Electromagnetics & Radiation

Thursday, May 31st at 4:00 p.m., Dr Yongxin Guo, National University of Singapore, Singapore, will be presenting a distinguished lecture: “RF in Medicine: Current Status and Challenges of Antennas and Wireless Power”. Day & Time: Thursday, May 31, 2018 4:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Dr Yongxin Guo National University of Singapore, Singapore Location: Room Number: BA 1180 Bahen Centre for Information Technology 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Contact: George V. Eleftheriades Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Abstract: Wireless power and data telemetry technologies for biomedical and healthcare applications have received a lot of attention recently. Numerous applications in medical diagnostics and therapeutics ranging from cardiac pacemakers to emerging devices in visual prosthesis, brain computer interfaces and body area networks have spurred electronic engineers to propose new wireless medical devices. In the meantime, the ageing population poses many challenges to healthcare systems, especially on chronic illness management. In this talk, I would mainly cover our recent research progress on wearable/implantable antennas and wireless power for biomedical applications. A few related ongoing biomedical projects for on-body and in-body applications will be addressed. In addition, I would also briefly introduce my other related research activities. Biography: Yong-Xin Guo received his Ph.D. degree from City University of Hong Kong in 2001. From September 2001 to January 2009, he was with the Institute for Infocomm Research, Singapore, as a Research Scientist. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore (NUS), as an Assistant Professor in February 2009 and was promoted to a tenured Associate Professor in Jan 2013. He has authored or co-authored 206 international journal papers and ~200 international conference papers. Thus far, his publications have been cited more than 6200 times and the H-index is 44 (source: Google Scholar). He holds 8 granted/filed Patents in U.S. or China. His current research interests include antennas for wireless communications and biomedical applications, wireless power for biomedical and IoTs, and MMIC modelling and design. He has graduated 12 PhD students at NUS. Dr Guo was the General Chair/Co-Chair for AWPT 2017, ACES-China 2017, IEEE IMWS-AMP 2015 and IEEE IMWS-Bio 2013. He served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) Co-Chair for IEEE IMWS-AMP 2017 and RFIT2009. He is serving as Associate Editors for IEEE Journal of Electromagnetics, RF and Microwave in Medicine and Biology, IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, and Electronics Letters. He was a recipient of the Young Investigator Award 2009, National University of Singapore. He received 2013 Raj Mittra Travel Grant Senior Researcher Award. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Tuesday, July 17th at 3:00 p.m., Professor Erping Li, Zhejiang University, China, will be presenting “EMC and Frequency Selective Surfaces for 5G Communications”. Day & Time: Tuesday, July 17, 2018 3:00 p.m. ‐ 4:00 p.m. Speaker: Professor Erping Li, Zhejiang University, China Location: 40 St George Street Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2E4 Building: Bahen Centre for Information Technology Room Number: BA1240 Contact: Costas Sarris Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Abstract: The spectrum in the range of 28 GHz is sued for adoption of 5G wireless communication. The novel wideband frequency selective surfaces (FSSs) are explored for the extensive applications in 5G communication such as antenna reflectors, radomes to system level electromagnetic structures. This presentation will touch on a novel broadband bandpass frequency selective surface (FSS) designed for fifth generation (5G) communication. The new structure design employs the vertical vias in the two-dimensional (2-D) periodic arrays, which demonstrates that such a single 2.5-dimensional (2.5-D) periodic layer of via_based structure produces a highly stable angular response up to 75 degrees for both the TE and TM incident angles. The proposed FSS is a good candidate for 5G communication applications. Biography: Erping Li holds the appointment of Changjiang-Qianren Distinguished Professor in Zhejiang University, China, Dean for Zhejiang University-UIUC Institute. Prior that he worked for Singapore A*STAR Institute of High Performance Computing as a Principal Scientist, Director of Photonic Department, Associate Professor at National University of Singapore and adjunct Professor at Singapore Nanyang Technological University. Dr Li’s research interests include advanced computational electromagnetics, electromagnetics in micro-nanoelectronics, electromagnetics in 5G communication, nano-plasmonics for microwave and mmwave. He authored or co-authored over 400 papers published in the referred international journals and conferences, authored two books published at John-Wiley Press(2012) and Cambridge University Press(2014). Dr Li is a Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of MITElectromagnetics Academy, USA. He received numerous international awards including the IEEE EMC Richard Stoddard Award in 2015, IEEE EMC Technical Achievement Award, and Changjiang Chair Professorship Award from the Ministry of Education in China. He has served as General Chair and Technical Program Chair for more than 10 prestigious international conferences and delivered over 80 invited talks and plenary speeches at various international conferences and forums.

