Buon Kiong Lau, Professor

 For the latest news, check-out my activities on my Linkedin page.

 

• 28 Sep 2021 - The Call for the 2022 Student Design Contest, organized by the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society is out! Videos made by the semifinalists of the 2021 Contest is available here. For those of you who are academics in the electrical engineering field, please encourage your students to join this very interesting and highly beneficial activity!

 

• 27 July 2021 - I found out that I made it to the ballot of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society's Administrative Committee Election this year. I am certainly excited about the possible opportunity to serve the society members in a more significant role than those that I have been in before (Distinguished Lecturer, Student Design Contest Coordinator, Track/Senior/Associate Editor, Special Issue Guest Editor, etc.). My position statement and other information are provided here.

 

• 9 July 2021 - My THIRD joint article with Ross Murch's group at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) is now published! 

Co-Designed 3+3 Port Dual-Band Broadside Tri-Modal Patch Antenna

C. Y. Chiu, B. K. Lau, and R. Murch

IEEE Open Journal on Antennas and Propagation

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9461189 

In the first edition, a single-band tri-port broadside patch antenna was created as the unit cell for massive MIMO, allowing one more (broadside) port to be added relative to dual-polarized patch designs (50% capacity gain or 1/3 array miniaturization). Not being content with this, we then enhanced the bandwidth of the design in the second edition from 4% to about 20%. In this latest (third) edition, a second band was created with three separate ports, adding further flexibility to the usage of this antenna. The 20% bandwidth is retained for the original band, and 14% bandwidth is achieved for the higher band. 

 

• 4 Mar 2021 - I made my debut as a YouTuber with a live-stream seminar given as part of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Young Professional (VTS YP) Seminar Series. The title was "Taming the Massive MIMO Beast". Fun experience!

 

• 4 Jan 2021 - I gave a Distinguished Lecture on "Challenges and Solutions in Massive MIMO Antenna Design" to IEEE Delhi Section APS Chapter Jaipur and IEEE Student Branch Chapter (SBC) of IIT Jodhpur. The recorded video has been uploaded to the SBC's YouTube Channel and available here.

The presentation focuses on a new massive MIMO antenna design concept that makes use of characteristic mode analysis to generate a patch antenna with 3 uncorrelated ports with broadside patterns, as opposed to the conventional 2-port patch element. Since similar element spacing can be kept, the new 3-port array element enables roughly 50% more ports per unit area for a massive MIMO array (or a smaller array size for a given number of ports).

Thanks to Assistant Professor Fenghan Lin, a shorter version of this video (without the introduction of AP-Society, Lund University and Q&A) has been uploaded to the Characteristic Mode Special Interest Group (CM-SIG) Channel on Bilibili.com for the benefit of Chinese researchers (here). The QR code is shown below:

 

 

• 22 Dec 2020 - I was informed that my application to the Swedish Strategic Research Foundation for an industrial PhD project with nok9 AB has been approved. The project is entitled "Interference Reduction in Inductive Wireless Power Transfer". With the growing importance of wireless charging not only for small devices but also for electric vehicles, the issue of electromagnetic interference is attracting increasing attention. We are excited about the many new topics that we will pursue within this project!   

 

• 3 Dec 2020 - I gave a CM SIG Webinar on "Innovations in smartphone MIMO antenna design using characteristic modes" and the recorded version is available on YouTube (https://youtu.be/QKi74A971rg) and Bilibili (directly accessible by QR code below).

Also took the opportunity to upload a distinguished lecture I gave at a workshop in Riga, Latvia almost a year ago in Nov 2019 (https://youtu.be/jdLEPOPsY5s).

 

• 27 November 2020 - I was one of two external committee members (censors) for the PhD defense of PhD candidate Paolo Squadrito at Aalborg University. His thesis title is "Cm-wave Antennas for Small Satellite Communication". This was not the first time for me to perform this duty online, but certainly the first time for Aalborg University, which really isn't very far away from Lund. I enjoyed the experience of "picking on" Paolo together with my co-opponent Prof. Jorge Costa. Paolo defended very well and we were sufficiently convinced that Paolo deserves his PhD title. The photo below is taken after the defense, together with Paolo, Gilberto Berardinelli the chair of the thesis committee and Shuai Zhang the co-supervisor. Congrats, Dr. Paolo Squadrito!

       

 

• 6 August 2020 - For the first time ever, I gave an invited conference talk over Zoom. The title of the presentation was "Innovative MIMO Antenna Design for Mobile Communications Using Characteristic Modes" and the conference (which turned online due to the pandemic) was the 9th Asia-Pacific Conference on Antennas and Propagation (APCAP 2020). What made the experience even more interesting was that I was on vacation at a rented summer cottage in the Blekinge Province (Sweden) that week (see photos below of the cottage and the lake next to the cottage), and the 4G coverage was not particularly good. So I used a smartphone app to find the "sweet spot" on the outdoor terrace, which improved my 4G reception to "two bars", and a simple reflector made of  the aluminum foil I found in the kitchen (for the 0.9 GHz signal) further boosted the signal by a few more dB's to "three bars" - problem solved!

  

• 4-10 January 2020 - Prof. Raj Mittra and Mr. Junyi Huang invited me to University of Central Florida (UCF), Orlando to give a distinguished lecture already in Aug 2019, but due to various other commitments I couldn't go there earlier. This was not my first trip to Orlando, since I attended the 2013 IEEE AP Symposium in Orlando. But unlike my previous trip, which was in July and very warm even for me, this trip had been very pleasant (I went swimming in an unheated outdoor pool, in "winter"). Also, I had the opportunity to drive around to three cities in a rental car.

Naturally, My first stop was UCF. I had a full day to roam around the unuiversity campus and the surrounding area. UCF was founded in 1963. The campus was well laid out and very pretty (see photo below), and of course the weather is on its side. I later found out from Junyi that UCF has more than 60,000 students (66183 according to Google)! After giving the talk, Raj took me to a seafood restaurant (in a Bentley - he is famous for having exotic rides) for dinner with a couple of other staff/students, the food was DELICIOUS (see photo below)!

 

My second stop was University of Southern Florida (USF), Tampa, where I was hosted by Mr. Jonas Mendoza Sandoval. USF was founded ni 1956 and currently has over 50,000 students. I gave a talk there about terminal antennas for future wireless systems.

My final stop was Florida Institute of Technology (FIT) in Melbourne (NOT the one in Australia!). I gave a more general talk about antennas, since the seminar was held in the evening and targeted an audience from both academia and industry (see photo below). Among others, I met Jerry Meyerhoff (see photo below), who knows Nicholas E. Buris (my old friend) very well, it's a small world!

 

I stopped by Kennedy Space Center shortly on my way back to Orlando. It was a really nice place, hope to return with my family to Florida one day.

