Plenary Lecture

Microwave Applications other than Communication Fields

Professor Cevdet Akyel
Department of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunication Group
Ecole Polytechnique Montreal
Montreal (Quebec), Canada
Email: cevdet.akyel@polymtl.ca

Abstract: Microwave Energy is intensively used in Communication and Radar Technology. The introduction of the domestic microwave oven in everyday life is known nowadays by a large number of individuals around the world. But today the industry and scientific worlds use microwave energy at different levels of power and at very specified frequencies. These frequencies are called IMS frequencies (Industrial, Medical and Scientific).
In some applications microwave power is very suitable for industrial drying and heating of materials . Medical applications of microwave energy present some advantages over conventional hyperthermia treatments. Different energy applications in medical areas are being developed these recent years. Another important question concerns the safety measures and power levels in electronic technology, especially for cellular telephones. Low-level microwave power on health effects are still not so clarified and may concern public health these coming years. Microwave sensors are also an important part of today’s technologies. For the development of such techniques, the knowledge of permittivity (dielectric constant and dielectric losses) of material becomes a key factor for such applications.
Different methods exist for the measurement of these parameters. Microwave sensing and microwave heating depend heavily on the evolution of these parameters with time, temperature and physical or chemical change of materials under study.
More accurate measurements are made with the use of resonant cavities tuned to the frequency of interest. By introduction of a sample into the cavity, resonant frequency and quality factor change. These changes can be related to the complex permittivity or permeability of the material under investigation.
Active cavity measurement system permits real-time measurements with microprocessor-based acquisition systems and algorithms.

Brief Biography of the Speaker:
Cevdet Akyel was born in Samsun, Turkey. He received his Sup.Ing. degree from Technical University of Istanbul in 1971where he worked as a research assistant and developed first Turkish holograms in microwave laboratory and wrote a book
on their scientific applications. He moved to Canada in 1972 to get his MScA and DScA from Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal in 1975 and 1980, respectively.
He had engineering positions ion 1974 and 1976 at Northern Telecom of Canada as a system engineer in radio telecommunications.
Since 1986, he has been a professor of Electrical Engineering at EcolePolytechnique de Montreal where he teaches Electromagnetic Theory and Automated Microwave Instrumentation. In 1991 he joined the Group of Poly-Grames involved in space electronics and microwave advanced technologies at the same university.His main domains of research interest are the permittivity and permeability measurements with microwave active systems,material characterization of materials(conductive polymers,superconductivity ceramics,ferromagnetic materials, etc) and high power microwave measurements and industrial applications.