Received 1 October 2019; revised 19 November 2019; accepted 20 November 2019.

Date of publication 25 November 2019; date of current version 2 January 2020.

Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/OJAP.2019.2955507

Screen-Printed, Flexible, Parasitic Beam-Switching

Millimeter-Wave Antenna Array for
Wearable Applications
AZAT MEREDOV1,2 , KIRILL KLIONOVSKI 1, AND ATIF SHAMIM1 (Senior Member, IEEE)
1 Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology,
Thuwal 23955-6900, Saudi Arabia
2 Department of Electrical Engineering, RWTH Aachen University, 52056 Aachen, Germany

CORRESPONDING AUTHOR: K. KLIONOVSKI (e-mail: [email protected])

ABSTRACT Millimeter wave antennas have applications in several sensing and communication systems.
Such antennas, designed for modern miniaturized devices and systems, must be low profile, flexible,
and low cost. Some applications also require beam steering for detection purposes. Combining all these
features into an antenna system and delivering decent antenna performance is challenging. In this study,
we combined a partially reflective surface with a parasitic patch array to create a simple beam-switching,
low-profile, and flexible wearable detection system. To ensure lower costs as well as compatibility with
wearable systems, screen printing was utilized on a flexible substrate. The antenna array was optimized
for the 77 GHz band and had a high gain of 11.2 dBi. The designed system has three independent beams,
which can be oriented from bore-sight to ±32◦ through a simple switching mechanism. The antenna array
maintains its performance in both flat and flexed conditions. Finally, the antenna array was tested in the
field to successfully detect objects moving in three different directions.

INDEX TERMS Additive manufacturing, beam switching, flexible, low-profile antenna, mm-wave antenna,
partially reflecting surface, parasitic antenna arrays.

I. INTRODUCTION Continuous beam steering can be achieved using

M ILLIMETER (mm)-wave antennas are required for

a wide range of applications, such as 5G commu-
nication, radio frequency (RF) identification, automotive
techniques such as mechanical scanning, electrical scanning
(e.g., phase shifters), and frequency scanning. Mechanical
scanning requires bulky components, which makes it infeasi-
radars, and more. Object detection or sensing through elec- ble for modern miniature designs. Furthermore, utilizing dis-
tromagnetic waves is also becoming popular for wearable crete phase shifters at each element for mm-wave frequencies
applications. One possible application for such wearable would make the antenna array expensive, narrow-banded, and
sensing systems is to provide assistance to visually impaired lossy.
people when walking [1]. Such antennas require either mul- By contrast, beam switching (i.e., beam steering at dis-
tidirectional beams or certain types of beam switching or crete points) offers a comparatively simpler approach. Beam
steering. In addition, they require a low profile to ensure switching may be achieved using Butler and Blass matri-
they can be easily embedded in modern miniature designs. ces, a Rotman lens, or parasitic antenna arrays. However,
Flexibility is also desirable for wearable applications. Finally, couplers, crossovers, and delay lines in the Butler matrix
lower cost is a consideration for almost all wearable applica- add extra power losses to the system. Similarly, Rotman
tions. However, designing a beam-steerable antenna system lenses are unsuitable for wearable applications because
that is low-cost, low-profile, and flexible with a simple of their significantly large dimensions. Moreover, parasitic
beam-steering mechanism and decent performance (i.e., gain, antenna arrays exhibit potential for low-loss and flexible
efficiency, and beamwidth) is quite challenging. beam-switching systems.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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TABLE 1. Comparison of parasitic antenna arrays.

