The Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems (CIARS) is a world-class electromagnetic device and communication/sensing system development/characterization facility at the University of Waterloo. The facility was the result of an extensive infrastructure project led by Professor Safieddin (Ali) Safavi-Naeini (Lead Applicant), Professor S. K. Chaudhuri (Co-applicant) and other co-investigators from the University of Waterloo, University of Manitoba, University of Toronto, University of Simon Fraser, BlackBerry, Canada Research Chairs (CRC), and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). CIARS infrastructure was primarily funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Ontario Research Fund (ORF), and BlackBerry.
The facility in-door labs are located at the Engineering 5 (E5) building. All main CIARS instruments and setups can be accessed by remote users through web interface.
CIARS consists of five interconnected indoor laboratories, one outdoor lab, and a highly advanced computational facility:
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Electromagnetic Measurement Lab (ERL): Electromagnetic anechoic chamber and near-field/far-field measurement setups as well as EMC-EMI Test lab, are located in E5-1018.
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RF/Microwave and Millimeter Wave System Lab, is located in E5-4031.
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THz-Photonics and sub-millimeter-wave Integrated System Lab is located in E5-4036.
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Rapid Prototyping Lab (RPL): Hybrid Multi-layer Circuit and Antenna Prototype Fabrication Lab is located in E5-4001.
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On-Chip Lab: Device Characterization, and yield enhancement, EMI shielding for low noise application. The Lab is located in E5-4034.
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Vehicular Mobile Radio Network Lab and Outdoor Test Road Track is located off-campus.
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High-performance computational facility Advanced multi-core parallel computing platform, all main stream software packages, in-house computational EM software tools.