COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO. — Physicists at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs will lead a five-year $5.25 million project to create high frequency communications for use by U.S. Armed Forces.
Robert Camley, professor, Physics, and Zbigniew Celinski, associate professor, Physics, will coordinate a multi-disciplinary team of scientists from six universities to develop high frequency devices for use by the military. The frequencies under study offer the potential to create new radar and communication devices.
“We hope to explore the physics of what is possible with various combinations of new materials,” Camley said. “From there, we can explore how to use those materials to create small devices that have the ability to see’ through clouds, smoke or fog.”
Camley and Celinski will work with faculty from the University of California at Irvine, University of California at San Diego, University of California at Berkeley, Oakland University and Colorado State University to develop materials capable of operating at 20 to 100 GHz. By comparison, radios and cell phones operate near 1 GHz. Funding will be shared between the universities.
To operate at such high frequencies without interference, new devices must be created. Camley and Celinski have conducted experiments and created new devices using circuits that are as much as ten times narrower than a human hair. If successful, the new technology could significantly improve radar, telecommunication and battlefield communications.
Much of the work will take place in laboratories on the CU-Colorado Springs campus and concurrently in laboratories at the other partner universities. This sharing of ideas and lab resources bodes well for the project’s future.
“We have a team approach where people have different expertise – but a common goal,” Camley said. “I believe it will prove to be a highly successful combination.”
On March 12, the Department of Defense announced awards totaling $146 million to twenty-four academic institutions. The awards are made under the DoD Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI). The MURI program funds research representing exceptional opportunities for future technology and applications. The awards will provide support for research, graduate students and laboratory instrumentation.
Other institutions receiving awards include Stanford University, Harvard University, the University of Chicago and Pennsylvania State University.
Camley and Celinski’s theoretical and experimental work about high-frequency communications have been published in leading scientific journals including Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review B and Journal of Applied Physics.
CU-Colorado Springs, located on Austin Bluffs Parkway in northeast Colorado Springs, is the fastest growing university in Colorado and one of the fastest growing universities in the nation. The university offers 25 bachelor’s degrees, 17 master’s and two doctoral degrees. The campus enrolls more than 7,600 students annually.