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3.2e Industry Paper - Thin, Low-Power, and Efficient Beam-Steering Antenna Terminals for Defence Systems

Tracks
Track 4
Thursday, November 12, 2020
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM

Speaker

Prof. Karu Esselle
Distinguished Professor
University of Technology Sydney

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Abstract

Thin, low-power, high-gain antenna systems with the ability to steer a narrow beam over a wide range of directions are required or very useful for several defence applications including space, weight, and power (SWaP) constrained wideband point to point communication between defence vehicles and/or units that are mobile (on the move) or semi-mobile (on the pause), Electronic Support (ES) functions, Electronic Attack (EA) functions including directed energy applications, and Wideband Satcom on the move terminals. Near-Field Meta-Steering (NFMS) technology has been recently demonstrated to produce thin planar high-gain antenna systems with negligible radio-frequency (RF) losses when compared with electronically scanned antennas. The technology yields antenna terminals that are totally RF-passive and hence need extremely low power to operate, which may be provided through a solar panel and/or a battery. Unlike mechanically steered reflector (dish) antenna systems, these antenna systems are neither bulky nor heavy. They can be designed to operate on a variety of manned and autonomous defence platforms on land, sea, and in air. They can be concealed. Further, they can be designed to be extremely lightweight, for example, to make them portable or to use in unmanned aerial platforms. Since the first prototype was reported in 2017, research and development on this type of antenna system have progressed on several fronts, including high-power microwave applications, wideband spectrum sensing, dual-band high-throughput communication, and controlling dominant grating-type lobes in radiation patterns.

Biography

Professor Karu Esselle, FRSN, FIEEE, FIEAust, is the Distinguished Professor in Electromagnetic and Antenna Engineering at the University of Technology Sydney and a Visiting Professor of Macquarie University, Sydney. According to a Special Report on Research published by The Australian national newspaper in 2019, he is the National Research Field Leader in Australia in Microelectronics in Engineering Discipline as well as in the Electromagnetism field in the Disciplines of Physics and Mathematics. Karu received BSc degree in electronic and telecommunication engineering with First Class Honours from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and MASc and PhD degrees with near-perfect GPA in electrical engineering from the University of Ottawa, Canada. Previously he was Director of WiMed Research Centre and Associate Dean – Higher Degree Research (HDR) of the Division of Information and Communication Sciences and directed the Centre for Collaboration in Electromagnetic and Antenna Engineering at Macquarie University. He has also served as a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and the Division Executive and as the Head of the Department several times. Karu is a Fellow of IEEE, the Royal Society of New South Wales and Engineers Australia. Since 2018, Karu has been chairing the prestigious Distinguished Lecturer Program Committee of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation (AP) Society – the premier global learned society dedicated for antennas and propagation - which has close to 10,000 members worldwide. After two stages in the selection process, Karu was also selected by this Society as one of two candidates in the ballot for 2019 President of the Society. Only three people from Asia or Pacific apparently have received this honour in the 68-year history of this Society. Karu is also one of the three Distinguished Lecturers (DL) selected by the Society in 2016. He is the only Australian to chair the AP DL Program ever, the only Australian AP DL in almost two decades, and second Australian AP DL ever (after UTS Distinguished Visiting Professor Trevor Bird). He has been continuously serving the IEEE AP Society Administrative Committee in several elected or ex-officio positions since 2015. Karu is also the Chair of the Board of management of Australian Antenna Measurement Facility, and was the elected Chair of both IEEE New South Wales (NSW), and IEEE NSW AP/MTT Chapter, in 2016 and 2017. Karu has authored approximately 600 research publications and his papers have been cited nearly 10,000 times. In 2019 his publications received 1,200 citations. He is the first Australian antenna researcher ever to reach Google Scholar h-index of 30 and his citation indices have been among the top Australian antenna researchers for a long time (at present: i10 is 174 and h-index is 48). Since 2002, his research team has been involved with research grants, contracts and PhD scholarships worth about 20 million dollars, including 15 Australian Research Council grants, without counting the 245 million-dollar SmartSat Corporative Research Centre, which started in 2019. His research has been supported by many national and international organisations including Australian Research Council, Intel, US Air Force, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Australian Department of Defence, Australian Department of industry, and German and Indian governments. Karu’s awards include 2019 Motohisa Kanda Award (from IEEE USA) for the most cited paper in IEEE Transactions on EMC in the past five years, 2019 Macquarie University Research Excellence Award for Innovative Technologies, 2019 ARC Discovery International Award, 2017 Excellence in Research Award from the Faculty of Science and Engineering, 2017 Engineering Excellence Award for Best Innovation, 2017 Highly Commended Research Excellence Award from Macquarie University, 2017 Certificate of Recognition from IEEE Region 10, 2016 and 2012 Engineering Excellence Awards for Best Published Paper from IESL NSW Chapter, 2011 Outstanding Branch Counsellor Award from IEEE headquarters (USA), 2009 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Higher Degree Research Supervision and 2004 Innovation Award for best invention disclosure. His mentees have been awarded many fellowships, awards and prizes for their research achievements. Fifty international experts who examined the theses of his PhD graduates ranked them in the top 5% or 10%. Karu has provided expert assistance to more than a dozen companies including Intel, Hewlett Packard Laboratory (USA), Cisco Systems (USA), Audacy (USA), Cochlear, Optus, ResMed and Katherine-Werke (Germany). His team designed the high-gain antenna system for the world’s first entirely Ka-band CubeSat made by Audacy, USA and launched to space by SpaceX in December 2018. This is believed to be the first Australian-designed high-gain antenna system launched to space, since CSIRO-designed antennas in Australia’s own FedSat launched in 2002. Karu is in the College of Expert Reviewers of the European Science Foundation (2019-22) and he has been invited to serve as an international expert/research grant assessor by several other research funding bodies as well, including the European Research Council and funding agencies in Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada, Finland, Hong-Kong, Georgia, South Africa and Chile. He has been invited by Vice-Chancellors of Australian and overseas universities to assess applications for promotion to professorial levels. He has also been invited to assess grant applications submitted to Australia’s most prestigious schemes such as Australian Federation Fellowships and Australian Laureate Fellowships. In addition to the large number of invited conference speeches he has given, he has been an invited plenary/extended/keynote speaker of several IEEE and other conferences and workshops including EuCAP 2020 Copenhagen, Denmark; URSI’19 Seville, Spain; and 23rd ICECOM 2019, Dubrovnik, Croatia. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Antennas Propagation, IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine and IEEE Access. He is a Track Chair pf IEEE AP-S 2020 Montreal, Technical Program Committee Co-Chair of ISAP 2015, APMC 2011 and TENCON 2013 and the Publicity Chair of ICEAA/IEEE APWC 2016, IWAT 2014 and APMC 2000. His research activities are posted in the web at http://web.science.mq.edu.au/~esselle/ and https://www.uts.edu.au/staff/karu.esselle .
Dr. Muhammad Afzal
Research Associate
University of Technology Sydney

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Biography

Dr Affan Baba
Research Associate
University of Technology Sydney

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Biography

Dr Dushmantha Thalakotuna
Lecturer
University of Technology Sydney

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Biography

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