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Doctoral School of Microwaves: Microwave Fundamentals

When: Thursday 1st and Friday 2nd November 2012
Location: G001
Organisers and Lecturers:
F.E. van Vliet, TNO & Twente University, The Netherlands T.J. Brazil, University College Dublin, Ireland

About the Doctoral School of Microwaves
As a result of the Bologna agreement, different international academic study programmes are becoming increasingly harmonised. This has resulted in university programmes that lead to broadly comparable B.Sc. and M.Sc. qualifications across Europe.

In 2009, it was realised that the community of European Ph.D. students would be a fertile ground for one or more Ph.D. courses in microwave engineering. With support from the GAAS Association, the first of these programmes has been created and a pilot ran during the 2011 EuMW in Manchester. Due to the success of this pilot, the school will be launched in Amsterdam in 2012. As this is the first course in the Doctoral School of Microwaves, the starting point chosen is that which should be first: Microwave Fundamentals.

From the foregoing, it is clear that the targeted audience of this two-day course is formed by Ph.D. students, predominantly in their first two years of study, with a field of research that is in some way related to the microwave domain. The course will be formed by two intensive days of lectures. Given the audience, there should be something to learn for everyone. Basic ideas for those who have just started, food for thought for those who have been around for a while. The programme focusses on passive microwaves, and covers transmission lines, S-parameters, matching, microwave theorems, coupled lines, splitters and combiners and the fundamentals of network analysis. It is a programme not to be missed!

Abstract:
The programme is directed toward Ph.D. students. Obviously it is primarily for any Ph.D. student in the microwave domain, but the school also has relevance to high-speed digital designers and to people concerned with signal integrity in the broader sense. The programme is designed to lay the foundations, both mathematically as well as conceptually, for microwave analysis. It allows a fundamental understanding of high frequency passive circuits, and will prepare students to become intelligent users of commercial microwave and EM field simulators. As background, students will be expected to have attained a Bachelor/ Masters level qualification in Electrical Engineering, sufficient to enable them to be admitted to doctoral studies. Familiarity with basic circuit theory and Maxwell’s equations will be assumed. Up to 30 students can be accommodated.

Programme

Day 1, Thursday
08:30 - 09:00 Introduction

09:00 - 10:30 Transmission lines: circuit perspective

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee and interactive problem-solving session

11:00 - 13:00 Transmission lines: field perspective. Pulse propagation.

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch

14:00 - 16:00 S-parameters and matching

16:00 - 18:30 Useful microwave theorems: passivity, reciprocity, unilaterality etc.

Day 2, Friday
08:30 - 10:30 Coupled lines: theory and couplers

10.30 - 11.00 Coffee and interactive problem-solving session

11:00 - 13:00 Splitters, combiners and hybrids

13:00 - 14:00 Lunch