Final year electronic engineering student Tom Moody has been announced as a runner-up in a national Radio Frequency Engineering and Communications Competition with an ambitious individual project at the University of Southampton.
Tom designed, simulated and fabricated four Frequency Reconfigurable Patch Antennas during his MEng Electronic Engineering project, which followed two summer internships with Meggitt Avionics.
Radio Frequency (RF) engineering creates high frequency systems and circuits, with a strong dependence on electromagnetic design and simulation.
The UK Electronics Skills Foundation (UKESF) 2020 RF Engineering and Communications Competition, run in partnership with the Radio Communications Foundation (RCF) and with support from Leonardo, highlights the achievements of major individual projects in the field from partner universities.
"I love working and studying in RF and am thrilled my work has been recognised by the UKESF and RCF,” Tom says. “RF design is very important to modern electronics with the latest developments catering for the reduction in component cost and size required for the ever-increasing frequency of communications systems, such as with millimetre wave 5G.
"RF engineering also plays a key role in sensing systems, such as the development of compact scanning RADAR units for the automotive industry. This technology was until recently confined to specialist applications, such as defence, but is now making its way into family cars thanks to the latest fast and exciting developments."
Tom's third-year project developed antennas that can be electronically reconfigured to tune to different frequencies.
Many modern smart devices utilise multiple communication bands for different communication protocols, either requiring several individual antennas designed for each band, or a wideband or multiband antenna design.
Tom’s alternative, electronically-tuneable antenna can be adaptively tuned to the active frequency band while maintaining the high selectivity characteristic of narrowband antennas, potentially lowering cost and space requirements.
The prizewinning project produced four antenna designs on a common FR-4 printed circuit substrate.
Tom has spent two placements at Meggitt Avionics during his degree through a UKESF scholarship. The industrial scholarships, which were awarded to a record-breaking number of Southampton students this spring, offer invaluable industry experience alongside an annual bursary and a place on a residential UKESF Scholar Workshop. In return, scholars carry out electronics outreach work each year, such as by giving a talk at a local school.
"I have worked on various tasks over my placements, such as the development of automated EMC pre-compliance testing and the development of gamma calibration software for avionics display screens," Tom says. "I would strongly recommend the UKESF Scholarship scheme to Southampton undergraduates due to the wide-spanning benefits and the work experience."
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PhD, BSc
Research Fellow ECS
Jonathan is a research fellow in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, with cross-disciplinary expertise (BSc Biomedical Science, PhD Optoelectronics). His work is focused on using integrated optical technology and microfluidics for biomedical applications most notably microflow cytometry.
Projects:
- Deployable microflow cytometer for impedance and fluorescence based analysis of marine phytoplankton.
- Microflow cytometer for the analysis of pigment content of commercial algae crops.
- Microflow cytometer for the analysis of extracellular vesicle sized particles using multiangle scattering analysis https://doi.org/10.1039/C9LC01182J
- "Algae Farmer" interactive game for science communication and outreach.
- Antimicrobial light in urinary catheters.
Jonathan has a broad skill base in optical theory and design, microfabrication, microfluidics, electronics and experimental biology. JB has been awarded £16K as PI from HEFCE (Zepler Institute Stimulus Fund) for research into anitmicrobial light guiding technology in biomedical devices. He has also been the researcher co-I on a £20K Higher Education Innovation Fund projects from HEFCE (Zepler Institute Stimulus fund). In 2019 JB was funded to attend the British Council/Newton fund, UK-India Researcher Links Multi-disciplinary Workshop on TB Diagnostics and AMR.
Research
Research interests
Microflow cytometry, Integrated optics, Microfluidics, Lab-on-a-chip, Biosensing, Antimicrobial photonics
Teaching
Jonathan has supervised masters students in interdisciplinary discertation projects.
Publications
Braddick, Lucy M., Garland, Patrick J., Praeger, Matthew F., Butement, Jonathan, Friedrich, Daniel, Morgan, David J. and Melvin, Tracy (2012) Uniform aligned bioconjugation of biomolecule motifs for integration within microfabricated microfluidic devices. Analytical Biochemistry, 424 (2), 195-205. (doi:10.1016/j.ab.2012.02.020).
Sones, C.L., Katis, I.N., Mills, B., Feinäugle, M., Mosayyebi, Ali, Butement, J. and Eason, R.W. (2014) Rapid and mask-less laser-processing technique for the fabrication of microstructures in polydimethylsiloxane. Applied Surface Science, 298, 125-129. (doi:10.1016/j.apsusc.2014.01.138).
Sones, C.L., Katis, I.N., He, P., Mills, B., Mosayyebi, A., Butement, Jonathan, Feinäugle, M. and Eason, R.W. (2014) Laser-based printing and patterning for biological applications. International Workshop on the Fabrication and Application of Microstructured Optical Devices, Yokohama, Japan. 27 - 28 Feb 2014.
