Facilities
Facility Hire
Facility hire is arranged by academics. Simply contact and academic working in your area of interest to find out if our equipment is suitable for your needs.
The Centre has access to state of the art testing and measurement systems related to communications engineering. Academics and students use them everyday for their research. We are keen to collaborate with industry and routinely run test and measurement programs for enterprises outside of º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ. Using our experience in this way helps us to freshen our research with current knowledge and support our PhD community by way of conference and travel expenses.
The Big Chamber
The big chamber was donated to the communications group at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ by RACAL Antennas and is currently being recommissioned. The anechoic chamber is housed in a screen room with a screening ability of greater that 80dBs:
The inside of the facility consists of a control room, tapered chamber and a cylindrical near field. The cylindrical near field has been integrated into the tapered chamber to save space;
Originally the chamber was purchased by Racal from Orbit/FR who contracted Rainford to supply and build the screen room, Advanced Electromagnetics Inc to supply and install the RAM. Orbit/FR supplied and installed the software and measurement equipment; Since receiving the chamber university academics and technicians have moved and reassembled the system in Holywell Park at º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ.
The tapered chamber is fed via two ridge horns (originally supplied by EMS systems) to cover two frequency ranges, the first horn goes from around 700MHz to 2GHz and the second from 2GHz to 18 GHz The high frequency is restricted by the capability of the network analyser.
The tapered portion of the chamber projects out into a 5m cubic, with a back RAM wall consisting of 36 inch deep RAM.
The taper chamber has an elevation over azimuth turn table system, at the moment it is shown with just the azimuth turntable in place.
The Small Chamber
Our main teaching facility is a bespoke anechoic chamber measuring approximately 7x3x3 m3. We have our own specially designed positioner and in-house software. The room is screened and will operate reliably down to -30dBs and is useful for measurements between 700MHz to 4.5GHz with a normalized site attenuation of -4dB at the higher frequency. This chamber has been used extensively for pattern measurement for mobile phone antennas and on-body antennas.
The chamber has an elevation over azimuth turn table system.
Other Facilties Include
- The Half Wave Chamber
- The Screened Room
- The Tank Room
- The Acoustic Chamber - An acoustic semi-anechoic room including a calibrated microphone, high speed DAQ card and recording software.
- The SAR Measurment System - DASYIV
- PCB Manufacture