 

• 27/28 November 2019 - It was time to say goodbye to Liying Nie, who came to my group as a visiting PhD student from University of Electronic Sciences and Technology of China (UESTC), China. Liying's visit enabled very fruitful cooperation and her cheerful presence was well appreciated by all of us. We wish her the very best as she goes back to China to defend her thesis soon.

   

 

• 24/25 Oct 2019 - Prof. Anja Skrivervik (EPFL) and Dr. Nicholas Mora invited me to give a distinguished lecture in EPFL. It was really a pleasure for me to make the trip, having known Anja for many years. After my talk, I had very nice discussions with the audience, including some concerns about electromagnetic field exposure in 5G systems. Anja then drove me to the beautiful vineyards on the hill next to Lake Geneva, which was a fantastic experience. My only regret was that I could not stay longer, since I was busy with my teaching duties at the time.

• 5 September 2019 - It's been a while since my group had a photo together, so we took one today during our coffee/tea break. New to the group are Qiuyan Liang (double PhD degree student with Xidian University, China) and Kranti Kumar Katare (postdoc from IIT Kanpur, India).

• 18-25 June 2019 - I went to a four-city IEEE AP-S Distinguished Lecture Tour in Australia (Brisbane, Adelaide, Canberra, Sydney). It had been a long time since I was last in Australia (14 years to be precise!). Caught up with old friends and getting to know new ones, and I really appreciated the efforts made by the local AP-S chapters to make me feel welcome and comfortable. Technically it was winter but it felt like summer to me, I miss the weather there, that's for sure!

 

  Heading to Oz - my second ever flight on Airbus A380!

 

  Very nice student lab facility at Griffiths University, Brisbane

 

  Dinner treat by my very friendly hosts in Adelaide

 

  Peiyuan and Can brought me out to a very fancy Chinese place in Sydney

• 11 June 2019 - It was the presentation day for my three Master/Bachelor thesis project students working on different topics within the field of wireless power transfer (WPT). They all performed their thesis work at nok9 AB. 

Love Rosén's Master's project "Communication Channel Measurement and Modeling for Inductive Wireless Power Transfer" was sponsored by Google Inc, USA. It was about acquiring and modeling the coil-to-coil channel under normal WPT operation. Understanding this channel is important as it is not only used for WPT, but also in-band communication within the Qi Specification.

Brenda Awuor Odhiambo's Master's project was "Impact of Surrounding Objects on Inductive Wireless Power Transfer". She studied the impact of different metal objects on WPT coil parameters, insights of which can be used to improve the design of WPT systems in the presence of friendly metal and potentially applied to foreign object detection.

Jonatan Nyström present his bachelor thesis work on "Numerical Calculations of Wireless Power Transfer Coil Parameters", which studied ways to speed up the calculation of coil parameters in realistic setups, including multi-coil configuration as well as coil in the presence of ferrites. Faster computation while ensuring accuracy will allow designers to better optimize their WPT coil design.  

 

 

• 3-7 June 2019 - It was a very productive week of hosting the visit of Dr. Philipp Gentner, Kathrein SE. Philipp is interested in the design of base station antenna arrays for 5G and we were able to contribute with some of our ideas. Some initial work had been done together, which hopefully lead to closer collaborations later.

 

 

• 1-5 April 2019 - I went on my yearly "pilgrimage" to European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP). This year it was held in the beautiful city of Krakow in Poland. It was a fruitful meeting, with lots of opportunities to catch up with existing contacts and find out the latest advances in my research fields.

As usual, one of my roles is to organize a CM SIG (Characteristic Modes Special Interest Group) Meeting to discuss some important issues relating to organizing future activities in CM research. Around 30 persons showed up. Some great ideas were raised, both during and after the meeting, including possible hosting of webinars for CM topics. We are also excited about the 2nd edition of the European School of Antenna (ESoA) course on CM, which will be held during May 2020 in Prague. As is our tradition, we took a group photo (see below).

New to this year is my role as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) Chair for the next edition of EuCAP, EuCAP 2020 in Copenhagen. The organization of EuCAP 2020 is ramping up quickly, and among the challenges we face is the introduction of several new features, one being that there will be no extension of the paper submission deadline of 18 October 2019, unlike all previous editions.

 

• 18-22 February 2019 - I embarked on my first trip to South America to give two distinguished lectures in Brazil, one each at Rio de Janeiro and Natal, two very beautiful cities with lots of beach front. In fact, it was the famous Carnival period in Rio, but I missed the gigantic celebration since I was there on a weekday.

In Rio, my host was Prof. José Ricardo Bergmann of Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (famously known as PUC-Rio). Despite heavy duties as Deputy Vice Chancellor for Research, he took time to give me a personal tour around the very unique campus of PUC-Rio, the land of which was gifted to the Pope by a rich French family upon their return to France, which was then used for the private university. Although the campus area is large, government restrictions on the forested land limited the number of buildings, which the university took advantage of by concentrating staff/students from many faculties around a central building complex, allowing close interactions of different disciplines. After I gave my talk, a couple of young faculty members came to interact with me, some of whom have close contacts with my colleagues/collaborators in Sweden. It's a small world! The photos below show: Christ the Redeemer (the famous landmark I saw from afar), French Mansion (whose owner gave the estate on which PUC-Rio is built), Rio beach scenes at night.

 

My second destination was Natal - I was hosted by Prof. Adaildo Gomes D'Assunção, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte. Again, the hospitality was first class!!! I was staying at a beach resort (Natal is famous as a summer vacation spot in South America) but too bad I didn't have time to go for a swim. Apart from giving a talk at the electrical engineering department and interacting with some graduate students, Prof. Adaildo and his wife also brought me out for dinner at a prawn-themed restaurant the night before. After the talk, he and the head of department treated me to a special Portuguese BBQ lunch experience. On top of that, they drove me around the city and showed me among other things the famous local dish ginga-cum-tapioca and the cashew fruit (which I saw and tried for the first time, surprised by the nice tasting fruit that I never knew existed - the cashew nut is at the top end of the fruit).

 

Even though it was a short trip (2 nights spent on the return flights, and 2 nights in Brazil), it was an eye opening experience for me, not least it was my first trip to anywhere in South America. I was happy to hear that the funding situation is reasonably good in Brazil, and PUC-Rio for example recently hired two new faculty to join their team. I felt a good sense of optimism and hopefully there will be chances for more interaction in the future! Lastly, I sincerely thank Prof. Glauco Fontgalland at Universidade Federal de Campina Grande (UFCG) for making the initial contact for me to visit Brazil, even though we did not meet due to him being away in the States at the time.

 

• 1 November 2018 - My group is 4 MSEK richer thanks to the 4-year project grant awarded by the Swedish Research Council (Vetenskapsrådet). The decision for all grants is available here. The project is entitled: "Optimal MIMO Terminal Antennas for 5G and Beyond". It concerns the use of characteristic modes to design terminal antennas with consideration of its surroundings.

