Three young researchers from ETSIT honoured by the International Scientific Union of Radio (URSI)

21/05/2025

Three young researchers from Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros de Telecomunicación (ETSIT) have been honoured at the national symposium of the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), held in Cuenca during the first week of September. Ignacio Sardinero Meirás won second prize for the best work presented by a scientist under 35, while Elías Antolinos García won an honourable mention in the same category. María Guijarro Maortua also won an honourable mention, although this was for the Indra Prize for articles on low observability.

The work of Ignacio Sardinero, a doctoral candidate in the Microwave and Radar Group (GMR), is entitled Towards mmWave Multistatic Arrays: A 120 GHz Phased-Array Imaging Radar. It presents a 120 gigahertz radar system for generating images of the environment in the horizontal plane. Unlike cameras, it can create images of the environment regardless of lighting conditions and can penetrate certain materials such as walls or fabric. The system, with only 15 radar nodes, is capable of generating images of the horizontal plane with a resolution of 1 centimetre for objects located 3 metres away.

A PhD student in the same research group at ETSIT, Elías Antolinos has presented a millimetre wave radar network for contactless monitoring of vital signs. His article, entitled Non-Invasive Monitoring of Arterial Stiffness with mmWave Radar, focuses on carotid-femoral pulse wave velocity. This biomarker is the gold standard for measuring arterial stiffness and is a reliable predictor of various cardiovascular diseases, such as myocardial infarction and stroke. The aim of the system is to serve as a tool for home monitoring, as it allows continuous tracking of the aforementioned biomarker, facilitating the early detection of pathologies.

The award, organised by Indra as part of the URSI national symposium, recognises work on simulation technologies and tools for low visibility, i.e. to make certain objects less visible to radar. María Guijarro, a recent graduate of the Master’s Degree in Telecommunications Engineering and a fellow in the Radiation Group, won second prize with her article Metasurface Design for Monostatic and Bistatic RCS Reduction in X-Band. She presents the design of a metasurface capable of scattering electromagnetic waves that strike it in a specific frequency band. In this way, it achieves the undetectability of the objects on which it is formed.

URSI, a non-governmental, non-profit organisation under the International Council for Science, its objective is to promote and coordinate studies, research, applications, scientific exchange and communication in the field of radioscience, which includes all aspects of electromagnetic fields and waves. Its scope ranges from telecommunications, radio astronomy, the acquisition of radar information from distant passive objects, and the analysis of radiation stimulated or spontaneously emitted by these objects, to the biological effects of electromagnetic radiation and the active modification of objects by radio waves, within the spectrum ranging from extremely low frequencies to the optical domain.

Source: UPM, Press room, Research news: https://short.upm.es/u66sr, published in its original source on 16.09.2024