Thursday, August 23rd 2018, Prof. Yueping Zhang at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, is presenting an Electromagnetics and Radiation IEEE Distinguished Lecture “Differential Microstrip Antennas”. Day & Time: Thursday August 23rd, 2018 3:00 p.m. ‐ 4:00 p.m. Speaker: Prof. Yueping Zhang at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Bahen Center of Information Technology, Room BA1230 40 St George Street Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2E4 Contact: Costas Sarris Abstract: The earliest antennas implemented by Hertz for the discovery of radio waves were dipole and loop. They are differential. It was Marconi who introduced the ground concept into antennas and realized single-ended monopole antennas for wireless transmission. Compared with differential antennas, single-ended antennas have smaller size and therefore single-ended antennas have dominated in antenna designs. Compared with single-ended circuits, differential circuits permit higher linearity and lower offset and make them immune to power supply variations, temperature changes, and substrate noise. As a result, differential circuits have dominated in integrated circuit designs. Differential circuits call for differential antennas. This is particularly essential in highly-integrated system-on-chip and system-in-package solutions where the system ground plane may be much smaller than one free-space wavelength. Differential antennas perfectly marry (match) with differential circuits. No lossy balanced/unbalanced conversion circuit is needed. As a result, the receiver noise performance and transmitter power efficiency are improved. In this lecture, I present differential microstrip antennas with an emphasis on the comparison of them with single-ended counterparts. First, I extend the well-known cavity model for the single-ended microstrip antennas to analyze the input impedance and radiation characteristics of differential microstrip antennas. Then I examine the design formulas to determine the patch dimensions and the location of the feed point for single-ended microstrip antennas to design differential microstrip antennas. It is shown that the patch length can still be designed using the formulas for the required resonant frequency but the patch width calculated by the formula usually needs to be widen to ensure the excitation of the fundamental mode using the probe feeds. The condition that links the patch width, the locations of the probe feeds, and the excitation of the fundamental mode is the electrical separation, which is a new and unique concept specifically conceived for the design of differential microstrip antennas. Next, I turn to the miniaturization of differential microstrip antennas and discuss some latest achievements. Finally, I summarize the lecture and provide recommendations. Biography: ZHANG Yueping is a full Professor of Electronic Engineering with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (IEEE AP-S), and a Fellow of IEEE. Prof. Zhang was a Member of the Field Award Committee of the IEEE AP-S (2015-2017), an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (2010-2016), and the Chair of the IEEE Singapore MTT/AP joint Chapter (2012). Prof. Zhang was selected by the Recruitment Program of Global Experts of China as a Qianren Scholar at Shanghai Jiao Tong University (2012). He was awarded a William Mong Visiting Fellowship (2005) and appointed as a Visiting Professor (2014) by the University of Hong Kong. Prof. Zhang has published numerous papers, including two invited papers in the Proceedings of the IEEE and one invited paper in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation. He holds 7 US patents. He received the Best Paper Award from the 2nd IEEE/IET International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks and Digital Signal Processing, July 18–20, 2000, Bournemouth, U.K., the Best Paper Prize from the 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Antenna Technology, March 21–23, 2007, Cambridge, U.K., and the Best Paper Award from the 10th IEEE Global Symposium on Millimeter-Waves, May 24–26, 2017, Hong Kong, China. He received the prestigious IEEE AP-S Sergei A. Schelkunoff Prize Paper Award in 2012. Prof. Zhang has made pioneering and significant contributions to the development of the antenna-in-package (AiP) technology that has been widely adopted by chipmakers for millimeter-wave applications. His current research interests include the development of antenna-on-chip (AoC) technology and characterization of chip-scale propagation channels at terahertz for wireless chip area network (WCAN).

