Antennas send and receive electromagnetic waves in a desired way and have uses in a wide range of everyday applications including communications, data transfer, wireless power transfer, device monitoring, vehicle to vehicle communication, geospatial positions (GPS), and radar, among others. We use custom modeling and optimization tools to design state-of-the-art antennas that achieve multi-band and tunable performances, multi-channel and full-duplex communication, beam-forming and beam steering for antenna arrays, polarization selectivity, and other phenomena.
CEARL is at the forefront of applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Deep Learning (DL) in electromagnetics. Applications of AI and DL in EM include the acceleration of computational fullwave solvers, inverse scattering and sensing, as well as predictive and generative models that are able to produce structures that achieve a desired electromagnetic response given just a set of expected performance data. Over the next few years, AI and DL have the potential to significantly advance the state of the art in electromagnetic and optical meta-device design.
The area of Computational Electromagnetics (CEM) deals with solving Maxwell's equations or various asymptotic forms thereof in a desired simulation domain. CEARL researchers develop CEM codes based on the Finite Element Mechanics (FEM) method, Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD), Methods of Moments (MoM), Discontinuous Galerkin Time Domain (DGTD), and high-frequency ray tracing methods. We use these codes to efficiently solve design problems that often cannot be solved by conventional commercial solvers. Furthermore, we tightly couple these solvers with state of the art optimization routines to realize disruptive electromagnetic and optical devices.
CEARL is internationally recognized for pioneering the use of powerful global optimization techniques (e.g. Â genetic algorithms (GA), particle swarm (PS), covariance matrix adaptation evolutionary strategy (CMA-ES), clonal section (CS) algorithms, wind driven optimization (WDO)) for application-driven design of RF and optical meta-devices. We tightly integrated these optimization algorithms with commercial as well as in-house simulation tools to develop new and transformative inverse design synthesis techniques that are enable designers to realize beyond state-of-the-art device performance.
Researchers in CEARL are experts in a number of areas of novel optical system design and optimization. Technical areas of expertise include Transformation Optics (TO), Gradient Index (GRIN) lenses, metasurfaces and metalenses, global optimization and Topology Optimization of optical meta-devices, and surrogate modeling techniques for optical system design. We also develop cutting edge optical design tools for modeling new technologies such as metalenses and free-form lenses.
Metamaterials are artificial engineered materials that possess properties beyond what occurs in nature. CEARL is at the forefront of electromagnetic metamaterial research and have explored metamaterials with unique properties including: electromagnetic band gap (EBG) materials, artificial magnetic conducting (AMC) surfaces, multiband artificial dielectric metamaterials with fractal sphere molecules, left-handed or double-Negative materials (including magneto-elecric coupling), zero- and low-index metamaterials, meta-ferrite materials, bi-anisotropic metamaterials, metamaterial absorbers, interdigitated capacitor-Loaded metasurfaces, nonlinear metasurfaces.