Kamal Sarabandi
University of Michigan, MI·Engineering
Antennas, wireless chips and phased arrays are usually tested by sending in signals from far away. That approach shows how a whole device responds, but not how each tiny part reacts to a field applied right next to it.
- Fields
Engineering
Physics
Biomedical Engineering
- Topics
electromagnetics
RF measurement
microwave engineering
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through May 2027
What they work on
- Build a fiber-fed RF probe on a 65-nm CMOS chip that uses photovoltaic cells and an avalanche photodiode at its tip to generate a localized electric field over 0–12 GHz.
- Scan the probe across receiving antennas and arrays, recording output at each point, to experimentally measure their electromagnetic Green's function, a full map of their response to applied fields.
- Apply the probe to locate defective elements in phased arrays and MIMO systems and map electromagnetic interference in microwave integrated circuits with micron-level resolution.
More about the research
Bulky metal probes also disturb the very fields they measure. This project develops a tiny, fiber-fed probe that can 'tap' a receiving system at a precise point without disturbing it. Mapping the response point by point would give the system's electromagnetic Green's function, a complete description of how it responds to any applied field. The project describes this as the first method able to measure it directly.
Why it matters
A non-invasive, micron-scale RF probe could help chip makers and wireless companies find defective elements in large antenna arrays and 5G-style MIMO systems. It could also help them track down interference inside microwave chips. In medicine, precise local field measurements could support RF dosimetry and treatments such as RF ablation and microwave hyperthermia for cancer.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Subhanshu Gupta
Washington State University, WA·Engineering
Use the frequency-dependent beams of true-time-delay arrays to cut beam-training overhead, and design a low-latency protocol that trains beams and estimates interference at the same time in dense millimeter-wave networks.
Spyridon Pavlidis
North Carolina State University, NC·Engineering·Early-career
Extract impact ionization coefficients — the parameters governing avalanche breakdown — from avalanche photodiodes fabricated on native aluminum nitride substrates, to establish how large an electric field aluminum-rich AlGaN can support.
Jun-Chau Chien
University of California-Berkeley, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Develop low-loss wireless interconnects that carry radio signals between face-to-face stacked chips separated by a 10–20 µm gap, together with a low-cost chip-stacking process for 3D radio-frequency integrated circuits.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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