Ad Reniers, Research & Education, Eindhoven University of Technology
Ad Reniers received the Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Fontys University of Applied Sciences and is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e).
From 1999 to 2009, he worked with TNO Industry and Technique in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, on research projects, affiliated to antenna-based sensors, antenna miniaturization, RFID applications, and energy harvesting. Since 2009, he has been associated with the Electromagnetics Group, Department of Electrical Engineering, Eindhoven University of Technology, Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He has extensive engineering and research experience in the field of antenna design and antenna measurement. His research interests include millimeter-wave antenna measurement, antenna miniaturization for integrated mm-wave communication and wireless power transfer.
Millimeter-wave Antenna Measurement Facility for Antenna-in-package and Antenna-on-chip Characterization
The advent of millimeter-wave frequencies in mass-market wireless communications requires low-cost, highly integrated antenna designs. Their integrated nature leads to the need for small antenna dimensions, limiting their bandwidth to just about the system requirements. On the other hand, the low-cost demand requires the use of inexpensive materials and manufacturing processes, which in turn introduces a significant spread on the antenna’s performance parameters. To trade-off antenna size (bandwidth) and manufacturing tolerances (cost), accurate antenna characterization is a must. For this, reliability and repeatability are of paramount importance. Therefore, we designed an in-house modular and compact mm-wave antenna measurement system, see figure. The system is fully anechoic and is equipped with vibration and temperature sensors to monitor the environmental conditions during measurements adequately. Within a frequency range of 26.5 GHz till 110 GHz, the near- or far-fields of the antenna-under-test (AUT) can be measured in a complete semi-hemisphere. Depending on the design, the connection to the AUT can be established via a connector or on-wafer probe while the specifically designed antenna holder minimizes the influence of the environment. The software has been developed such that fully automated 2D and 3D antenna patterns can be obtained.