 

• 27 October-3 November 2018 – I visited India for the first time ever to present 5 IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society Distinguished Lectures in 3 cities (Kanpur, Kolkata and Chennai). It was quite an eye-opening experience for me, despite all that I have heard about India. I am especially thankful for the volunteers (both staff and students, too many to name individually) who have helped in every possible way to make my trip smooth and pleasant, including rebooking my flight to depart from a nearby city (and escorting me all the way there!) when my original flight was severely delayed such that I would miss my connecting flight.

My first stop was Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur (IIT-K), one of the original IITs, which are famed for their super-smart engineering graduates. I was able to arrive at Kanpur airport, which opened only a few months earlier – the airport’s “terminal” was still a big tent.

The students later told me that I was their first guest to arrive through the new airport, which as I personally experienced was still unreliable (hence the flight rebooking mentioned above). I stayed at the well-kept and luxurious campus’ visitor’s hostel, and had many opportunities to interact with the staff and students. One of the PhD students showed me his beautiful flower-like antenna design which gives very good performance (see group picture below).

My next stop was Kolkata. I gave my talk in IIEST Shibpur, which was held in conjunction with the formal opening of the local IEEE Student Branch, I was deeply humbled by the enthusiasms of some students who travelled from quite far to join the event. I had the opportunity to also look around Kolkata a little, including paying a short visit to Victoria Memorial (main administrative centre during the British colonial). On the way to the airport (on the way out), I also saw a very accurate (smaller) replica of the Big Ben clock tower in the middle of a highway! My host candidly commented: “Someone decided to make a copy of the Big Ben, and so it came to be!”.

My last stop was Chennai, one of the largest Information Technology centres of India, and also known by its automobile industry (“Detroit of India”). I presented my lectures in IIT Madras, which has a very nature-friendly campus (deers and monkeys roaming around in jungle-like surroundings) in the middle of a city with over 4-million people. Among the highlights, Prof. Selvan invited me over to his home to enjoy some homemade sweets made by his wife for the Divali festival, and Dr. Karthikeyan brought me to Chennai’s beautiful beach in the evening (with kilometres of beachfront!).

Throughout the trip, apart from meeting professors who are working hard to maintain and expand India’s academia reputation (despite modest resources available), I also came into contact with many promising young people, who are carefully selected from among many thousands to pursue their dream research education in India’s best institutions. I am inspired by their willingness to contribute to India’s continuing economic growth and betterment, and the awareness that the grass is greener at home, even if it is not reflected in big paychecks.

 

• 25 September 2018 - Google and nok9 AB are collaborating with me on a Master's thesis project in wireless power transfer. The aim is to characterize the inductive channel, which is also used for in-band communications in the Qi Specification, the dominant global standard for smartphone charging . This project is very timely and important for further development of Qi. More details are given here: https://www.eit.lth.se/index.php?gpuid=223&L=1&eauid=1179

• 13 September 2018 - My Master's thesis student Arianna presented her thesis, marking the end of a challenging journey for her. She performed her thesis on inductive wireless power transfer at nok9 AB, a company which I closely collaborate with through a Mobility Grant from SSF (Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research). Her thesis available here. Her thesis lays the groundwork for many more exciting thesis topics that nok9 is offering. I really appreciated her great attitude and hard work, is it any wonder that nok9 has offered her a permanent position! 

 

• 10-16 June 2018 - Prof. Michael Jensen, who is my group's Guest Professor of many years, came by for a week-long visit. It was fantastic to have an extended time to discuss various research topics of mutual interest. We started working on some nice ideas and hopefully we can share the results in the near future.

 

• 21-25 May 2018 - The first edition of the European School of Antenna (ESoA) Course on "Characteristic Modes: Theory and Applications" came and go so quickly. As they say, good time flies! Pavel Hazdra (CTU), Eva Antonino Daviu, Miguel-Ferrando Bataller, Marta Cabedo Fabres (UPV), Dirk Manteuffel (Leibniz University of Hannover) and I shared the load in teaching the week-long intensive course. Eva, Marta and Miguel (UPV) were fantastic organizers/hosts and the 17 students who took part in the course gave good reviews. We are already looking forward to presenting the course again in about two years! 

 

 

• 28 April 2018 - What began as a brief meeting at 2017 IEEE AP-Symposium in San Diego ended up with Changfei Zhou coming to my group as a visiting PhD student (from University of Hong Kong) for 5 months. Changfei is a no-nonsense personality who has endless bright ideas. Even though he bravely took on a new research topic for collaboration that neither of us are very good at, he made good progress in his relatively short stay in Lund. We are hopeful about finishing the work even though he has left. A photo of his farewell party is shown below.

 

• 10-13 Apr 2018 - I attended the 2018 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2018) in London, UK. Among other things, I was busy with activities relating to the Special Interest Group on Characteristic Modes (CM SIG), which I am coordinating. Our SIG held a meeting (about 30 showed up), organized two convened sessions, and some of us came together to discuss the details of the upcoming European School of Antenna (ESoA) Course on "Characteristic Modes: Theory and Applications", to be held in Valencia during 21-25 May 2018.

 

• 8 Feb 2018 - In the latest Academic Ranking of World Universities ("Shanghai ranking"), Lund University is now #20 in the world in subject ranking for Electrical and Electronics Engineering. How did that happen?! 

 

• 7-8 Jan 2018 - I visited Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) Skudai and National University of Singapore (NUS) to give IEEE Distinguished Lectures on massive MIMO and future terminal antennas. I last visited similar friendly faces at UTM in Jan 2011 and Institute for Infocomm Research (Singapore) in Dec 2007. Time flies! Some photos from the UTM visit are shown below.

 

 

• 21 Dec 2017 - I have been awarded a SSF Mobility Grant to spend halftime at a cool company called nok9 for 1.5 years, to assist in their efforts to establish stronger R&D efforts within the area of wireless charging. nok9 is the sole provider of test equipment for the Qi wireless charging standard. The Qi standard has been increasing adopted by key players across several business sectors, including Apple (iPhone8 and iPhoneX) and Volvo Cars.  

 

• 29 Nov 2017 - Dr Frankie Chi-Yuk Chiu of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) came to my group for a month-long visit. I have known Frankie for many years and I have been impressed with the quality of his work, so I am very happy to have the chance to start collaborating with him on a topic of mutual interest. We had many fruitful discussions and the plan is to submit a joint paper later based on the results obtained.

 

• 6 Nov 2017 - Some of my colleagues know that I enjoy being the opponent at thesis defenses, and I was at Blekinge Tekniska Högskola (BTH) to oppose the thesis of (now Dr) Momin Jamil, who was an industrial PhD student there. Momin did a pretty good job, projecting both confidence and enthusiasm of his work. The thesis title is "On Sequence Design for Integrated Radar and Communication Systems" and the primary supervisor was Prof. Hans-Jürgen Zepernick.
  