A parasitic antenna array directs the antenna beam using

parasitic elements that are close to a driven (i.e., directly
fed) antenna. Current is induced into the parasitic elements
through mutual coupling from the main driven antenna. The
radiation from these parasitic elements changes the total
radiation pattern of the array. A parasitic antenna array
has only one driven element, which helps to avoid distri-
bution network losses. Some designs of various parasitic
antenna arrays have been presented in [2]–[6]. In [2], a patch
antenna array with parasitic patches was employed to track
polar-orbiting satellites. Beam switching through a parasitic
monopole antenna array was utilized in [3] to determine the
FIGURE 1. Intended antenna design with three beams on a t-shirt for a sensing
direction of the nearest base station. An array of four para- application.
sitic circular patches was used in [4] to switch the beam in
four different directions for a WiMAX application. Finally,
a wide switching range was demonstrated in [5], which uti- the published parasitic antenna arrays. It indicates that
lized parasitic antenna elements. Paper [6] describes a design our antenna array is the only one that is flexible and was
of a parasitic monopole antenna array. Although the parasitic realized through additive manufacturing technique. The
antenna array-based beam-switching mechanism is simpler antenna has a ±32◦ beam-switching range, which is said
and has lower loss, it has the disadvantages of a wide to be the limit of the parasitic antenna array concept.
beamwidth and lower directivity. Furthermore, unlike con- This limit can be further extended up to 50◦ using the
ventional antenna arrays with a feed network, the beamwidth ground-plane truncation method described in [5]. This
does not become narrower when the number of array ele- method was not employed in the present study because of
ments is increased. Because narrow beams are desirable for the fabrication limitations of a W-band antenna dues to its
increasing detectability in most beam steering and switching small dimensions. To the authors’ knowledge, the presented
applications, design techniques must be adapted to narrow antenna array has the highest gain among the published
the beam for parasitic arrays. parasitic patch array designs (11.2 dBi) as a result of PRS
Typically, narrow beams (enhanced directivity) can be integration. Furthermore, it is apparent that we have one
achieved through lenses, reflectors, or transmit arrays. of the lowest profiles and a comparable gain with other
However, these methods are generally unsuitable for low- published PRS antennas. The low profile, flexibility, narrow
profile, flexible, and planar designs. An alternate approach is beamwidth (i.e., high directivity), simple beam-switching
a partially reflective surface (PRS), which can be realized on mechanism, and low cost are features of the proposed
top of the antenna through a thin flexible superstrate layer. design that are attractive for various wearable sensing
Studies have demonstrated multiple antennas with a PRS applications.
layer [7]–[15]. However, the concept of PRS has never been
applied to enhance the directivity of a parasitic antenna array II. ANTENNA DESIGN
or flexible antennas. The objective of this study was to demonstrate a low-
This paper presents a beam-switching parasitic profile, flexible, simple beam-switching antenna for wearable
antenna array that is loaded with a PRS. Because of applications. Because most detectors (radars) utilize the
these design choices (i.e., a parasitic array and PRS), the 77 GHz band, it was chosen as the center frequency of
antenna system is low profile. It was realized on a flexible the antenna system in this study. The antenna was designed
substrate to enhance its suitability for wearable applications. on a low-loss (loss tangent = 0.0044) flexible substrate from
The antenna was developed through screen printing to PremixGroup with a permittivity of 2.6 [16]. Antenna sim-
make it cost-effective. Table 1 compares our work with ulations were performed using CST Microwave Studio.

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FIGURE 3. (a) Parasitic antenna array (PA) with eight parasitic elements; (b) H-Plane
radiation patterns of a single active element and parasitic antenna array.

element in each (discussed in detail in the following sub-

section). The single-patch antenna was fed through a 50 
microstrip line with inset feeding (Fig. 2(a)); it had a gain
of 6.8 dBi and a half-power beamwidth (HPBW) of 68◦ .