Friday August 9th, 2019 at 10:00 a.m. Dr. Xiaoxiong Gu, Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE EMC Society, will be presenting “Opportunities, Challenges and Implementations of Silicon Integration and Packaging in mmWave Radar and Communication Applications”. Day & Time: Friday August 9th, 2019 10:00 a.m. ‐ 11:00 a.m. Speaker: Dr. Xiaoxiong Gu (IBM) Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE EMC Society Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter, IEEE EMC Society Location: Room BA 1200 Bahen Centre for Information Technology 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Contact: Prof. Piero Triverio Abstract: Co-design and integration of RFIC, package, and antennas are critical to enable multiple aspects of 5G communications (backhaul, last mile, mobile access) and are particularly challenging at mmWave frequencies. This talk will cover various important aspects of mmWave antenna module packaging and integration for base station, backhaul, and user equipment applications, respectively. We will first present a historical perspective on Si-based mmWave modules and approaches for antenna and IC integration including trade-offs. We will focus on the challenges, implementation, and characterization of a 28-GHz phased-array module with 64 dual polarized antennas for 5G base station applications. We will then introduce a software-defined phased array radio based on the 28-GHz hardware. The highly re-configurable phased array radio features beam shaping/steering control as well as data TX/RX function control from a single Python-based software interface. Second, we will present a W-band phased-array module with 64-element dual-polarization antennas for radar imaging and backhaul application. The module consists of a multilayer organic chip-carrier package and a 16-element phased-array TX IC or a 32-element RX IC chipset. Third, we will describe a compact, low-power, 60-GHz switched-beam transceiver module suitable for handset integration incorporating 4 antennas that supports both normal and end-fire directions for a wide link spatial coverage. Biography: Xiaoxiong Gu received the Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington, Seattle, USA, in 2006. He joined IBM Research as a Research Staff Member in January 2007. His research activities are focused on 5G radio access technologies, optoelectronic and mm-wave packaging, electrical designs, modeling and characterization of communication, imaging radar and computation systems. He has recently worked on antenna-in-package design and integration for mm-wave imaging and communication systems including Ka-band, V-band and W-band phased-array modules. He has also worked on 3D electrical packaging and signal/power integrity analysis for high-speed I/O subsystems including on-chip and off-chip interconnects. He has been involved in developing novel TSV and interposer technologies for heterogeneous system integration. Dr. Gu has co-authored over 80 peer-reviewed publications and holds 9 issued patents. He was a co-recipient of IEEE ISSCC 2017 Lewis Winner Award for Outstanding Paper and IEEE JSSC 2017 Best Paper Award (the world’s first reported silicon-based 5G mmWave phased array antenna module operating at 28GHz). He was a co-recipient of the 2017 Pat Goldberg Memorial Award to the best paper in computer science, electrical engineering, and mathematics published by IBM Research. He received an IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 2016, four IBM Plateau Invention Awards in 2012 ~ 2016, the IEEE EMC Symposium Best Paper Award in 2013, two SRC Mahboob Khan Outstanding Industry Liaison Awards in 2012 and 2014, the Best Conference Paper Award at IEEE EPEPS in 2011, IEC DesignCon Paper Awards in 2008 and 2010, the Best Interactive Session Paper Award at IEEE DATE in 2008, and the Best Session Paper Award at IEEE ECTC in 2007. Dr. Gu is the co-chair of Professional Interest Community (PIC) on Computer System Designs at IBM. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and has been serving on different program committees for MTT-S, EPEPS, ECTC, EDAPS and DesignCon. Dr. Gu was the General Chair of IEEE EPEPS 2018 in San Jose, CA. He is also a Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE EMC Society in 2019-2020.

