PhD Courses in Denmark

Welcome to Wireless Communication Systems for Space and Drones (2026)

Description: 
This PhD course provides an end-to-end view of wireless communication systems for space and drones—an NTN stack increasingly central to 6G, autonomy, and resilient connectivity—by blending essential theory with hands-on lab and field work so students can design, prototype, and evaluate space–air–ground links.
The course is organized in three parts:

1. Antennas for Space & UAVs—from fundamentals (impedance matching, Friis, gain, effective aperture at high frequencies) to mm-wave antennas and arrays (dipole/slot/patch/DR/ME, conformal and circularly polarized), massive-MIMO and beam-steering architectures, integration on drones and satellites (random orientation, user/body effects, multi-band), satellite antenna systems (deployable reflectors, reflectarrays, shared apertures, CubeSat constraints), and beamforming networks/lenses (Butler/Blass/Rotman, Luneburg) with practical trade-offs; 
2. UAV-based EM Measurements—planning and executing in-situ air-to-ground/OTA campaigns for large or immobile objects, calibration and synchronization, coverage/channel mapping, data processing, and safety/regulatory considerations to capture realistic environmental and operational effects; 
3. RF Circuits & Systems for Satellites—front-end architectures with emphasis on PA linearization via digital predistortion, RF fault diagnosis, signal recovery under interference/fading, and automatic modulation recognition. AI/ML methods are woven through all three parts for modeling, detection, and optimization. 

Teaching combines focused lectures, paper discussions, EM/VNA/spec-an and SDR labs, and a supervised UAV measurement exercise. Evaluation is project-based (small-team experimental/design study with a short paper-style report and reproducible code/data) plus an oral presentation and active lab/field participation.

For additional information, updates, and registration, please refer to AAU PhD Moodle via the link provided on the right side of this page.