Butement, J.T.G., Hunt, H.C., Rowe, D.J., Karabchevsky, Alina, Hua, P., Murugan, G.S., Clark, O., Holmes, C., Carpenter, L.G., Gates, J.C., Smith, P.G.R, Chad, J.E. and Wilkinson, J.S. (2014) A microflow cytometer for microsphere-based immunoassays using integrated optics and inertial particle focussing. Biosensors '14, Melbourne, Australia. 26 - 29 May 2014.
Sones, C.L., Katis, I.N., Mills, B., Feinäugle, M., Mosayyebi, Ali, Butement, Jonathan and Eason, R.W. (2013) Rapid, low-cost patterning of microstructures in polydimethylsiloxane via mask-less laser-machining. 2013 Conference on Lasers & Electro-Optics Europe & International Quantum Electronics Conference CLEO EUROPE/IQEC, , Munich, Germany. 12 - 16 May 2013. (doi:10.1109/CLEOE-IQEC.2013.6801592).
Sones, C.L., Katis, I.N., Mills, B., Feinäugle, M., Mosayyebi, Ali, Butement, Jonathan and Eason, R.W. (2013) Mask-less laser-machining for rapid low-cost patterning of microstructures in polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). E-MRS '13 Materials Research Society Spring Meeting, , Strasbourg, France. 27 - 31 May 2013.
Mittal, Vinita, Aghajani, Armen, Carpenter, Lewis, Gates, James C., Butement, Jonathan, Smith, Peter G.R., Wilkinson, James S. and Murugan, Ganapathy Senthil (2015) Fabrication and characterization of high-contrast mid-infrared GeTe4 channel waveguides. Optics Letters, 40 (9), 2016-2019. (doi:10.1364/OL.40.002016).
Butement, Jonathan, Hunt, Hamish, Rowe, David, Sessions, Neil, Clark, Owain, Hua, Ping, Murugan, G. Senthil, Chad, John and Wilkinson, James (2016) Integrated optical waveguides and inertial focussing microfluidics in silica for microflow cytometry applications. Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 26 (10), [105004]. (doi:10.1088/0960-1317/26/10/105004).
Butement, Jonathan (2016) Integrated optical microflow cytometer for bead-based immunoassays. University of Southampton, Faculty of Physical Sciences and Engineering, Doctoral Thesis, 152pp.
Holloway, Paul M., Butement, Jonathan, Hegde, Manjunath and West, Jonathan (2018) Serial integration of Dean-structured sample cores with linear inertial focussing for enhanced particle and cell sorting. Biomicrofluidics, 12 (4), [044104]. (doi:10.1063/1.5038965).
Lane, Simon, Butement, Jonathan, Harrington, Jack, Underwood, Timothy, Shrimpton, John and West, Jonathan (2019) Perpetual sedimentation for the continuous delivery of particulate suspensions. Lab on a Chip, 19, 1-5. (doi:10.1039/C9LC00774A).
Butement, Jonathan (2020) Dataset for: Monolithically-integrated cytometer for measuring particle diameter in the extracellular vesicle size range using multi-angle scattering. University of Southampton doi:10.5258/SOTON/D1173 [Dataset]
Butement, Jonathan, Holloway, Paul, Welsh, Joshua A, Holloway, Judith, Englyst, Nicola, Horak, Peter, West, Jonathan and Wilkinson, James S (2020) Monolithically-integrated cytometer for measuring particle diameter in the extracellular vesicle size range using multi-angle scattering. Lab on a Chip, 20 (7), 1267-1280. (doi:10.1039/C9LC01182J).
Harrington, Jack, Esteban, Luis Blay, Butement, Jonathan, Vallejo, Andres F, Lane, Simon I R, Sheth, Bhavwanti, Jongen, Maaike S A, Parker, Rachel, Stumpf, Patrick S, Smith, Rosanna C G, MacArthur, Ben D, Rose-Zerilli, Matthew J J, Polak, Marta E, Underwood, Tim and West, Jonathan (2021) Dual dean entrainment with volume ratio modulation for efficient droplet co-encapsulation: extreme single-cell indexing. Lab on a Chip, 21 (17), 3378-3386. (doi:10.1039/d1lc00292a).
Qi, Yanli, Zheng, Zhexuan, Banakar, Mehdi, Wu, Yangbo, Gangnaik, Anushka, Rowe, David, Mittal, Vinita, Butement, Jonathan, Wilkinson, James S, Mashanovich, Goran and Nedeljković, Miloš (2021) Integrated switching circuit for low-noise self-referenced mid-infrared absorption sensing using silicon waveguides. IEEE Photonics Journal, 13 (6), [6600110]. (doi:10.1109/JPHOT.2021.3121331).
Butement, Jonathan (2022) Data set For : A light-guiding urinary catheter for the inhibition of Proteus mirabilis biofilm formation. University of Southampton doi:10.5258/SOTON/D2300 [Dataset]
Contact
Email: jb3006@soton.ac.uk
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