The University of Waterloo will officially open the doors September 13 to CIARS, a new Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems.
The world-class facility, considered one of the best in the world to test electromagnetic devices, is a boon for academic and industry researchers who specialize in everything from next generation wireless communications, to mobile health, car radar, satellite communication, THz imaging/spectroscopy, advanced radio telescopes, and futuristic nano-sensors and smart devices.
CIARS features a unique multi-configuration electromagnetic radiation lab (ERL) including an anechoic chamber and Tera-hertz (THz) measurement facilities that will close the so-called THz-gap in the electromagnetic spectrum, offering researchers access to new technologies that may offer life-changing outcomes in bio-technology, genetics, pharmaceutics, and targeted drug delivery. Sitting between radio frequency and light-wave, THz is the most exciting and least explored portion of electromagnetic spectrum, open to unlimited possibilities, which we have started to understand and to explore just since a decade ago or so.
Housed in the north end of the university’s Engineering 5 building, the 5,000 square-foot facility (including ERL, anechoic chamber and first and fourth floor labs), took over five years to build at the cost of about $15 million. Funding for the facility was provided by the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Ontario Research Fund, industry partners and the University of Waterloo.
Engineering home to the centre
“The University of Waterloo is very pleased to be the home of the Centre for Intelligent Antenna and Radio Systems’ new facilities, the first of their kind in Canada, and amongst the most advanced in the world,” said Pearl Sullivan, Dean of Engineering. “CIARS supports and promotes multidisciplinary research collaboration in highly diversified areas such as emerging intelligent wireless technologies, sensing, nano-scale radio-wave devices, bio-medical electromagnetism and more."
Although the facility is set up for research at the University of Waterloo, researchers will be able to use it remotely. The ERL and its instruments can measure electromagnetic fields radiated by objects as tiny as a human hair to as big as a two ton truck, with the highest precision over the widest range of frequency possible in any academic facility in the world.