Short Courses

AM courses will take place from 8:00 AM to 12:00 PM
PM courses will take place from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM
All day courses will take place from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM

All Short Courses will be in the Spokane Convention Center (SCC)


SC1 (Sunday, Full Day) Room: SCC-201A

Dielectric Resonator Antennas, Theory, Design and Applications with Recent Advancement

Ahmed A. Kishk, University of Mississippi, USA

An overview for the development of the dielectric resonator antennas will be provided. Theory of operation will be discussed to provide basic understanding. Excitation mechanisms such as probe, slot, image line and waveguides are presented. Mutual coupling and wide scanning capabilities are considered. Techniques for broadband and size reduction of the DRA are presented. Recent developments of DR as a multifunction device for antennas and microwave circuits as a low and high Q-factor simultaneously will be provided.



SC2 (Sunday, Full Day) Room: SCC-201B

Reflector Antenna Design and Analysis

Peter Meincke, TICRA, Denmark

The course gives an introduction to the design and analysis of single and dual reflector antennas, center-fed as well as offset. After a review of the analysis methods commonly employed for space- and Earth-station reflector antennas, the basic design principles are presented. First, single and dual spot-beam antennas are considered with the relation between size, feed illumination, directivity, and sidelobe level. Second, the influence of blockage by struts, subreflector, and feed is discussed. Third, the origin of cross polarization in offset designs is addressed and it is shown how to improve the polarization characteristics in dual reflector systems by employing the Mizuguchi compensation principle. Hands-on experience in reflector antenna design is obtained during the course by using the software package GRASP (participants must bring their own laptop).



SC3 (Sunday, Full Day) Room: SCC-201C

Electromagnetic Band Gap (EBG) Structures in Antenna Engineering: From Fundamentals to Recent Advances

Yahya Rahmat-Samii, University of California, Los Angeles, USA, and Fan Yang, University of Mississippi, USA

This comprehensive and application-oriented short course on the state-of-the-art in electromagnetic band gap (EBG) engineering explains the theories, designs, and antenna applications of EBG structures. The course will start with an overview of the EBG research history and important discoveries. An accurate and efficient FDTD/PBC algorithm will be presented for general periodic structures analysis. Next, detailed presentations will be provided on the unique electromagnetic features and diverse functional designs of EBG structures. Furthermore, a wealth of practical antenna examples with design details and measurement data will be presented to illustrate promising applications of EBG structures in antenna engineering.



SC4 (Sunday AM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202A

Introduction to Adaptive Arrays

Randy L. Haupt, Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., USA

Adaptive arrays improve the signal reception by rejecting interference. This short course is broken into three parts: (1) Fundamentals - arrays, signals, terminology, (2) Algorithms - gradient based, direction inversion of the covariance matrix, and random search, and (3) Advanced concepts - array calibration and compensation, multipath, partial adaptive nulling, MIMO, STAP, digital beamforming, and reconfigurable arrays. The material in the course is based on the two books: R. A. Monzingo, R. L. Haupt, and T.W. Miller, Introduction to Adaptive Arrays, 2ed., SciTech Publishing, 2010 and R.L Haupt, Antenna Arrays: A Computational Approach, New York: Wiley, 2010.



SC5 (Sunday AM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202B

Compressed Sensing in Electromagnetism: Theory and Applications

Marco Donald Migliore, University of Cassino, Italy

Compressed sensing is a novel paradigm in data acquisition that allows to represent sparse data in an efficient and accurate way using non-linear interpolation techniques. The aim of the course is to introduce the compressed sensing theory, with a particular stress on the practical applications in Antennas and Propagation community. The mathematical details are limited as much as possible, using an intuitive approach based on geometrical representations. The last part of the course is devoted to the discussion of the wide range of possible applications of compressed sensing in electromagnetism, including antenna testing and synthesis, microwave tomography, source position identification, and wireless sensor networks.



SC7 (Sunday PM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202A

Transient Analysis of Electromagnetic Waves Based on Numerical Inversion of Laplace Transform

Qingsheng Zeng, Communications Research Centre Canada

This short course addresses one method based on numerical inversion of Laplace transform (NILT), which overcomes the restrictions in previous approaches, leads to good accuracy in both late and early time, and has a simple algorithm, short calculation time, small required memory size and readily controlled error. To our knowledge, this would be the first time that systematically treats the theory of NILT and its application in the transient analysis of electromagnetic waves. This short course highlights how to overcome the restrictions of NILT, and places the emphasis on how to extend and apply this method to a variety of cases.



SC8 (Sunday PM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202B

Antenna Design for Mobile Terminals

Zhijun Zhang, Tsinghua University, China

The lecturer is an antenna engineer turned professor who has worked at Apple, Nokia and Amphenol. This is a comprehensive course for fresh and intermediate engineers involved in antenna design. The course instructs attendees through all aspects of real world antenna designs, which includes how to make an stable antenna fixture, designing various types of antennas, designing an antenna with good manufacturability, using various matching technique to improve antenna performance, setting up production measurement for mass manufacturing, and making antenna SAR and HAC Compliant. Most popular antenna categories, such as internal PIFA, integral IFA, internal folded monopole, ceramic antennas, stubby antennas and whip stubby antennas, are introduced in the course. The course focuses on the basic principle of each kind of antenna and emphasizes on key parameters of antenna optimization. Complimentary matching software, which accompanies with the course, is provided so readers can practice various antenna matching technique and design matching circuits for real projects.



