PhD Supervisor: Professor Steven Gao

Application Deadline: 20 August 2013

Funding Availability: This research project has funding attached. Applications for this project are welcome from suitably qualified candidates worldwide. Successful candidate will receive a bursary of £14,604 per annum for 3 years.

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship within the Broadband Wireless Communication Research Group in the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. This is a 3-year project, funded by the European Commission (EC) Space Programme, and the researcher is to work under the supervision of Professor Steven Gao. The PhD student is to start on October 1, 2013. A post-doctoral researcher will also be employed in this project, and work together with the PhD student.

The University of Kent is well-known internationally, for research work in frequency-selective surfaces (FSS), antennas, RF/microwave/millimetre-wave technologies and wireless communications. The research is conducted as part of the EC project GANSAT in collaboration with leading academic and industrial partners across the Europe. The aim of this project is to investigate the design, modelling and development of novel millimetre-wave antennas and active phased arrays for next-generation satellite communications and inter-satellite communications. Gallium nitride (GaN) technologies will be employed in the millimeter-wave front ends of transmitter and receivers, which will lead to significant reduction in size, mass and cost of transceivers due to high power density GaN devices. The project will investigate active phased arrays for space applications. Such an active phased array-integrated transceiver is expected to achieve significantly better performance at smaller size and lower cost, compared to the state of the art.

The University of Kent has excellent antenna and RF/microwave/millimetre-wave measurement facilities including various anechoic, near-field and plane-wave chambers, the largest of which operates between 400MHz and 110GHz with a totally new measurement system including a dedicated vector network analyzer. The antennas laboratories also contain broadband network analysers operating from 10MHz to 110GHz. It has a well-equipped mechanical workshop with newly installed computer controlled machinery, which is for the fabrication of antennas and RF/microwave circuits.

In this project, the main roles of the PhD student will include: 1) the design, modelling, simulation and analysis of novel millimetre-wave antenna elements and active phased array antennas for satellite communications; 2). Antenna fabrication and testing; 3). Millimeter-wave circuits designs;4). The student will give presentations to European partners and write technical reports and publications in international journals and conferences. The PhD student will be supported by a post-doctoral researcher at Kent and other academic and industrial partners across the Europe.

The ideal candidate has a Master degree in engineering or physics with experience in antenna designs, or electromagnetics or RF or microwave engineering. Working or research experience in antennas or RF or microwave engineering will be a plus. 

Informal enquiries regarding this PhD opportunity can be addressed to Professor Steven Gao (s.gao@kent.ac.uk). Applications should be submitted by 20 August 2013. 

Application:  Apply online by clicking the Apply link below and select the following:

Funding Notes:

Funding open to students worldwide. Successful candidate will receive a bursary of £14,604 per annum for 3 years.

References:

www.kent.ac.uk

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