Communications Research Group

The Communications Research Group currently comprises thirteen academic staff and over thirty researchers.

Research activities are addressing exciting topics such as Cognitive radio, vehicle communications, smart surfaces, body worn systems, wireless friendly buildings and medical electromagnetics.

Topics include active and passive meta-materials, multi-functional tunable antennas, miniaturized antennas and surfaces, textile systems, beam forming, frequency selective surfaces, indoor propagation modeling, smart surfaces for wind turbines and time switched arrays.

We are a founding member of the Wireless Friendly Buildings Forum which researches and advises on matters relating to radio propagation within and between buildings.

We are the only academic member of the Antenna Interface Standards Group (AISG) which was formed to create an open specification for the control interface of 3G antenna line products.

The group has a range of anechoic chambers operating from 400 MHz upwards, a fully polarimetric SAR imaging facility and one for very low RCS measurements. In addition we have both indoor anechoic and outdoor free-field range facilities at our Buxton site. We have measurement facilities for characterisation of both low and high loss materials from 400 MHz. These are complemented by a full range of computer controlled measurement instrumentation.