Monday October 7th, 2019 at 4:30 p.m. Dr. Edward Ackerman, Vice President of R&D for Photonic Systems and IEEE Fellow, will be presenting “Analog Photonic Systems: Features & Techniques to Optimize Performance”. Day & Time: Monday October 7th, 2019 4:30 p.m. ‐ 5:30 p.m. Speaker: Dr. Edward Ackerman Vice President of R&D for Photonic Systems, Inc. of Billerica, Massachusetts IEEE Fellow Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Sidney Smith Hall – Room SS 2108 University of Toronto – St. George Campus 100 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 3G3 Contact: George V. Eleftheriades, FRSC, FIEEE Abstract: Both the scientific and the defense communities wish to receive and process information occupying ever-wider portions of the electromagnetic spectrum. This can often create an analog-to-digital conversion “bottleneck”. Analog photonic channelization, linearization, and frequency conversion systems can be designed to alleviate this bottleneck. Moreover, the low loss and dispersion of optical fiber and integrated optical waveguides enable most of the components in a broadband sensing or communication system, including all of the analog-to-digital and digital processing hardware, to be situated many feet or even miles from the antennas or other sensors with almost no performance penalty. The anticipated presentation will highlight the advantages and other features of analog photonic systems (including some specific systems that the author has constructed and tested for the US Department of Defense), and will review and explain multiple techniques for optimizing their performance. Biography: Edward Ackerman received Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Drexel University in 1994. From 1989 through 1994 he was employed as a microwave photonics engineer at Martin Marietta’s Electronics Laboratory in Syracuse, New York. From 1995 to July 1999 he was a member of the Technical Staff at MIT Lincoln Laboratory. Since 1999 he has been Vice President of R&D for Photonic Systems, Inc. of Billerica, Massachusetts. Dr. Ackerman is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Thursday March 5th, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. Dr. Markus Gardill, IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer, will be presenting an IEEE Distinguished Lecture “Automotive Radar – A Signal Processing Perspective on Current Technology and Future Systems”. Day & Time: Thursday March 5th, 2020 4:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Dr. Markus Gardill IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Bahen Centre, Room BA 1180 University of Toronto – St. George Campus 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Contact: George V. Eleftheriades, FRSC, FIEEE Abstract: Radar systems are a key technology of modern vehicle safety & comfort systems. Without doubt it will only be the symbiosis of Radar, Lidar and camera-based sensor systems which can enable advanced autonomous driving functions soon. Several next generation car models are such announced to have up to 10 radar sensors per vehicle, allowing for the generation of a radar-based 360° surround view necessary for advanced driver assistance as well as semi-autonomous operation. Hence the demand from the automotive industry for high-precision, multi-functional radar systems is higher than ever before, and the increased requirements on functionality and sensor capabilities lead to research and development activities in the field of automotive radar systems in both industry and academic worlds. Current automotive radar technology is almost exclusively based on the principle of frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar, which has been well known for several decades. However, together with an increase of hardware capabilities such as higher carrier frequencies, modulation bandwidths and ramp slopes, as well as a scaling up of simultaneously utilized transmit and receive channels with independent modulation features, new degrees of freedom have been added to traditional FMCW radar system design and signal processing. The anticipated presentation will accordingly introduce the topic with a review on the fundamentals of radar and FMCW radar. After introducing the system architecture of traditional and modern automotive FMCW radar sensors, with e.g. insights into the concepts of distributed or centralized processing and sensor data fusion, the presentation will dive into the details of fast-chirp FMCW processing – the modulation mode which is used by the vast majority of current automotive FMCW radar systems. Starting with the fundamentals of target range and velocity estimation based on the radar data matrix, the spatial dimension available using modern single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems will be introduced and radar processing based on the radar data cube is discussed. Of interest is the topic of angular resolution – one of the key drawbacks which e.g. render Lidar systems superior to radar in some situations. Consequently, traditional and modern methods for direction of arrival estimation in FMCW radar systems are presented, starting from traditional monopulse-like algorithms to modern frameworks for superresolution DoA estimation. The presentation will then introduce the great challenge of FMCW radar system interference. While FMCW radar interference is a challenge which can be handled using adaptive signal processing in today’s systems, it will become a severe problem with the increasing number of radar-sensors equipped vehicles in dense traffic situations in the near future and a solution to the expected increase in interference is still an open question. It is this problem of interference, together with some added functionality, which motivated the proposal of alternative radar waveforms such as pseudo-random or orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar for automotive radar systems. Although not yet of great interest from an industrial perspective, the fundamentals and capabilities of both technologies will be introduced in the remainder of the anticipated presentation. Biography: Markus Gardill (S’11-M’15) was born in Bamberg, Germany in 1985. He received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree in systems of information and multimedia technology/electrical engineering from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. In 2010, he joined the Institute for Electronics Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg as a research assistant and teaching fellow. From 2014 to 2015 he was head of the team Radio Communication Technology. In late 2015 he joined the Robert Bosch GmbH as an R&D engineer for optical and imaging metrology systems and leading the cluster of non-destructive testing for the international production network. In 2016 he joined the automotive radar business segment of InnoSenT GmbH, where he is currently head of the group radar signal processing & tracking. His main research interest include radar and communication systems, antenna (array) design, and signal processing algorithms. His particular interest is spatio-temporal processing such as e.g. beamforming and direction-of-arrival estimation with a focus on combining the worlds of signal processing and microwave/electromagnetics. Dr. Gardill is an IEEE Young Professional. He is member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) and currently serves as co-chair of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee Digital Signal Processing (MTT-9). He regularly acts as reviewer and TPRC member for several journals and conferences, will act as associate editor of the Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques beginning with 2020 and serves as Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (DML) for the DML term 2018-2020 with a presentation focussing automotive radar systems.