B. PARASITIC ANTENNA ARRAY

As explained in the Introduction section, parasitic anten-
nas can be used for tilting the beam. Fig. 2(b) clearly
shows that the bore-sight maximum beam of the single patch
FIGURE 2. (a) Single element patch antenna and H-plane radiation pattern; antenna can be tilted to the right side (23◦ from the bore-
(b) parasitic array with an open parasitic element and its H-plane radiation pattern; sight) by adding an open (i.e., not connected to any metal)
(c) parasitic array with a shorted parasitic element and its H-plane radiation pattern;
(d) surface current plot; (e) parasitic patch array with an open and a short parasitic parasitic element next to it (on the left side). Furthermore,
element and its H-plane radiation pattern. the maximum beam can be slightly tilted (by only a few
degrees) to the right by adding a shorted (i.e., connected to
the ground through a metalized via) parasitic element on the
As a proof of concept, we designed a wearable antenna to right side of the driven element (Fig. 2(c)). The antenna sur-
detect obstacles in three directions (i.e., slightly right, front, face current plot in Fig. 2(d) shows that the open parasitic
and slightly left). This is intended to be a wearable device element has a stronger coupling compared with the shorted
and can be attached to the chest area, as shown in Fig. 1. parasitic element. Thus, the open parasitic element has more
Each antenna is connected to a separate integrated cir- of an effect on the radiation pattern of the parasitic array.
cuit (IC) to provide a continuous operating mode for each Combining both the abovementioned cases, the maximum
beam. Fig. 1 depicts these three antennas with dedicated ICs angle of the parasitic array switches to 26◦ when open and
for three directions. The antennas occupy a square measuring shorted parasitic elements are placed next to the driven ele-
85 mm × 27 mm on the textile. ment, as shown in Fig. 2(e). The number of the parasitic
elements was increased to four on each side of the driven
A. MICROSTRIP PATCH ANTENNA patch to tilt the maximum beam angle to 34◦ , as shown in
A microstrip patch antenna was chosen because it has Fig. 3a. This study observed that the further increase in the
a ground plane that can shield the antenna from the losses of number of parasitic elements did not increase the maximum
the human body. Because a single patch antenna has a bore- beam angle (due to weaker coupling in the farthest para-
sight maximum radiation pattern, it can be used to realize sitic elements). Thus, in this study, a parasitic antenna array
the central beam, whereas the left- and right-tilted beams can with eight parasitic elements (four open and four shorted)
be created through parasitic antenna arrays with one driven was designed that demonstrated a gain of 6.59 dBi and an

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 TABLE 2. Antenna dimensions.

FIGURE 4. (a) Antenna stack up; (b) parasitic patch array with PRS (top view).

HPBW of 96.9◦ (Fig. 3b). A beam with a maximum of patch and parasitic antenna array, respectively. Therefore,
−34◦ was obtained by interchanging the open parasitic ele- α(θ0 ) = 0 had to be satisfied for the required angles.
ments with the shorted ones. As Fig. 3(b) indicates, the When (2) was equal to zero, we obtained the following
antenna array beamwidth was quite wide and unsuitable for condition for the phase of the reflection coefficient:
detecting objects uniquely. To effectively distinguish signals √
from three directions, we had to decrease the beamwidth of 4π εr
ϕ(θ0 ) = π + (H + hs) cos(θo ). (4)
both the single element patch and parasitic antenna arrays. λ
A PRS structure on top of the antenna array can be beneficial For the given H and hs (1.3 and 0.15 mm, respectively),
for achieving a narrower beam. we calculated the ϕ(θ0 ) (phase of the PRS reflection coef-
ficient). For θ0 = 0, the calculated ϕ value was −105◦ ,
C. PRS and ϕ was −152 for θ0 = 30◦ . The parameters l and g
The operational principle of the PRS layer is that an elec- (shown in Fig. 4 (b)) were then varied in the simulations to
tromagnetic wave that travels through the layer is partially obtain the calculated reflection phase for the given θ0 . For
reflected and then partially transmitted through the surface. the plane wave incident perpendicular to the PRS, values of
By changing the reflection and transmission properties of l = 0.75 mm and g = 0.1 mm resulted in a −105◦ reflection
the PRS, we could obtain co-phase radiation of a transmit- phase. These l and g values gave the highest directivity for
ted wave and a wave reflected from the ground plane of the the single patch antenna. The PRS with the determined l and
antenna (Fig. 4). Co-phase radiation allowed us to increase g values was then placed on top of the parasitic antenna, and
the gain and make the beamwidth narrower. To obtain co- the values of l and g were optimized to achieve the high-
phase radiation, a matrix of periodically placed small square est gain (considering the screen printing minimum feature
patches with side length l and gap g was placed on top limitations). The optimal parasitic antenna performance was
of a superstrate layer of PreFlex material with thickness H. obtained when l = 0.85 mm and g = 0.1 mm.
We assumed that the PRS for plane wave excitation with an Table 2 specifies the final dimensions of the single
incident angle θ is characterized by the reflection coefficient patch antenna and the parasitic antenna array integrated
of R(θ )ejϕ(θ) . Then, the total radiation pattern of the patch with the PRS. In our simulations, we employed a lossy
antenna with PRS could be found through the following conductor with a conductivity of 107 S/m, which is the
analytical formula [7]: measured conductivity of the stretchable silver ink used in
  our fabrication.
1 − R(θ )2 f (θ ) Fig. 5 presents the H-plane radiation patterns of the single-
F (θ ) =
PRS
, (1)
1 + R(θ )2 − 2R(θ ) cos(α(θ )) patch antenna and parasitic antenna array with PRS. The
√
4π εr figure illustrates that the single antenna with the PRS had
α(θ ) = ϕ(θ ) − π − (H + hs) cos(θ ), (2)
λ a gain of 13 dBi and HPBW of 28.5◦ , and the parasitic
where f (θ ), λ, and εr are the pattern of the source antenna, antenna array had a gain of 10.8 dBi and HPBW of 15.8◦ .
wavelength, and permittivity of the superstrate, respectively. Both antennas exhibited an HPBW of approximately 30◦ in
When α(θ0 ) = 0, we had maximum directivity the E-plane. The gain of the antennas with PRS increased by
more than 4 dB. Furthermore, we noted an 8-dB side-lobe
1 + R(θ0 )
Dmax = , (3) level (SLL) for the parasitic antenna array with PRS.
1 − R(θ0 ) To decrease the SLL, the left half of the PRS structure on
for a certain angle θ0 . In our case, the goal was to maximize top of the parasitic antenna array in Fig. 4(b) was replaced
the directivity for angles θ0 = 0◦ and θ0 = 30◦ for a single with a square metal sheet with a length a (Fig. 6(a)). The

