Mission
Since its inception in 1992, the Poly-Grames Research Center has become the most important research center in radio frequency in Canada and one of the most distinguished in the world. Poly-Grames vows to continue this long-standing tradition of excellence and innovation in research while providing the next generation of engineers and researchers a scholarly and professional education and training like no other.
The Center’s ten professors and technical staff work together to maintain the highest standard in advance research and seminal activities. It offers to its eighty-five graduate students a dynamic and stimulating environment which fosters the creation of new concepts and disruptive technologies. All the facilities whether they be computer servers, fabrication laboratories or testing laboratories are integrated and allow our users to build hardware circuits and prototypes.
Many graduates from the Poly-Grames Research Center have become leaders in academia, industry and business worldwide.
Funding
Industry partners
A research center of high technology for the world of tomorrow!
Research Activities
- Microwaves and millimeter wave components, devices and transceivers design
- Characterization and measurement of dielectric materials
- Superconductors (circuits, applications)
- Antenna design, modeling and characterization
- Advanced electromagnetic surfaces for wave front processing: reflect arrays, transmit arrays, polarization selective surfaces, frequency selective surfaces, polarizers
- Antennas for aerospace applications
- Physical layer digital signal processing algorithms
- Radio link control (RLC) techniques
- Cognitive Cyber-Physical Systems
- Wireless Security Systems
- Machine-learning Empowered Wireless Networks
- Metamaterials and Meta-surfaces: Theory and Applications
- Meta-surfaces for Quantum Applications (optical delivery, sensing and imaging, computing)
- Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs)
- Smart Antennas for MIMO and Satellite Communication Systems
- Radar Sensing/Imaging Techniques
- AI Applications in Applied Electromagnetics
- Optoelectronics and nonlinear optics
- Development of optical sensors and optical fiber sensors
- Waveguide and microstructure laser writing
- Integrated photonics: integration of optical frequencies and THz in single platforms
Explore a few of the projects we’ve accomplished
Accomplishments
- Feedforward linearizer for power amplifiers
- International renown for pioneering contributions in the areas of NRD guides and SICs (Substrate Integrated Circuits)
- Digital radio receiver based on the six-port junction
- Development of permittivity and permeability measurement techniques
- Software-defined radio
- Resonant-cavity characterization methods
- Characterization of microwave heating and dehydration
- Collaboration on development of a microwave cardiac tissue-ablation technique for treatment of arrhythmia
- Characterization of microwave heating and dehydration
- Electromagnetic modelling and CAD of RF and microwave structures
- Near-field measurement and processing technique based on equivalent current method (ECM)
History Since 1992
History
Poly-Grames (Groupe de Recherche Avancée en Micro-ondes et Électronique Spatiale) was born in 1992 from a research team’s work, which spanned well over thirty years, led by Professor Renato G. Bosisio. In 1994, Poly-Grames reached the official status of Research Center at Polytechnique Montréal. It had five professors active in different fields of microwave applications, namely: modelling, conception of circuits and antennas, characterization of active devices, electromagnetic compatibility, development of reflectometer six port, and measurement and heating of industrial materials.
The technologies used at the time were the conventional techniques for microwave integrated circuits (printed circuits). The increasing demand for circuits of higher frequencies, like millimeter-waves, progressively paved the way towards more sophisticated fabrication techniques. Already, in the early ‘90s, Poly-Grames researchers began to conceive circuits with MHMIC and MMIC technologies. These required more advanced equipment and thus had to be outsourced. The first MHMIC circuit realized by Poly-Grames was fabricated at the Communication Research Center (CRC) in Ottawa, Canada, and the MMIC circuits at the Philippe de Limueil-Brevanne foundry in collaboration with researchers at the École Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (INST) in Paris. In 1995, thanks to funding from CRSNG, the Poly-Grames Research Center installed its first MHMIC circuit assembly and fabrication laboratory.
From the beginning, the students and research associates used MDS and HFSS CAD modelling software from Hewlett Packard for their microwave works. Over the yards, a number of numerical methods and modeling techniques were development such as: frequency- and time-domain TLM, spectral domain approach (SDA), boundary integral equation methods, mode matching method, finite elements et finite differences, for modeling various planar, non-planar and metallo-dielectric structures. These advancements have not gone unnoticed by Hewlett Packard; they elected Poly-Grames as the reference site in Eastern Canada.
In 1995, the Poly-Grames received funding from the Government of Québec (Synergie) for a new laboratory for highly linear amplifiers of type feedforward, in collaboration with an industrial partner. Through this program, a new spinoff corporation, Amplix Inc., was born and was housed under the Center, until it was sold to Miteq in 2000.
Also in 2000, following a considerable grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation (CFI), the Government of Québec and industrial partners, Poly-Grames rose to new heights with the creation of FAME (Facility for Advanced Millimeter-Wave Engineering), a state-of-the-art research equipment infrastructure. The laboratory spaces and the number of students doubled, and the fabrication, measurement and characterization equipment brought Poly-Grames to the international stage. The Center had at that time the processing and fabrication technology capabilities in MHMIC, PCB and MMIC (through CMC) and could produce measurements up to 110 GHz. In addition, it then acquired a measurement system of type load-pull and source-pull for nonlinear and noise characterization up to 110 GHz. It had a measurement system of compact range and spherical nearfield systems going up to 110GHz and the most modern computational tools for planar and 3D structure modeling. It had also built an ultra-modern mechanical shop which allows the fabrication of all kinds of devices.
In 2005, the Center moved to the Lassonde Pavillion. In 2008, the Government of Québec got funding for a strategic cluster called CREER. This created a collaborative network where researchers and students from all Québec universities were given access to Poly-Grames’s resources. In 2009, two CFI grants, the first gave way to a well-orchestrated frequency expansion up to THz and helped to improve fabrication techniques in support of validating, developing and demonstrating new and emerging technologies. The second founding, implement a new laboratory, Fabulas, specializing in photonics.
Since then, numerous collaborations with many internationally renowned institutions and groups have been forged. Presently, ten professors supervised more than eighty-five students at the graduate level (most of them at the Ph.D. level) at the Poly-Grames Research Center.
