Microwave and millimetre-wave engineering

The research is supported by three laboratories and the EPSRC National Facility for Innovative Robotic Systems: The wireless communications test bed allows Gigabit/s testing of transmitters, receivers and individual subsystems to 110 GHz.

The test bed is part of the facility and housed in a laboratory dedicated to high frequency communications and sensing. The facilities are focused on exploration and inspection robotics and swarm robotics, to support the EPSRC £4.2M project "Balancing the impact of City Infrastructure Engineering on Natural systems using Robots" led by Phil Purnell in Civil Engineering.

The Roger Pollard High Frequency Measurements Laboratory, which is sponsored by Keysight Technologies (formerly Agilent), houses a suite of vector network analysers that permit the precision characterisation of devices, components and materials at frequencies from 9kHz to 1.1 THz. With circa £2M of test equipment, this is one of the top facilities in Europe and fully able to support world-class research in microwave, millimetre-wave and THz communications and sensing. The strong relationship with Keysight Technologies and NPL gives access to the very best technical expertise so that we can stretch the equipment to the limits of performance.

The LTCC prototyping facility is believed to be one of only two in UK universities. LTCC (low temperature co-fire ceramic) is a key technology for miniature systems integration for harsh environments, being uniquely able to combine high frequency electronics with piezoelectric transducers and actuators. LTCC systems integration and micromachined components are studied at Leeds using laser-based prototyping. The fabrication of hollow waveguide and microfluidic structures in LTCC has attracted widespread interest. The robotics facility houses LPKF UV laser and 3D Fusion systems for the fabrication of miniature integrated systems such as 3D electronically-steered conformal antenna arrays.