  

• 24-28 Oct 2017 - I had the privilege of visiting four Spanish universities in my role as a Distinguished Lecturer (DL) for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society:
  • Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), Valencia, 25 Oct
  • Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Madrid, 26 Oct
  • Universitat Politècnica de Madrid (UPM), Madrid, 26 Oct
  • Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, 27 Oct

Apart from familiar faces in UPV, I was entering into unknown territories in other universities. But not surprisingly, I was met with warm hospitality everywhere I went (plus perfect weather). The quality of the work done by the researchers I met was truly impressive and world-class, and keeping in mind that they are often under far more severe funding limitations than us in Northern Europe. I was hoping to give as a DL, but I received much more in return!

 

• 26 Sep 2017 - Prof. Mats Gustafsson and I hosted the Distinguished Lecture (DL) visit of Prof. Zhi Ning Chen from National University of Singapore (see photos below). Prof. Chen has been to Lund several times before, among others as an invited speaker of the MIMO Systems Workshop that I organized back in 2008. It was great catching up with him! Prof. Chen is a highly established and respected scholar in the Antennas and Propagation community and he has contributed greatly with his many successful initiatives, such as starting up International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Antennas and Propagation (APCAP)! His latest venture is to organize the 2021 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation in Singapore, which is the first ever edition to be held outside North America!

 

• 5-14 July 2017 - I went to Silicon Valley for the first time to visit some friends at Google HQ and Amazon Lab126, as well as to give technical talks at these companies. Apart from nice free food at Google, I was given an Amazon Echo (I actually didn't know about this neat Amazon product, since it is not sold in most of Europe!). The photo below shows my visit to Google.

  

I also gave a Distinguished Lecture at the Santa Clara Valley APS Chapter - I was pleased to see quite many participants, despite it being held close to their Independence Day. My flight there was also memorable - it was the first time I flew on Airbus A330!

After Silicon Valley, I flew to San Diego for my "annual pilgrimage" to attend the 2017 IEEE AP-S Symposium on Antennas and Propagation. It was a really well-organized conference, and the welcoming reception on a decommissioned aircraft carrier (USS Midway) was fantastic! Some photos are shown below.

I was also amused that two operational aircraft carriers can be seen from my hotel room (I was told a third one was also there briefly).

As usual, I attended several meetings relating to my voluntary duties for the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society and caught up with many people. In particular, I chaired an informal lunch meeting for the Special Interest Group on Theory of Characteristic Modes (SIG TCM) and we came up with some nice ideas on how to develop our common interests further.

 

• 31 May-2 June 2017 - I was a keynote speaker for the 2017 International Workshop on Electromagnetics (iWEM 2017). It was a nice opportunity to interact with my existing contacts as well as new ones. I also took the opportunity to visit Dr. Yue Gao and Prof. Yang Hao's groups at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) after the workshop ended. I was especially pleased with the opportunity to catch up with Prof. Koichi Ito from Chiba University, who also presented a keynote speech at iWEM 2017 and visited QMUL. The group photo below was taken during the visit to QMUL.

  

• 29-31 May 2017 - Prof. Fredrik Tufvesson and I co-organized the EU COST CA15104 (IRACON)'s 4th Technical Meeting and 4th Management Committee Meeting in Lund, with the great support of our department's highly competent administrators Pia Bruhn and Anne Andersson. We had over 110 participants, mostly from Europe. Fredrik and I also hosted the 1st Technical Meeting of EU COST IC1004 (predecessor of COST IRACON) back in 2011. It is always a pleasure for us to contribute to an organization focusing on promoting scientific research, collaboration and networking, from which we have also benefited tremendously in our own scientific careers.
• 18-19 Apr 2017 - I was in Prague and Brno (Czech Republic) upon the invitation from the local IEEE Antennas and Propagation Chapter to give Distinguished Lectures. I presented two talks: "Theory and Applications of Characteristic Modes" and "Terminal Antenna Systems for Future Wireless". I was happy both old friends and new people, and not to mention, I also learned about the perpetual elevator system unique to the Czech Republic and Germany (formally named paternoster, nicknamed elevator of death). You can read more about it here. Thankfully, I survived the experience of riding in them several times.
• 21-24 Mar 2017 - I attended the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2017) in Paris, France. It was a busy week, overseeing the various activities of the Special Interest Group on Theory of Characteristic Modes (SIG TCM) (www.characteristicmodes.org), attending other meetings, teaching a short course, etc. The photo below shows the participants of the meeting at EuCAP 2017 to discuss benchmarking efforts of the SIG (an initiative headed by Prof. Yikai Chen of UESTC, China).
  

  

 

• 27 Jan 2017 - I was pleasantly surprised by an email from the European Commission informing me that the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Research Fellowship proposal that Dr. Shang Xiang and I prepared during the fall last year has been accepted! I am particularly humbled by the 91.8/100 score given (threshold 70/100). I am looking forward to Dr. Xiang joining my team soon at Lund for 2 years, financed by the prestigious fellowship!
• 18 Jan 2017 - My PhD student Zachary Miers successfully defended his thesis on 29 Nov 2016. His opponent was Prof. Jennifer Bernhard of UIUC, and the examination committee members were Prof. Dirk Manteuffel, Assoc. Prof. Eva-Antonino Daviu, Björn Johannisson and Assist. Prof. Miloslav Čapek. More details with pictures and other interesting insights about Zach are published under my department's news corner, which can be found here (dated 16 Jan 2017).

 

• 23-25 Oct 2016 - I was invited by Professor Yi Huang of the University of Liverpool to visit his research group since a long time ago and finally we found a time for it! Apart from good discussions on research and related activities, I presented 2 seminars on Theory of Characteristic Modes and massive MIMO. I was particularly impressed by the very engaging audience despite the rather long talks of about 1 hour each. I also got to know a few other senior researchers and it was a very fruitful trip. I thank Prof. Huang for this nice opportunity as well as his warm hospitality during my visit!

 

• 17-20 Aug 2016 - I was invited to be the external thesis committee member of the PhD defense of Mr. Saber Soltani at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) by Prof. Ross Murch. It was a short trip but I enjoyed being involved in a thesis defense in Hong Kong and I also had the opportunity to pay a short visit to City University of Hong Kong (CityU) and I gave an AP Chapter seminar there as well. Some photos from the trip are shown below.

  

 

• 8-23 Jul 2016 - I spent two weeks visiting Chinese Universities in Chengdu, Chongqing, Xi'an and Beijing, giving talks on the topics of Theory of Characteristic Modes, Massive MIMO, publication best practices, etc. It was my first trip to the Western part of China and I really appreciate the warm hospitality shown to me throughout the trip.

