We are pleased to announce an open 4-year PhD position within our Electromagnetics (EM) Group of the Department of Electrical Engineering (EE) of the Eindhoven University of Technology. This position is embedded in a new National project Mi-Rays in which 3 PhD students will join forces to develop technology for future automotive radars.  The work will be carried out in close cooperation with NXP, one of the global market leaders in automotive safety. 

Future radar sensors will use multiple frequency bands to further enhance the angular and range resolution as to improve the imaging capabilities to further improve safety and to allow level-5 autonomous driving. Radar sensing systems operate at millimeter-wave frequencies and use beamforming phased-arrays and multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) concepts with silicon-based RF integrated circuits (RFICs). Using separate solutions for each frequency band would result in high costs, bulky solutions, and would create potential co-existence issues. A solution for these issues could be the use of shared apertures, which provide multi-band functionality by combining 77 GHz and 140 GHz radar sensing using the same hardware. To realize shared apertures, a low-loss and low-cost dual-band transition between the RFIC and the dual-band antenna needs to be developed.  

In this PhD project you will extend state-of-the-art to realize a multi-band launcher-in-package (LiP) from RFIC to radiator implemented in low-cost plastic packaging technologies. An illustration of a possible implementation of the concept is provided in Fig. 1.  In this way, a dual-band RFIC can be connected to a single dual-band radiating aperture. The launcher can also provide additional frequency filtering properties to improve the out-of-band properties. We target a loss below 1 dB for the LiP structure.         Figure 1: Conceptual picture of a multi-band Launcher-in-Package (LiP)The Department Electrical Engineering (EE) of the TU/e, The Department of Electrical Engineering is one of the nine departments of the Eindhoven University of Technology and provides BSc and MSc programs in Electrical Engineering. The department has nine research groups and three centers. The department has approximately 450 employees and 1200 BSc and MSc students.  

The Electromagnetics (EM) group has a strong background in research on integrated antenna systems for applications ranging from wireless communications to radio astronomy. The group has state-of-the-art experimental antenna measurement facilities and has developed two novel facilities (anechoic and reverberation chamber) for measuring mm-wave integrated antennas up to 150 GHz.

Candidates for the PhD position should have a MSc degree in Electrical Engineering with specialization in microwaves and antennas, an interest in combining theory and experiment and well-developed analytic skills.

• A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university with the possibility to present your work at international conferences.
• A full-time employment for four years, with an intermediate evaluation (go/no-go) after nine months.
• To develop your teaching skills, you will spend 10% of your employment on teaching tasks.
• To support you during your PhD and to prepare you for the rest of your career, you will make a Training and Supervision plan and you will have free access to a personal development program for PhD students (PROOF program).
• A gross monthly salary and benefits (such as a pension scheme, pregnancy and maternity leave, partially paid parental leave) in accordance with the Collective Labor Agreement for Dutch Universities.
• Additionally, an annual holiday allowance of 8% of the yearly salary, plus a year-end allowance of 8.3% of the annual salary.
• Should you come from abroad and comply with certain conditions, you can make use of the so-called '30% facility', which permits you not to pay tax on 30% of your salary.
• A broad package of fringe benefits, including an excellent technical infrastructure, moving expenses, and savings schemes.
• Family-friendly initiatives are in place, such as an international spouse program, and excellent on-campus children day care and sports facilities.