Carlos Fernandes, born in 1957, is Full Professor (2006) of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (DEEC) of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), faculty of Engineering from the University of Lisbon. He obtained his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering form IST in 1990. He was past vice-president of DEEC/IST (2003-04). He is a member of the Board of Directors of Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) since 2009, and Coordinator of its Wireless Communications Scientific Area. He is also the head of the Antennas and Propagation Group of IT in Lisbon and of its Labs. Teaching chairs and research work are in the fields of Antennas, Microwaves, Radiowave Propagation for Communications and Sensores, and Satellite Systems. He is Senior Member of the IEEE.Carlos Fernandes has co-authored 1 book (Artech House), 3 Book Chapters in CRC Press and Springer Antenna Handbooks, 80+ peer-reviewed journal papers mostly in IEEE journals and 250+ conference publications mostly in IEEE and European reference conferences. His work has received 3900+ citations in the Google Scholar database (h-index 35). He is co-inventor of 5 patents. He has supervised about 60 licenciatura and MSc theses, as well as 11 PhD theses (5 on-going). Since 1993 he has been leading the development of cutting-edge measurement and fabrication facilities at the Antennas and Propagation Lab of IT in LIsbon.Current research team:
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MAIN AREAS OF RESEARCH
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| Millimeter-wave Antennas |
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The recent focus has been on the development of low cost, low profile focusing antenna systems to produce high gain, wide-angle beam steering, based on metamaterials and 3D printed technologies. This work comes on the continuation of several years of contributions on highly shaped dielectric lens concepts for beam shape control. Applications include mobile broadband communications, ultrawideband radiometry, low-cost mass-market multi-gigabit local-area networks, 5G backhaul, and Ka-band satellite-on-the-move ground terminal antennas. <more> |
| RFID and the Internet of Things |
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The main emphasis is on near-field UHF-RFID and its application to the Internet-of-Things (IoT). Innovative antenna concepts were developed for non-intrusive integration in common objects like shelves, drawers, tables, conveyor belts, mirrors, etc. to create “smart surfaces” capable of identifying and localizing objects that contain passive UHF-RFID tags. This low-cost detection and localization capability can fuel the development of new mass market applications, such as automatic inventory assessment, shopping facilitation, smart pantries, travel baggage tracking, and health assistance. The work on smart surfaces is protected by a worldwide patent and is being commercialized by an industrial partner. Other two patents cover an RFID-based polling system for real-time in-class student assessment, and a mirror-integrated RFID antenna that uses IoT to enhance the customer shopping experience. <more>
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| Metamaterials |
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Most of the team's work on matamaterials has been done in close cooperation with Prof. Mário Silveirinha. This has been driven by the desire to explore metamaterials for real applications. The work started with the development of analytical formulations and numerical methods for efficient analysis and characterization of known and new materials. Then sophisticated homogenization methods were developed, with especial emphasis on the homogenization of metamaterial slabs. Finally different concepts or devices were designed. <more>
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| Antennas for body-area networks and medical imaging |
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The work follows two main directions in the important field of near-body antennas: antennas for body-area networks and antennas and techniques for medical microwave imaging. In both cases the emphasis is put on the development of very simples and inexpensive antenna solutions, yet with remarkable performance for the intended functions. For the first topic, the new developments include both implanted antennas for implanted sensors, and on-body antennas (including stick-on antennas) that can operate not only with near-body sensors, but also as relays between implanted antennas and off-body access points. Regarding microwave medical imaging, our studies show that other antenna design requirements need to be addressed further to the usual UWB figures of merit, in order to obtain the best possible image inversion results. We discuss these characteristics and present antennas that match those additional requirements. We also focus on full system demonstrators to evaluate the antenna impact on system performance. <more> |