Baris Volkan Gurses has been named as a recipient of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) Undergraduate/Pre-graduate Scholarship. Gurses is a fourth-year undergraduate student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), where he is majoring in electrical engineering. 

Since last August, Gurses has worked as a researcher in the Georgia Tech Electronics and Micro-System Lab, which is led by ECE Associate Professor Hua Wang. His research project involves working on a reconfigurable rat-race coupler for mm-wave and sub-THz applications.

As modern wireless communications continuously increase in speed and performance, operating at higher frequencies has become a requirement and a clear trend for all wireless devices and systems. Simultaneously, multi-band high-frequency communications and advancements in adaptive radio gave rise to the implementation of frequency reconfigurability in integrated devices. 

Combining the benefits of both high-frequency operation and frequency reconfigurability, Gurses is working on a design methodology to devise frequency-reconfigurable rat-race hybrid couplers in the mm-wave/sub-THz, or >100 GHz, range. This project proves itself to be the first implementation of reconfigurable couplers on silicon at these frequencies. Therefore, the proposed methodology will be a crucial element for the development of future adaptive wireless systems operating at sub-THz frequencies to address beyond-5G/6G challenges.