SC11 (Friday, Full Day) Room: SCC-201C

GPU Acceleration of Computational Electromagnetics Software

Daniel L. Faircloth, R. Todd Lee, Tyler N. Killian, and James G. Moloney, Georgia Tech Research Institute, USA

In many types of computational electromagnetics codes, the simulation time increases rapidly as the problem size (number of unknowns) increases. As problems become larger, it is necessary to look to new approaches to improve performance. In this course, we present techniques for using relatively inexpensive, off the shelf graphical processing units (GPUs) for computation. For many applications, 20-100x or more speed-ups can be achieved over equivalent conventional CPU codes. Our focus will be on the NVIDIA CUDA and OpenCL frameworks. We will discuss acceleration techniques for the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, the frequency-domain method of moments (MoM), and finite element method (FEM). In addition, we will discuss acceleration of other algorithms useful in CEM and signal processing such as FFTs. The attendee will walk away from the course with an understanding of practical GPU concepts and software examples of accelerated CEM applications.



SC13 (Friday AM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202B

Calderon Preconditioning in Computational Electromagnetics

Francesco Andriulli, TELECOM Bretagne, France, and Eric Michielssen, University of Michigan, USA

This course will provide an introduction to Calderon preconditioning techniques for integral equations pertinent to the analysis of electromagnetic boundary value problems. Calderon methods permit the construction of rapidly convergent iterative solvers for electric and combined field integral equations and as such are a perfect complement to fast multipole and related accelerators. Applications of Calderon-enhanced integral equation solvers range from antenna analysis to the characterization of microwave devices and circuits, the analysis of electromagnetic compatibility phenomena, and the synthesis of metamaterials. The course will cover theoretical and practical issues related to the development and implementation of Calderon-enhanced integral equation solvers. In addition, the course will detail the incorporation of Calderon preconditioners into existing integral equation codes and their interaction with fast matrix-vector multiplication schemes. Finally, the course will compare Calderon preconditioners on theoretical, practical, and performance grounds to other preconditioners used in CEM.



SC14 (Friday AM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202C

Internal Handheld Device Antennas: Traditional Design, Recent Advances, and Future Perspectives for Bio-Compatible Handheld Device Antennas

Kin-Lu Wong, National Sun Yat-sen University, Taiwan

Internal WWAN and LTE antennas for handheld devices including handsets and tablet PCs have recently shown great advances. Traditional design was mainly based on λ/4-PIFA. Various planar antennas including printed λ/8-monopole, λ/8-PIFA, λ/4-loop and λ/4-slot have been demonstrated for achieving much smaller size yet wideband operation. These advances will be presented. Internal antennas with high radiation efficiency yet low near-field emission to achieve acceptable HAC and Head/Hand or Body SAR values have also been demanded. Such antennas with acceptable HAC or SAR values can be treated as bio-compatible handheld device antennas, whose design techniques and future perspectives will be discussed.



SC15 (Friday PM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202A

Array Mutual Coupling: Physical Interpretation and Numerical Modeling

Christophe Craeye, Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium

Several complementary routes to mutual-coupling analysis are provided. The limitations of single-mode approximations are made clear and physical interpretation of mutual coupling for arrays made of complex elements is provided. From a numerical point of view, the Method of Moments (MoM) is considered and it is shown how regular finite-array and infinite-array approaches can be accurately reconciled by combining the Array Scanning Method with the Macro Basis Functions approximation. Applications are provided for both phased arrays and metamaterials. The attendees will have the opportunity to try out most of the taught concepts with an open-source MoM code in Matlab language.



SC16 (Friday PM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202B

Design of Low-Profile Antennas with Emphasis on Tilted Beam Formation

Hisamatsu Nakano, Hosei University, Japan

This course provides new techniques that form a tilted beam without adopting conventional array techniques that use phase shifters. Eleven antennas are discussed; (1) right-handed grid leaky wave antenna, (2) left-handed transmission-line leaky wave antenna, (3) bent four-leaf and two-leaf antennas, (4) reconfigurable/smart antenna, (5) inverted F antenna with an EBG reflector, (6) patch antenna with an inhomogeneous plate, (7) double-loop antenna with perturbation elements, (8) internal-excitation single-arm spiral antenna, (9) loop-based grid array antenna, (10) external-excitation spiral antenna array, and (11) spiral and helical antenna arrays with high gain and high aperture efficiency.



SC17 (Friday PM, Half Day) Room: SCC-202C

Introduction to Over-The-Air MIMO Performance Evaluation Methods and Techniques

Steven Schennum, Gonzaga University, USA, Michael D. Foegelle, ETS-Lindgren, USA, William Young, National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA, and Moray Rumney, Agilent Technologies, Scotland

Several methods for measuring MIMO OTA performance are being considered by CTIA, 3GPP and other standards bodies. Most methods rely on the creation of a spatially rich RF environment using either a reverberation chamber or anechoic chamber with multiple antennas. These two alternative methods along with a third method will be discussed by leading experts. The third method consists of two stages. In the first stage, the antennas are characterized in an anechoic chamber. In the second stage, the antenna results are convolved with a 3D channel model and applied directly to the device antenna connectors via a channel fading emulator.