Prof. Richard Ziolkowski of University of Technology Sydney

The introduction of metamaterials and metamaterial-inspired structures into the tool set of RF engineers has led to a wide variety of advances within research areas treating structures that radiate (e.g., RF antennas) and scatter (e.g., optical nano-antennas). The increased awareness of complex media, both naturally occurring and artificially constructed, which has been stimulated by the debut of metamaterials, has enabled paradigm shifts in terms of our understanding of how devices and systems operate and our expectations of their performance characteristics. These shifts include the trends of miniaturization, enhanced performance (total radiated power, bandwidth and directivity) and multi-functionality. New techniques have been developed that are impacting practical realizations. These include, for example, dispersion engineering (tailoring material and geometry resonances), scattering mitigation (cloaking, active jamming, perfect absorbers), field localization (sensors, nonlinearities), and output beam shaping (leaky wave broadside radiators, sub-diffraction limit resolution in remote sensing, and highly directive beams for energy transfer and low probability of intercept systems).

A variety of metamaterial-inspired, near-field resonant parasitic (NFRP), electrically small antennas have been developed that exhibit multi-functional performance, enhanced bandwidths, and higher directivities. Multi-functionality is achieved by combining multiple NFRP elements with simple driven radiators. Higher directivity is obtained by simultaneously exciting balanced electric and magnetic NFRP elements, leading to endfire and broadside radiating Huygens dipole antennas (HDAs). Enhanced bandwidths and loss mitigation, as well as wireless power transfer capabilities, have been achieved by augmenting the HDAs with non-Foster (active) and rectifying (rectenna) elements. A variety of HDAs have been fabricated and tested to confirm their attractive performance characteristics. Many will be reviewed briefly. Most recently, linear arrays of HDAs have also been demonstrated to be in good agreement with their analytical and numerical predictions. These Huygens dipole antenna arrays (HDAAs) will also be described. The potential of HDAs and HDAAs for the much anticipated 5G and beyond electromagnetic ecosystems and associated IoT applications will be stressed throughout my presentation.

Biography:

Richard W. Ziolkowski received the B. Sc. (magna cum laude) degree (Hons.) in physics from Brown University, Providence, RI, USA, in 1974; the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, USA, in 1975 and 1980, respectively; and an Honorary Doctorate degree from the Technical University of Denmark, Kongens Lyngby, Denmark in 2012.

            He is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Global Big Data Technologies Centre in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies (FEIT) at the University of Technology Sydney, Ultimo NSW Australia. He became a Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona in 2018, where he was a Litton Industries John M. Leonis Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the College of Engineering and was also a Professor in the College of Optical Sciences. He was the Computational Electronics and Electromagnetics Thrust Area Leader with the Engineering Research Division of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before joining The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA, in 1990. His current research interests include the application of new mathematical and numerical methods to linear and nonlinear problems dealing with the interaction of electromagnetic and acoustic waves with complex linear and nonlinear media, as well as metamaterials, metamaterial-inspired structures, nano-structures, and other classical and quantum applications-specific configurations.

            Prof. Ziolkowski was the recipient of the 2019 IEEE Electromagnetics Award (IEEE Technical Field Award). He is a Life Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE, 1994). He became a Fellow of Optica (previously the Optical Society of America, OSA) in 2006 and the American Physical Society (APS) in 2016. He was the 2014-2015 Australian DSTO Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Advanced Science and Technology. He served as the President of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) in 2005 and has had many other AP-S leadership roles. He is also actively involved with the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP), and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) professional societies. He is the co-Editor of the best-selling 2006 IEEE-Wiley book, Metamaterials: Physics and Engineering Explorations.