Talk
Engineering Next-Generation Wireless Environments: SICL Technologies and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces
Dr Soumava Mukherjee from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India, delivered the invited talk “Engineering Next-Generation Wireless Environments: High-Frequency Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line (SICL) Technologies and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces” on 27 October 2026. He joined online, and the talk was followed in the NITC Seminar Room at Queen's University Belfast.
The move towards mid-band 6G and the millimetre-wave spectrum needs new ideas in both transceiver hardware and the propagation channel. The talk connected these two levels: reconfigurable surfaces that control the channel, and SICL technology that improves the hardware behind it.
Activity highlights
- Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces turn the propagation medium into an active, programmable part of the link, the idea behind the Smart Radio Environment.
- Digitally controlled surfaces can restore coverage for users behind blockage, illustrated with a massive-MIMO base station, a blocking wall and an RIS panel.
- Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line (SICL) is a low-loss, self-shielded planar guided-wave platform for high-frequency circuits.
- Recent SICL passive feed networks and active mmWave circuit architectures reduce interconnect loss and suppress unwanted radiation.
- SICL enables compact, highly integrated front-ends for millimetre-wave systems.
- Together, surface-based and hardware-based advances offer a path towards robust, energy-efficient and reconfigurable high-frequency networks.
