Robust slot-fed dielectric resonator antenna using an intermediatesubstrate

A new slot-fed rectangular dielectric resonator antenna design is presented. An intermediate substrate is introduced between the slot and the resonator, resulting in a correct excitation of the fundamental mode and a particularly robust structure to adhesive thickness. Comparisons between finite difference time-domain simulations and measurements confirm the good properties of the proposed design     

A wideband high gain dielectric resonator antenna for RF energy harvesting application

A novel high gain and broadband hybrid dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) is designed and experimentally validated. To obtain the wide impedance bandwidth, the proposed antenna geometry combines the dielectric resonator antenna and an underlying slot with a narrow rectangular notch, which effectively broadens the impedance bandwidth by merging the resonances of the slot and DRA. An inverted T-shaped feed line is used to excite both antennas, simultaneously. It supports amalgamation of different resonant modes of the both, DRA and slot antenna. The measured results show that the proposed antenna offers an impedance bandwidth of 120% from 1.67 to 6.7 GHz. The antenna gain is next enhanced by a reflector placed below the antenna at an optimum distance. On engineering the height and dimension of this reflector the antenna gain is improved from 2.2 dBi to 8.7 dBi at 1.7 GHz. Finally, antenna operation is attested experimentally with a rectifier circuit in the frequency range of 1.8–3.6 GHz, where various strong radio signals are freely available for RF energy harvesting. The measured maximum efficiency of the rectifier and rectenna circuit were found to be 74.4% and 61.4%, respectively.     

射频卫星电视天线电路中LC压控振荡器设计

本文设计了一款应用于卫星电视天线电路中低功耗、低相噪的宽带单片集成压控振荡器。该振荡器利用PMOS尾电流源和MIM电容阵列结构。在保证调谐范围的前提下,有效的降低了相位噪声。使得该压控振荡器实现了3.384GHz~4.022GHz频段的覆盖,在中心频率为3.7GHz时,100Hz和1MHz频偏处的相位噪声分别为-90.4dBc/Hz和-119.1dBc/Hz,工作电压下为1.8V,功耗仅为2.5mW。     

Dielectric resonator antenna using aperture coupling

A practical antenna configuration for use at microwave and millimetre wave frequencies is investigated. It consists of a circular cylindrical dielectric resonator fed by a microstrip feedline through a coupling aperture in the ground plane between them. Several elements, with different physical parameters, operating between 14 and 16 GHz were constructed and tested. Experimental results confirm the effective and practical performance of the antenna structure.<>     

Development of RF/microwave on-chip inductors using an organic micromachining process

The design and development of a micromachined spiral inductor using an organic micromachining process are presented. The process utilizes an ultra-thick negative photoresist SU-8 to elevate an inductor structure above a substrate. The micromachined inductors have been designed and fabricated on solid and hollow ground planes to, investigate the feasibility for achieving high Q-factors. The experimental results demonstrate that a micromachined inductor integrated on a Si substrate achieves a Q-factor of 19.3 at 2.1 GHz.     

Miniature high gain slot-fed rectangular dielectric resonator antenna for IoT RF energy harvesting

Radio-frequency (RF) energy harvesting is a promising candidate for alternative power source that can reduce the dependencies on batteries. However, its power density is very low which makes it crucial to have a high gain antenna to increase the power received by the system. This study presents the design of miniature high gain dielectric resonator antenna for RF energy harvesting application with high figure of merit to increase the power received. Numerical approximation is used to assist the antenna design and modelling. The design focused on three parameters which are the width, length, and height of the dielectric resonator. The performance, electric field density, and the radiation patterns of the dielectric resonator antenna have been observed by varying the design parameters. The effect of air gap to the performance is investigated and it is found that 8.11–13% gain improvement and up to 36% improvement in impedance matching is achieved through incorporating thin air gap between the dielectric resonator. Soda-lime glass with relative permittivity 7.75 is used which allows miniaturization and transparency. Experimental results show reasonable agreement to the simulations. The work shows highest antenna gain with smallest size with high FOM at 5 GHz ISM band compared to previous works.     

