Antennas & Applied Electromagnetics Laboratory

The research within the Antenna and Applied Electromagnetics Laboratory focuses on antennas and radiowave propagation for application into personal mobile communications, vehicles and sensors.

AAEL bannerFurthermore, research activities also include applied research in classical electrodynamics (e.g. scattering and diffraction theory) and its application to the study and modelling of radiowave propagation in the VHF, UHF and SHF bands in terrestrial environments (e.g. mobile radio microcells, body area communications).

Research activities

  • Characterisation of on-body radiowave propagation
  • Reconfigurable antennas for on-body communications systems
  • Efficiency of antennas mounted on the body
  • Measurement of diversity for on-body channels
  • Switchable antennas for ultra wideband applications
  • Low profile millimetric sensors for vehicle radar and communications
  • Left handed antennas
  • Wideband antennas on electromagnetic bandgap materials
  • Antennas for medical implants
  • Electromagnetic theory
  • Diffraction theory
  • Radiowave propagation

Research group

Laboratory news

January 2011 : AAEL researchers win the best paper award in Second UK URSI Festival of Radio Science, 2011

Second UK URSI Festival of Radio Science,2011 awarded the best paper prize to AAEL researchers for the paper "Pattern Reconfigurable Wideband Conical Monopole Antenna with Frequency Notch-band" can be found at:

November 2010 : AAEL researchers win the best student paper award in LAPC2010

Loughborough Antenna & Propagation Conference (LAPC) 2010 awarded the best student paper prize to AAEL researchers for the paper "Novel Yagi-Uda antennas for on-body communication at 60 GHz".

October 2010 : AAEL work featured in Electronics Letters

We are pleased to have been selected as a feature article in Electronics Letters volume 46, issue 21 which highlights the advances made in our paper called 'Multimode Vivaldi Antenna'. More information on the featured article called 'Vivaldi steps up a notch' can be found at:

April 2010 : AAEL work highlighted in Electronics Letters

Electronics Letters has an 'In brief' section at the front which highlights some of the work within the issue. We are pleased to have been included in the 'In brief' section of the Electronics Letters volume 46, issue 7 which points out the advances made in our paper 'Switchable Filtering in Vivaldi Antenna' More information on the highlighted work called VIVALDI'S 7TH can be found at:

January 2009: AAEL researchers win CST short paper award 2008

The CST University Publication Award is an annual grant to university institutes and researchers for work in the application of 3D EM field simulation. For the first time in 2008, an additional special award for short papers was introduced. We are pleased to have been presented with the short paper award 2008 for the paper "Omnidirectional loop antenna with left handed loading".

More information on the CST award, and direct link to paper can be found at:

SLIMSENS to bring radar and broadband to the future of motoring

SLIMSENS (Short and Long Range Integrated Multifunction Radar and Communications Sensors) is a joint industry, academic and UK Government research project which was initiated after EU legislation was passed which paves the way towards every new vehicle having a pedestrian safe device by 2008/10.

The aim of SLIMSENS is to create an integrated sensor that can provide both pedestrian safe technology and adaptive cruise control

More information on the SLIMSENS project can be found here:

Research at EECE in cognitive radio to speed up two-way radio communications

In an effort to improve the speed and quality of two-way radio communication, researchers within the Devices and Systems research centre are developing selfadapting antenna for cognitive radio. These radios detect those channels that are in use and those that are not. Rather than traditionally modifying the signal processing methods of congnitive radio, changes will be made to the antenna itself.

