access Technologies at Ericsson Research since 2007. He is based in Kista and the responsibility covers research of air-interface design, advanced signal processing, multi-antenna systems, propagation and modem RF design. Results are fed into standardization and product development. Höök has been involved in the research and standardization of GPRS, EDGE, HSPA and LTE.
Höök has 18 years of experience in the areas of research and standardization of wireless access technologies. He holds an MSc degree in Electric Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

More Invited Speakers

Ke Wu

Multi-Dimensional and Multi-Functional Substrate Integrated Waveguide Antennas and Arrays for GHz and THz Applications: An Emerging Disruptive Technology - Download slides -

Ke Wu is professor of electrical engineering, and Tier-I Canada Research Chair in RF and millimeter-wave engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique (University of Montreal). He holds the first Cheung Kong endowed chair professorship (visiting) at the Southeast University, the first Sir Yue-Kong Pao chair professorship (visiting) at the Ningbo University, and an honorary professorship at the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, the Nanjing University of Post Telecommunication, and the City University of Hong Kong, China. He has been the Director of the Poly-Grames Research Center and the founding Director of the Center for Radiofrequency Electronics Research of Quebec (Regroupement stratégique of FRQNT). He has also hold guest and visiting professorship in many universities around the world. He has authored or co-authored over 860 referred papers, and a number of books/book chapters and filed more than 30 patents. His current research interests involve substrate integrated circuits (SICs), antenna arrays, advanced CAD and modeling techniques, wireless power transmission, and development of low-cost RF and millimeter-wave transceivers and sensors for wireless systems and biomedical applications. He is also interested in the modeling and design of microwave photonic circuits and systems.

Dr. Wu is a member of Electromagnetics Academy, the Sigma Xi Honorary Society, and the URSI. He has held key positions in and has served on various panels and international committees including the chair of technical program committees, international steering committees and international conferences/symposia. In particular, he was the general chair of the 2012 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium. He has served on the editorial/review boards of many technical journals, transactions, proceedings and letters as well as scientific encyclopedia including editors and guest editors. He is currently the chair of the joint IEEE chapters of MTTS/APS/LEOS in Montreal. Dr. Wu is an elected IEEE MTT-S AdCom member for 2006-2015 and served as Chair of the IEEE MTT-S Transnational Committee and Member and Geographic Activities (MGA) Committee. He was the recipient of many awards and prizes including the first IEEE MTT-S Outstanding Young Engineer Award, the 2004 Fessenden Medal of the IEEE Canada and the 2009 Thomas W. Eadie Medal of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a Fellow of the IEEE Fellow, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (The Canadian Academy of the Sciences and Humanities). He was an IEEE MTT-S Distinguished Microwave Lecturer from Jan. 2009 to Dec. 2011.

Rodney Vaughan

Compact, Multiport Antennas for High Spectral Efficiency - Download slides -

The pursuit of spectral efficiency draws on many different research areas. The most impactful is the deployment of multiport antennas because it is the only technology that allows simultaneous sharing of the spectrum between many users, including full duplex operation in some circumstances. Current system designs are still a long way from their information-theoretic limits, and similarly, current multi-element antenna designs are quite a way from compactness limits. This talk will touch on how wireless has reached this point, along with the need for new results in information theory, communications techniques, networking, antenna elements and arrays, and signal theory. These aspects converge to set the scene for a new generation of adaptive antenna technology, and some design examples will be presented. The design of compact multiport antennas requires an extension of classical performance metrics, and new approaches to measurement and evaluation include tools such as physics-based statistical channel models.
 
Rodney G. Vaughan attended the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and Aalborg University, Denmark. He worked on mechanical and electrical projects from abattoir hardware to telephone traffic forecasting, before evolving to communications. He is Professor of Electrical Engineering and Sierra Wireless Chair in Communications at Simon Fraser University, B.C., Canada. His research involves propagation and its modelling, signal processing, and multiport antenna design and evaluation. Recent projects include compact bio-implantable antennas; spatial efficiency of MIMO antennas; multifaceted arrays; on-chip (60GHz) antenna structures, blind techniques for MIMO, and mobile sonar channel modeling. He has been on scientific evaluation panels for the funding and knowledge base for ICT in the UK, the Canadian Communications Research Centre, and for the ICT Centre of the CSIRO, Australia. He is Fellow of the IEEE, and an IEEE VT Society Distinguished Lecturer.

