At this year's Antenna Measurement Techniques Association (AMTA) symposium, October 24-29, 2021, M.Sc. Willi Hofmann was awarded first place for best junior researcher paper for his research, "Bi-static reflectivity measurements of microwave absorbers between 2 and 18 GHz."
The publication describes the characterization of microwave absorbers, which form the elementary building block of all antenna measurement chambers. The absorbers attenuate the reflections of electromagnetic waves from walls, ceiling and floor, creating low-reflection radio environments in the laboratory that resemble the propagation conditions in free space. This field of research, which has been studied for a long time, has recently gained enormous importance, especially with regard to the development of modern radio technologies for automated and connected driving.
With its annual conferences, the world association AMTA has been providing experts and researchers from all over the world with probably the most renowned international platform for scientific exchange on trends in antenna and radar measurements for more than 40 years. This year's conference was held in a hybrid format in Daytona Beach, Florida (USA) and virtually due to ongoing travel restrictions due to the COVID19 pandemic.
Willi Hofmann has been a research assistant and PhD student in the Group of Radio Frequency and Microwave Engineering at TU Ilmenau since 2017 under the supervision of Professor Dr. rer. nat. habil. Matthias Hein. Previously, he successfully completed his bachelor's and master's degree in electrical engineering and information technology at TU Ilmenau with a focus on information and communication technology. Within the framework of the DFG project "Electromagnetic Modeling of Microwave Absorbers (EMMA; DFG project no. 418894892)", jointly led by Prof. Hein and Dr. Christian Bornkessel, methods for the characterization of microwave absorbers are being researched and virtual radio environments are being modeled with respect to their electromagnetic wave propagation. The findings are applied in the Virtual Road - Simulation and Test Facility (VISTA), a globally unique research facility of the ThIMo for automated and connected driving.