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FIGURE 5. H-plane radiation pattern of the single element and parasitic patch
with PRS.

FIGURE 7. (a) S-parameters of the planar and flexed antennas with a bent
antenna at the inset (R = 50 mm); (b) H-plane radiation pattern of the bent
antenna with a 100-mm bend radius; (c) H-plane radiation pattern of the bent
antenna with a 50-mm bend radius.

not deteriorate the antenna’s performance beyond accept-

able limits. For this investigation, the antenna was bent
FIGURE 6. (a) Parasitic antenna array with PRS and metal sheet; (b) H-plane
radiation pattern of the single-patch and parasitic antenna array with updated PRS. around cylinders with radii of 50 mm and 100 mm. These
radii are sufficient for mounting the antenna on most com-
mon places on the human body, such as chest or even the
dimensions of the metallic sheet were chosen to be almost arms. Fig. 7(a) visualizes the bending of the antenna around
similar to the PRS (slightly larger) for optimal performance. a cylinder with a 50-mm radius. Fig. 7(b) shows that the
With the help of the metal sheet, the SLL was increased to bending did not significantly change the return loss of the
11 dB (Fig. 6(b)). To study the human body effects in the antennas in either orientation (single patch and parasitic
vicinity, the designed antenna was simulated with a human array). Fig. 7(c) presents the bent antenna radiation pattern
body phantom and the results did not change. The maximum results, which confirm that the bending did not significantly
gain, maximum angle, and SLL were the same as in the alter the antenna radiation performance. The beamwidth of
presented design. the antennas increased and the gain decreased at approxi-
mately 0.5 dB when the antenna was bent around the cylinder
D. FLEXED ANTENNA with a 100-mm radius, and it decreased at approximately
Wearable devices should have flexibility to assume the shape 1 dB when it was bent around the cylinder with a 50-mm
of the clothes to which they are attached. Thus, flexibility radius; however, the three beams were still quite distin-
is an essential aspect of wearable electronics. We performed guishable. The side lobe levels of the bent antennas were
simulations for flexed antennas to ensure that bending would approximately 8 dB, which is still in the acceptable level.

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FIGURE 8. The fabrication process.

