Compressive Millimetre-wave Antennas for Computational Security-Screening Radars

Imaging using millimetre-waves (mmW) brings several advantages such as non-ionizing radiation, operation in all-weather conditions and their ability to penetrate through most optically opaque materials. Therefore, mmWs are an excellent choice for emerging radar applications. Today, there is a strong demand for simplifying the physical hardware architecture and developing alternative image reconstruction techniques, especially in support of real-time radar imaging capabilities.

Computational imaging is a single-pixel imaging technique in which a set of coded modes are used to encode and reconstruct the scene information as opposed to raster scanning a beam to image the scene on a pixel-by-pixel basis. This unique advantage of computational imaging radars circumvents the need for mechanical scanning or phased shifting circuits to synthesize a raster scanned radiation pattern for imaging.

Computational imaging using frequency-diverse antennas and active coded apertures has recently gained significant traction. Metasurface antennas are a promising candidate to realize these unusual radiation characteristics and compress the backscattered radar measurements in the hardware layer. These compressive antennas radiate a set of spatially-incoherent radiation patterns by modulating the coupling response of the meta-atoms across the metasurface aperture. The advantage of this technique is that it substantially reduces the hardware complexity of the radar system as the scene information can be reconstructed from a set of compressed back-scattered measurements using a substantially fewer number of RF channels in comparison to conventional radar architectures. This can enable real-time data acquisition capability.

This project will investigate the design of new compressive antenna architectures with a substantially increased information coding capacity for computational mmW radars for security screening. The goal of this project is to develop a new antenna technology and radar architecture to enable real-time data acquisition capabilities for computational mmW security-screening radars.
This project is funded by the Leverhulme Trust and constitutes a real scientific and technological advance compared to the actual state of art in mmW imaging. This is a unique opportunity to build the next generation mmW radar systems and work at one of the leading institutions in the United Kingdom in millimetre-wave technology, Centre for Wireless Innovation at Queen’s University Belfast, collaborating with an international team of academics and industry.

Job Description

• High quality research and engineering design focusing on the design of mmW reconfigurable holographic metasurface antennas for computational electromagnetic imaging applications.
• Development of polarimetric metasurface antennas for radar polarimetry.
• Development of innovative holographic concepts for mmW metasurface antennas and dynamic beam synthesis.
• Design of antennas and RF hardware for mmW radar systems using full-wave electromagnetic (EM) simulation software, such as CST Microwave Studio.
• Publishing and presenting results both at international conferences and in scientific journals.
• Working towards realizing a PhD in about 3 years.

Contact details

Supervisor Name: Dr. Okan Yurduseven Tel: +44(0)2890971847 Email: [Email Address Removed]