Fred Gianesello

“Innovate in a 4G world: RFIC designers discovering antennas" - Download slides -

Dr Fred Gianesello received the B.S. and M.S. degree in Electronics Engineering from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (Grenoble, France) in 2003 and the Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Joseph Fourier University (Grenoble, France) in 2006. Dr Gianesello has authored and coauthored more than 80 refereed journal and conference technical articles. He currently is with STMicroelectronics (Crolles, France), where he leads the development of electromagnetic devices integrated on advanced RF CMOS/BiCMOS, silicon photonics and advanced packaging technologies.

The rapid growth of wireless data and complexity of 4G systems drive new design challenges for RF chipset and handheld/mobile device manufacturers along with carriers. The wide and many frequency bands to be supported in multimode phone pose severe RF design challenges both from the chipset and antenna point of view.
Generally, RF chipset and antenna designs are performed independently and there is little exchange between RFIC and antenna designers. This talk will provide a perspective in order to illustrate how the wireless industry can innovate and improve RF system performances leveraging a closer collaboration between RFIC and antenna communities.

Bertram Arbesser-Rastburg

European Collaborative Propagation Research - a tribute to Aldo Paraboni and Gert Brussaard

Bertram Arbesser-Rastburg studied Electrical Engineering at the Technical University of Graz, Austria. In his first position at the Technical University of Graz, he was involved in the design of a C-band weather radar for propagation studies. In 1983 he became Propagation Engineer at INTELSAT in Washington, D.C., taking responsibility for propagation experiments in tropical regions. In 1988 he joined the European Space Agency where he was responsible for the planning and implementation of wave propagation studies for all aspects of satellite communication and navigation as well as wave interaction studies for earth observation. End of 2007 he was appointed Head of the Electromagnetics and Space Environment Division of the European Space Agency, responsible for R&D and project support in the fields of Antennas, Propagation, EMC and Space Environment. He is Chairman of ITU-R SG3 (Propagation), Coordinator of the European part of the international SBAS-IONO Group and Executive Secretary of the Galileo Science Advisory Committee. He is member of the Board of Directors of EurAAP and Chairman of Commission F of the Netherlands URSI Committee. He serves as member of the editorial boards of the “International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking” and as member of the Scientific Advisory Board of “Annals of Telecommunications”. He is Senior Member of IEEE and  Member of AGU, IEICE and OVN.

Femius Koenderink

Antenna ideas at the nanoscale: quantum emitters at visible wavelengths controlled using plasmonics and metamaterials - Download slides -

Femius Koenderink heads the Resonant Nanophotonics Group at the FOM Institute AMOLF, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, and is also affiliated as a professor to the Institute of Physics at the University of Amsterdam. After a MSc in Experimental Physics (1998) and in Mathematics (1999), he obtained his PhD on emission and transport of light in photonic crystals in 2003 at the University of Amsterdam. During a postdoctoral stay with Vahid Sandoghdar at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), he became interested in nanophotonics:  the science of measuring and manipulating light confinement and light-matter interaction at deeply subwavelength length scales. His group at AMOLF aims to bring antenna physics to the nanoscale in order to manipulate the interaction of quantum emitters and single photons. The group models, realizes and characterizes plasmonic and metamaterial antennas, and explores their uses to control how fast, how brightly, and whereto single molecules and quantum dots emit.

Yves Lostanlen

From heterogeneous wireless networks to sustainable efficient ICT infrastructures: how antenna and propagation simulation tools can help? - Download slides -

Yves Lostanlen, MSc, PhD, DSc (HDR) is a multilingual Business Executive and Technology Expert in the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Industry.
Currently Vice President and CTO of the Wireless activities at Siradel, a high-tech company specialized in complex wireless system design optimization, Yves has been involved, for more than 15 years, in delivering highly praised high-tech products and expert consultancies to many top-tier companies in the ICT and Media Industry: government, policy makers, regulation bodies, wireless operators and manufacturers. Yves is known for his ability and versatility to jump in a new environment, to successfully valuate and transfer innovative technology, and to create original solutions at the crossroads of several industries. 
His research focuses on smart devices, efficient wireless networks and Smart Cities minimizing the Energy consumption, EM wave Exposure and Spectrum needs to deliver optimal user experiences.
Yves Lostanlen is also Professor of Wireless Communication Systems at the University of Toronto, Canada, as Industrial Adjunct Fellow in the ECE Communications Group.
A senior IEEE member, Dr. Lostanlen serves as Board Member of the IEEE ComSoc Education Board, as Technical Program Committee Chair for IEEE International Conference on Telecommunications (2012, 2013). He also serves as Guest Editor for EURASIP special issues. Author and co-author of more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific articles, Yves Lostanlen is co-author of 2 chapters of the recent book “LTE-Advanced and Next Generation Wireless Networks: Channel Modelling and Propagation”.