FIGURE 10. (a) Measurement of the antenna inside the anechoic chamber;
(b) comparison of simulated (Sim) and measured (Meas) return losses of the
single-patch antenna with PRS and parasitic antenna array with PRS; (c) H-plane
radiation patterns of the single-patch antenna with PRS and parasitic antenna array
with PRS.

stretched by 25%. First, the antenna was printed on the sub-

FIGURE 9. (a) Parasitic antenna array; (b) PRS for the parasitic antenna array;
(c) patch antenna and its PRS layer; (d) bent antenna with a 50-mm bend radius;
strate according to the alignment marks and the cameras were
(e) patch antenna image under microscope for the non-bent case; and (f) patch aligned with these marks. Four shorting vias were generated
antenna image under microscope for the bent case.
by manually applying ink on the holes that were formed by
a laser. Then, the substrate was flipped, and the ground layer
was printed after being aligned with the marks. Lastly, the
III. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENTS superstrate layer was printed on a different substrate (the
The antennas were realized through a screen-printing (Aurel same material as the antenna substrate) but with a larger
Automation 900 screen printer) process. Figs. 8 and 9 show thickness. After each layer of printing, the printed ink was
the fabrication process and the fabricated antennas, respec- cured in an oven at 120◦ C for 10 minutes. The measured
tively. To this end, a screen for the designed antenna was ink conductivity after curing is 2x106 S/m. The thickness
prepared. Cross-shaped alignment marks were added to of the printed conductive layer is 2.5 µm. All printed lay-
align the antenna layers and shorting vias for the parasitic ers were stacked through the use of extra alignment marks.
antenna array. The crosses for alignment were printed on The air gap between the antenna layers was removed by
a dummy substrate, and two printer cameras were manually adding plastic screws on multiple points around the antenna.
aligned with them. A 2.5% diluted stretchable silver ink Notably, we did not use glue because its dielectric proper-
DuPont PE873 [17] was used to screen print our antenna on ties at high frequencies are unknown and could affect the
the low-loss flexible material. The stretchability of the ink antenna’s performance. Because of the lack of coaxial con-
was studied in [18], where it is shown that the ink can be nectors that work at 77 GHz, the antennas had to be tested

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TABLE 3. Simulated and measured results.

at this frequency using ground signal ground (GSG) probes.

A coplanar waveguide (CPW) transition was added to our
design in anticipation of this probing. Testing with these
probes is quite challenging because they are typically asso-
ciated with parasitic capacitances and radiation, which can
foul the measurements. The S-parameter and radiation pat-
tern of the antennas were measured in a specialized u-lab
anechoic chamber from Orbit/FR (Fig. 10a). This cham-
ber was equipped with a probing system and a movable
microscope to properly land a probe on a sample. The
microscope was removed after landing the probes and when
testing the antenna parameters. Fig. 10(b) presents the mea-
sured and simulated reflection coefficients (S11 ). It shows
FIGURE 11. (a) Radar test method; (b) measured and calculated received power
that the antenna resonance frequencies exhibited similar versus distance.
trends. A slight shift in frequency occurred for the parasitic
antenna array case, which was expected because they are
more sensitive to the presence of a nearby probe compared applications. To test them, we prepared a setup similar to
with single patch antennas. Nonetheless, the antennas were that shown in Fig. 11(a), where the user is shown to have
matched at the desired frequencies. Fig. 10 (c) illustrates the three wearable antennas (labelled A, B, and C) for the three
measured and simulated radiation patterns of the antennas, test cases. In this setup, we used these antennas as transmit
which were well-aligned. The simulated and measured gain, antennas and the RF input signal was provided to them using
HPBW and SLL of the antennas are presented in Table 3. a signal generator. We used metal sheets (metalized A4 size
The maximum value of the measured gain of the single-patch FR-4 boards and some metal objects such as wrenches, which
antenna with PRS was 12 dBi at an angle of 0◦ , whereas that were present during the tests) as objects for the tests, which
of the parasitic antenna array with PRS was 9.8 dBi at an reflected back the transmitted signal. To receive the reflected
angle of 30◦ . The maximum measured gain was 1 dB lower signal, we used a spectrum analyzer that was connected to
than the simulated gain, which may be because of the loss a horn antenna and placed next to the transmitting wearable
tangent variance in the dielectric material and the screen- antennas (A, B, and C). Because we had to test three anten-
printing metal ink. The dielectric loss in the datasheet was nas (i.e., one for each direction) with the same setup, we
shown to have a variance of ±10%, and the conductivity of tested them sequentially (i.e., one at a time).
printed metal can vary slightly from expectations because The reflected power was recorded for different distances,
of printing and sintering conditions. Because of the com- and the measurement results are shown in Fig. 11(b). The
plexity of probing on bent surfaces, the bent antenna could total loss of the cables, connectors, and mixers was 51 dBm,
not be characterized in this study. However, we investigated and due to this high loss in the test setup, the measurement
the effect of bending on the ink. Figures 9 (e) and (f) show range was limited. However, the sensor detection range could
microscopic images of the printed patch antenna for the non- be calculated using the radar range equation [19]:
bent and bent case, respectively. From these images, we can λ2
see that there are no cracks on the ink, and the bending does PR = PT GT GR σ  2 , (5)
not affect the structure of the patch. 4π 4π R21
where, PR , PT , σ , GT , GR , λ, and R1 are received power,
IV. DETECTION TESTING transmitted power, radar cross-section, gain of the transmit
The detection range and object movement detection with antenna, gain of the receive antenna, wavelength, and object
location prediction are two main parameters for sensing distance, respectively. The calculated curve, along with the

