Giovanni Crupi, Changzhi Li, Xun Gong
The IEEE Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) Graduate Student Fellowship Awards are sponsored by the MTT-S to encourage and support graduate students from around the world who are interested in pursuing studies in the field of microwave engineering. The fellowship honorees receive an award of US${\$}$6,000, presented at the annual IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium (IMS), to support their research activities. Supplemental funding is offered to support the recipients’ travel to the IMS (up to a maximum of US${\$}$1,000). In addition, the highest-ranked honoree is awarded the IEEE MTT-S Tom Brazil Graduate Fellowship, with an additional travel grant of US${\$}$1,000.
Twelve graduate fellowships were awarded for 2023 in the general category and two in the medical applications domain. To be eligible for these graduate fellowships, applicants must be full-time students in a recognized M.S. and/or Ph.D. degree program. Full details regarding eligibility and application requirements can be found at https://mtt.org/students/. The submission deadline for the 2024 awards is 15 October 2023.
For the 2023 awards, 37 applications from 14 countries were received in the general category, and 11 applications from five nations were received in the medical area. All of the applications were excellent and represented some of the best research being conducted around the world. The overall success rate was 29.2% because of the large number of submissions. The difficult task of selecting the awardees was performed by a group of dedicated, impartial MTT-S volunteers from both industry and academia. Special thanks are due to the volunteers who spent many hours reviewing and grading the proposals. Chun-Mei Liu (Polytechnique Montréal, Canada) was selected for the IEEE MTT-S Tom Brazil Graduate Fellowship.
Apala Banerjee
School: Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India.
Advisor: Prof. M. Jaleel Akhtar.
Project topic: Development of a stand-alone RF sensor system for humanitarian applications.
Apala Banerjee received her M. Tech in microwave engineering from the University of Burdwan, West Bengal, India, in 2018. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. at the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in the Department of Electrical Engineering with a specialization in RF and microwaves. Her main research interests include high-sensitivity RF sensors for humanitarian applications, terahertz systems, receiver architectures, and eddy current sensing applications. Banerjee is the recipient of the University Gold Medal for her M. Tech degree, the winner of the IEEE MTT-S IMaRC Best Female Student Paper Award in 2021, the IEEE MTT-S APS MAPCON First Runner-Up Best Female Student Paper Award in 2022, and the IEEE Outstanding Student Volunteer Award 2022, Uttar Pradesh Section, Region 10, India. She is presently the chapter chair of the IEEE MTT-S Student Branch Chapter, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
RF sensors are presently being used for a number of industrial, biomedical, and humanitarian applications due to their several advantages such as ease of fabrication, low cost, and noninvasive approach. However, some of the major bottlenecks limiting their usage for various humanitarian applications are their low sensitivity and limited portability due to the requirement of a costly measuring instrument such as the network analyzer. This project primarily aims to develop a stand-alone RF sensor system comprising a high-sensitivity planar RF sensor, the RF source, and a detector, primarily for humanitarian applications such as the detection of adulteration in various edible food products. The overall work would primarily involve 1) the design and development of a highly sensitive RF planar sensor for various biomedical and humanitarian applications and 2) the integration of the sensor with a low-cost RF system, to realize a portable, lightweight, stand-alone RF sensor system for the testing of various edible and biological-grade fluids.
Wen Chen
School: University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China.
Advisor: Prof. Xun Luo.
Project topic: Wideband self-adaptive fast-locking frequency synthesizer with low phase noise in CMOS technology for multiband wireless applications.
Wen Chen received his B.E. degree in microelectronics from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2019, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in electronic science and technology under the supervision of Prof. Xun Luo. He is expected to graduate in June 2024. He received the IEEE Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits Symposium 2021 Third Place Best Student Paper award. His research interests include the design of a wideband microwave/millimeter-wave (mm-wave) circulator, oscillator, and frequency synthesizer.
Multiple-band operations for 5G/6G wireless communication requires a frequency synthesizer with a wide tuning range and low phase noise. At the same time, the short locking time is an important design requirement, especially for future multiple users requiring big data or fast vehicles traveling among cities and towns. This research aims to achieve the frequency synthesizer with the merits of a wide output frequency range, low phase noise, and a self-adaptive short locking time. As an outcome of the proposed research plan, a wideband self-adaptive fast-locking frequency synthesizer with low phase noise will be implemented and verified using CMOS technology for multiband wireless systems.
