Research in electrical and electronic engineering at Macquarie University received a rating of 4 in ERA 2010 - 'performance above world standard'

4-rated discipline

Electrical and electronic engineering research

Electrical and electronic engineering research at Macquarie specialises in microwave and wireless communications, and is based predominantly within the Department of Electronic Engineering.

Five areas of electrical and electronic engineering expertise

Macquarie's CORE in this area - Wireless Communications - is supported by five research groups:

• The electromagnetic and antenna group, which has strong links with the CSIRO and works in the areas of smart materials and propagation.
• The nonlinear electronics group, which enjoys several external partnerships and has built up a world-class facility for test and measurement.
• The integrated wireless communication systems group, which has capitalised on the laboratory infrastructure.
• The nonlinear optics group, which closely collaborates with the MQ Photonics Research Centre.
• The wireless body area networks group, which is undertaking research into medical applications.

Wireless communications and CSIRO

Macquarie has strengthened its partnership with the CSIRO ICT centre through a $2 million grant from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund to establish a Professorial Chair in Wireless Communications in 2011, as well as postdoctorate research fellowships and Higher Degree Research (HDR) scholarships.

Commercial success for WLAN pioneers

Our research in wireless communications follows in the footsteps of pioneering research conducted by adjunct Professors Neil Weste and David Skellern in the late 1990s. Their research into WLAN IEEE 802.11 technology resulted in Macquarie's most successful IT-related commercial start-up, Radiata Communications, which was bought by Cisco systems for a record $US295 million.