Planeamento

Aulas Teóricas

Course overview.

Aula 1

Brief introduction. Course organization. Assessment method.

Basic concepts of a radio link in free space, antennas, transceiver blocks and thermal noise. Concept of software defined radio. Communication bands.

Ground reflection

Aula 2

Fresnel coefficients. Interference from ground reflections - plane-Earth model. Case of one high-altitude antenna (satellites and high altitude platforms)

Ground reflection (cont) and diffraction

Aula 3

Generalization for spherical Earth. Concepts of Radio Horizon, Equivalent Height and Divergence factor. Introduction to diffraction. Attenuation by Diffraction by the Earth curved surface.

Diffraction (cont) and refraction

Aula 4

Diffraction by isolated obstacles. Attenuation by a knife edge type of obstacle.

Atmospheric refraction. Concept of Earth equivalent radius.

Atmospheric attenuation

Aula 5

Attenuation by gases, clouds, and rain. Depolarization by the rain drop shape. 

 Propagation in the ionosphere and effects on satellite links. 
Rayleigh fading, Rice fading and Log-normal fading.

Sub-6 GHz coverage - multi path propagation in celular mobile radio

Aula 6

Basic concepts and general system architecture. Multipath propagation modelling in micro cells and macrocells. Diversity techniques.

Sub-6 GHz coverage - shadowing effect in celular mobile radio

Aula 7

Attenuation by multiple buildings. Outdoor to indoor propagation:  attenuation through walls and concept of window gain.  

Mm-wave propagation for 5G and 6G

Aula 8

Introduction to mm-wave communications for 5G and 6G. Analysis of specific challenges, mitigation strategies and implications on system configuration. Antenna beam forming and MIMO, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), coverage by satellites. Indoor coverage.

Body-area communications

Aula 9

Introduction to body-area propagation. Analysis of the challenges and quantification of the problem. Concept of Specific Absorption Ratio - SAR. 

Wave scattering

Aula 10

Introduction. Types of scattering. Definition of scattering cross-section. Scattering by rough planar surfaces.

Radar-based detection

Aula 11

The radar equation. Radar cross section of canonical shapes. RCS reduction (stealth strategies) and RCS enhancing. Types of radar and applications 

Imaging and remote sensing

Aula 12

Synthetic aperture radar. Basic principle. Application for Earth observation. Application for other imaging applications, like security scans, medical imaging.

Other microwave sensing applications

Aula 13

Radio identification (RFID). Indoor radio localization. Retrieval of meteorological data from GPS signal propagation: method of occultation