Grant: Research Tools and Instruments - Category 1 (<$150,000)

The equipment proposed in this RTI grant is for upgrading an existing planar scanner antenna measurement system to a cylindrical measurement system. The upgrade comprises azimuthal and radial robotics to support microwave measuring equipment. Operating with existing software and computers will allow for controlling and undertaking data acquisition and processing for the scanner, and simulating and optimizing antenna designs and experimental data. This upgrade offers exceptional value. It will be located in the world-class Sierra Wireless Mobile Communications Research Laboratory at SFU and will be used on pressing and wealth-creating research projects. The research which is supported by the equipment is sophisticated in its theory, computation and physical experimentation requirements. The physical measurements require: high-accuracy robotics to enable sampling the fields on a surface enclosing a device; multipath reduction using absorber-lined surroundings; and computation for the holography and effective sources and fields on the physical surfaces of devices-under-test and also on imagined surfaces such as the far field.The underpinning research is supported through grants including NSERC Discovery and Strategic grants, MITACs Accelerate, and shorter term projects such as the NSERC Engage. This research concerns design projects stemming from fields and waves research in physics, and in engineering, and communications signal processing. Specifically, the research includes fundamental evaluation where numerical and physical experiments for radiation and scattering are compared. The research has very high relevance to Canadian industry.