 

• 26 Jun 2016 - I have been informed that I have been appointed as a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) for the three-year term 2017-2019. I am looking forward to promoting the visibility of the society in our branches worldwide through this volunteering role. More information about the Distinguished Lecturer Program of IEEE AP-S is found here.

   

• 11-15 Apr 2016 - My PhD students (Zachary Miers and Irfan Yousaf) and I participated in the European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in Davos, Switzerland. We presented 2 oral papers and 1 poster paper there.

There were many opportunities to catch up with colleagues and friends in the field and we had many good discussions. The Special Interest Group on Theory of Characteristic Modes (SIG TCM) which I founded with a few others in 2014 also had its first group photo (see below). We also had a short meeting there for information sharing and discussion. One exciting news is that apart from FEKO, CST and WIPL-D have decided to implement TCM analysis in their electromagnetic solvers, thanks to increasing interest from the industry on this powerful technique. There are several new initiatives in the works, do check the SIG TCM website from time to time for updates!

 

• 17-18 Mar 2016 - A friend of mine, Prof. Karl Warnick from Brigham Young University, USA, came to our department for a visit and to give a IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (AP-S) Distinguished Lecture (see photo below) organized by my colleague Prof. Mats Gustafsson. It was his first visit to Lund and we enjoyed catching up with each other, including a dinner with other colleagues in the department (see below). Karl is an IEEE Fellow and a well-established researcher who has made major contributions especially in radio astronomy.

  

• 15 Feb 2016 - My group hosted Mikko Heino, a visiting PhD student from Aalto University for a month, to collaborate on the topic of full duplex antenna design using Theory of Characteristic Modes (TCM). Full duplex antennas are very challenging to design due to very high requirement for isolation between the transmit and receive antennas, and an attempt will be made to achieve better designs through TCM.

 

• 9-17 Nov 2015 - Two visiting researchers from CTU (Czech Technical University, Prague) Associate Prof. Lukas Jelinek and Dr. Miloslav Čapek, came to the department for a 2-week visit. Apart from their other interests including stored energies and development of a new full-wave simulator, Lukas and Miloslav are active members of the Special Interest Group on Theory of Characteristic Modes (SIG TCM). We had an interesting time discussing our mutual interests in the area of TCM and we found ways to continue promoting the research, not least during some informal occasions such as a nice dinner at a local pub (see below).

• 19-24 July 2015 - My postdoc Hui Li, PhD student Zachary Miers and I attended the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation in Vancouver, Canada. Our group presented two papers at the conference, and as usual, I was involved in many activities. My main duty there was to organize the judging and public demo of the Student Design Contest, which ran for the 6th time. Though I enjoyed the experience, I am happy to complete my 3-year term and handover the coordinator task to Sean Hum for the 2016 edition. I was also pleasantly surprised by the award I received from the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation for exceptional performance as an associate editor (one of 3 awarded each year). The photos below shows the presentation of the award by the Editor-in-Chief.

  
• 20 May 2015 - A group of 10 visitors from Volvo Cars Corporation (VCC) AB dropped by the department to take a first hand look at the setup we have relating to antenna systems research. Apart from a guided tour of our antenna and channel measurement equipment and facilities, they were also given a live demo of our massive MIMO testbed by Liang, Steffan and Joao (thanks guys!). Currently my group hosts a VINNOVA sponsored industrial PhD student from VCC, working on vehicular antenna research, and my colleague Fredrik Tufvesson has a large VINNOVA project with VCC on vehicular channel research. We are excited about our collaborations with VCC and we look forward to fruitful times ahead!

 

• 28 Apr. 2015 - My PhD student Ivaylo Vasilev successfully defended his thesis today against the formidable opponent Prof. Gert F. Pedersen (Aalborg University, Denmark), who is a well-known expert in the field covered by the thesis work. Ivaylo's performance during the defense was under the watchful eyes of thesis committee members Prof. Mark Beach (Bristol University, UK), Dr. Jan Carlsson (SP Sweden), Assist. Prof. Katsuyuki Haneda (Aalto University, Finland) and Dr. Dmytro Pugachov (Sigma Connectivity, Sweden), who later unanimously approved the thesis work and expressed their satisfaction with it. The photos below show the audience at the defense, Ivaylo testing out the gift from me, the thesis defense party and a group photo with me, Vanja Plicanic (my first PhD student), Ivaylo (my 3rd PhD student) and Zachary Miers (my 4th PhD student). All the best Ivaylo, as you move on to the next phase of your life!

 

• 31 Mar. 2015 - My PhD student Ivaylo Vasilev had his "spikning" today (Thesis nailing ceremony). The event went smoothly and he treated all those attending to a nice fika! Ivaylo's thesis defense will soon be held on Tue, 28 Apr. 2015!

  

 

• 3-6 Jan. 2015 - I took the opportunity during my vacation in China to visit two well-known universities there - Tongji University in Shanghai and Beijing Jiaotong University in Beijing. Apart from giving a technical presentation, I had the opportunity to find out the exciting projects that are ongoing at both places. Assoc. Prof. Xuefeng Yin (see photo on the left) of Tongji had in recent years been developing and applying infrastructures for channel measurement, often with very innovative ideas. Prof. Zhangdui Zhong and Prof. Bo Ai's team at Beijing Jiaotong have in recent years been making very intensive and successful efforts to build up their reputation internationally, especially in propagation aspects of wireless communications for railway scenarios. There were some discussions on possible further contacts and I am very thankful for their very warm hospitality during my visits.

  

• 4-6 Dec. 2014 - I was the Opponent for the thesis defense of the PhD candidate Mr. Janne Ilvonen, Dept. of Radio Science and Engineering, Aalto University, Finland. The title of the thesis is "Multiband and Environment Insensitive Handset Antennas”. In Finland, a manuscript of the dissertation is examined by two pre-examiners before it can be published as a doctoral dissertation. After the pre-examination the dissertation will be publicly defended. I was also invited to the traditional defense dinner in the evening, great food and nice restaurant with an extremely good view of THE landmark of Helsinki (see photo below)!

  

 

• 23 Oct. 2014 - I was the External Examiner for the thesis defense of PhD candidate Mr. Krishna Kumar Kishor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Toronto, Canada. The thesis title is "Multi-functional Chassis-based Antennas Using Characteristic Mode Theory". In Canada, a doctoral degree is awarded based on the outcome of written thesis examination as well as successful thesis defence. The role of the External Examiner is equivalent to that of Faculty Opponent.

   

• 5-11 July 2014 - Two PhD students (Zachary and Ivaylo) and I attended the IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation in Memphis (known for producing Elvis Presley), USA. It was a very busy week for me.

