Student Design Contest

Introduction

Modern wireless communication systems often require antennas that can operate over a wide frequency range while suppressing unwanted interference from specific frequency bands. A wideband filtering antenna with band-notch characteristics combines wideband radiation and frequency-selective rejection in a single compact structure, thereby reducing the need for additional filtering circuits. In this assignment, students will design and simulate a wideband antenna operating from 2–6 GHz with two independently controlled rejected bands centered around 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz. The design will help students understand wideband antenna design, impedance matching, bandwidth enhancement, band-notch generation, and the effect of slots or resonating structures on antenna performance.

Design Specifications and Rules

Introduction

RF amplifiers are fundamental building blocks in wireless communication, IoT, telemetry, and low-power RF systems. Designing a compact amplifier that operates efficiently at multiple frequency bands while maintaining adequate gain, narrow bandwidth, stability, and controlled output power presents an important practical RF design challenge. In this problem, participants are required to design, simulate, fabricate, and characterize a dual-band RF amplifier operating at 433 MHz and 866 MHz. The design should provide sufficient gain at both frequencies with narrow passbands and should demonstrate effective RF matching, stability, and practical PCB implementation.

Design Specifications and Rules

Introduction

High-gain antennas are important for point-to-point communication, radar, satellite communication, and emerging wireless systems. Metasurfaces can manipulate electromagnetic waves and enhance antenna radiation characteristics without significantly increasing the overall antenna profile. In this problem, participants are required to design a compact planar antenna integrated with a metasurface or electromagnetic periodic structure to improve gain and radiation efficiency while keeping the overall size of the antenna and metasurface as small as possible. Since compactness is a key design objective, the combined physical size of the antenna and metasurface will be evaluated as one of the parameters for judging the design contest entries.

Design Specifications and Rules

Introduction

The rapid growth of wireless communication systems has resulted in the presence of significant amounts of ambient RF energy in the environment. RF energy harvesting provides a potential approach for powering low-power wireless sensors, IoT devices, and battery-assisted systems by converting incident RF energy into usable DC power. An RF rectifier is a key component of an RF energy harvesting system, where the received high-frequency AC signal is converted into DC voltage using nonlinear devices such as Schottky diodes. The performance of the rectifier strongly depends on the diode characteristics, input impedance, matching network, operating frequency, input power level, and load resistance. In this problem, participants are required to design, simulate, fabricate, and characterize a high-frequency double-band RF rectifier capable of converting RF signals from two different frequency bands into DC power. The design should demonstrate effective impedance matching, RF-to-DC conversion, and stable operation across the selected frequency bands. The project provides students with practical understanding of RF matching networks, nonlinear circuit behaviour, harmonic generation, diode rectification, electromagnetic/circuit co-simulation, and RF energy harvesting.

Design Specifications and Rules