The activities of CM-SIG are currently facilitated by Buon Kiong Lau (Lund University), assisted by several key volunteers:

Webinar Coordinators: Marta Cabedo Fabrés (Universidad Politécnica de Valencia) and Divitha Seetharamdoo (University Gustave Eiffel)

Newsletter Editors: Binbin Yang (North Carolina A&T State University), Kalyan Durbhakula (University of Missouri – Kansas City)

Social Media Coordinator: Fenghan Lin (ShanghaiTech University)

Benchmarking Activity Coordinator: Yikai Chen (UESTC)

Our ongoing activities and initiatives are:

• The Second Edition of the European School of Antenna (ESoA) Course on “Characteristic Modes: Theory and Applications” will be held in Prague, Czech Republic during 24-28 May 2021. The course is jointly organized by Czech Technical University in Prague, Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Leibniz Universität Hannover and Lund University. The course website with detailed information is available here. The course pamphlet is found here. The first version of this course, held in Valencia, Spain, received a good review by the ESoA Board, but we will strive to do even better this time!
• Convened Session “Characteristic Mode Analysis for Emerging Applications and New Structures” at the 2021 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation in Düsseldorf, Germany, 22-26 March, 2021 (Organizers: Dirk Manteuffel, Kalyan C. Durbhakula, and Fenghan Lin)
• Benchmarking activities to verify characteristic mode software tools (both inhouse and commercial), led by Yikai Chen of UESTC, China. Those interested can contact Yikai Chen for more details. Participants of a discussion on benchmarking activity at EuCAP 2017 are shown in the group photo below.

Our past activities and initiatives include the following:

• Marta Cabedo Fabres and Divitha Seetharamdoo organized two webinars, on 1 and 3 Dec 2020. Both have been uploaded to our YouTube channel. Details are given below:

Webinar on 1 Dec 2020 – https://youtu.be/wUdJ_czttLA

Unfortunately, the actual recording was of poor quality due to some technical issues, so the two speakers were kind enough to made separate recordings (of very high quality) for the uploaded version. The downside is that we lost the Q&A.

The video is also available on Bilibili (courtesy of Fenghan Lin): https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1V5411V7Vr

Webinar on 3 Dec 2020 – https://youtu.be/QKi74A971rg

The video is also available on Bilibili (courtesy of Fenghan Lin): https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1ya4y1W7Gi

• Oral Session “B19 Theory and Applications of Characteristic Modes” at the 2020 URSI General Assembly and Scientific Symposium (GASS) in Rome, Italy, 29 August – 5 September 2020 (Conveners: Deb Chatterjee and Ahmed M. Hassan).
• Special Session on “Extending the Boundaries of Characteristic Mode Design and Analysis” at the 2020 IEEE AP-S Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and CNC/USNC-URSI Joint Meeting in Montréal, Canada, 5-10 July 2020 (Conveners: Qi Wu and Ahmed M. Hassan).
• Zoom-based Webinars on 23 and 25 June 2020 (organized by DivithaDivitha Seetharamdoo and Marta Cabedo Fabres). Most talks are available on our YouTube channel.

23 June 2020

25 June 2020

• Convened Session “CS45 New Perspectives and Applications of Characteristic Mode Analysis in Antenna Design” at the 2020 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP 2020), 15-20 March 2020, Copenhagen, Denmark (Conveners: Hui Li and Naobumi Michishita)
• Special Session on “Modeling and Design of Innovative Antennas” at the 9th IEEE-APS Topical Conference on Antennas and Propagation in Wireless Communications (APWC 2019) in Granada, Spain, 9 – 13 September 2019 (Convener: Zhi Ning Chen). The conference is coupled with International Conference on Electromagnetics in Advanced Applications (ICEAA 2019)
• Special Session on “Theory and Applications of Characteristic Modes” at the URSI Commission B International Symposium on Electromagnetic Theory (EMTS 2019) in San Diego, USA, 27 – 31 May 2019 (Co-conveners: Deb Chatterjee and Ahmed M. Hassan). The papers presented in the session were:
  • The Shape Optimization of Dielectric Resonator Antennas
  • Characteristic Modes of Lossy Objects
  • Scalable Characteristic Mode Analysis Using Big Data Techniques
  • Characteristic Mode Analysis of Electromagnetic Coupling to Wires with Realistic Shapes
  • A Multilayered Green’s Function Model for the Characteristic Mode Analysis of Carbon Nanotube Composites
• Convened Sessions on “CS40 Progress in the Application of Characteristic Modes Analysis” (Co-conveners: Danie Ludick and Werner L. Schroeder) and “CS3 Generalized MoM-based Eigenvalue Problems for Antennas and Scattering” (Co-conveners: Mats Gustafsson and Kurt Schab) at the 2019 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP2019) in Krakow, Poland, 31 March – 5 April 2019.
• “Workshop on Characteristic Modes Theory and Applications”, organized by Yikai Chen and his team at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in Chengdu, China on 17 July 2018. There were three hour-long talks, focusing on the development of the theory behind characteristic modes for dielectric as well as some specific applications. Apart from the professors, about 70 local and international students attended the event. A detailed description of the workshop in Mandarin is available here. A photo of the professors participating in the event is shown below.
  