More information on cognitive radio:

People

Academic Staff

  • Prof Peter Hall - Head of AAEL laboratory
  • Dr Peter Gardner - Head of MCI laboratory
  • Dr Hooshang Ghafouri-Shiraz - Head of ODCL laboratory
  • Dr Costas Constantinou - Head of DSNL laboratory

Research Staff

  • Dr Yuriy Nechayev - Characterisation of On-Body Communication Channels (EPSRC)

PhD/MPhil Students

  • Mr M Hamid - Active and Passive Antenna for Cognitive Radio
  • Mr Zhen Hau Sampson Hu - Antenna Design for Cognitive Radio
  • Mr S Hamani -
  • Mrs Lida Akhoondzadeh-Asl - Wearable Antenna
  • Mrs Elham Ebrahimi - Antennas for cognitive radio
  • Mr Ghaith Elsanosi Mansour - Frequency band reconfiguration of wideband antennas
  • Mr Xianyue Wu - Wearable antenna for Gigabit body-centric wireless communications
  • Miss Donya Jasteh - Decoupling Network for Cognitive Radio
  • Mr Oluwabunmi Tade - RF Front end for Cognitive Radios
  • Mr Zhengpeng Wang - UWB Reconfigurable Antennas and Filters

Selected publication

Radiowave Propagation


Nechayev Y. I. and Constantinou C. C., 'Improved Heuristic Diffraction Coefficients for an Impedance Wedge at Normal Incidence', IEE Proceedings on Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, to appear, 2006

Nechayev Y. I. and Constantinou C. C., 'Statistical Modelling of Building Transmission in a Cellular Urban Environment', IEE Proceedings on Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, , to appear, 2006

Constantinou C. C. and Mughal M. J., 'On the modelling of reflected energy from building faces in Microcellular Environment Mobile Radio Planning Tools', IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 53, 2623-2630, 2005

Mobile Communication antennas


Song, C T P, Hall, P S and Ghafouri-Shiraz, H, 'Shorted fractal Sierpinski monopole antenna', IEEE AP-S Trans, vol 52, no 10, 2564-2570, 2004

Hall, P S, 'Multi-Band and Broadband Antennas for Mobile Communications Applications', Loughborough Antenna and Propagation Conference, LAPC06, Loughborough, UK, 2006

Kamarudin M. R. and Hall P. S, Colombel F. and Himdi, M, 'Switchable Disk-Loaded Monopole Antenna Array with CPW Feeding System', IEEE AP-S International Symposium, Albuquerque, USA, 2006

Left handed antennas


Iizuka, H and Hall, P S, 'A Left-Handed Dipole Concept', IEEE Int. Workshop on Antenna Technology, Small Antennas, Novel Metamaterials, IWAT06, New York, 2006

Iizuka, H and Hall, P S, 'Omnidirectional Left-Handed Loop Antenna', IEEE AP-S International Symposium, Albuquerque, USA, 2006

Medical Implants


Spratley, J P, Hall, P S and Ward, M C L, 'Design of wireless passive microsensor for injection into the human brain', Nanotech, Boston, 2006

On-body communications


Nechayev, Y I, Hall, P S, Constantinou, C C, Hao, Y, Alomainy, A, Dubrovka, R and Parini, C, 'Antennas and Propagation for On-Body Communication Systems', 11th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics – ANTEM, Saint Malo, France, 2005

Kamarudin, M R, Nechayev, Y I and Hall, P S, 'Performance of antennas in the on body environment', IEEE AP-S International Symposium, Washington, USA, 2005

Hao Y., Alomainy A., Hall P. S., Nechayev Y. I., Parini C. G. and Constantinou C. C., 'Antennas and Propagation for Body Centric Wireless Communications', 2005 IEEE/ACES International Conference on Wireless Communications and Applied Computational Electromagnetics, Honolulu, Hawaii, 2005

Nechayev Y. I., Hall P. S., Constantinou C. C., Hao Y., Alomainy A., Dubrovka R. and Parini C. G., 'Antennas and Propagation for On-Body Communication Systems', Proceedings of the 11th International Symposium on Antenna Technology and Applied Electromagnetics, Saint Malo, France, 2005

Peter S. Hall, University of Birmingham, and Yang Hao, Queen Mary College, University of London , 'Antennas and Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications', Antennas and Propagation for Body-Centric Wireless Communications, , Artech House, 2006

Testimonial

"The skills acquired, first as a PhD student in the Communications Engineering Research Group and then as a Research Associate, had a major positive impact in my career. Peter Hall’s guidance and leadership by example made possible to transform a group of people into a strong research team"

Christos Kalialakis, Telecommunications and Post Commission, Thessaloniki, Greece