Alden Fisher
School: Purdue University, United States.
Advisor: Prof. Dimitrios Peroulis.
Project topic: Solid-state plasma switches for reconfigurable high-power RF electronics.
Alden Fisher received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering with highest distinction from Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, USA, in 2017, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. under the supervision of Prof. Dimitrios Peroulis. His current research interests include solid-state plasma devices and their role in reconfigurable, high-frequency, high-power RF electronics. He has also explored wireless energy transfer. He is a member of Eta Kappa Nu and was the local IEEE MTT-S chapter chair. Fisher received first place in the Packaged C-Band Filter (MTT-5 and MTT-16) student design competition at IMS 2022 and is a recipient of the 2023 MTT-S Graduate Fellowship. He is a Graduate Student Member of IEEE.
Conventional RF switching technologies struggle to simultaneously achieve high-power handling, low loss, high isolation, broadband operation, quick reconfiguration, and high linearity, which are desirable for many applications, including communications, radar, and sensors. Moreover, they require electrical bias networks, which degrade performance and, in many cases, inhibit wideband applications, including dc operation. On the other hand, plasma (photoconductive) switches use an optical bias to generate free charge carriers. Recently, these switches not only have begun to rival conventional technologies in terms of performance metrics such as switching speeds and loss but have exceeded what is possible in terms of power handling. This work details the strides made in placing solid-state plasma technologies at the forefront of advanced, high-power switching applications including a novel high-power tuner and an absorptive/reflective single-pole double-throw switch.
Dariia Herasymova
School: Institute of Radio-Physics and Electronics NASU, Ukraine.
Advisor: Prof. Alexander I. Nosich.
Project topic: Smith–Purcell terahertz radiation from a beam of particles moving above a grating of graphene-covered dielectric rods.
Dariia Herasymova is currently a Ph.D. student at the Laboratory of Micro and Nano Optics of IRE NASU, where she also holds a part-time position as a junior scientist. Previously, Herasymova earned her B.S. and M.S. degrees in photonics and optoinformatics from the National University of Radio Electronics. Herasymova’s ongoing work at IRE is concentrated on the accurate modeling, with analytical–numerical techniques, of the diffraction radiation, including the Smith–Purcell effect, of the modulated electron beams in the presence of microsize and nanosize metal and dielectric obstacles and arrays of them, in the range of frequencies from visible light to terahertz waves.
We plan to study the terahertz and infrared range diffraction radiation of a modulated beam of electrons flowing near a grating of graphene-covered dielectric nanowires. In our analysis, we assume that the beam velocity is fixed, and the graphene cover can be characterized with the aid of the Kubo formalism and resistive-type boundary conditions. Then, using the separation of variables in the local coordinates and the addition theorems for the cylindrical functions to account for the wire shape and location, we transform the diffraction radiation problem to a Fredholm second-kind matrix equation. This yields a meshless numerical code, which has a mathematically guaranteed convergence, and allows us to compute the scattering and absorption characteristics and the far- and near-field patterns with controlled accuracy. This work can be useful in the design of novel sources of terahertz waves and of dielectric laser accelerators.
Chun-Mei Liu
School: Polytechnique Montréal, Canada.
Advisor: Prof. Ke Wu.
Project topic: Hybrid circuits–antennas integration for future wireless systems.
Chun-Mei Liu was born in Sichuan, China, in 1992. She received her bachelor’s degree in electronic information science and technology from Southwest Petroleum University, China, in 2014. She pursued a Ph.D. degree in radio physics from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China, from 2016 to 2017. In 2017, she received the Chinese Scholarship Council scholarship and continued her Ph.D. study at Polytechnique Montréal. She received her Ph.D. degree from UESTC in 2022. She is pursuing a Ph.D. degree at Polytechnique Montréal and is expected to graduate in fall of 2024. Her research interests include nonradiative dielectric waveguides, low-loss terahertz circuits, integrated systems, phased array antennas, ultrawideband antennas, and cavity antennas. She was a recipient of the Mojgen Daneshmand Grant in 2022. As noted previously, she was also selected for the IEEE MTT-S Tom Brazil Graduate Fellowship.
