Antennas are no longer just things on masts—they are embedded in phones, cars, and aircraft, and the next generation will use materials that actively control radio waves, requiring a new kind of test facility to measure them. Current measurement chambers cannot handle the complex interactions between these antennas and their surroundings, especially at the high frequencies needed for future 5G, 6G, and quantum radar. This project will build a unique facility covering 900 MHz to 330 GHz, allowing researchers to simultaneously measure radiation, near-field, and far-field effects of antennas and nearby objects. It will support work on everything from stealth materials and metamaterials to electromagnetic sensing for healthcare and materials science. If successful, the facility will fill a critical gap in UK research infrastructure, enabling the development of faster, more reliable wireless communications, better radar systems, and new sensing technologies. It extends current UK capability beyond existing chambers, making it possible to validate designs that cannot be tested today. The work is primarily about enabling fundamental and applied research in electromagnetics, with direct implications for communications, defence, and medical diagnostics.
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In the not-too-distant past, antennas were devices which were mounted on a mast or pole and therefore their design and characterisation was independent of their environment e.g. TV broadcast antennas and radar antennas. This paradigm has been superseded in recent decades as antennas are embedded into objects in their immediate environment be those a mobile telephone handset, laptop, or the fuselage of an aircraft or chassis of a car. Future developments dictate that state-of-the-art radio technologies will go beyond the embedding of antennas in their immediate environment by adopting active wave control technologies. Such wave control technologies include the design of new materials, both natural and artificial, having reconfigurable scattering parameters. Experimental work needed to develop, characterise and validate the next generation of antennas in a controlled environment requires a new type of measurement facility which can allow for the simultaneous radiation, near-field and far-field interactions of antennas and objects in their vicinity to be explored. This project will establish such a unique measurement facility which will cover a wide range of frequencies from 900 MHz to 330 GHz. Such a facility will support an exceptionally diverse range of research, including 5G and 6G antennas, internet of things (IoT), conventional and quantum radar, frequency selective surfaces and low-RCS stealth materials, metasurfaces and metamaterials, and electromagnetic sensing across diverse domains ranging from materials science to healthcare research. Such a flexible, integrated and automated measurement facility will extend the current UK capability beyond existing chambers.
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