Band‐notched ultra‐wideband antennas using nonperiodic composite right/left‐handed resonators

This article investigates the characteristics of a single/double‐cell composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) resonator and its application on multiple band‐notched ultra‐wideband (UWB) antennas while suggesting an accurate design procedure. Periodicity assumption and calculating a dispersion diagram allow band‐notched frequencies to adequately predict prior to antenna design. Zeroth‐order resonance (ZOR) frequency due to the CRLH characteristics of a mushroom resonator and higher‐order resonance frequencies are predictable through the hypothetical dispersion diagram. To demonstrate this method, compact, printed, ultra‐wideband circular monopole antennas with four/five‐band notched characteristics using a single/double mushroom resonator are presented. The effects of mushroom cell size on ZOR and the other band notched resonant frequencies are also investigated. The numerical simulations show that the asymmetrical unit cell provides the capability to tune both ZOR and band notched frequencies. Comparison between the simulation and measurement results shows reasonable agreement.     

Complementary metamaterial transmission line for monoband and dual‐band bandpass filters application

A novel composite right‐/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL) and its equivalent circuit model are proposed based on cascaded complementary single split ring resonator (CCSSRR). It features an intrinsically balanced wider band and an additional transmission zero above the right‐handed band relative to CRLH TL using complementary single split ring resonator and complementary split ring resonators. Moreover, two single negative (SN) metamaterial (MTM) TLs constructed by using complementary electric inductive‐capacitive resonator on the conductor strip and on the ground, respectively, are researched. Both SN MTM TLs exhibit electric resonance above the fundamental magnetic resonance. For application, a monoband (MB) bandpass filter (BPF) covered WLAN band, and a dual‐band (DB) BPF covered satellite DMB band and WiMAX band are designed, fabricated, and measured. The SN MTM TLs are adopted for the sake of deep and wide out‐of‐band suppression while CRLH MTM TLs using square‐shaped and Sierpinski‐shaped CCSSRR are critical factors of the MB and DB behavior. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2012.     

Leaky‐wave antenna with high gain and wide beam‐scanning angle range based on novel SIW‐CRLH transmission line

A leaky‐wave antenna (LWA) with high gain and wide beam‐scanning angle is proposed in this article using a novel substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) composite left/right‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL). The novel SIW‐CRLH TL is analyzed and the equivalent circuit model is also provided. Considering the continuous phase constant of the balanced SIW‐CRLH TL from negative to positive values, the proposed LWA can obtain a continuous beam steering property from backward to broadside to forward. For verification, a periodic LWA, which is comprised of 10 unit cells of the balanced SIW‐CRLH TL, is fabricated and measured. The measured and simulated results agree well, showing that the proposed periodic LWA operates from has continuous beam‐scanning capabilities of about 90° from backward to forward (including the broadside) with gains of better than 10 dB within the operating band. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:36–41, 2016.     

Broadband and low‐loss composite right/left‐handed transmission line based on broadside‐coupled lines

A novel composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) transmission line (TL) structure is proposed and investigated. This structure consists of a pair of broadside‐coupled lines and a shorted stub. First, its fundamental characteristics and the relation between its electrical parameters and bandwidth are studied utilizing the TL theory. Then, closed‐form design equations with flexible parameter selection are given. Finally, several microstrip implementations of the proposed structure are developed to verify our theoretical results. It is shown that the proposed structure can achieve a very wide left‐handed (LH) and right‐handed (RH) bandwidth with low insertion loss and low return loss.     

A compact transmission line with two pairs of composite right/left‐handed passbands

A compact transmission line with two pairs of composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) passbands is investigated, and its equivalent circuit is proposed. Compared with the conventional CRLH transmission line (CRLH‐TL), we use the rectangular patches with meander lines and the T‐shaped defected ground structures (T‐DGS) to model the other two resonators, which realize the second left‐ and right‐handed bands. The dispersion relations are analytically derived using the equivalent circuit and Bloch‐Floquet theory. The five‐stage CRLH‐TL is fabricated, and the measured results are in agreement with those of simulation. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2010.     

A CPW‐fed band notched wideband circularly polarized ZOR antenna based on CRLH‐TL approach

This article presents design and analysis of three wide band zeroth‐order resonance antennas (antennas I, II, and III) using composite right and left‐handed transmission line (CRLH‐TL) approach. Coplanar waveguide technology, single layer via‐less structures are used to have the design flexibility. The bandwidth characteristics are analyzed by using lumped parameters of CRLH‐TL. By introducing a simple slot in the ground plane of antenna I both bandwidth enhancement and circularly polarization characteristics are achieved in antenna II. Another quarter wave L‐shaped slot has been introduced in the ground plane of antenna II to introduce a notch band in the frequency response of antenna III. Achieved measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth of antenna I and antenna II are 960 (3.3‐4.26 GHz) and 2890 MHz (2.77‐5.66 GHz), respectively. Antenna III offers measured 10 dB return loss bandwidth of 3220 MHz (2.32‐5.54 GHz) with a band notch from 2.39 to 2.99 GHz that isolates the 2.4 GHz WLAN and 3.5 GHz WiMAX band. Antenna II and antenna III have circular polarization property with measured axial ratio bandwidth of 440 MHz. The measured peak realized gain of antennas II and III is around 1.53‐2.9 dBi.     

