Centre for Wireless Innovation
A global leader in Physical Layer Wireless Communications
CWI is the UK’s largest research, development and exploitation base in physical layer wireless, and one of the strongest in Europe.
We have 60 scientists inventing underpinning technologies for Mobile, Medical and Space applications. Our work focuses on massive MIMO, mmWave cellular comms, retrodirective antennas, flat self-steered high gain active antennas (>24 GHz), secure and energy-efficient small cell networks, high-efficiency switched-mode power amplifiers, electromagnetic media, body-implanted antennas, 5G networks, IoT/Industry 4.0/C-V2X and 5G-V2X, next-generation EO satellites and implantable medical devices.
GSMA MOBILE WORLD SCHOLAR CHALLENGE 2019 - WINNERS
A team of researchers from our Centre for Wireless Innovation have designed a new, full end-to-end mmWave hardware solution for 5G networks and as a result have been crowned the Grand Winners in the Mobile World Scholar Challenge 2019, organised by GSMA (the global mobile operators association).
Unlike existing solutions that require dedicated RF chains per antenna, their approach massively reduces the complexity and the cost of mmWave MIMO RF front-ends in 5G mobile networks in the 28GHz band.
Prof Vince Fusco, Dr Muhammar Ali Babar Abbasi, Dr Michalis Matthaiou (L-R on photo) and Dr Harsh Tataria have proposed a two-stage Rotman lens based uniform rectangular array (URA) beamformer, as an RF front-end solution for hybrid mmWave MIMO base stations, to find the best trade-off between cost, complexity and performance in 5G connectivity.
Innovate: do your PhD at CWI
5G NETWORKS
Are you passionate about 5G networks?
If you have an MSc or MEng in Electronics, Maths or Physics, enjoy solving the challenges of 5G technologies, like our current PhD student Lei Zhang, who chose CWI to carry out research on "The effect of the human body on mm-wave wireless channels for 5G networks".
Watch Lei explain his research.
SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS
Do you want to transform satellite communications?
The space industry is experiencing a boom. We're going to the Moon again and soon to Mars. New satellites will need novel materials to transmit data back to Earth efficiently and swiftly, like those monitoring plastic pollution in the oceans. Join us like Miss Sarah Clendinning who chose to do her PhD at CWI, on "Resonant Frequency Selective Surfaces as Linear to Circular Polarisation Converters" (for the space industry).
Watch Sarah explain her research.
BUILDING ADVANCED STRUCTURES FOR SPACECRAFTS
Do you dream of making new spacecrafts work?
Communication technology innovations often start in the military world (think Radar or GPS) but eventually move into the real world. This is what happened to Electromagnetic Energy Absorbing Structures, that our PhD student Gabriel Machado from Brazil is currently researching. He chose CWI to do his PhD and now enjoys pushing the barriers of physics to make the next generation of spacecrafts more efficient in their communications.
Watch Gabriel explain his research.
CREATING NEW MEDICAL COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
Are you interested in how to communicate from within the human body?
Implantable antennas for in-body communications are still an emerging technology and are very costly, as they're designed and calibrated for a single type of human or animal tissue. Matthew Magill, who chose CWI to do his PhD, has designed over the past three years an antenna that can work in any tissue, thus making sensor systems implanted inside living bodies much cheaper to manufacture. His groundbreaking work even won him the award of “Mobile World Scholar” by GSMA, the global association of mobile operators, in February 2018!
Join our Research Team
INTERESTED IN UNDERTAKING A PHD AT CWI?
Completing a PhD is a highly rewarding experience.
At CWI you will have the opportunity to work with some of the most passionate researchers in their field. We are currently seeking applications for a variety of research projects in wireless technologies. See our full list of PhD projects available in the link below.
News
NEW KEYSIGHT MILLIMETER-WAVE RESEARCH LAB OPENED AT CWI
The lab can accommodate 60 researchers, students and engineers.
Executing a market driven, innovative approach, ECIT works closely with world-leading companies and entrepreneurs to establish the lab’s research objectives focusing on the future of a digital society. Welcoming the announcement of the new lab, Professor Vincent Fusco, Chief Technical Officer of ECIT and leader of microwave research at Queen’s University Belfast for over thirty years, commented: “This partnership with Queen’s University Belfast and Keysight gives us unprecedented measurement and instrumentation capabilities that will transform our microwave and millimeter-wave laboratories to advance our world leading research in this area.”
CWI RESEARCHER WINS THE EURASIP EARLY CAREER AWARD
Dr Michalis Matthaiou, a Reader (equivalent to Associate Professor) in Multiple-Antenna Systems at the Institute of Electronics, Communications and Information Technology (ECIT) at Queen’s University Belfast, is the winner of the 2019 Early Career Award from the European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP)
This prestigious prize is awarded annually to an outstanding researcher and engineer working within the technical scope of EURASIP at an early or mid-stage of their career. The selected recipient’s current work shows not only significant scientific achievements but also high potential to advance scientific knowledge through novel, timely and significant endeavours.