8 VOLUME 1, 2020
 reflected power for 0◦ . Similarly, the movement direction of
the object can be determined; for example, if the movement
is in the ±ax direction (according to the coordinates shown
in Fig. 11(a)), the direction of movement can be determined
through recording the reflected powers while the object
(a metal sheet in this case) is moved in the ±ax direc-
tion. Fig. 12(a) displays the measured results for these tests.
If the object was moving in the +ax direction (right side),
antenna A or B received the reflected signal first and then
antenna C received it. The order of receiving the reflected
signal was the opposite when the object moved in the −ax
direction. This can be seen in the points measured by the
three antennas in Fig. 12(a). Similarly, the movement in the
±ay direction could be determined by moving the object
in the ±ay direction and recording the reflected powers.
The results for these measurements are shown in Fig. 12(b),
where it can be seen that if the object is moving in the
+ay direction, the reflected power level increases with this
movement, whereas the response is the other way round for
−ay movement. With the help of this antenna system, the
user can be informed whether the object is moving to the
right or left as well as whether it is moving away or coming
closer.

V. CONCLUSION
This study demonstrated a wearable antenna array with three
independent beams to detect objects in three directions.
FIGURE 12. (a) Measured movement detection in the ax direction, and (b) measured
movement detection in the ay direction. A light colored boxes has been used to show The flexible, low-profile, and low-cost antenna array was
the previous position of the box (object). designed, prototyped, and tested for this study. The tests
proved that the antenna array is capable of detecting objects
within a range of 10 m, which can be enhanced using suit-
able power and low noise amplifiers. Moreover, the direction
measured values, is shown in Fig. 11(b). A good correlation
of movement of an object can be determined using a sim-
between the measurements and calculations was observed in
ple technique. The combination of the three antennas can
the initial part of the results (until approximately the 2-m
detect objects in the angle range of ±32◦ . The design is
range); thus, the calculated values of the remaining part of the
highly suitable for futuristic wearable sensing and detection
curve can be trusted (until the 10-m range). Considering that
applications.
the antennas are to be used with a power amplifier and low
noise amplifier in their front ends, the received power levels
will increase even more, thereby facilitating object detec- ACKNOWLEDGMENT
tion beyond the 10-m range. Notably, the accurate distance The authors wish to thank the PremixGroup team for their
and velocity of objects can be obtained by integrating the extensive support with material information. They also thank
antenna with appropriate circuits to obtain the wave travel H. Zhang and Y. H. Kuo for their assistance with the
time and frequency shift. Standard signal-processing tech- antenna range testing.
niques can then be applied to acquire real-time information.
However, this setup can also be used for a simple method
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[4] M. Jusoh, T. Sabapathy, M. F. Jamlos, and M. R. Kamarudin, AZAT MEREDOV was born in Turkmenistan, in
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design,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 58, no. 2, pp. 258–270, KIRILL KLIONOVSKI was born in Krasnogorsk,
Feb. 2010. Russia. He received the Engineer degree (Hons.)
[9] R. Guzmán-Quirós, J. L. Gomez-Tornero, A. R. Weily, and in electrical engineering from Moscow Aviation
Y. J. Guo, “Electronically steerable 1-D Fabry-Perot leaky- Institute, Moscow, Russia, in 2010, and the
wave antenna employing a tunable high impedance surface,” Ph.D. degree in radiophysics from the Kotel’nikov
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 60, no. 11, pp. 5046–5055, Institute of Radioengineering and Electronics,
