PhD Supervisor: Professor Steven Gao, Chair of RF and Microwave Engineering

Funding Availability: Applications for this project are welcome from candidates internationally. Successful candidate will be fully funded and the funding will cover both the bursary and fees (for international students) for 3 years.

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship within the School of Engineering and Digital Arts, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK. This is a 3-year project, funded by industries, and the researcher is to work under the supervision of Professor Steven Gao. The PhD student is to start on (or before) March 2, 2015.

The University of Kent is well-known internationally, for research work in frequency-selective surfaces (FSS), smart antennas, RF/microwave/millimetre-wave circuits and wireless communications. The aim of this project is to investigate the innovative design, modelling, implementation and testing of antennas for smart phones. For wireless communications, the antenna for mobile handsets will need to be tuneable, adaptive, and operate over multiple frequencies bands while having a small size.

The University of Kent has excellent antenna and RF/microwave/millimetre-wave measurement facilities including various anechoic, near-field and plane-wave chambers, the largest of which operates between 400MHz and 110GHz with a totally new measurement system including a dedicated vector network analyzer. The antennas laboratories also contain broadband network analysers operating from 10MHz to 110GHz. It has a well-equipped mechanical workshop with newly installed computer controlled machinery, which is for the fabrication of antennas and RF/microwave circuits.

In this project, the main roles of the PhD student will include: 1) the design, modelling, simulation and analysis of adaptive multi-band miniaturised antennas for smart phones; 2). Antenna fabrication and testing; 3). The student will give presentations and write technical reports or papers.

The ideal candidate has a Master degree in engineering or physics with experience in antenna designs, or electromagnetics or RF or microwave engineering. Working or research experience in antennas or RF or microwave engineering will be a plus. For overseas applicants, the minimum English requirement is that he/she needs to have IELTS scores 6.5 overall including 6.0 in both reading and writing.

Enquiries: Any enquiries relating to the project should be directed to Prof Steven Gao (s.gao<στο>kent.ac.uk)

Application: Apply for a PhD online at http://www.kent.ac.uk/courses/postgraduate/262/electronic-engineering#!apply specifying the research topic “Adaptive Multi-Band Small Antenna for Smart Phones”.