U of A Researcher Central to Wireless Communications Advances

Photo by Russell Cothren

Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering Samir El-Ghazaly.

Samir El-Ghazaly, Distinguished Professor of electrical engineering, is designing a chamber south of Fayetteville roughly the dimension of a basketball court and six stories high with walls that block outside electromagnetic signals and absorb those produced inside. The chamber simulates infinite space, where electromagnetic waves would travel unimpeded and not echo back.

The work to design the anechoic chamber, an open-air electromagnetic test site and a calibration test bench for software-defined radios is being carried out with a roughly $770,000 subcontract from Xtremis. The company received a larger Department of Defense contract to develop artificial-intelligence technologies that will improve wireless communications. Xtremis, which spun out of research conducted at Vanderbilt University, has opened a testing facility in Northwest Arkansas that within five years will have 200 employees. The DOD contract was supported by Sen. John Boozman and Rep. Steve Womack.

“Due to the extreme size and cost, not many universities have them,” El-Ghazaly said of the anechoic chamber.

El-Ghazaly, a leading expert on radio-frequency engineering, will use the anechoic chamber to test antennas with radio frequency ranges as low as 300 megahertz, far lower than what he can currently test in his lab. Lower frequency electromagnetic waves can travel longer distances.

“Samir is one of the premier RF researchers in the country,” said Xtremis CEO Jay Harrison. “The partnership with the university and Samir is one of the key factors that drew the entire company to the area.”

The open-air testing site, located on the Xtremis campus near Devil’s Den State Park, will be a place to test radio equipment under real conditions in a remote location with little surrounding electromagnetic interference.

“They are not really common in university environments, because where do you find an electromagnetically clean and quiet large space near a university?” El-Ghazaly said. “We’re extremely lucky.”

Once the anechoic chamber is built, other companies will be able to use it for testing antennas or certifying the RF interference produced by large electrical devices, such as cars or airplanes. Access to the testing facilities could entice other startups to Northwest Arkansas.

“Xtremis is interested in collaborations with universities and other commercial entities,” Harrison said. “We see this infrastructure as being a draw for other high-tech businesses to partner with us.”

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