Friday, February 7, 2020 Zoya Popovic, Distinguished Professor and Lockheed Martin Endowed Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado, will be presenting “Medical Applications of Microwaves”. Day & Time: Friday, February 7, 2020 3:00 p.m. ‐ 4:00 p.m. Speakers: Zoya Popovic Distinguished Professor Lockheed Martin Endowed Chair of Electrical Engineering, University of Colorado Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Bahen Centre for Information Technology – Room 2135 40 St George street Toronto, Ontario Canada M5S 2E4 Register: https://meetings.vtools.ieee.org/m/219067 Contact: Prof. Costas Sarris Abstract: This talk will first present a brief overview of the activities in the microwave group at the University of Colorado, Boulder, following a discussion on two topics that use microwave techniques for medical applications: (1) design of exciters and bore for human-sized 10.5-T MRI machines; and (2) a study of near-field radiometry for internal temperature measurements of the human body. The focus of the first topic is design of cavity and probes for improving uniformity of the circularly-polarized B-field inside phantoms for high-field travelling-wave MRI imagers. The phenomenology of high-field imaging and its resulting challenges will be highlighted, followed by simulation and experimental data using a research Siemens instrument. Although MRI can be used for measuring internal body temperature, it is expensive, large and slow. Radiometry is shown to be a feasible method for implementing a portable or even wearable microwave thermometer. One of the possible frequencies of operation is the 1.4 GHz quiet band, which is appropriate for centimeter penetration into tissues with minimized radio-frequency interference (RFI). The total blackbody power from a tissue stack is received by a probe placed on the skin, designed to receive a high percentage of the total power from a buried tissue layer. Temperature retrieval for sub-surface tissue layers is performed using near-field weighting functions, obtained by full-wave simulations with known tissue complex electrical parameters. Measurements are presented using a calibrated Dicke radiometer at 1.4GHz for various phantom tissues. It is shown that temperature can be tracked within a fraction of a degree for a phantom muscle tissue layer under phantom fat and skin layers. Biography: Zoya Popovic is a Distinguished Professor and the Lockheed Martin Endowed Chair of Electrical Engineering at the University of Colorado. She obtained her Dipl.Ing. degree at the University of Belgrade, Serbia, and her Ph.D. at Caltech. In 2001/03 and 2014, she was a Visiting Professor with the Technical University of Munich, Germany and ISAE in Toulouse, France, respectively. She was a Chair of Excellence at Carlos III University in Madrid in 2018-19. She has graduated 60 PhDs and currently advises 14 doctoral students in various areas of microwave engineering. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and the recipient of two IEEE MTT Microwave Prizes for best journal papers, the White House NSF Presidential Faculty Fellow award, the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal, the ASEE/HP Terman Medal and the German Humboldt Research Award. She was named IEEE MTT Distinguished Educator in 2013 and the University of Colorado Distinguished Research Lecturer in 2015. She has a husband physicist and three daughters who can all solder.