Nov. 2012. Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia,
[10] A. Ghasemi, S. N. Burokur, A. Dhouibi, and A. de Lustrac, in 2015.
“High beam steering in fabry–pérot leaky-wave antennas,” His current research interest includes the beam-
IEEE Antennas Wireless Propag. Lett., vol. 12, pp. 261–264, switching antenna arrays designing.
2013.
[11] T. Debogović and J. Perruisseau-Carrier, “Array-fed partially reflective
surface antenna with independent scanning and beamwidth dynamic ATIF SHAMIM received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees
control,” IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 62, no. 1, pp. 446–449, in electrical engineering from Carleton University,
Jan. 2014. Canada, in 2004 and 2009 respectively. He was an
[12] L.-Y. Ji, Y. J. Guo, P.-Y. Qin, S.-X. Gong, and R. Mittra, “A reconfig- NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Graduate Scholar
urable partially reflective surface (PRS) antenna for beam steering,” with Carleton University from 2007 to 2009
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 63, no. 6, pp. 2387–2395, and an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow with Royal
Jun. 2015. Military College Canada and the King Abdullah
[13] H. Moghadas, M. Daneshmand, and P. Mousavi, “MEMS-tunable University of Science and Technology (KAUST)
half phase gradient partially reflective surface for beam-shaping,” from 2009 to 2010. In August 2010, he joined the
IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 63, no. 1, pp. 369–373, Electrical Engineering Program, KAUST, where
Jan. 2015. he is currently an Associate Professor and the
[14] S. X. Ta, T. H.-Y. Nguyen, K. K. Nguyen, and C. Dao-Ngoc, Principal Investigator of IMPACT Lab. He was an Invited Researcher
“Bandwidth-enhancement of circularly-polarized fabry-perot with the VTT Micro-Modules Research Center, Oulu, Finland, in 2006.
antenna using single-layer partially reflective surface,” Int. J. He has authored/coauthored 230 international publications, is an inventor
RF Microw. Comput.-Aided Eng., vol. 29, no. 8, Aug. 2019. of 25 patents and has given over 50 invited talks at various international
Art. no. e21774. forums. His research interests are in innovative antenna designs and their
[15] L.-Y. Ji, P.-Y. Qin, Y. J. Guo, S. Genovesi, H.-L. Zhu, and Y. Zong, integration strategies with circuits and sensors for flexible and wearable
“A reconfigurable partially reflective surface antenna with enhanced wireless sensing systems through a combination of CMOS, and additive
beam steering capability,” in Proc. 13th Eur. Conf. Antennas Propag. manufacturing technologies. His research work has won Best Paper Awards
(EUCAP), Krakow, Poland, Apr. 2019. at the IEEE EuWiT 2008, the IEEE IMS 2016, the IEEE MECAP 2016,
[16] PREPERM PPE260 Material. [Online]. Available: https:// and the First Prize in the IEEE IMS 2019 3MT competition and honorable
www.preperm.com/ mention prizes at IEEE APS 2005, IEEE IWAT 2006, IEEE IMS 2014,
[17] (2015). DuPont PE873 Stretchable Silver Conductor. [Online]. and IEEE IMS 2017 (3MT competition). He was given the Ottawa Centre
Available: https://www.dupont.com/content/dam/dupont/amer/us/en/ of Research Innovation (OCRI) Researcher of the Year Award in 2008 in
products/ei-transformation/documents/PE873.pdf Canada. His work on Wireless Dosimeter won the ITAC SMC Award at
[18] S. An, A. Meredov, and A. Shamim, “Flexible, stretchable and wash- Canadian Microelectronics Corporation TEXPO in 2007. He has also won
able filter printed directly on textile,” in Proc. 48th Eur. Microw. Conf., numerous business-related awards, including first prize in Canada’s national
Madrid, Spain, Sep. 2018, pp. 831–834. business plan competition and OCRI Entrepreneur of the Year Award in
[19] C. A. Balanis, Antenna Theory: Analysis and Design. New York, NY, 2010. He serves on the editorial board for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON
USA: Wiley, 1997. ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION.

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