RANDIKA KOSWATTA AWARDED THE LAMPARD PRIZE FOR 2013

Randika attended the SMEEA dinner on 9th July 2014 to receive his award. David Morgan, a in the department for many years, presented the award. The citation reads as follows:

The Douglas Lampard Electrical Engineering Research Prize and Medal for 2013 is awarded to Randika Koswatta for his PhD thesis entitled ‘Readers for frequency signature-based chipless RFID tags’. The work was carried out under the supervision of Dr Nemai Karmakar.

Chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) tags show great promise for retailing and warehousing applications and have advantages over existing optical barcode systems. For RFID tags to be competitive suitable RF readers must be developed.

Randika has developed three such readers, each with its own features. The first is capable of detecting the features of amplitude and phase signature of a tag but it does require a calibration measurement. The detection process is more hardware-based and fewer signal processing techniques are used. The second uses a voltage-controlled oscillator to generate a linear chirp (swept) frequency interrogation signal and then reconstructs the amplitude and phase responses of the received signal to identify the tag. The detection process uses a Hilbert transform technique. The operations of both of these readers were validated experimentally.

A third technique based on ultra wideband RF pulses was proposed and validated with simulation. The integrated reader will be a complete system with an RF section, a digital section and a graphical user interface.

Randika also proposed a novel antenna design for use with the readers.

One of Randika’s examiners, Professor Durgin of the Georgia Institute of Technology, writes ‘...this dissertation is technically outstanding ... The topic is unique; I have seen few students concentrate on “readers”, which can lie in far deeper waters than “tags”. Yet the value of this work would be instantly recognized by an expert in the field.’ The other, Professor Williamson of the University of Auckland, writes ‘The work is novel and of publishable standard. Indeed in his list of publications the author notes publication already of one paper in the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, the top international journal in microwave engineering ...’

During his candidature Randika co-authored one book on chipless RFID technology and published 2 papers in leading journals and another 6 in leading conferences around the world.

The degree of PhD was conferred on Randika in October 2013.

Randika comes from and completed his primary and secondary education at the College in . He commenced undergraduate studies at the University of , Sri Lanka in 2003 and completed a bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering with First Class Honours in February 2007. His final year undergraduate project was awarded the best student project in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the General Convocation of the in 2007.

Randika commenced his PhD studies at Monash in December 2009. He was a recipient of an Australian Postgraduate Award (Industry) Scholarship. Since completion of his PhD he has been working as an RF Design Engineer with Hawk Measurement Systems in Melbourne. He is working on designing Microwave and Millimeter-wave active and passive components and antennas for a range of level measurement products.

Photo courtesy of Nabil Salameh Randika Koswatta receiving the award from David Morgan