In mm-wave and terahertz applications, the transmission behaviors of circuit structures and component parts such as radiation and leakage losses are critical for the overall performance of the associated system in question. It is imperative to develop a low-loss interconnect and transmission technique that should be used for the development of building circuit blocks. In this project, a hybrid metallodielectric waveguide architecture is proposed and studied with special interest in maximum possible loss reduction while maintaining an excellent degree of freedom in circuit developments. The scheme is made of mixed dielectric waveguides and nonradiative dielectric waveguides, which are respectively deployed for the design of specific building parts in consideration of the two waveguide properties. The main research goals are to propose, study, and explore highly original wireless transceiver architectures and technologies with the enabling integration platforms of wireless functions and hardware structures.
Md Hedayatullah Maktoomi
School: University of California, Irvine, United States.
Advisor: Prof. Hamidreza Aghasi.
Project topic: A heterogeneous mode-converting power radiator for broadband subterahertz applications.
Md Hedayatullah Maktoomi received his B.E. degree in electronics and communication engineering from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, in 2015 and his M.S. degree from Washington State University, Vancouver, WA, USA, in 2020. He is currently a Ph.D. degree student in electrical engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and is expected to graduate in spring of 2024. His work focuses on broadband mm-wave power amplifier (PA) design. He was a recipient of a 2022 IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference student grant.
The growing interest in data-intensive applications has led to the development of mm-wave integrated circuits at frequencies above 100 GHz. However, there are various challenges inherently associated with the conventional semiconductor devices at these frequencies, such as insufficient power generation, excessive passive loss, low amplification gain, and the increased path loss of the radiated signal. This requires a PA with high gain and high output power and a directive antenna with efficient radiation for the transmitter. Furthermore, to exploit the true potential of the mm waveband, broadband performance is required from both the PA and the antenna. In this proposal, we aim to design a novel broadband PA using an 8 × 1 power combiner, a broadband dual-polarized antenna, and a low-insertion-loss and broadband multilayer interface circuitry between the chip and the flexible printed circuit board that efficiently couples the electromagnetic field from the PA chip to the antenna.
Jason Merlo
School: Michigan State University, United States.
Advisor: Prof. Jeffrey A. Nanzer.
Project topic: High-accuracy wireless distributed coherent array synchronization.
Jason Merlo received his B.S. degree in computer engineering from Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA, in 2018, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering and is expected to graduate in July 2024. His current research interests include distributed radar and wireless system synchronization, interferometric arrays, synthetic aperture radar, joint radar communications, and automotive/automated vehicle radar applications.
Wireless distributed coherent arrays at mm-wave frequencies and beyond will become an enabling technology, soon facilitating systems from on-orbit long-baseline interferometers for astronomical observations, to collaborative automated vehicle radar arrays to enhance angular resolution and spatial diversity. While the applications for these arrays are many, there is still significant work required to synchronize the nodes in the array to provide coherent time, frequency, and phase-aligned operation at mm-wave carrier frequencies and multi-GHz bandwidths. This work will focus on the design and implementation of a system to wirelessly coordinate distributed platforms to align frequency, time, and phase, through high-accuracy time transfer techniques.
Florian Probst
School: Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany.
Advisor: Prof. Robert Weigel.
Project topic: On-chip baseband signal generation for digital mm-wave noise radar systems in 22 nm fully depleted silicon on insulator (FDSOI).
Florian Probst received his M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in 2020, where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering. He expects to graduate in 2023. He has been a research assistant at the Institute for Electronics Engineering since 2020, where he is involved in various projects on integrated circuits and demonstrators for radar systems. Probst received first place at the High-Sensitivity Radar Student Design Competition of the IEEE International Microwave Symposium in 2021.
State-of-the-art CMOS technology enables radar systems at mm-wave frequencies, which provide increased ultrawide bandwidth. Phase-modulated continuous-wave (PMCW) radar represents an alternative to the widely used frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar, in which a pseudorandom binary sequence (PRBS) is modulated onto a carrier frequency. This sequence is used for broadband frequency utilization and separation between channels in multiple input/multiple output or joint radar–communication systems. Since the range resolution depends on the data rate of the PRBS, it must therefore be as high as possible. We will investigate and realize different PRBS generators for an integrated 140-GHz PMCW radar transmitter realized on a 22-nm FDSOI technology. The transmitter is used in a radar system for gesture recognition enabling noncontact human–machine interaction, e.g., when operating smartphones or entertainment systems in cars.
