Course Description

Mutual coupling in arrays : applications to antenna arrays and metamaterials 

Christophe Craeye, Université catholique de Louvain

Dates :

February 8th, 9th, and 10th, 2010

Course outline :

The course focuses on the electromagnetic interactions between elements of regular and non-regular arrays, which are assumed to be made of identical elements.  In particular, we show ho such interactions can be efficiently computed with integral-equation approaches and how to connect - for periodic structures - finite and infinite-array results.

Particular attention will be given to physical interpretation and to applications in the fields of antenna arrays and metamaterials, both devoted to communication and sensing applications.  The course will be accompanied by homeworks based on the Method of Moments, to be implemented in the Matlab language and through which most of the taugh concepts will be applied to the simple case of arrays of dipoles

Short outline :

• Reminders on electromagnetics and antenna theory
• Planar, cylindrical and spherical wave decompositions + multipoles
• Basic array theory and introduction to mutual coupling
• Electric and Magnetic-field integral equations
• Method of Moments (MoM)
• Infinite arrays : analytical approach
• Infinite arrays : numerical approach
• Fast iterative methods for finite arrays
• Array scanning Method
• Macro Basis Functions
• Methods for mutual coupling corrections (brief summary)
• Near-field sensing with wideband arrays
• Eigenmode analysis in metamaterials
• Metamaterials : applications of metasurfaces and metavolumes

The homework will consist of developing with Matlab a MoM code for the analysis of finite and infinite arrays, with the help the the Array Scanning Method and Macro Basis Functions approaches. 

Short biography : 

Christophe Craeye was born in Belgium in 1971. He received the Electrical Engineer and bachelier in Philosophy degrees in 1994, from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL) http://www.uclouvain.be. He received the Ph.D. degree in Applied Sciences from the same university in 1998. From 1994 to 1999, he was a teaching assistant at UCL and carried out research on the radar signature of the sea surface perturbed by rain, in collaboration with the Rain-sea interaction facility http://rsif.wff.nasa.gov of NASA, Wallops Island (VA).
From 1999 to 2001, C. Craeye stayed as a post-doc researcher at the Eindhoven University of Technology  http://w3.ele.tue.nl/en/tte , The Netherlands. His research there has been carried out in the framework of the Square Kilometer Array http://www.skatelescope.org radio telescope project, and consisted of studying a technology based on phased-arrays traditionally used for broadband radar applications. In this framework, he also stayed at the University of Massachusetts http://www.ecs.umass.edu/ece/labs/antlab/APLab/index.html in the Fall of 1999, and worked with the Netherlands Institute for Research in Astronomy http://www.astron.nl in 2001.
In 2002 he started an antenna research activity at the Université catholique de Louvain, where he is now a Professor. His research interests are finite antenna arrays, small antennas and numerical methods for fields in periodic media, with applications to communication and sensing systems and to metamaterials. His research is funded by Région Wallonne, European Commission, FNRS and UCL. C. Craeye currently is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.

Venue : 

Louvain-la-Neuve

Monday 8th feb. : aud. Merc 24

Tuesday 9th feb. : aud. Merc 25

Wednesday 10th feb. : aud. Merc 12 AM and Merc 25 PM

Registration :

Registration on the Web until February 1st 2010

Map of Louvain-la-Neuve : http://www.uclouvain.be/271269.html

Aud. Merc. are located in building nr 9