Thursday March 5th, 2020 at 4:00 p.m. Dr. Markus Gardill, IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer, will be presenting an IEEE Distinguished Lecture “Automotive Radar – A Signal Processing Perspective on Current Technology and Future Systems”. Day & Time: Thursday March 5th, 2020 4:00 p.m. ‐ 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Dr. Markus Gardill IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer Organizers: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Bahen Centre, Room BA 1180 University of Toronto – St. George Campus 40 St George St, Toronto, ON M5S 2E4 Contact: George V. Eleftheriades, FRSC, FIEEE Abstract: Radar systems are a key technology of modern vehicle safety & comfort systems. Without doubt it will only be the symbiosis of Radar, Lidar and camera-based sensor systems which can enable advanced autonomous driving functions soon. Several next generation car models are such announced to have up to 10 radar sensors per vehicle, allowing for the generation of a radar-based 360° surround view necessary for advanced driver assistance as well as semi-autonomous operation. Hence the demand from the automotive industry for high-precision, multi-functional radar systems is higher than ever before, and the increased requirements on functionality and sensor capabilities lead to research and development activities in the field of automotive radar systems in both industry and academic worlds. Current automotive radar technology is almost exclusively based on the principle of frequency-modulated continuous-wave (FMCW) radar, which has been well known for several decades. However, together with an increase of hardware capabilities such as higher carrier frequencies, modulation bandwidths and ramp slopes, as well as a scaling up of simultaneously utilized transmit and receive channels with independent modulation features, new degrees of freedom have been added to traditional FMCW radar system design and signal processing. The anticipated presentation will accordingly introduce the topic with a review on the fundamentals of radar and FMCW radar. After introducing the system architecture of traditional and modern automotive FMCW radar sensors, with e.g. insights into the concepts of distributed or centralized processing and sensor data fusion, the presentation will dive into the details of fast-chirp FMCW processing – the modulation mode which is used by the vast majority of current automotive FMCW radar systems. Starting with the fundamentals of target range and velocity estimation based on the radar data matrix, the spatial dimension available using modern single-input multiple-output (SIMO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar systems will be introduced and radar processing based on the radar data cube is discussed. Of interest is the topic of angular resolution – one of the key drawbacks which e.g. render Lidar systems superior to radar in some situations. Consequently, traditional and modern methods for direction of arrival estimation in FMCW radar systems are presented, starting from traditional monopulse-like algorithms to modern frameworks for superresolution DoA estimation. The presentation will then introduce the great challenge of FMCW radar system interference. While FMCW radar interference is a challenge which can be handled using adaptive signal processing in today’s systems, it will become a severe problem with the increasing number of radar-sensors equipped vehicles in dense traffic situations in the near future and a solution to the expected increase in interference is still an open question. It is this problem of interference, together with some added functionality, which motivated the proposal of alternative radar waveforms such as pseudo-random or orthogonal-frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radar for automotive radar systems. Although not yet of great interest from an industrial perspective, the fundamentals and capabilities of both technologies will be introduced in the remainder of the anticipated presentation. Biography: Markus Gardill (S’11-M’15) was born in Bamberg, Germany in 1985. He received the Dipl.-Ing. and Dr.-Ing. degree in systems of information and multimedia technology/electrical engineering from the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 2010 and 2015, respectively. In 2010, he joined the Institute for Electronics Engineering at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nürnberg as a research assistant and teaching fellow. From 2014 to 2015 he was head of the team Radio Communication Technology. In late 2015 he joined the Robert Bosch GmbH as an R&D engineer for optical and imaging metrology systems and leading the cluster of non-destructive testing for the international production network. In 2016 he joined the automotive radar business segment of InnoSenT GmbH, where he is currently head of the group radar signal processing & tracking. His main research interest include radar and communication systems, antenna (array) design, and signal processing algorithms. His particular interest is spatio-temporal processing such as e.g. beamforming and direction-of-arrival estimation with a focus on combining the worlds of signal processing and microwave/electromagnetics. Dr. Gardill is an IEEE Young Professional. He is member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (IEEE MTT-S) and currently serves as co-chair of the IEEE MTT-S Technical Committee Digital Signal Processing (MTT-9). He regularly acts as reviewer and TPRC member for several journals and conferences, will act as associate editor of the Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques beginning with 2020 and serves as Distinguished Microwave Lecturer (DML) for the DML term 2018-2020 with a presentation focussing automotive radar systems.

