Project Info

Improving Microwave Device Efficiency Through Quantitative Visualization of Electromagnetic Fields

Peter Aaen | paaen@mines.edu

Have you every wondered what the electromagnetic fields actually look like? Using a single pixel camera based on electro-optic probing we can measure the fields directly above an antenna, amplifier or any microwave/mm-wave device. These pictures give us very interesting insights into how these devices operate and allows us to design methods to improve their operation. Of primary importance is to reduce their energy consumption so that we can create very efficient or ‘green’ electronics.

In this project the student will work within my multiphysics research team to work on two objectives. The first is to combine surrogate modeling techniques with the measurement system to reduce measurement time. The second will be to use study and simulate the camera so that we can use physics and machine learning-based methods to improve the focusing of the system – allowing sharper images of the fields.

You can find lots of details on my research team website: https://people.mines.edu/paaen/
and recent publications: https://people.mines.edu/paaen/publications/

Two recent papers – showing the measurement system and field images.
1. J. Urbonas, K. Kim, and P. H. Aaen, “Direct E-field measurement and imaging of oscillations within power amplifiers,” IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, Sept. 2018, Early Access.
2. J. Urbonas, K. Kim, F. Vanaverbeke, and P. H. Aaen, “An electro-optic pulsed NVNA load-pull system for distributed E-field measurements,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 66, no. 6, pp. 2896-2903, June 2018.

Grand Challenge: Engineer the tools of scientific discovery