• Special Session on “Characteristic Modes 2.0 – From Fundamental Limits to 5G Antenna Systems” at the 2018 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and CNC/USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting (IEEE APS/URSI2018) in Boston, MA, USA, 8-13 July 2018 (Co-conveners: Jacob Adams and Buon Kiong Lau, Co-chairs: Jacob Adams and Dirk Manteuffel).
• The First Edition of the European School of Antenna (ESoA) Course on “Characteristic Modes: Theory and Applications” was held in Valencia, Spain during 21-25 May 2018. The course was jointly organized by Universitat Politecnica de Valencia, Czech Technical University in Prague, Leibniz Universität Hannover and Lund University. The course website with detailed information is available here. The course pamphlet is found here. 17 students attended the course.
  
• Convened Sessions on “Advances in Antenna Design and Analysis Using Characteristic Modes (Co-conveners: Kurt Schab and Eva Antonino Daviu) and “Advances in Theory and Computation of Characteristic Modes” (Co-conveners: Hiroyuki Arai and Miloslav Capek) at the 2018 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP2018) in London, UK, 9-13 April, 2018.
• Special Sessions on “Theory of Characteristic Mode and Its Applications” at the 2017 Asia-Pacific Conference on Antennas and Propagation (APCAP2017) in Xi’an, China, October 16-19, 2017 (Co-chairs: Hui Li and Yikai Chen).
• Special Session on “Recent Advances on Characteristic Mode Analysis and Applications” at the 2017 International Applied Computational Electromagnetics Society (ACES) Symposium in Florence, Italy, 26-30 March 2017 (Co-chairs: Agostino Monorchi and Simone Genovesi).
• Convened Sessions on “Characteristic Mode Analysis for Platform-Mounted Antenna Design” (Co-conveners: Yikai Chen and Simone Genovesi) and “New Trends in Characteristic Modes Research” (Co-conveners: Divitha Seetharamdoo and Qi Wu) at the 2017 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP2017) in Paris, France, 19-24 March, 2017.
• Mini-Workshop on Characteristic Modes, Lund, Sweden on 29 Nov 2016, in conjunction with the PhD thesis defense of Zachary Miers at Lund University. Workshop speakers include Jennifer Bernhard, Dirk Manteufffel, Eva-Antonino Daviu, Miloslav Capek.
• Special Session on “Characteristic Mode Analysis for Small Antenna Design” at the International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP2016) in Okinawa, Japan, 24-28 October, 2016 (Co-conveners: Hiroyuki Arai and Naobumi Michishita).
• Special Session on “Antenna Design/Analysis Based on Stored Energy and Characteristic Modes” at the 2016 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and CNC/USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting (IEEE APS/URSI2016) in Puerto Rico, USA, 26 June-2 July 2016 (Co-conveners: Mats Gustafsson, Buon Kiong Lau, and Guy Vandenbosch).
• Special Issue on “Theory and Applications of Characteristic Modes” published in the July 2016 issue of the IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.
• Convened Session on “Theory and Application of Characteristic Modes” at the 2016 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP2016) in Davos, Switzerland, 10-15 April 2016 (Co-conveners: Dirk Manteuffel and Yikai Chen).
• Focused and Special Sessions on “Modal Analysis of Electromagnetic Structures” at the 2015 European Microwave Conference (EuMC2015) (Co-conveners: George Kyriacou and Theodoros Kaifas).
• Invited Talk on “Characteristic Mode Based Antenna Design – a Straight Forward Approach to Small Form Factor Antenna Integration” given by Dirk Manteuffel (University of Kiel, Germany) at the 2015 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP2015) in Lisbon, Portugal, 12-17 April 2015.
• Special Session on “Theory of Characteristic Modes for Antenna System Design in Wireless Communications” in 2014 IEEE International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation and CNC/USNC/URSI National Radio Science Meeting (IEEE APS/URSI2014), Memphis, TN, USA, 6-12 July 2014 (Co-conveners: Buon Kiong Lau and Joseph Modro).

Some archived News:

• 2019-01-18 The First Edition of the European School of Antenna (ESoA) Course on “Characteristic Modes: Theory and Applications” held in Valencia, Spain during 21-25 May 2018, received a good review by the ESoA Board in their meeting today. Therefore, we will continue this successful venture: We are happy to announce that the next edition of this course will be held in Prague, Czech Republic during 18-22 May 2020. For those interested, please note the dates down in your diary. Further details will come later.
• 2018-01-10  We congratulate our members Feng Han Lin and Prof. Zhi Ning Chen for obtaining the CST University Publication Award 2017 for their CM paper: F. H. Lin and Z. N. Chen”Low-Profile Wideband Metasurface Antennas Using Characteristic Mode Analysis,” IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, vol. 65, no. 4, pp. 1706-1713, Apr. 2017.
• 2016-04-15 – The Special Interest Group would like to congratulate our member Ms. Montaha Bouezzeddine (RheinMain University of Applied Sciences) for winning the ESoA-EuCAP 2016 Best Student Paper Award at the 2016 European Conference on Antennas and Propagation (EuCAP’2016) in Davos, 10-15 April 2016 (details here). The winning entry was co-authored with her advisor Prof. Werner L. Schroeder and it is entitled “Systematic Approach for Electrically Tuning N-port Antenna System Based on Characteristic Modes”. Fantastic work!