Pradyot Yadav
School: Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States.
Advisor: Prof. Tomás Palacios.
Project topic: Heterogeneous integration of GaN and Si for monolithic microwave integrated circuits above 300 GHz for 6G applications and beyond.
Pradyot Yadav received his B.S. in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2022. He is currently working toward his M.S. and Ph.D. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with an expected graduation date in 2027. His research interests lie at the intersection of subterahertz devices, circuits, and heterogeneous integration. He is involved in the full continuum of chip design from transistor fabrication in the cleanroom, to the design of circuits, to even package processing. At IMS 2019, Yadav won first place in the High-Efficiency Power Amplifier Student Design Competition for his Doherty amplifier design as an undergraduate freshman. He is also a Barry Goldwater Scholar.
The future of gallium nitride (GaN) RF circuit technology is at the intersection of material synthesis, device modeling, and circuit design. Currently, these are three separate fields with little to no communication among them, resulting in critical limitations to today’s technology. There is an urgent need for these fields to collaborate, cross-pollinate, and intersect to modernize and advance innovation for the next generation of RF circuits. To design the most efficient RF and mm-wave circuits, we must embrace the design technology cooptimization approach, which combines new GaN-based transistors with engineered linearity, novel heterogeneous integration with state-of-the-art silicon (Si) control circuits, and advanced physics-based modeling. This project sets the foundation of the next generation of RF and mixed signal circuits for applications such as 6G and hypersonic environments.
Hang Yin
School: University College Dublin, Ireland.
Advisor: Prof. Anding Zhu.
Project topic: On-demand energy-saving multimetric digital predistortion (DPD) for future wireless systems.
Hang Yin received his B.E. degree in information engineering and M.E. degree in electromagnetic field and microwave technology from Southeast University, Nanjing, China. He is currently working toward his Ph.D. degree at the RF and Microwave Research Group at University College Dublin, Ireland. He is under the supervision of Prof. Anding Zhu, and his anticipated graduation date is April 2025. His research interests include DPD for future wireless communication systems.
To exploit the limited communication resources, the wireless system will operate in a flexible manner in which multimetric linearity requirements could be posed. The nonlinearity in different frequency regions is required to be suppressed to different levels, and the requirements may also change from time to time subject to the channel condition and collaborative scenario. My project aims at developing DPD model extraction algorithms and model topology adaptation strategies for multimetric linearity requirements in different frequency regions, so that the DPD system can acknowledge which model terms should be switched on and which ones should be kept dormant for different multimetric demands, with the least power consumed for DPD-related digital circuits.
Yingcong Zhang
School: University of South Carolina, United States.
Advisor: Prof. Guoan Wang.
Project topic: High-signal-integrity transmission lines enabled with thin films and design techniques.
Yingcong Zhang was born in China in 1996. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Jiangxi Normal University, Jiangxi, China, in 2019 and 2021, respectively. She is currently working toward her Ph.D. degree at the University of South Carolina, SC, USA. Her current research interests include tunable RF/microwave passive components and circuits and 3D integrated devices/systems.
The development of modern wireless communication systems drives the radio devices toward the trend of smaller size and higher speed and frequency. Accordingly, crosstalk becomes one of the dominant limiting factors in microwave and mm-wave communication systems. In this research, high-signal-integrity transmission lines enabled with thin films and design techniques are proposed for far-end crosstalk (FEXT) mitigation. First, a novel tabbed routing transmission line with multiple trapezoidal tabs on both sides of the signal trace is proposed for the reduced FEXT. Methods to further reduce FEXT, including transmission line structures with nonuniform signal conductor thickness and integration of high-permittivity dielectric thin film and high-permeability magnetic thin films, are investigated. Moreover, the proposed high-signal-integrity transmission lines are comprehensively studied by theoretical modeling. The equivalent circuit model is established, and the closed-form formulas for calculating capacitance and inductance values will be derived. The proposed concepts in this research project have great potential in modern microwave systems.
Han Zhou
School: Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden.
Advisor: Prof. Christian Fager.
Project topic: Energy-efficient, wideband, and linear PA theory and architectures for next-generation wireless transmitters.