On the top of my agenda was the organization the 2014 Student Design Contest Final Demo. Three finalist student teams from Portugal (Lx-ITeam, Universidade de Lisboa), Finland (Aalto ELEC, Aalto University) and India (IITK, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur) showed off their RFID antenna systems, based on which the first/second/third prizes were decided by a team of highly respected judges (Prof. Zhi Ning Chen, Dr. Trevor S. Bird, Dr. K. V. S Rao, and Dr. Leena Ukkonen). It was a close race, but the Portugese team stood out among the crowd and won the first prize in the contest. It was impossible for the judges to decide on the better team among the remaining two teams, so it was decided that two second prizes were to be awarded. I am extremely proud of the students' achievements and my warmest congratulations to all the teams! Photos of the finalist teams and judges (left) and the award of first prize at the Awards Banquet (right) are shown below:

Another highlight at the conference was the Special Session on "Theory of Characteristic Modes (TCM) for Antenna System Design in Wireless Communications" that I organized together with Joseph Modro from Amazon Inc., USA. We were pleased to see many attendees at the session. Apart from collecting 10 papers on the topic of fast-growing interest, we managed to get together a smaller crowd (around 30 persons) to discuss possible joint efforts in promoting the topic of TCM in general. Many of those who attend gave very strong support to the initiative. Among the concrete steps that will be taken are the proposal of a special issue in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation (best journal in the field of antennas and propagation) on the topic of TCM as well as the formation of an interest group to coordinate future joint efforts in TCM (not least to avoid unnecessary duplication of research activities). Shown below are a photo of attendees of the Special Session during a question time (left) and also one taken with "Elvis Presley" during the Awards Banquet (right).

 

• 26-28 May 2014 - After returning to Lund for the weekend, I am back to Aalborg first thing on Monday to attend the COST IC1004 10th Management Committee Meeting and Scientific Symposium. Apart from presenting one temporary document (TD), I am also chairing Subworking Group 1.1, which has a total of 12 TD contributions (a record number!). The Group will also discuss on the chapter on antennas for the COST IC1004 Final Report (to be published as a book), particularly on the content and the proposed section editors to nominate. I took a picture with Prof. J. Bach Andersen at the meeting venue, whom I have enjoyed close collaborations for many years (see below).

 

• 23 May 2014 - I was one of the two external censors (i.e., opponents) of Istvan Szini's PhD thesis defense at Aalborg University. The other censor was Prof. Rodney Vaughan, who came all the way from Canada! Istvan's thesis is mainly about the development of Over-The-Air (OTA) test methods for MIMO terminals. His work has made significant impact on the ongoing standardization work of MIMO OTA by CTIA and 3GPP RAN4. As per tradition, the thesis defense committee took a photo together (see below) with the main supervisor (Prof. Gert F. Pedersen), moderator (Prof. J. Bach Andersen) and new PhD (Dr. Istvan Szini).

 

• 13 May 2014 - The group has just been strengthened with the success of the project proposal "Simulation and Design of Integrated Vehicular Antennas – SDIVA" (2014-2018, 10.4 MSEK with co-funding from Volvo Cars AB), awarded under the VINNOVA-FFI Programme. The project provides full funding for an industrial PhD student based on Volvo Cars (2014-2018), and I will be the main academic supervisor to the student.

 

• 24 Mar. 2014 - Assoc. Prof. Sean Victor Hum, a colleague from the University of Toronto, Canada, came to visit my group and gave an interesting seminar at the department entitled "Reconfigurable Antennas: Architectures, Technologies, and Their Exciting Future". I first came to know Sean in 2011 as a fellow Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, and we have since discovered many common interests and perspectives in research.

 

• 5-7 Feb. 2014 - I attended the 9th MCM and Scientific Meeting of COST IC1004 in Ferrara, Italy. Among the highlights was a Special Session held in memory of late Prof. Pertti Vainikainen, who had made pioneering contributions in antennas and propagation topics within wireless communications. As usual, I chaired SWG1.1 and 7 temporary documents (TDs) were presented in the subgroup, including papers on measurement techniques and isolation strategies for full-duplex communications. I happened to sit at the "Chinese table" during the Gala Dinner (see photo below), perhaps it was to continue the Chinese New Year celebration!

 

• 5 Feb. 2014 - The IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Special Cluster on "Terminal Antenna Systems for 4G and Beyond" (co-edited by Marta Martinez Vazquez and I) has been published! The Special Cluster, consisting of 14 papers, is a joint initiative COST IC1004 and COST IC1102 (VISTA) to showcase latest research activities in the area both within the two Actions and worldwide! See the Guest Editorial here.

 

• 19 Dec. 2013 - A paper that Hui Li and I co-authored with two others has been chosen from among 140 entries (!!) as one of the four winners of the CST University Publication Award 2013:

Hui Li, Buon Kiong Lau, Zhinong Ying, and Sailing He, "Decoupling of Multiple Antennas in Terminals With Chassis Excitation Using Polarization Diversity, Angle Diversity and Current Control" IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 60, no. 12, pp. 5947-5957, Dec. 2012.

The paper introduces a new method to design two antennas on a mobile handset that can be placed very close to each other (effectively co-located) without interfering with each other, an especially challenging feat for frequencies lower than 1 GHz. This allows the antenna system to provide high data rates in an efficient manner. The promising design approach has been filed as a patent application through Sony Mobile Communications AB.

All submissions to the publication award were evaluated on a number of criteria, including originality of the application or the theory, clarity of presentation, as well as the skillful usage of CST software features.

This is in fact, the second time the group has received such an award, with the previous award being received in 2010!

 

• 29 Oct. 2013 - Apostolos Tsiaras presented his Master project on "SAR Evaluation in Multi-Antenna Mobile Handsets", a project performed in collaboration with Art-Fi, a start-up company in France. Apostolos has worked hard in the past 6 months and had proven himself to be a reliable worker with very good ability to learn different skills required to perform the project. The project looked into SAR performance for multi-antenna handsets, with several prototypes with antenna setups being investigated. Some of the results obtained from the thesis work are expected to be published on a later date.The photo below was taken shortly after the seminar.

 

• 25-27 Sep. 2013 - My PhD student Zachary Miers and I attended the COST VISTA-COST IC1004 Joint Workshop on "Terminal Antenna Systems for 4G and Beyond" and the COST IC1004 Management Committee Meeting in Ghent, Belgium. Zach presented a paper each at the Joint Workshop and the COST Meeting. I co-organized the Joint Workshop with Marta Martinez Vazquez from COST VISTA and we were pleasantly surprised by huge interest in the rather focused workshop - with around 120 registered participants. We had two invited speakers from ST Microelectronics and Samsung and 11 regular presentations. In fact, this is the second focused workshop held between us and the antenna COST community. The previous edition was held in Valencia during May 2009, under the umbrella of COST2100 and COST ASSIST. Marta and I have also proposed a Special Cluster in IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters on the same theme and the submission deadline is on 15 Oct 2013.

