About the Antennas & Electromagnetics Research Group
The Antennas & Electromagnetics Research Group was established in 1968 with a mission of “High Quality Research backed by High Quality Measurements”. In the past 50-years, the group has been at the heart of technology and innovation in antennas and electromagnetics, collaborating with academic and industrial partners working nationally and globally. Our research output has made a significant impact to the UK through developing new technologies, supply chains and job creation through spinout activities.
The group consists of 16 academic staff (with 10 staff undertaking a full-time teaching and research role), 8 postdocs and over 50 PhD students. The group has an international reputation for microwave and THz research including feed and reflector systems for satellite communications, passive and active radar antenna arrays, body centric wireless antennas and propagation, metamaterials, bio-electromagnetics, and recently THz devices and antenna & EM metrology. Antenna Metrology has been a constant research thread throughout the groups history having built an extensive Antenna Measurement Laboratory (AML) including several major antenna test ranges and electromagnetic characterisation facilities, covering the whole RF to THz frequency bands, from 400MHz to 3THz. Supported by 3 full-time professional staff, the facility is arguably one of the most comprehensive among European universities, supporting both industry and academia. QMUL has provided strong infrastructure support through:
- £1m refurbishment (2011) of the Antenna Measurement Laboratory (AML) and the establishment within the AML of a new Terahertz Laboratory;
- New research mechanical workshop combining previous separate workshops into one new space (190sqm) plus investment of £150k in new machine tools (2019).
- Rohde & Schwarz ZNA Network Analyser with operation up to 500GHz (£260k, 2020).
- £1.5m refurbishment of all the groups office space for staff and students (2020);
- Plus, in 2018 an EPSRC Strategic Equipment grant for a millimetrewave (40-500GHz) NSI/MI spherical near-field test system and Nanoscribe 200nm resolution 3D printer (TERRA, EP/S010009/1, £1.2m).
From 2014 to 2020 the group has (source SciVal):
- Published 389 journal articles, cited in 95 countries with an average citation count of 13.7
- Published 447 conference papers, cited in 74 countries with an average citation count of 3.5
Our interdisciplinary research interfacing with materials, physics and chemistry, life sciences and medicine has led to new transformative research ideas and clearly shapes our grant portfolio. The group has strong links with industry and our work has raised the international status of UK antenna research attracting many citations and a number of patents (several with BAE Systems). The group has doubled in size over the last 6-years by attracting talented Early Career Researchers (ECR’s), who, in turn, have extended our portfolio of research to:
- THz spectroscopy for space exploration (Ioppolo);
- Power electronics and battery control technology for Green Energy (Mehran);
- Digital manufacturing of antennas via 3D printing (Castles);
- 5G wireless communications (Kelly and Qin).
The group has hosted research fellows from the Royal Society and EPSRC. Our current active grant portfolio is around £7M.
