Bachelor student Niloufar Bateni took first place at the International Microwave Symposium (ISM) in San Diego, California. The Duisburg native is studying electrical engineering at the University of Duisburg-Essen. In addition to her studies, she has been working as a student assistant at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Hochschule Niederrhein.

She won first place in the "Wearable Backscatter Radio" category of the student design competition. In the competition, the students had to develop special hardware components under real optimization specifications. Backscatter technology is used in radio frequency identification (RFID) to read information from an RFID transponder. The background to the "Wearable Backscatter Radio" competition was the integration of RFID transponders in clothing, where the proximity of the transponder to the human body plays a key role in the quality of data transmission.

The competition participants were given the task of developing an antenna with a switchable load that emits as much power as possible while being as small, light and insensitive to the human body as possible. "When it comes to wireless technology, many people think primarily of 5G or even already 6G. However, RFID technology is still very interesting because it can be used to integrate transponders into clothing, for example, very easily and cost-effectively," explains Professor Dr. Christoph Degen of the Hochschule Niederrhein. The module presented by Niloufar Bateni was created as part of her work as a student assistant at HSNR.

The International Microwave Symposium is one of the most important meetings around the theory and practice of microwave technology. This includes everything that operates in the frequency range between megahertz and terahertz. It is organized by the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S). In San Diego, 160 students competed in nine contests.