Giuseppe Vecchi

Electromagnetic simulation of a multi-scale world- and beyond

Giuseppe Vecchi received the Laurea and Ph.D. (Dottorato di Ricerca) degrees in electronic engineering from the Politecnico di Torino, Torino, Italy, in 1985 and 1989, respectively, with doctoral research carried out partly at Polytechnic University (Farmingdale, NY). He was a Visiting Scientist with Polytechnic University in 1989-1990, and since 1990 he is with the Department of Electronics, Politecnico di Torino, where he has been Assistant Professor,  Associate Professor (1992 – 2000), and Professor. He was a Visiting Scientist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, in 1992, and has been an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, since 1997. In 2010 he has been nominated academic reference person for the “Innovation Front-End”, a technology-transfer outreach initiative of Politecnico di Torino.
Prof. Vecchi is a Fellow of the IEEE, an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, member of the Board of the European School of Antennas (ESOA), member of the IEEE-APS Educational Committee, and the Chairman of the IEEE AP/MTT/ED Italian joint Chapter.  He serves as Course Organizer and instructor for the ESOA.
His current research activities concern analytical and numerical techniques for analysis, design and diagnostics of antennas and devices, RF plasma heating, electromagnetic compatibility, and imaging.

Ernst Bonek

MIMO propagation channel modeling - Download slides -

Ernst Bonek  (http://www.nt.tuwien.ac.at/about-us/staff/ernst-bonek/) received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr. techn. degrees from Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien). In 1984, he was appointed Full Professor of Radio Frequency Engineering at the TU Wien, where he worked until his retirement in 2004. His field of research has been mobile communications, starting 1984, when the sweeping success of this technology had been by no means apparent.

Contributions:

- 3D super-resolution measurements of the urban radio channel

- “Double-directional” viewpoint of the mobile radio channel

- MIMO propagation channel models

- Advanced antenna designs, mostly smart antennas

1996 - 1999 Board of Directors of Post und Telekom Austria (PTA)
1997 - 2005 Chairman of the "Antennas and Propagation" working group in COST 259 and COST 273
1999 - 2002 Chairman of Commission C “Signals and Systems“ of URSI
1999 Initiator of Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien
2008 Dr. Techn. honoris causa from Lund Universitet, Sweden

Prof. Fan Yang

Microwave and Antenna Institute
Electronic Engineering Department, Tsinghua University
Beijing, China

Progress in Reflectarray Antenna Research: From Enhanced Frequency Features to Advanced Radiation Capabilities - Download slides -

Fan Yang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University, and the Ph.D. degree from University of California, Los Angeles. Currently, he is a Professor at Tsinghua University, and serves as the Director of the Microwave and Antenna Institute. Dr. Yang’s research interests include antenna theory, designs, and measurements, electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures and their applications, computational electromagnetics and optimization techniques, and applied electromagnetic systems. He has published three books, five book chapters, and over 150 journal articles and conference papers. Dr. Yang is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Full Member of URSI/USNC. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagation and Associate Editor-in-Chief for Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society Journal.

AMTA Invited Speaker : Michael H. Francis

Estimating Uncertainties in Antenna Measurements - Download slides -

Michael Francis received the Bachelor’s Degree in physics in 1973 and a Master’s Degree in 1976, both from the University of Colorado.  He was a research assistant at the University of Colorado from 1974 – 1980, where he studied the solar chromosphere-corona transition region.

He joined the National Institute of Standards and Technology (then the National Bureau of Standards) Antenna Metrology Group in 1980.  His research has been primarily in the theory and practice of near-field measurements.  He has participated in the development of probe-position correction methods at NIST for both planar and spherical near-field measurement techniques.  He specializes in uncertainty analysis methods for near-field measurements. He was the project leader for the NIST/Boulder team that performed the electromagnetic testing of the prototype ePassport and ePassport reader. He has organized and lectured at the NIST biannual near-field short course for more than twenty-five years.  He is currently a senior scientist in the Radio-Frequency Fields Group at NIST.

Mr. Francis has received the US Department of Commerce Bronze, Silver and Gold Medals.  He has received the Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) Distinguished Achievement and Distinguished Service Awards.