Dual‐band beam scanning filtering antenna using dual‐eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide‐based metamaterial structure

In this article, a dual‐band beam scanning antenna with filtering capability is proposed by using novel dual‐eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide‐based dual‐band metamaterial (DB‐MTM) structure. The novel DB‐MTM structure consists of two interconnected modified eighth mode substrate integrated waveguide (EMSIW) structures, which is designed by etching four interdigital fingers on the upper ground, and has two balanced composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) passbands. Taking advantage of the continuous phase constant changing from negative to positive values within the two CRLH passbands of the DB‐MTM structure, a beam scanning antenna, which is composed of 11 dB‐MTM unit cells, is designed to achieve continuous beam scanning from backward to forward directions within dual operating frequency bands. For verification, the proposed dual‐band antenna is fabricated and measured. According to the measurements, the fabricated antenna can scan its main beam from ?72° to +57° and ?70° to +38° over the two operating frequency bands of 3.40‐4.95 GHz and 5.85‐6.80 GHz, respectively; and exhibits very sharp transitions at the band edges over the two operating frequency bands. Besides, the measured peak gains in the two operating bands are 14.0 dB at 4.5 GHz and 14.5 dB at 6.4 GHz. Moreover, the measurements show good agreement with the simulations, proving the validity of the design method, and further expanding the applications of EMSIW.     

Modeling and synthesis of the interdigital/stub composite right/left‐handed artificial transmission line

An efficient design procedure, including both analysis and synthesis, is proposed for Composite Right/Left Handed (CRLH) interdigital/stub structures. Improved models are developed for both the interdigital capacitor and the shorted stub inductor including its ground via hole. Subsequent optimal formulas are recommended to model these components with their parasitic effects. The models and formulas are verified by both full‐wave and experimental results. A CAD program with a friendly GUI, available online, is provided and its operation is described in details. This program allows a very fast design of the CRLH structure, and its synthesis parameters are proven very accurate without any full‐wave optimization. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

Miniaturized low‐profile antenna based on uniplanar quasi‐composite right/left‐handed metamaterial

In this article, a metamaterial‐based broadband low‐profile antenna is presented. The proposed antenna employed an array of uniplanar quasi‐composite right/left‐hand (CRLH) metamaterial cells. This structure contributes to exciting the operating modes in lower frequencies. The antenna has an overall electrical size of 0.75 × 0.60 × 0.07 λ₀³ (λ₀ is the center operating wavelength in free space) and provides a 25% measured bandwidth with the center frequency of 5.1 GHz and maximum gain of 6.6 dB. The proposed antenna is an appropriate candidate for WLAN, WiMAX, and other wireless communication applications.     

High‐efficiency leaky‐wave antenna with continuous wide‐angle scanning using hybrid composite right/left handed structure

A hybrid composite right/left handed (CRLH) structure based leaky‐wave antenna with continuous wide beam scanning is proposed in this article. Six series‐wound periodic units, combining spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) with CRLH, form the radiating portion of proposed antenna. The unit is connected to the ground with metal hole, which provides the equivalent parallel inductance, and the unit is separated from its adjacent unit at prescheduled intervals, which provides the equivalent series capacitance. Additionally, the unit operates at balanced state and the open stopband is obviously suppressed. Dispersion diagram is also used to analyze this continuous scanning. A prototype of proposed antenna is fabricated and measured. The main beam of the antenna scans continuously from ?70° to +40° in the range from 5.2 to 8.8 GHz. The antenna radiation efficiency reaches a maximum of 92% in the working band. Measurement results agree quite well with the simulation, which indicate this leaky wave antenna can find potential applications in communication systems and radars.     

Fine control of filter performance based on composite right/left‐handed metamaterial technology

Composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) metamaterial unit cell whose ground‐plane is defected with a rectangular dielectric slot is used to develop a single and multi‐pole pole bandpass filter. The unit cell comprises of serially connected interdigital capacitors whose junction is connected to a short‐circuited inductive stub. By defecting the ground‐plane of the unit cell's structure with a dielectric slot, which is located immediately below the unit cell, enables substantial tuning of the filter's center frequency in the order of 26.5%. This is achieved with minimal effect on the unit cell's insertion and return‐loss performance including its selectivity. The filters were fabricated on conventional dielectric substrate and their performance measured to verify the design methodology. The proposed technique eases the trade‐off constraints and makes possible the realization of challenging filter specifications constituted from CRLH unit cells using distributed transmission‐lines. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:39–45, 2014.     

