Engineering

In collaboration with France Telecom, the Chair of Optoelectronics (Prof. Dieter Jäger) has developed an ultra-wideband radio communication system that has set a world record with its data transmission rate. The system is based on optoelectronic components and can transmit in the 60 GHz frequency range at a data rate of 12.5 Gbit/s.
This ultra-broadband radio system is related to the European IPHOBAC (Integrated Photonic mm-Wave Functions for Broadband Connectivity) project, which is being coordinated by the Institute of Optoelectronics (total volume 11,300,000 €).
The Chair of Electronic Materials and Nanostructures (Prof. Gerd Bacher) has developed and manufactured a new and purely inorganic, electrically operated light emitter from commercially available zinc-oxide nanoparticles. It also succeeded in operating a light emitting diode (LED) of nanometre-scale dimensions based on a single semiconductor quantum dot at room temperature. In the course of research work on spin electronics, a component was developed thatis able to control spin polarisation in a semi­conductor by microscale current loops.
Outstanding publications at the Chair of General and Theoretical Electrical Engineering (Prof. Daniel Erni) include a review paper on metamaterial-based microwave antennas and the first scientific study on the optically-induced forces in photonic nanojets.
One of the highlights of 2008 was the chair’s success at the “Transfer.NRW: Science-to-Business PreSeed” competition with its winning project entitled “Meta Beam – Low-Cost Metamaterial Antennas for Automotive Sensor Applications”.
The Chair of Communication Systems(Prof. Andreas Czylwik, Prof. Hans-Ingolf Willms) commissioned a rapid prototyping multi-antenna hardware platform with wireless mobile radio transmission at a data rate of 144 Mbit/s in real-time.
On the same chair’s initiative, the University of Duisburg-Essen entered into a cooperation agreement in October 2008 with the Research Institute for High Frequency Physics and Radar Techniques (Forschungsinstitut für Hochfrequenzphysik und Radartechnik / FHR). The first joint project will involve development of a new genera­tion of fire detectors.