Current students

Nowadays, it is common knowledge that wireless communications traffic has been growing and will continue to grow in the future. Despite the use of advanced modulation schemes and signal processing techniques, the need for more spectral resources is quite evident. The mmWave and sub-THz frequency ranges offer wide availability of bandwidth, however planar transmission lines suffer from prohibitive losses at such high frequencies and are not suitable for implementing high-performance passive devices. This is the reason why antennas and filters are preferably realized in rectangular waveguide technology, which in turn requires precise and advanced 3D manufacturing. Traditional CNC-milling is not able to meet the strict tolerances due to its low product uniformity and, being intrinsically sequential, it results definitely too expensive. A suitable low-cost alternative is offered by various micromachining techniques based on lithography. The extremely high accuracy and repeatability, alongside the parallel fabrication of more devices at the same time, stand out as the ideal candidate for batch production of sub-THz passive devices. The objective of my research project is the design, realization and electromagnetic characterization of working prototypes, that demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale production of multilayer passive devices built through micromachining.
Planar transmission lines and SIW are still useful in the mmWave band thanks to their easy fabrication and integration with other components. Some rather new filter types such as the path filters look extremely promising, as they allow the implementation of transmission zeros and also the combination of different transmission media, while still maintaining an inline configuration. During my Ph.D. I will also explore the possibilities enabled by the path filter concept to enhance the flexibility of current filter design techniques.