On Wednesday, October 7, 2020 at 4:00 p.m., Prof. James Hwang of Cornell University will present “Microwaving a Biological Cell Alive ‒ Broadband Label-free Noninvasive Electrical Characterization of a Live Cell”. Day & Time: Wednesday, October 7, 2020 4:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. Speaker: Prof. James Hwang of Cornell University Organizer: IEEE Toronto Electromagnetics & Radiation Chapter Location: Virtual – Zoom Contact: George Eleftheriades Abstract: Microwave is not just for cooking, smart cars, or mobile phones. We can take advantage of the wide electromagnetic spectrum to do wonderful things that are more vital to our lives. For example, microwave ablation of cancer tumor is already in wide use, and microwave remote monitoring of vital signs is becoming more important as the population ages. This talk will focus on a biomedical use of microwave at the single-cell level. At low power, microwave can readily penetrate a cell membrane to interrogate what is inside a cell, without cooking it or otherwise hurting it. It is currently the fastest, most compact, and least costly way to tell whether a cell is alive or dead. On the other hand, at higher power but lower frequency, the electromagnetic signal can interact strongly with the cell membrane to drill temporary holes of nanometer size. The nanopores allow drugs to diffuse into the cell and, based on the reaction of the cell, individualized medicine can be developed and drug development can be sped up in general. Conversely, the nanopores allow strands of DNA molecules to be pulled out of the cell without killing it, which can speed up genetic engineering. Lastly, by changing both the power and frequency of the signal, we can have either positive or negative dielectrophoresis effects, which we have used to coerce a live cell to the examination table of Dr. Microwave, then usher it out after examination. These interesting uses of microwave and the resulted fundamental knowledge about biological cells will be explored in the talk. Register: Please visit https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/239462 to register. Biography: James Hwang is Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University. He graduated from the same department with a Ph.D. degree. After years of industrial experience at IBM, Bell Labs, GE, and GAIN, he spent most of his academic career at Lehigh University. He cofounded GAIN and QED; the latter became the public company IQE. Between 2011 and 2013, he was the Program Officer for GHz-THz Electronics at the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research. He has been a visiting professor at Cornell University in the US, Marche Polytechnic University in Italy, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, East China Normal University, and University of Science and Technology in China. He is an IEEE Life Fellow and a Distinguished Microwave Lecturer. He is also a Track Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. He has published more than 350 refereed technical papers and been granted eight U.S. patents. He has researched for decades on the design, modeling and characterization of optical, electronic, and micro- electromechanical devices and circuits. His current research interest focuses on electromagnetic sensors for individual biological cells, scanning microwave microscopy, and two-dimensional atomic-layered materials and devices.

The U of T Student Chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) (https://edu.ieee.org/ca-uotaps/) invites you to the following talk of our 2020-2021 seminar series: “Quasi-Optical Antennas for Space Applications”, presented by the European Space Agency antenna engineer, Nelson J. G. Fonseca, on Tuesday, Dec. 08, 12 PM ET. Day & Time: Tuesday, December 8, 2020 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Speaker: Nelson J. G. Fonseca Organizer: U of T Student Chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Location: Online (link will be provided to registrants) Contact: Parinaz Naseri Abstract: This presentation provides an overview of recent multiple beam lens antenna developments supported by the European Space Agency, for applications ranging from satcom payloads, to imaging systems and microwave instruments. There are also on-going transfer of technology activities for 5G terrestrial communication systems. The presentation will cover related developments on polarizers, providing polarization conversion as well as polarization selectivity for advanced antenna systems. Register: Please visit https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/250057 to register. Biography: Nelson J. G. Fonseca (Senior Member, IEEE) received the M.Eng. degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electrotechnique, Electronique, Informatique, Hydraulique et Telecommunications (ENSEEIHT), Toulouse, France, in 2003, the M.Sc. degree from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal, Quebec, Canada, also in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree from Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse – Université de Toulouse, France, in 2010, all in electrical engineering. Since 2009, he works in the Antenna and Sub-Millimetre Waves Section, European Space Agency (ESA), Noordwijk, The Netherlands. His current research interests include multiple beam antennas for space missions, beamformer theory and design, ground terminal antennas and novel manufacturing techniques. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He contributed to 25 technical innovations, protected by over 40 patents issued or pending.

