Millimetre Wave & Microwave RF Circuits and Systems

Applications are invited for a 3 year Ph.D. studentship on the theme described below, as part of The University of Sheffield’s Communications Research Group and Advanced Radio Technology Centre.

Details

Research and design of RF systems and circuits continues to be a field where practitioners are in high demand and are setting the international direction of future communication technologies, such as emerging 5G.
In particular, the field of Millimetre Wave (mmWave) circuit design has experienced a resurgence of interest, due to anticipated applications in 5G mobile and fixed systems at circa 28GHz, 73GHz and beyond.
Underpinning future communications equipment will be cost-effective and low power (yet high performance) RF circuits, spanning the entire field and spectrum of RF design.
The purpose of this research project is to investigate present state-of-the-art aspects of mmWave and Microwave RF circuit design and then choose an area for further research.
The research topic can be chosen from one or more of (but not limited to) the following themes:-
• Low power RF modulators / demodulators
• Subharmonic mixers
• RF Sampling transceiver architectures
• Wideband modulators / demodulators (e.g. 5 and 6 Port concepts)
• Chireix RF power amplifiers (including associated DSP control)
• PCB / MMIC implementation of low-power, high-performance transceivers and subsystems
• High performance tunable and reconfigrable oscillators and synthesisers
• Cost effective and power efficient circuits for RF antenna beam forming and steering
Researchers can expect to become involved in designing novel hardware and related DSP or control software for their proposed system(s) and then trialling and enhancing them for optimal operation in the Lab and in field trials. The Communications Research Group is working on multiple areas of wireless communications technology including mmWave, Massive MIMO and IoT systems. The technology emerging from the researcher’s chosen project will contribute to these research themes, their associated test platforms and demonstrator systems.