Millimeter-wave antenna research at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), IETR, Rennes, France

The lecture focuses on novel antenna solutions for telecom and safety applications, near-field probing and covert communications. A compact, planar, wide scanning leaky-wave antenna fed by a planar dual offset Gregorian system is proposed for telecom and safety applications. The antenna structure is based on substrate integrated waveguide technology. The dual offset system behaves as an optical beam forming network that does not require any additional phase shifter. A cluster of planar feeds in the focal plane of the dual offset system is used to electronically steer the antenna main beam (beam switching). A novel planar leaky-wave feed is proposed to efficiently illuminate the quasi-optical system and at the same time reduce the mutual coupling among different feeds allowing very dense feed clusters. A compact dual layer pillbox transition is then introduced to replace the Gregorian system reducing the total antenna size. Fast and efficient tools based on in-house Method of Moments and Physical Optics codes are adopted to analyze the antenna main blocks. In an effort to reduce the physical size of beam forming networks, a novel Butler matrix based on tensor transmission lines is proposed. The Butler matrix does not use any phase shifter or cross-over thanks to a novel directional coupler. Finally, propagating Bessel beams using leaky radial waveguides are considered for near-field probing and covert communication. Design equations and new physical insight on the non-diffractive behavior of Bessel beams are derived using a vector approach and the associated dispersion analysis.
Dr. Mauro Ettorre was born in Tricarico, Matera, Italy. He received a laurea degree summa cum laude in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in electromagnetics from the University of Siena, Italy, in 2004 and 2008, respectively. During his Master's degree studies, he spent five months at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Lyngby, Denmark. Part of his Ph.D. work was developed at the Defence, Security and Safety Institute of the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), The Hague, Netherlands, where he later worked as an antenna researcher. From 2008 to 2010, Dr. Ettorre was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut d'electronique et de Télécommunications de Rennes (IETR), Université de Rennes 1, France. In 2010, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Radiation Laboratory, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Michigan. Since October 2010, he is a Research Scientist at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), within a unit of IETR.

Dr. Ettorre's research interests include the analysis and design of leaky-wave antennas, periodic structures, millimeter-wave antennas, imaging systems, compact planar antennas and wireless power transfer systems. He has authored over 45 journal and conference papers and has 4 international patents on millimeter-wave antenna technology.

Dr. Ettorre received the Young Antenna Engineer Prize at the 2008 European Space Agency Antenna Workshop in Noordwijk, Netherlands and a French Ministry of Research award for the most innovative project in all natural sciences in Brittany, in 2009. As a Ph.D. student, he also received two internal projects/awards for innovative and original ideas at TNO in 2006 and 2007.