What is this course about?
5G era is approaching and we now see some versions of commercial 5G networks starting to go live at different parts of the world. The 5G communication technology will bring new experiences including higher bandwidth, higher data rate or greater capacity, security, and lower latency and will create new opportunities for society, businesses. 5G is going to make a significant change of how we live in this world.
​
The key enabling 5G technologies under development include novel multiple access strategies, ultra-dense networking, all-spectrum access, massive MIMO, full digital beamforming or hybrid beam forming etc. The realization of these high-level technologies brings about new challenges for the physical infrastructure designers which undoubtedly include the antenna and microwave engineers. After many years of collective effort on 5G antenna systems research, in both academia and industry, some challenges have been solved up to a certain extent. But many challenges still need to be solved or waiting for better solutions. The implementation and completion of 5G systems will be carried out in several stages: first sub-6GHz, then step into millimeter wave regime, from 20 GHz to even 100 GHz.
​
This course presents some updated research results on 5G antenna systems. It is not possible to include all the relevant results on the 5G topic, however some significant and promising results relevant from industrial perspective are covered. The teaching team includes well-recognized researchers in academia, and experts in industry covering the area of 5G antenna systems research and developments, mainly in Europe and worldwide.
ESoA Coordinators
Stefano Maci
He received the Laurea degree from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy, in 1987. He has been a Professor with the University of Siena, Siena, Italy, since 1997. He was a WP Leader of the Antenna Center of Excellence (FP6-EU) from 2004 to 2007, and an International Coordinator of a 24-institution consortium of a Marie Curie Action (FP6) from 2007 to 2010. He has been a Principal Investigator of six projects financed by the European Space Agency since 2004.
In 2004, he was the Founder of the European School of Antennas, Athens, Greece, a post graduate school that currently comprises 30 courses on antennas, propagation, electromagnetic theory, and computational electromagnetics and 150 teachers coming from 15 countries.
He was the co-founder of two spinoff companies. He is the Director of the Consortium FORESEEN, presently involving 40 European Institutions. His research activity is documented in 140 papers in international journals, (among which 90 on IEEE journals), ten book chapters, and about 300 papers in proceedings of international conferences on high-frequency and beam representation methods, computational electromagnetics, large phased arrays, planar antennas, reflector antennas and feeds, metamaterials and metasurfaces. These papers have received around 4200 citations.
Prof. Maci was an AdCom Member of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S), an Associate Editor of AP-Transaction, the Chair of the Award Committee of IEEE AP-S, and a member of the Board of Directors of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP). He has also been a member of the National Italian Committee for Qualification to Professor and the Antennas and Propagation Executive Board of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K. He was a recipient of the EurAAP Award in 2014, the Shelkunoff Transaction Prize in 2016, and the Chen-To Tai Distinguished Educator Award in 2016. Since 2000, he has been a member of Technical Advisory Board of the 11 international conferences and a member of the Review Board of six International Journals. He organized 25 special sessions in international conferences, and he held ten short courses in the IEEE AP-S Symposia about metamaterials, antennas and computational electromagnetics. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE AP-S from 2010 to 2014.
Ronan Sauleau
He graduated in electrical engineering and radio communications from the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Rennes, France, in 1995. He received the Agrégation degree from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan, France, in 1996, and the Doctoraldegree in signal processing and telecommunications and the “Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches” degree from the University of Rennes 1, France, in 1999 and 2005, respectively. He was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at the University of Rennes 1, between September 2000 and November 2005, and between December 2005 and October 2009, respectively. He has been appointed numerical modeling (mainly FDTD), millimeter-wave printed and reconfigurable antennas, substrate integrated waveguide antennas, lens-based focusing devices, periodic and non-periodic structures (electromagnetic bandgap materials, metamaterials, reflectarrays, and transmitarrays) and biological effects of millimeter waves.
He has been involved in more than 60 research projects at the national and European levels and has co-supervised 23 post- doctoral fellows, 44 PhD students and 50 master students. He has received 20 patents and is the author or coauthor of more than 215 journal papers and 470 publications in international conferences and workshops.
He has shared the responsibility of the research activities on antennas at IETR in 2010 and 2011. He was co-director of the research Department ‘Antenna and Microwave Devices’ at IETR and deputy director of IETR between 2012 and 2016. He is now director of IETR. Prof. Sauleau received the 2004 ISAP Conference Young Researcher Scientist Fellowship (Japan) and the first Young Researcher Prize in Brittany, France, in 2001 for his research work on gain-enhanced Fabry-Perot antennas. In September 2007, he was elevated to Junior member of the “Institut Universitaire de France”. He was awarded the Bronze medal by CNRS in 2008.
He was the co-recipient of several international conference awards with some of his students (Int. Sch. of BioEM 2005, BEMS’2006, MRRS’2008, E-MRS’2011, BEMS’2011, IMS’2012, Antem’2012, BioEM’2015). He served as a guest editor for the IEEE Antennas Propogat. Special Issue on “Antennas and Propagation at mm and sub mm waves”. He served as a national delegate for COST VISTA and for EurAAP. He is a member of the board of directors of EurAAP.
Jian Yang
He received B.S. degree from the Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China, in 1982, and the M.S. degree from the Nanjing Research Center of Electronic Engineering, Nanjing, China, in 1985, both in electrical engineering, and the Swedish Licentiate and Ph.D. degrees from the Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, in 1998 and 2001, respectively.
From 1985 to 1996, he was with the Nanjing Research Institute of Electronics Technology, Nanjing, China, as a Senior Engineer. From 1999 to 2005, he was with the Department of Electromagnetics, Chalmers University of Technology as a Research Researcher. During 2005 and 2006, he was with COMHAT AB as a Senior Engineer. From 2006 to 2010, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology. From 2010 to 2016, he was an Associate Professor.
From 2016, he has been a professor at the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology. He has published more than 60 journal articles and about 150 peer reviewed conference papers. H -index: 26. His research interests include ultra-wideband antennas and UWB feeds for reflectorantennas, mmWave antennas, mmWave multilayer phased array antennas, mmWave SWE (sheet waveguide element) antennas, Gap waveguide antennas, UWB radar systems, UWB antennas in near-field sensing applications, hat-fed antennas, reflector antennas, radome design, and computational electromagnetics.