RF detector for on-chip amplitude measurements

A novel on-chip amplitude detector that allows for efficient debugging of complex RF circuits is proposed. The simplicity, low power consumption, flat frequency response, minimal loading of the tested circuit and possibility of multiplexing makes this detector suitable for on-chip RF amplitude measurements. Simulations and measurements confirm the detector operation.     

CMOS blocks for on-chip RF test

In this paper we present two designs of CMOS blocks suitable for integration with RF frontend blocks for test purposes. Those are a programmable RF test attenuator and a reconfigurable low noise amplifier (LNA), optimized with respect to their function and location in the circuit. We discuss their performances in terms of the test- and normal operation mode. The presented application model aims at a transceiver under loopback test with enhanced controllability and detectability. The circuits are designed for 0.35μm CMOS process. Simulation results of the receiver frontend operating in 2.4 GHz band are presented showing tradeoffs between the performance and test functionality.     

Cumulant-based adaptive multichannel filtering for wirelesscommunication systems with multipath RF propagation using antenna arrays

A method based on high-order statistics is proposed to mitigate the performance degradation caused by multipath RF propagation in a mobile radio communication system using a linear antenna array at the base-station receiver. It is shown that an overdetermined system of linear equations (involving only cumulants of the received baseband digitized signal) can be obtained to perform noniterative deconvolution. An efficient adaptive algorithm based on square-root decomposition is proposed to avoid numerical problems when real-time tracking of moving transmitters is needed     

A new contactless smart card IC using an on-chip antenna and anasynchronous microcontroller

This paper describes a new generation of contactless smart card chip which integrates an on-chip coil connected to a power reception system and an emitter/receiver module compatible with the ISO 14443 standard, together with an asynchronous quasi-delay insensitive (QDI) 8-bit microcontroller. Beyond the contactless smart card application field, this new chip demonstrates that system-on-chip integrating power reception and management, radio-frequency communication, and signal processing is feasible. It associates analog/digital parts as well as synchronous/asynchronous logics and has been fabricated in a CMOS six metal layers 0.25-μm technology from STMicroelectronics     

Waveguide probe with size-reduced aperture using split-ring resonator array for near-field measurements

A waveguide probe with size-reduced aperture for near-field measurements is proposed. The open-ended waveguide loads the split ring resonator array. The low return loss, high efficiency, and length extension have been achieved by optimising the ring arrangement as well as adopting a double-ridged waveguide and inserting a dielectric material. The proposed probe produces 70% aperture reduction in comparison to conventionally designed probes. The return loss, radiation pattern and gain from the simulation and measurement show good results.     

On the feasibility of using an atmospheric discharge plasma as an RF antenna

The plasma produced by a laser-guided, electric discharge in the atmosphere has been formed in the shape of a folded monopole antenna with a characteristic frequency of 112 MHz. This plasma antenna has been used to transmit and receive signals at 112 MHz. While the plasma remained conducting, the signal transmitted from, and received on, the plasma antenna was within -1pm1dB of that transmitted from and received on a "standard" copper folded monopole antenna of the same size. During this time the signal transmitted from, and received on, the plasma antenna also remained approximately constant in amplitude (fluctuationssim pm1dB). This useful lifetime of the plasma antenna was varied fromsim 200 mus togeq 2000 mus by changing the dration of the electric discharge sustaining the plasma columns. In these experiments, the noise from the plasma antenna was not distinguishable from that developed using a copper antenna, but in both cases the noise was much larger than the true thermal noise background.     