Compact dual‐band antenna based on CRLH‐TL for WWAN/LTE terminal applications

In this article, a compact dual‐band antenna based on composite right/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH‐TL) is proposed for WWAN/LTE wireless terminal applications. By using 2 symmetrical CRLH structures, the proposed antenna can easily produce 2 wide separate operating frequency bands with a compact size of 25 × 25 × 6 mm³. Additionally, a pair of matching strips is introduced on both sides of the feeding line to further improve the impedance characteristics of the terminal antenna. The experimental results demonstrate the proposed antenna is capable of working over the frequency ranges of 0.66‐1.06 GHz and 1.68‐2.88 GHz with |S₁₁| < ?6 dB, which can cover the bands of LTE700, GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800, GSM1900, UMTS, LTE2300, and LTE2500 for wireless terminals. Moreover, the multiple input multiple output (MIMO) operating performance of the proposed antenna element is also studied, and an enhanced isolation between the antenna elements is obtained by utilizing the defected ground structures and grounded branches.     

Dispersive delay structure using cascaded‐coupled CRLH‐CRLH C‐sections

The demand for analog signal processing (ASP) is rising for high‐speed and high‐frequency systems. In some ASP systems, the core is dispersive delay structure (DDS). DDS creates a steady increase or decrease in group delay over frequency bandwidth. One of the popular methods for designing DDSs is the use of coupled C‐sections structure. Analysis of the coupled C‐sections was based on the analysis of N coupled‐lines network. In this paper, we employ a fast approach for analyzing N coupled‐lines network that does not need solving an eigenmodes problem. Moreover, we propose a novel DDS structure based on the coupled composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) transmission lines with interdigital capacitors and short stub inductors. The proposed DDS operates between 3 to 3.5 GHz with relatively high group delay slope (about 5.5 ns). The measurements are presented for scattering parameters and group delay to compare with simulated results.     

A novel full‐wave CAD for the design of tapered leaky‐wave antennas in hybrid waveguide printed‐circuit technology

This work presents a novel computer‐aided design (CAD) tool for the design of tapered leaky‐wave antennas (LWAs) in hybrid waveguide printed‐circuit technology. The software package is composed of several tools, which are connected together to provide a semi‐automated step‐by‐step design procedure. The design procedure is presented and the different tools are described, together with the involved theory, leading to the design of tapered LWAs. A practical taper design is performed, and comparisons with simulations using commercial software (HFSS) are presented for validation purposes. Due to the full‐wave nature of the technique used in the analysis engine, excellent agreement is shown between the proposed 2D‐based approach, and 3D HFSS results. Also, the analysis procedure is fast, thus leading to semi‐automated designs that are not affordable with common 3D optimization techniques. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

Bandwidth and gain‐enhanced composite right/left‐handed antenna for ultra‐wideband applications

A coplanar waveguide‐fed metamaterial antenna is presented for ultra‐wideband (UWB) applications. The proposed antenna is designed with single unit‐cell composite right/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH‐TL) loaded with a split‐ring resonator (SRR). The UWB characteristic is obtained by merging the zeroth‐order resonance of CRLH‐TL with two additional resonances due to the ground plane and SRR respectively. Subsequently, a partial reactive impedance surface is embedded on the rear side of the proposed antenna to enhance the realized gain without affecting the UWB response. The overall size of the antenna is 0.241λ_o x 0.267λ_o x 0.013λ_o (28.8 x 32 x 1.6 mm³), where λ_o is the free space wavelength at 2.51 GHz. The measured results indicate –10 dB fractional bandwidth of 139.19% (2.51‐14 GHz) with realized gains of 2.3, 4.6, and 6 dBi at the resonant frequencies 4, 7.84, and 10.29 GHz respectively. The measured peak realized gain is 6.6 dBi at 10.6 GHz. The radiation efficiency is above 63.85% for the entire UWB range with a peak value of 86.84%. A fairly stable group delay with variation within 1 ns is obtained throughout the operating frequency band. A good agreement has been observed between the measured and simulated results.     