• 7-13 Jul. 2013 - Three members from my group (Ivaylo Vasilev, Zachary Miers and I) participated in the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting in Orlando, Florida. Apart from presenting three scientific papers, I was also coordinating the final demonstration of the 2013 Student Design Contest, where three finalist student teams from Texas, Singapore and Egypt showed off their antenna systems to judges as well as conference attendees. This year the topic was on reconfigurable antenna system. The top two teams from Texas and Singapore were so close to each other in terms of their performance that the judges decided to award two first prizes (first time this happened)! The photos below show the luncheon for the design contest teams and judges, the final demonstration for conference attendees, as well as a firework display at the Conference Reception.

 

• 30 May 2013 - Crafoord Foundation has awarded the group a 300 kSEK project grant on the topic "Design of Multi-antennas for High Performance Mobile Terminals". The grant supplements our existing research funding on the design of MIMO antennas for mobile handsets, by partially supporting a postdoctoral researcher with strong competence in the area. The focus of the project is to design efficient MIMO handset antennas, where each antenna should radiate independently of other antenna(s) in the handset. Since the design is intended for frequency bands under 1 gigahertz and typical handset form factors are electrically small at these frequencies, achieving independent radiation from the multi-antennas is particularly challenging. We are proposing and actively developing a promising solution that can be implemented in real terminals without significant design changes.

 

• 8 May 2013 - Three members of my group have successfully obtained travel grants from Ericsson Research Foundation to attend the 2013 IEEE AP-S/URSI-USNC Symposium, July 7- 13, 2013 in Orlando, Florida (100% success rate!). So we expect a strong presence there. Apart from three oral presentations, the group is also involved in other activities, including organization of the Student Design Contest and participation at several committee meetings.

 

• 5-8 Feb. 2013 - The COST IC1004 Management Committee Meeting in Malaga, Spain was a welcoming change for some members of my group in the midst of cold winter in Sweden. Ivaylo Vasilev, Hui Li and I participated with two presentations. Apart from chair my Subworking Group 1.1, I also organized a tutorial on SAR (Specific Absorption Rate) entitled "Biological Effect of Electromagnetic Radiation", which was given by Dr. Kamya Yekeh Yazdandoost from NICT, Japan (see photos below). The tutorial was part of the effort to promote more antenna-related research in the area of electromagnetic exposure in wireless communication systems. A joint session between SWG1.1 and the Topic Working Group on Body Area Networks was also organized in the same spirit.

 

• 7 Nov. 2012 - My PhD student Ivaylo Vasilev and I attended the annual meeting for the VINNOVA Program "Smarter, Faster and Convergent Solutions for Future Communications". Apart from giving a short presentation, we also brought along three posters showing the results obtained within our project on Antenna-Channel Harmonization for Throughput Enhancement in Advanced Mobile Terminals. A photo of us with two of our posters is given below.

 

• 28 Oct-4 Nov. 2012 - I attended the17th International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP) in Nagoya. This was my first time attending an ISAP. Apart from serving as an international advisory committee member, I also co-convened an oral session with Assoc. Prof. Kentaro Nishimori of Niigata University, Japan and presented an oral paper. Nagoya is like other Japanese cities that I have been to so far - everything just works well! I tried some local delicacies as well, including Miso-katsu (chicken), Hitsumabushi (eel) and Kishimen (noodle). You can find pictures of these here. I caught up with many old friends at the conference, including Prof. Keizo Cho (more affectionately known as "Cho-san") of Chiba Institute of Technology, shown in the photo below (the guy in the middle) together with the Technical Program Committee (TPC) Chair Prof. Hiroyuki Arai of Yokohama National University. A photo of the entertainers at the conference dinner is also shown below.

 

• 1 July-30 Sep. 2012 - My group hosted a visiting PhD student Ms Di Su from Prof. Chenyang Yang's group at Beihang University, China. The collaboration is on the topic of very large MIMO systems (also called massive MIMO). See below for a photo from a small farewell held in honor of both Di Su and Ehsan Foroozanfard. Ehsan will soon leave Lund University for PhD study!

 

• 24-26 Sep. 2012 - I presented two temporary documents (TDs) at the 5th Management Committee Meeting and Scientific Symposium of COST IC1004. I also chaired Subworking Group 1.1, where a total of 7 TDs were presented and discussed. Moreover, it was a real privilege for me to be able to invite Prof. Zhisheng Niu (see photo below) from Tsinghua University, China, to give a plenary talk on Green ICT. Prof. Niu, an IEEE Fellow, is well known for his work in Green ICT and leads the first national fundamental research program ("973 Project") on Green communications in China.

 

• 19-20 Sep. 2012 - I am invited to give a talk at the 2nd COST VISTA (IC1102) Workshop in Istanbul, Turkey on the topic of "Advances and Opportunities in Compact MIMO Antenna Research".

 

• 17 Sep. 2012 - The group warmly welcomes a new member, Zachary Miers, who arrives from USA to begin his PhD study! Mr Miers graduated from the MSc program at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2010 has 6 years of work experience prior to coming here.

 

• 31 Aug. 2012 - My Master's student Mr. Ehsan Foroozanfard presented his thesis!

 

• July 2012 - I attended the 2012 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC-URSI National Radio Science Meeting in Chicago and caught up with many colleagues in the field. Apart from presenting two papers from my group, I also assisted in the organization of the 2012 IEEE AP-S (Antennas and Propagation Society) Student Design Competition (see photos below for the public demo component). Next year, it will be my turn to coordinate the event and the flyer for the 2013 edition is available here. The topic for 2013 is Reconfigurable Antennas and we hope that more teams will participate from all over the world!

 

Older News

• 30 May 2012 - The group had a nice BBQ at my place - we grilled burgers that was made with a secret recipe from Vanja! A photo with some of those who were present is shown below. We also try to keep up with some sporting activities - some of us are now well-trained in badminton!

 

• 26 Apr. 2012 - My group successfully hosted the 2012 Swedish Antenna Measurement Society (SAMS) annual meeting in the E-building. There were about 80 attendees (limited only by the capacity of the seminar room) and 12 exhibitors, including Rohde & Schwarz, Agilent Technologies, Bluetest, SATIMO, etc. Moreover, thanks to the generous financial sponsorship from LU Communication Technology Portal, participants could attend the meeting at no registration cost. Technical visits were organized for 1) the antenna measurement facilities at Sony Mobile Communications AB and 2) the new laboratory of Department of Electrical and Information Technology, Lund University. Some photos from the Lund meeting are shown below. The host for next year's SAMS meeting will be FOI (Swedish Defence Research Agency) in Linköping.

