The laboratory was partly funded by European Development Fund (ERDF) in scope of Operational Programme Innovative Economy (POIG) as a part of the Faculty Research Centre FOTEH (Photonics and Terahertz Technologies). The Antenna Laboratory enables research on spatial distributions of the electromagnetic field up to sub-terahertz range to develop and study of antennas, characterization of materials and designing of communication, imaging and radar systems. Due to large set of measuring equipment it is possible to perform various types of measurements including:
- measurements of antenna characteristics –in the near-field and far-field, in the time and frequency domain;
- determination of properties of steerable and reconfigurable antennas and microwave switching circuits operating in transient states;
- measurements of parameters of transmission in Radio-over-Fiber links;
- characterization of materials.
An important element of the laboratory is an anechoic chamber which is used to measure the characteristics of antennas in the frequency range up to 50 GHz. The chamber is equipped with appropriate mechanical and control elements: rotary table with angular resolution of 0.06°, precision XY-scanner with dimensions of 1×1 m and resolution of 5 µm and appropriate set of measuring antennas.
Instruments and equipment
- Antenna chamber for far-field measurements in microwave and milimeter wave bands
- PM8 EPS200MMW manual probe system from Cascade Microtech Inc.
- Reference antennas
- R&S HL050E (0.75 - 6 GHz), log-periodic, linearly polarized
- A-INFOLB-8180-NF(0.8 - 18 GHz), linearly polarized
- RFspin RG18 (1 - 18 GHz), dual polarization
- RFspin QRH40 (4 - 40 GHz), dual polarization
- a set of waveguide millimeter wave antennas (50 - 500 GHz)
- Vector Network Analyzer PNA-X N5245A 10 MHz to 50 GHz with sets of frequency extenders for frequencies:
- 50 – 75 GHz (WR15)
- 75 – 110 GHz (WR10)
- 90 – 140 GHz (WR8.0)
- 140 – 220 GHz (WR5.1)
- 220 – 325 GHz (WR3.4)
- 325 – 500 GHz (WR2.2);
- Vector Network Analyzer PNA-X N5242A 10 MHz to 26.5 GHz;
- Handheld Vector Network Analyzer with frequency coverage from 5 kHz to 6 GHz PLUS a Spectrum Analyzer covering 9 kHz to 9 GHz Anritsu VNA Master MS2036C
- Vector Signal Generator SMBV100A (9 kHz – 6 GHz);
- Microwave Signal Generator SMF100A (100 kHz - 43.5 GHz);
- Spectrum Analyzers:
- Agilent PSA E4440A (3 Hz - 26.5GHz) with VSA89600 software for digital demodulation;
- Rohde&Schwarz FSP 30 (9 kHz ÷ 30 GHz) with tracking generator (9 kHz - 3 GHz);
- Keysight BSA N9322C (9 kHz - 7 GHz);
- Rigol DSA1030A (9 kHz to 3 GHz)
- Rohde&Schwarz NRP-Z Power Sensors;
- Oscilloscopes:
- LeCroy Teledyne WaveSurfer 3074, 4 channels, bandwidth 750MHz, sampling rate 2Gsps
- Rigol DS4014
- NI USRP-2944 Software Defined Radio Reconfigurable Device, equivalent to USRP X310 with UBX 160 daughterboard — a full-duplex wideband transceiver that covers frequencies from 10 MHz to 6 GHz with up to 160 MHz of instantaneous bandwidth
Software
- Electromagnetic simulator FEKO;
- Electromagnetic simulator QuickWave;
- Electromagnetic simulator CST;
- Computing software MATLAB;
- RF and microwave design software Microwave Office;
Measurement Database
The information of the measurements results performed at our group can be found in several of our publications. Those publications are available through e.g. IEEE Xplore database. Please see Publications for more information.