Prof. Jeffrey Nanzer

This lecture presents an overview of the challenges involved in distributed phased array coordination, and describes recent progress on microwave technologies that address these challenges. Requirements for achieving distributed phase coherence at microwave frequencies are discussed, including the impact of component non- idealities such as oscillator drift on beamforming performance. Architectures for enabling distributed beamforming are reviewed, along with the relative challenges between transmit and receive beamforming. Microwave and millimeter-wave technologies enabling wireless phase-coherent synchronization are discussed, focusing on technologies for high-accuracy internode ranging, wireless frequency transfer, and high-accuracy time alignment. The lecture concludes with a discussion of open challenges in distributed phased arrays, and where microwave technologies may play a role.

Biography:

Prof. Nanzer (S’02-M’08-SM’14) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering and computer engineering from Michigan State Univ. in 2003, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from The University of Texas at Austin in 2005 and 2008, respectively. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow with Applied Research Laboratories, Univ. of Texas at Austin, (2008-09) involved in designing electrically small HF antennas and communication systems. From 2009 to 2016, he was with The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, where he created and led the Advanced Microwave and Millimeter- Wave Technology Section. In 2016, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Michigan State University, where he is currently the Dennis P. Nyquist Associate Professor. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 refereed journal and conference papers, a book and chapters of other books on microwave circuits and wireless sensing. His current research interests include distributed arrays, radar and remote sensing, antennas, electromagnetics, and microwave photonics.