On Monday, February 8, 2021 at 11:00 a.m., IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society is hosting “Glide Symmetries: A New Degree of Freedom for the Design of Periodic Structures”. Day & Time: Monday, February 8, 2021 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Speaker: Oscar Quevedo-Teruel of KTH Royal Institute of Technology Organizer(s): IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Location: Virtual – Zoom Contact: George Eleftheriades Abstract: Glide symmetries were employed for electromagnetic purposes during the 60s and 70s. Those works were focused on one-dimensional structures with potential application in low-dispersive leaky wave antennas. However, the development of planar/printed technologies in the 80s and 90s associated to their low-cost for low-frequency applications, the studies of glide symmetries stopped. In the beginning of the 21st century, with arrival of metamaterials, there was a significant development of the understanding of periodic structures, and new methods of analysis were introduced. This theoretical development, together with the interest of industry in mm-waves, particularly for communications systems such as 5G, created an opportunity to explore the possibilities of glide symmetries, especially in two-dimensional configurations. Glide-symmetric structures has recently attracted the attention of researchers due to their attractive properties for practical applications. Among their interesting properties are low-dispersive responses in fully metallic structures such as parallel plate or co-planar waveguides (CPW), bandgaps associated to the symmetries and large electromagnetic bandgaps (EBGs). In this talk, Dr. Quevedo-Teruel will describe the most significant works in glide symmetries, including their application for the design of gap-waveguide technology and planar lens antennas with steerable angles of radiation. Register: Please visit https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/256420 to register. Biography: Oscar Quevedo-Teruel is a Senior Member of the IEEE. He received his Telecommunication Engineering Degree from Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain in 2005, part of which was done at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden. He obtained his Ph.D. from Carlos III University of Madrid in 2010 and was then invited as a postdoctoral researcher to the University of Delft (The Netherlands). From 2010-2011, Dr. Quevedo-Teruel joined the Department of Theoretical Physics of Condensed Matter at Universidad Autonoma de Madrid as a research fellow and went on to continue his postdoctoral research at Queen Mary University of London from 2011-2013. In 2014, he joined the Division for Electromagnetic Engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden where he is an Associate Professor and Director of the Master Programme in Electromagnetics Fusion and Space Engineering. He has been an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation since 2018 and is the founder and editor-in-chief of the EurAAP journal Reviews of Electromagnetics. He was the EurAAP delegate for Sweden, Norway, and Iceland from 2018-2020 and he is now a member of the EurAAP Board of Directors. He is a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society for the period of 2019-2022, and Chair of the IEEE APS Educational Initiatives Programme since 2020. He has made scientific contributions to higher symmetries, transformation optics, lens antennas, metasurfaces, leaky wave antennas, and high impedance surfaces. He is the co-author of 95 journal papers and 150 at international conferences.

The University of Toronto Student Chapter of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) invites you to the following talk in our 2020-2021 seminar series: Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Near-Field Imaging: Applications, Methods, and Challenges, presented by Natalia K. Nikolova from McMaster University, on Friday, March 19, 2021, 4-5 pm EDT. Abstract: In the last decade, we have witnessed dramatic decrease in the price and size of on-chip transceivers and radars along with their increased functionality. This has spurred unprecedented growth in imaging, sensing and detection applications, defining the current and future growth of wireless technology. We will introduce the methods of real-time microwave and millimeter-wave imaging, which allow to “see” inside optically opaque objects. The electromagnetic models of wave propagation that link the object’s electrical properties to the microwave measurements are briefly introduced with an emphasis on the approximations, which enable real-time image reconstruction. We will discuss the detrimental effects of these approximations on the reconstructed images and how these effects are mitigated through the careful design of the acquisition apparatus and through data processing. We will briefly dive into the inner workings of two reconstruction methods, microwave holography and the scattered-power mapping, along with examples of real-time quantitative image reconstruction of complex dielectric objects. Speaker: Natalia K. Nikolova of McMaster University Biography: Natalia K. Nikolova (IEEE S’93–M’97–SM’05–F’11) received the Dipl. Eng. (Radioelectronics) degree from the Technical University of Varna, Bulgaria, in 1989, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1997. From 1998 to 1999, she held a Postdoctoral Fellowship of the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) at Dalhousie University and McMaster University. In 1999, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University, where she is currently a Professor. Her research interests include inverse scattering, microwave imaging, as well as computer-aided analysis and design of high-frequency structures and antennas. Prof. Nikolova has authored more than 270 refereed manuscripts, 6 book chapters, and two books, including the monograph “Introduction to Microwave Imaging” (Cambridge University Press, 2017). She has delivered 48 invited lectures around the world on the subjects of microwave imaging and detection as well as computer-aided electromagnetic analysis and design. Prof. Nikolova is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Canadian Academy of Engineering and the Engineering Institute of Canada. She served as an IEEE Distinguished Microwave Lecturer from 2010 to 2013.