He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and currently chairs the IEEE Antenna Standards Committee and the Near-Field Working Group.

Anthony Grbic

Metamaterial Surfaces for Near and Far-Field Applications - Download slides -

Anthony Grbic (S’00–M’06) received the B.A.Sc., M.A.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 1998, 2000, and 2005, respectively. In January 2006, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he is currently an Associate Professor. His research interests include engineered electromagnetic structures (metamaterials, electromagnetic band-gap materials, frequency selective surfaces), printed antennas, microwave circuits, wireless power transmission systems, and analytical electromagnetics.

Dr. Grbic received an AFOSR Young Investigator Award as well as an NSF Faculty Early Career Development Award in 2008. In January 2010, he was awarded a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. In 2011, he received an Outstanding Young Engineer Award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society, a Henry Russel Award from the University of Michigan, and a Booker Fellowship from the United States National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science (USNC/URSI). In 2012, he was the inaugural recipient of the Ernest and Bettine Kuh Distinguished Faculty Scholar Award in the Department of Electrical and Computer Science, University of Michigan. Anthony Grbic served as Technical Program Co-Chair for the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting. He is currently the Vice Chair of AP-S Technical Activities, Trident Chapter, IEEE Southeastern Michigan section.

Anja Skrivervik

Implantable antennas: The challenge of efficiency - Download slides -

Anja Skrivervik obtained her electrical engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in 1986, and her PhD from the same institution in 1992, for which she received the Latsis award. After a stay at the University of Rennes as an invited Research Fellow and two years in the industry, she returned part time to EPFL as an Assistant Professor in 1996, and is now a Professeur Titulaire at this institution. Her teaching activities include courses on microwaves and antennas. Her research activities include electrically small antennas, implantable and on body antennas, multifrequency and ultra wideband antennas, numerical techniques for electromagnetics and microwave and millimeter wave MEMS. She is author or co-author of more than 100 scientific publications. She is very active in European collaboration and European projects. She is currently the chairperson of the Swiss URSI, the Swiss representative for COST action 297 and a member of the board of the Center for High Speed Wireless Communications of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research.

Hisamatsu Nakano

Hosei University, Tokyo, Japan

Natural and metamaterial low-profile antennas with emphasis on realization of wideband characteristics - Download slides -


Hisamatsu NAKANO received a Dr. E. degree in electrical engineering from Hosei University, Tokyo, in 1974. He has been a faculty member of Hosei University since 1973, where he is now a Professor in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department. His research topics include numerical methods for low- and high-frequency antennas and optical waveguides. He has published over 290 articles in major refereed journals and is the author or co-author of eight books.
In 1989, he received the IEE (currently IET) International Conference on Antennas and Propagation Best Paper Award. In 1992, he was elected an IEEE Fellow for contributions to the design of spiral and helical antennas, and, in 1994, he received the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation Best Application Paper Award (H. A. Wheeler Award). He also received the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award, in 2006. More recently, in 2010, he received the Prize for Science and Technology from Japan’s Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology.
Prof. Nakano has served as a member of AdCom (2000-2002) and a Region 10 representative (2004-2010) of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society. He is an associate editor of several journals and magazines, such as Electromagnetics, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Magazine, and IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters.

Kevin Boyle

Antenna tuners for mobile applications

Kevin Boyle received a B.Sc. (Hons.) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from City University, London, a M.Sc. (with distinction) in Microwaves and Optoelectronics from University College, London and the Doctor of Technology degree from Delft University of Technology.  
He has more than twenty years experience in the design of a wide range of antennas and associated RF systems.  He was with Marconi Communications Systems Ltd. until to 1997, working on all aspects of antenna system design.  He then joined Philips Research Laboratories (which became NXP Semiconductors Research in 2006) where he was a Principal Research Scientist and a Cluster/Project Leader for antenna and propagation related activities.  In 2008 he joined EPCOS (which has since become TDK-EPC) working as an Antenna Systems Architect.  His main areas of interest include antenna design for mobile communication systems, adaptive RF systems, MIMO/diversity, propagation modelling and related areas of mobile system design.  
Dr. Boyle has actively participated in COST 259 and COST 273, is a member of the IEEE and IET – where currently serving on the Antennas and Propagation Executive Committee - and a Chartered Engineer.  He has published more than thirty papers in refereed international journals and conferences, has contributed to two books and holds more than fifteen patents.