Physical Layer Lab

The PHYlab is keen to discuss short or long-term projects with potential collaborators.

Such work may be:

Novel research,

Independent tests of theory or practice,

Reports or white papers,

Development and adaptation of test methods .

Training and education.

The lab has a strong theoretical underpinning supporting both measurements and simulations.

The foundation of the work undertaken in the Physical Layer Laboratory is the investigation of electromagnetic phenomena - particularly related to electromagnetic compatibility and signal integrity, and with a particular focus on communications systems.

Over recent years some of the short term projects we have undertaken includes

Developing shielding test methods

Writing a white paper for a venture capital company assessing the capabilities of a company\'s technology being developed with their funding,

Performing primary parameter calculations for a power transmission line

Writing software to simulate energy coupling with transmission lines

• Dr Alistair Duffy (Director of Research and co-Director of the Centre for Electronic and Communications Engineering) 
• Dr Hugh Sasse (Laboratory Manager)
• Haitham Adarbah
• Sile Akinnouye
• Ahmed Al-Dabag
• Hassan Fadel
• Sabir Hussein
• Bernd Lehmanski
• Beier Li
• Riyadh Mansoor
• Olusegun Ogundapo
• Giacomo Braglia

The Physical Layer Laboratory is also supported by Manbir Sambhi (Technology Manager in the Faculty of Technology) and his technical support team.

Some of our current and recent projects include:

Using electromagnetic emissions to detect early failures in emiconductor devices

Reverberation chamber optimization using high performance computing

Prediction of lightning currents induced on transmission lines

Measurement of shielding effectiveness of  'Faraday' bags

Measurement of shielding effectiveness of components for automotive power train shielding

Inductance calculation for high power transmission bus system

Crosstalk improvements in all optical communications systems

Aging prediction of semiconductor devices using the Transmission Line Matrix (TLM) method 

Beam position prediction for medical linear accelerators

Channel performance effects due to Power over Ethernet

Network optimization using 'cognitive' techniques

Reverse engineering data cables

Efficient route discovery algorithms in noisy mobile ad hoc networks (MANETS)

Enhanced product life cycle specification information

Characterization of EMC issues associated with electric vehicles.

In addition to general test equipment

(such as vector network analysers)

the Physical Layer Laboratory has

equipment and test systems not

often found in academia, such as a reverberation chamber, PoE test capability, etc.