Han Zhou received his B.Sc. degree in space science from the Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2016. He received his M.Sc. degree in wireless, photonics, and space engineering from the Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden, in 2018. In 2019, he joined the Microwave Electronics Laboratory at Chalmers, where he is currently pursuing a Ph.D. degree with an expected graduation date in spring of 2024. In 2022, he was a visiting researcher at the IDEAS group, ETH Zurich. His research interests are highly efficient PA architectures for wireless transmitters and the design of mm-wave integrated circuits and systems. He received the EuMC Young Engineer Prize at the 52nd European Microwave Conference and a scholarship from the Ericsson Research Foundation.
The increasing demand for mobile data traffic creates new challenges for next-generation communication systems, which require higher-order modulation formats and produce signals with a large peak-to-average power ratio. RF PAs are critical building blocks in the communications system, including radio base stations, mobile handsets, and wireless point-to-point links, governing energy efficiency, bandwidth, and linearity performance. This project investigates and analyzes the theoretical limits and design tradeoffs of state-of-the-art high-efficiency PA architectures, while developing and exploring new operating modes and innovative PA architectures. The research goal is to propose new and innovative PA solutions for practical GaN and silicon PA prototypes designed for various frequency bands in beyond-5G/6G wireless communication systems.
Maede Chavoshi
School: KU Leuven, Belgium.
Advisor: Prof. Dominique Schreurs.
Project topic: Cancerous or not? Microwave judges! Microwave systems for dielectric characterization and actuation at the single-cell level in life sciences.
Maede Chavoshi received her B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering (communications) from Sharif University of Technology, Iran, in 2016 and her M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering (microelectronic and nanoelectronic devices) from the University of Tehran, Iran, in 2019. Currently, she is a Ph.D. student working on microwave biosensors for cancer detection at the department of electrical engineering, KU Leuven, Belgium. Her primary research interest is microwave dielectric spectroscopy and heating for life science applications focusing on cell studies. Chavoshi is now the chair of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation, Communications, and Microwave Theory and Technology Student Branch Chapter at KU Leuven.
A promising way to fight cancer, among other diseases, in the early stages is through information carried by single cells and extracellular vehicles (EVs) released by them. However, extracting this information often depends on the availability of biomarkers and their matching bioreceptors. Thus, label-free cell and EV analysis is critical. Collecting the EVs, however, is challenging and requires a large number of cells to release the EVs. To circumvent this necessity, this research will contribute to exploring the application of microwave dielectric sensing and actuation combined with microfluidics as a platform capable of the distinction and separation of single cells and analyzing EVs in a label-free manner. This platform acquires multiband passive microwave sensing by using resonant planar microwave sensors and thermal actuation to collect the cells that release EVs for biomedical analysis.
Shuqin Dong
School: Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China.
Advisor: Prof. Changzhan Gu.
Project topic: Doppler cardiogram (DCG) detection based on mm-wave radar and its biomedical applications.
Shuqin Dong received her B.S. degree in electronic and information engineering from Xidian University, Xi’an, China, in 2017 and her M.S. degree in electronic science and technology from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2020. From 2020 to 2021, she was a software algorithm engineer in Huawei, China. She is now pursuing her doctor’s degree in electronic and information at Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China. She received the IWS 2022 FLASH Competition Best Paper Award. Her research interests include bioradar applications, analog/RF systems, and signal processing algorithms.
Noncontact radar sensing technology can obtain human vital signs by measuring the displacement generated by the heartbeat and respiration on the chest wall. High-sensitivity mm-wave radar systems can capture fine cardiac volume change trajectory and obtain the DCG, which has been validated to have correspondence with the electrocardiogram. This project will focus on the DCG detection in the clinical environment and investigate and analyze the feasibility of the cardiac time interval measurement, based on which the diagnosis of cardiac diseases and sleeping stage classification will be achieved. Custom-designed mm-wave radar systems and novel signal processing techniques will be developed to realize the accurate detection of DCGs in the presence of respiration. Moreover, accurate deep-learning-based disease detection and sleep staging models will be exploited for advanced noncontact smart health care.
In 2024, the MTT-S will sponsor up to 12 graduate fellowships in the general category and two graduate fellowships in the medical applications area. Travel supplement funds will again be available for the awardees to attend next year’s IMS.
The MTT-S strongly encourages students in microwave and RF engineering to apply for the fellowships. As noted previously, the next application deadline is 15 October 2023. Please consult the detailed instructions for the graduate fellowship program at https://mtt.org/students/.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MMM.2023.3265519