Novel and compact open‐ended CRLH‐TL notch filter

A novel and very small metamaterial notch filter below 900 MHz is proposed in this paper. In the UHF band, compared to the size of the open‐ended quarter‐wavelength stub that is, 0.25 λ_g (42 mm), the length of the proposed filter is 0.07 λ_g (12 mm) approximately five times smaller. The notch filter is realized by a very short 90°‐phase shifter of the CRLH structure with one‐end open‐terminated. The design method is explained theoretically, while the circuit and geometry are simulated and validated through EM simulations and fabrication. The measured results show a high degree of agreement with the simulated results. The results illustrate the notch created at 900 MHz by the filter to avoid the conflict with Z‐wave communication, UHF RFID tag and uplink of GSM‐E. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:247–253, 2016.     

Multimode resonator based on composite right‐/left‐handed transmission line for UWB bandpass filter application

A new multimode resonator (MMR) using composite right‐/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL) is proposed and discussed. The CRLH TL structure is constructed by cascading interdigital coupled microstrip line sections on which short‐ended stepped impedance stubs are loaded. Dispersion characteristic of the transmission line structure is obtained using the Bloch–Floquet theory. The resonator, which has multiresonances electrical behaviors, is especially suitable in ultrawideband (UWB) applications. An UWB filter is presented as an illustration. With transmission zeros introduced at upper stopband, the filter has a sharp skirt performance. In addition, rejection level at lower stopband also gets enhanced due to direct current suppression effects of the multimode resonator. The filter prototype is implemented and measured. The measured results validate the theoretical analysis and show that the filter has a sharp skirt and an out‐of‐band rejection level as good as 38 dB. Meanwhile, return loss is better than 16 dB. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:815–824, 2015.     

Wideband leaky‐wave antenna with consistent gain and wide beam scanning angle based on multilayered substrate integrated waveguide composite right/left‐handed transmission line

In this article, a wideband leaky‐wave antenna is designed for consistent gain and wide beam scanning angle by using the proposed multilayered substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) composite right/left‐handed transmission line (CRLH TL). The proposed SIW CRLH structure consists of two parts: an interdigital fingers slot of rotating 45° etched on the upper ground of the SIW, and a rotated parasitic patch beneath the slot. Due to the continuous phase constants change from negative to positive values of the proposed SIW‐CRLH under the balanced condition, the designed LWA can achieves a continuous beam‐scanning property from backward to forward over the operating frequency band. The designed antenna is fabricated and measured, the measured and simulated results are in good agreements with each other, indicating that the designed antenna obtains a measured continuous main beam scanning from backward ?78° to forward +76° over the frequency range from 7.7 to 12.8 GHz with a consistent gain of more than 9.5 dB. Besides, the designed antenna also exhibits a measured 3‐dB gain bandwidth of 45.1% with maximum gain of 15 dB. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:731–738, 2016.     

Large‐signal modeling methodology for GaN HEMTs for RF switching‐mode power amplifiers design

A large‐signal model for GaN HEMT transistor suitable for designing radio frequency power amplifiers (PAs) is presented along with its parameters extraction procedure. This model is relatively easy to construct and implement in CAD software since it requires only DC and S‐parameter measurements. The modeling procedure was applied to a 4‐W packaged GaN‐on‐Si HEMT, and the developed model is validated by comparing its small‐ and large‐signal simulation to measured data. The model has been employed for designing a switching‐mode inverse class‐F PA. Very good agreement between the amplifier simulation and measurement shows the validity of the model. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2011.     

Novel configuration of ultra‐wide band uni‐planar configuration of complementary split ring resonator composite right/left‐handed based band pass filter with sharp roll off and good stopband attenuation

In this paper, a compact novel simple design of ultra‐wide bandpass filter with high out of band attenuation is presented. The filter configuration is based on combining an ultra‐wide band composite right/left‐handed (CRLH) band pass filter (BPF) with simple uni‐planar configuration of complementary split ring resonator (UP‐CSRR). By integrating two UP‐CSRR cells, the ultra‐wideband CRLH filter roll‐off and wide stopband attenuation are enhanced. The filter has 3 dB cutoff frequencies at 3.1 GHz and 10.6 GHz with insertion loss equals 0.7 dB in average and minimum and maximum values of 0.48 dB and 1.05 dB, respectively over the filter passband. Within the passband. The transition band attenuation from 3 dB to 20 dB is achieved within the frequency band 1.9 GHz to 3.1 GHz (48%) at lower cutoff and the frequency band 10.6 GHz to 11.4 GHz (7%) at upper stopband. Moreover, the filter has a wide stopband attenuation >20 dB in frequencies 11 GHz to 13.6 GHz (21%) and ends with 3 dB cutoff frequency at 14.8 GHz. Furthermore, the designed filter size is very compact (23 × 12 mm²) whose length is only about 0.17 λ_g at 6.85 GHz. The filter performance is examined using circuit modeling, full‐wave simulations, and experimental measurements with good matching between all of them.