An X-band dielectric resonator antenna using a single elliptical shaped dielectric resonator

This paper presents design evolution of a single elliptical dielectric resonator antenna to achieve wide measured impedance band-width extending from 8.26 GHz to 12.15 GHz. Design evolved from a right circular cylindrical DRA by varying the dimension along the semi-minor axis and thereby resulting in an elliptical DRA that supports near similar field distribution over the X-band. This similar field variation is achieved by tuning the eccentricity of the elliptical geometry, the feed position as well as height of the DRA. A fabricated prototype is developed and measured results agree well with that obtained from simulation. Apart from wide impedance bandwidth, the observed pattern bandwidth is also similar.     

Excitation of dielectric resonator antenna using a soldered-throughprobe

A soldered-through probe is used to excite the dielectric resonator antenna (DRA). A cylindrical ring DRA is used to demonstrate the feasibility of this excitation method. The return loss, radiation pattern, and antenna gain of the new configuration are studied     

Reflectarray element based on strip-loaded dielectric resonator antenna

A new low-loss reflectarray element based on a dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) loaded with a metallic strip etched on the top of the DRA is presented. The strip behaves as a parasitic element, and by adjusting its length, the desired reflected phase is achieved. A set of DRA samples were fabricated and measured in C-band. A low loss (less than 0.9 dB) is demonstrated when the phase is varied. It is also shown that the loss is much higher (up to 5 dB) when the strip is directly printed on a dielectric substrate with the same characteristics.     

Model based antenna array calibration for smart antenna systems

Model based antenna array calibration is used to remove the antenna array errors or predict the element patterns from the array manifold measured at a small number of directions. The experimental results show that this works very well for one sector angle region even in the presence of modelling errors     

Photonic crystal ring resonator based add-drop filter using hexagonal rods for CWDM systems

In this paper,theoretical analysis of two-dimensional photonic crystal ring resonator(2D PCRR) based add-drop filter(ADF) is presented for coarse wavelength division multiplexing(CWDM) system to drop a channel at 1511 nm using hexagonal rods that are positioned in the square lattice.The 2D finite difference time domain(2D FDTD) method and plane wave expansion(PWE) method are used for obtaining the filter response and band structure of the filter respectively.Close to 100 dropping and coupling efficiencies at 1511 nm and 16 nm of bandwidth are observed through simulation.This is very well meeting the requirement of ITU-T G.694.2 standard,which is specified for metro access and short haul optical networks.The overall size of the proposed filter is 11.4 μm×11.4 μm.It can also be used in integrated optics.     

Correction of near-field antenna measurements made with an arbitrary but known measuring antenna

We describe a technique for rigorously correcting for the effects of an arbitrary but known measuring antenna (or `probe?) in determination of vectorial far-field antenna pattern and power-gain function from near-field measurements.     

Small EBG resonator high-gain antenna using in-phase highly-reflecting surface

A small EBG resonator antenna (1.62lambda₀times1.62times₀timeslambda₀/4 in size) with specially-located PEC sidewalls to close the resonant cavity is proposed to achieve maximum directivity. An in-phase highly-reflecting surface is installed a quarter-wavelength above the PEC ground plane. For this small EBG resonator antenna, 13.5 dBi measured directivity and 11 dBi peak gain are obtained at 11.6 GHz.     

基于近场场图的带罩天线近副瓣畸变分析

采用FEKO软件仿真带罩天线远场方向图和近场场图, 采用近场场图分析远场方向图近副瓣畸变的原因.仿真过程中采用等效源技术, 兼顾仿真精度和仿真效率.带罩天线方向图近副瓣畸变主要是由天线罩尖部区造成的, 近场场图表明三种效应导致近副瓣抬升:其一, 电磁波经过天线罩尖部发生明显的衍射, 波阵面分叉; 其二, 金属雨蚀头被激励出表面电流, 进而产生二次辐射; 其三, 部分电磁波能量经反射后透过天线罩尖部区域, 反射-透射电磁波能量叠加在副瓣方向上.针对上述效应, 对天线罩改进设计, 改进后可明显抑制带罩天线近副瓣的抬升.近场场图分析方法揭示了天线罩局部细节和远场方向图之间的联系, 对天线罩电性能优化设计有很好的指导作用.