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Contact : Robert Malmqvist robert.malmqvist@foi.se |
The Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) is an independent public authority, created to serve the Ministry of Defence and now also serving an increasing number of civilian clients. FOI has a staff of approximately 1000 and is mainly financed by contracts. Core activities are applied research and development for defence, safety and security, in a wide range of specialist fields including e.g. sensor and information technologies. Projects range from short, problem solving to long term studies, technology development and assessment in a broad spectrum of areas and competences. The Division of Information Systems is located in Linköping and has currently a staff of 300 employees. The Department of Subsystems Technology (currently with a staff of 40 employees) builds on a long tradition, dating more than sixty years back, in research in the area of microwave/mm-wave technology, including both radar and communication system aspects. To exemplify, FOI has developed concepts for very compact and flexible digital beam-forming antennas, so-called Smart Skin antennas using 8-10 GHz single-chip tunable active filter/mixer front-ends (EuMA 2004 Radar Prize winner). The world’s first 20 GHz single-chip RF-MEMS based switched beam antenna front-end has been developed together with Uppsala University (UU) and VTT. FOI and UU have also presented various types of RF-MEMS based tunable LNA impedance matching networks made on quartz and silicon substrates, respectively (Best Paper Award at IEEE CAS2009). FOI is participating within the EU FP7-STREPs MEMS-4-MMIC and CATHERINE (on nanotechnology). Within the MEMS-4-MMIC project FOI has made successful designs of different types of RF-MEMS switching, matching and phase shifting circuits realized using a GaAs MMIC foundry process technology from OMMIC. Among the different RF-MEMS subjects in where FOI is now actively involved, some key functions under study are: high power testing of MEMS switches (up to 30 W) and design of reconfigurable active/passive MEMS-MMICs. Within this project the specific skills of FOI cover different levels of expertise:
- System requirements and RF front-end architectures (e.g. radar/radiometers and communication)
- Design of innovative RF-MEMS enabled reconfigurable active circuit functions (e.g. switched/tunable LNAs) realized using GaAs/GaN/SiGe based MMIC/RFIC process technologies)
- Design, simulation and test of fabricated hardware at the circuit, subsystem and system levels (from discrete RF-MEMS functions to demonstrations of reconfigurable active antenna front-ends)
- System and scenario level analysis (from the physical to the operational level) using proprietary and commercial software simulators
Resources: Equipment for RF-testing at FOI includes, for example, up to 110 GHz network analysers, up to 30 W high power component test facilities, antenna anechoic chambers and a rooftop measurement range. Processing facilities for metal sputtering as well as etching and a wire-bonding machine are also available. Our design software tools include programs for analysis, layout and optimisation of RF-circuits and EM field simulators (e.g. Agilent ADS/Momentum, Cadence, Sonnet and HFSS). In-house developed RF (antenna) system simulation tools to validate the usefulness and benefits of e.g. key enabling technologies and novel architectures at the higher system levels are also available. This gives improved possibilities to study and show the effects of using certain critical key components at the system architecture and scenario levels for various RF-functions (e.g. radar and communication).
Dr. Robert Malmqvist received the M.S. degree in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering and the Ph.D degree in Electronic Devices from Linköping University in 1994 and 2001, respectively. He joined FOI (Swedish Defence Research agency) in 2000 and he has been involved in different research projects related to circuit, subsystem and system design for radar and communication. Since 2008 he is the responsible project leader at FOI within the two RF-MEMS projects MOSART (national funded) and EU FP7-STREP MEMS-4-MMIC. Since 2007 he has a part-time position as scientist with the Microwave group at Uppsala University from where he is currently the supervisor of one Ph.D. student working on RF-MEMS. He is also participating within the two RF-MEMS related EU-projects MiniMEMS and SATURNE dealing with tunable filters and LNAs on silicon and GaN substrates. His research interests include the design, simulation and characterization of RF MEMS based active and passive components and systems. He has authored or co-authored around 50 scientific papers of which 4 in peer-reviewed journals and he has received two Best Papers Awards in 2004 (EuRAD2004) and 2009 (Int. Semiconductor Conf. – CAS2009), respectively.
Mr. Tomas Boman graduated from the University of Linköping in 1994 with a M.Sc degree in applied physics and electrical engineering. He has been with FOI since 1998 where he has been involved in areas such as antenna design, flexible (reconfigurable) microwave electronics, electromagnetic simulations and system level simulations. He has developed simulations tools for solving electromagnetic problems using the Method of Moments, and he is currently developing a multifunctional RF-system simulation tool for studying the impact of component properties and RF-architectures at the system and scenario levels.
