Chung-Tse (Michael) Wu, assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has received the DARPA Young Faculty Award (YFA) for the project titled "Metamaterial Integrated Ultra-Broadband Antenna Array with Embedded Reconfigurable Non-Foster Circuits".
Dr. Wu’s research seeks to develop and demonstrate a compact planar ultra-broadband array antenna operating from 1 GHz up to 100 GHz, which is needed to interface with emerging ultra-broadband electronic integrated circuits with 100 GHz instantaneous bandwidth. The electromagnetic radio frequency (RF) spectrum in the field is congested with multiple frequency bands for both civilian and military operations. Often multiple narrow band antennas are needed to cover a wide frequency spectrum, which are very bulky and difficult to operate in the mobile environment.
Michael and his group will create an ultra-broadband antenna array that aims to provide 1 - 100 Ghz instantaneous bandwidth, fundamentally enabled by an innovative integration of metamaterial (MTM) antenna elements, meta surfaces and a novel type of reconfigurable negative group delay (NGD)-based non-Foster circuits.
According to Dr. Wu, the resulting antenna array with ultra-broad instantaneous bandwidth will provide spectrum flexibility in communication and high resolution in radar sensing detection for current and future military applications.
The DARPA YFA program aims to identify and engage rising stars in junior faculty positions in academia and expose them to Department of Defense (DOD) and national security challenges and needs. The YFA program provides funding, mentoring, and industry and DoD contacts to awardees, developing the next generation of academic scientists, engineers, and mathematicians who will focus a significant portion of their career on DoD and national security issues.