QWED is a Polish SME founded in 1997 by 4 academics from the Warsaw University of Technology. The primary task of QWED has been to manage the development and industrial applications of QuickWave EM software, originated by the company co-founders, led by Prof. Wojciech Gwarek, IEEE Fellow and Pioneer Awardee for the underlying concepts. QuickWave was acclaimed „gem” in IEEE Spectrum Magazine (1998) and awarded with e.g. the European IT Prize (1998) and the Prime Minister of Poland Award (1999). In the 2000s QWED established a branch of microwave hardware activities based on 4 decades of worldly acknowledged research by Prof. Jerzy Krupka, IEEE Fellow, who joined QWED team. Currently QWED is led by Dr. Malgorzata Celuch, member of IEEE TC MTT-1, IEEE IMS TPRC, and expert for EC Horizon2020. QWED has grown fully on software licensing, industrial microwave consulting, and sales of material measurement test-fixtures. Since 2000 QWED has been partner in R&D projects including European 2 FP6, 1 FP7, 2 H2020, 2 Eureka, 1 MNT ERA-NET and several national ones.
QuickWave simulation software:
A total of ca. 200 licenses have been implemented on 6 continents by a diverse client base, from radioastronomy laboratories (e.g. NRAO in US) to world’s leading domestic microwave oven manufacturers. QWED offers a general-purpose three-dimensional electromagnetic simulator QW-3D, a unique ultra-fast QW-V2D full-wave solver for axisymmetrical problems and a multiphysics QW-BHM set for MW power problems. QWED GUI options vary from the industrial standard Autodesk®Inventor®, to FreeCAD license-free QW Modeller.
Test-fixtures for material measurements:
QWED manufactures several types of dielectric resonators for precise measurements of EM properties of materials in GHz range. Each resonator is equipped with dedicated firmware. A decade average amounts to 100 test fixtures sold per year. Their quality has been recognized by industrial practitioners, leading researchers, and industrial standard creators including 2007 NATO Certificate and Eureka Medaille d’or.
AREAS OF ACTIVITY IN THE SPACE SECTOR:
Axisymmetrical version QW-V2D for design of reflector antennas is a unique product on the world’s market and thus used by most of the manufacturers of antennas for Earth stations (and especially for multimode antennas with tracking functions).
Clients and Partners:
QWED customers in space sector includes organisations worldwide: public laboratories, key manufacturers of antennas for Earth stations, radio astronomy facilities and universities.
Identity of most industrial customers is subject to confidentiality. Organisations whose names can be quoted are:
- National Radio Astronomy Observatory (Charlottesville, US)
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Pasadena, US)
- Lyrebird Antenna Research (Aus)
- Global Skyware (USA)
- CALTECH University (US)
- Chalmers University (S)
QWED resonators are distributed and endorsed by Keysight (worldwide) and VEGA (Japan); QuickWave software is distributed by JService (China); ca. 100 most relevant publications by QuickWave users are listed at https://www.qwed.eu/users_publications.html.
