| Lecturer Profile |
Raj Mittra is a Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Science of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, FL. Prior to joining the University of Central Florida, he worked at Penn State as a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1996 through June, 2015. He also worked as a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign from 1957 through 1996, when he moved to the Penn State University. He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Past-President of AP-S, and he has served as the Editor of the Transactions of the Antennas and Propagation Society. He won the Guggenheim Fellowship Award in 1965, the IEEE Centennial Medal in 1984, and the IEEE Millennium medal in 2000. Other honors include the IEEE/AP-S Distinguished Achievement Award in 2002, the Chen-To Tai Education Award in 2004 and the IEEE Electromagnetics Award in 2006, and the IEEE James H. Mulligan Award in 2011. |
| Lecture Abstract |
There is virtually no doubt in our minds that wireless broadband services are the key drivers behind the growth of the digital economy in the world we live in today. To satisfy the demand for broadband services, various Ka-band communications satellites are currently being launched. Designing broadband in-the-sky networks that are expected to deliver data rates comparable to those provided by terrestrial services presents a gargantuan challenge. To meet this challenge, it would be necessary to maximize the quality of wireless links between mounting platforms, to reduce the power consumption, and to design reconfigurable conformal antennas employing low complexity beam forming technology. This presentation will focus on the topic of reconfigurable antennas in the context of broadband in-the-sky network, and will review a number of options available to us today for designing such antennas to see which ones would be suitable for the broadband networks, keeping in mind that cost would be a big factor in determining which ones would win out as viable candidates. |
