As an application engineer for EM Systems & Software, USA my responsibilities include

• Technical support in the use of the electromagnetic simulation software FEKO
• Using FEKO successfully in hitherto unexplored areas of application
• Execution of short courses for basic and advanced instruction in the use of FEKO
• Representation of the company at academic conferences and trade shows
• Conducting original research for contribution to academia

During my work I was involved in various projects, during the course of which I was able to expand my knowledge base and understanding of antennas and microwave circuits. Please note that the list below consists of relatively major projects and is by no means an exhaustive indication of all the research work I have undertaken.

Planar Inverted-F Antenna: Designed a reduced size Planar Inverted-F Antenna (PIFA) for Wi-Fi operation (2.4 GHz). A traditional PIFA uses a Perfect Electric Conductor (PEC) as the ground. However one can replace the PEC ground with a Photonic Band Gap (PBG) ground plane designed to work at the frequency of interest. The effect of the PBG ground is to shift the frequency of operation to a lower value. Therefore one can use the dimensions of a PIFA that would normally make it work at a higher frequency than 2.4 GHz (thereby making it smaller in size) and the presence of the PBG ground will move the frequency of operation lower to our desired value. Using this methodology, the size of the antenna was reduced by 20% as compared to a traditional PIFA. 

Microwave Circuits: Designed various passive microwave circuits for power division like quadrature hybrid, two-way Wilkinson power divider, rat-race coupler, and the 10 dB directional coupler at 2.4GHz. The power division behavior (splitting of the power with the right amplitude and phase) in each of the circuits was verified from standard references. Also designed active microwave circuits for signal amplification like the gain block and a low noise amplifier for use at 2.4GHz in ADS. 

Radar Cross Section: Conducted an in-depth analysis of the variation of the radar cross section (RCS) for distorted trihedral reflectors and spherical radomes from 800 MHz to 2 GHz. The aim of the investigation was to find the optimum design for the reflector and radome combination for manufacturing purpose. A variety of different cases were considered for the trihedral reflector (the radome was kept a constant throughout the experiment). Manufacturing inaccuracies like non-perfect orthogonality between the faces, a small gap at the vertex and perturbations on the faces were included in order to observe their effect on the RCS. The study was done for both vertical and horizontal polarizations of the incident plane wave.

  Other Projects

• Reduction in the size of a monopole using Electronic Band Gap ground plane: An Electronic Band Gap (EBG) structure was designed to act as an High Impedance Surface (HIS) at the frequency of interest using FEKO's optimization capabilities. The HIS was used as a substrate over a bent monopole to create a low-profile antenna.
• Analysis of radome structures using different numerical techniques: This project was undertaken to demonstrate the applicability of FEKO for the analysis of radome structures. A radome of typical complexity was chosen and its scattering behavior was characterized using FEKO's different numerical techniques. It was demonstrated that FEKO can be a very efficient solver for radome problems.