ATI's Microwave Antenna Systems & Design course

Summary: This two-day course begins with a tutorial on the basics of antenna design and performance. The performance of traditional antennas, including short dipoles, magnetic loops, and parabolic dishes, is summarized. The collective use of such antennas as arrays, including beam-steering and null-steering systems, is discussed in detail. Next, antenna-system properties such as bandwidth, beamwidth, impedance, and sidelobes, are related to system-level concerns such as noise, propagation, and interference. Terrestrial, aeronautical, and satellite antenna systems are compared and contrasted. The discussion continues with an investigation of new antenna systems, including the recent deployment on satellites of extremely large antennas that use digital beam-forming to generate hundreds of spot beams simultaneously. New system-design paradigms, such as the use of high these high gain satellite antennas with low-gain mobile ground station antennas, are analyzed. Finally, the impact of antenna system performance on spectrum management and regulatory issues is discussed, using as examples recent FCC and International Telecommunications Union rulings. The textbook, Antenna Theory, is included as well as a comprehensive set of course notes. Instructor: Dr. Daniel Jablonski is a member of the Principal Professional staff of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland. He has Bachelors and Masters degrees in Electric Engineering from M.I.T., and a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge University. With 25 years years of experience, he has numerous patents and publications related to antennas, microwave components, circuits, GPS, and communication systems. He is active in spectrum management issues at the national and international levels. Dr. Jablonski is also a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of Maryland. Contact this instructor (please mention course name in the subject line) What You Will Learn: How antennas work. Why antennas are designed the way they are. How antenna performance improvements benefit bandwidth efficiency, system error rates, and link reliability. What physical phenomena ultimately limit the performance of an antenna. How modern systems manage to utilize antenna designs that many current textbooks dismiss as being impractical. From this course you will develop a perspective that links the component level thinking of antenna engineers to the system level approach of communications engineers. At the same time, you will be sensitized to the legal and regulatory issues that must be addressed before practical systems can be deployed into the international marketplace. Course Outline: Why antennas radiate. —Relationship of antenna length to signal wavelength; transient vs. steady-state analysis; simple models Types of antennas: wires, loops, and reflectors — Maxwell's equations, current distributions, driving point impedance, bandwidth, beamwidth, duality between E-field and H-field antennas (e.g., wires vs. loops) Use of single antennas from ELF to millimeter waves. — Examples of what antennas for each band look like Antenna arrays — Constructive and destructive interference — Synthetic apertures Traditional antenna arrays — Binomial array (discrete) and Gaussian array (continuous) — End-fire and broad-side patterns Adaptive arrays — Beam steering — Null steering Propagation, noise, and interference. — How noise and propagation affect system design choices — Interference versus noise Communications system analysis — Impact of antenna parameters on link budget analyses New developments in high performance antennas — Digital beam forming — Fractal antennas and genetic algorithms for antenna design — Conformal antennas — Shared apertures Regulatory and spectrum management issues — How antenna factors are taken into account in regulatory proceedings — FCC and International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Issues Tuition: The tuition for this two-day course is $940 per person at one of our scheduled public courses. Onsite pricing is available. Please call us at 410-956-8805 or send an email to ati@ATIcourses.com. Register Now Without Obligation