 

• 26-30 Mar 2012 - Ruiyuan and I attended the 2012 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP) in Prague, Czech Republic. Ruiyuan presented two papers from the group and I was busy attending several European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP) meetings. A picture from the Gala Dinner (taken with some colleagues in the field) is given below.

 

• Mar. 2012 - The first newsletter of COST IC1004 has just been released! As a national delegate of Sweden, it is part of my task to help in the dissemination of the results and achievements of IC1004.

 

• Feb. 2012 - I have been elected as the Regional Delegate of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP, http://www.euraap.org/) for Region 6 (Iceland, Norway, Sweden). In addition, my group has produced three papers in the Special Issue on MIMO Technology in the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation published this month!

 

• 29 Nov 2011 - My PhD student Ruiyuan Tian has successfully defended his thesis on "Design and Evaluation of Compact Multi-antennas for Efficient MIMO Communications". Ruiyuan is shown in the photo to the left, together with Professor Gerhard Kristensson, who was the chairperson of the thesis defense. The faculty opponent was Professor Daniel D. Stancil of North Carolina State University, USA and the three thesis committee members were: Assoc. Professor Marco D. Migliore of the University of Cassino, Italy, Dr. Mattias (Wennström) Frenne of Ericsson AB, Sweden and Professor Gert F. Pedersen of Aalborg University, Denmark (they are shown in this order in the photo to the right). I am proud of Ruiyuan's achievements!

 

• 19-21 Oct 2011 - I attend the 2nd Management Committee Meeting of COST IC1004 on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments" held in Lisbon, Portugal. During the meeting, responsible persons for different working groups were elected, and I was given the chair of Subworking Group1.1, which focuses on antenna system aspects of green communications. The Gala Dinner was held as a river cruise, which was quite an experience!

 

• 13-20 Aug 2011 - I attended the XXX URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium, Istanbul, Turkey. There, I convened and chaired a session on "Antenna-Channel Interactions for Future Wirelesss Communications" together with Prof. Koichi Ogawa of Toyama University, Japan (see photo). Our session was well attended with up to 35 attendees. I also presented a paper on a new concept to design multiple antennas with good isolation for compact terminals, when there is chassis excitation. I also caught with many old friends and collaborators (see photo), including Prof. J. Bach Andersen of Aalborg University, Denmark.

• 18-22 July 2011 - Riding on the success of VINNOVA-MOST Sino-Swedish Cooperative Research Program, I visited Tsinghua University and Beihang University to discuss research collaborations, mainly on the topic of CoMP. My hosts were Prof. Zhisheng Niu (Tsinghua) and Prof. Chenyang Yang (Beihang). Photos from our discussions are shown below.

• 3-8 July 2011 - My PhD student Ruiyuan Tian and I attended the 2011 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting in Spokane, Washington, USA, between 3-8 July 2011. We presented a paper each, as well as participate in other events during the conference.

 

• 20-21 June 2011 - My group (especially Ruiyuan Tian, Ivaylo Vasilev, Vanja Plicanic and myself) together with Assoc. Professor Fredrik Tufvesson hosted the 1st Scientific Meeting of COST Action IC1004 on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments" at Lund University. It was hailed as a great success by the COST IC1004 Chairperson Prof. Narcis Cardona, as well as by the feedback we received from many attendees. Many thanks to all who have contributed, and special thanks to the event sponsors (Sony Ericsson, Ericsson, HSWC and LU Communication Technology Portal), as well as Pia Bruhn and Elisabeth Nordström, who have worked very hard for the local organization! Photos from the Walking Tour of Lund City and Gala Dinner at Grand Hotel are shown below.

• June 2011 - My group's first doctoral student Vanja Plicanic had her thesis defense on 14 June 2011. The PhD project was performed in cooperation with Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications AB. A photo of her dissertation party is shown below (From left to right; Myself, Ruiyuan, Vanja and Ivaylo). Congrats, Vanja!!!

• May 2011 - It is indeed our privilege to announce that Lund University has been chosen to host the 1st Scientific Meeting of COST Action IC1004 on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments", which will be held between 20-21 Jun 2011. The Local Organizing Committee are led by myself and Assoc. Professor Fredrik Tufvesson. More details are available in the official meeting website (http://ic1004.eit.lth.se).

 

• During 10-15 Apr 2011, my PhD student Vanja Plicanic and I attended the 2011 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in Rome, Italy. We participated with a total of four invited papers in convened sessions and I co-chaired a session with Professor Michael A. Jensen of Brigham Young University. I also was involved in teaching a short course called "The ABC of Small Antennas", which was organized by Professor Matthias Hein of Ilmenau University, Germany, on behalf of the Small Antenna Working Group within the European Association of Antennas and Propagation (EurAAP).

 

• I attended the 2011 IEEE International Workshop on Antenna Technology (IWAT'2011) in Hong Kong between 7-9 Mar 2011 and presented a keynote paper on "Antenna design challenges and solutions for compact MIMO terminals". I also co-chair the convened session "Multiple and Diversity Antennas" together with Zhinong Ying, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Sweden at the same conference.

 

• During Jan 2011, I paid a week-long visit to Wireless Communications Center @ Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), as a Visiting Professor. UTM is among the top 5 universities in Malaysia and has a growing research profile. Apart from presenting a 2-hour seminar and having discussions on closer contacts, I spent a lot of time meeting the PhD/Master students there.

 

• A journal paper published by my group (first author: Ms Vanja Plicanic) has received a CST University Publication Award.

• Five members of my group attended the COST2100 12th Management Committee Meeting in Bologna between 23-25 Nov 2010. Here is a photo of some of us taken at the Marconi Museum:

• My book chapter has just been published in Nov 2010: B. K. Lau, "Multiple antenna terminals," in MIMO: From Theory to Implementation, C. Oestges, A. Sibille, and A. Zanella, Eds. Academic Press, 2011.

• I was awarded the Senior Researcher ("rådforskare") Position Grant by Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Science Council) for the topic "Novel Antenna System Design Paradigm for High Performance Mobile Communications", within the specialization of "Optimization of Antenna Systems" in Sep 2010, salary support for 3 years (plus a possible 3 years extension). There is a total of 7 Senior Researcher positions offered by Vetenskapsrådet in 2010 over all areas of science.

 

• I was invited as a guest lecturer on the topic "Practical MIMO Antenna Design and OTA Standardization Overview" (27 Oct. 2010) for the "Reverberation Chamber Course" organized by Professor Per-Simon Kildal, Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University.

 

• I am a convener of the oral session in 2011 International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT'2011 Hong Kong) on "Multiple and Diversity Antennas" together with Zhinong Ying, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications, Sweden.

 

• I am a co-convener of the oral session in 2011 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP'2011 Rome) on "Recent Advances in MIMO Systems: Channel Characterization and Antenna-Channel Interactions" together with Professor Michael A. Jensen, Brigham Young University, Utah, USA.