MEMS variable‐capacitor phase shifters part I: Loaded‐line phase shifter

This article describes the design and characterization of a continuously variable loaded‐line phase shifter using micro‐electro‐mechanical system (MEMS) variable capacitors as phase shifting components. The design and characterization of micro‐electro‐mechanical system (MEMS) variable capacitors for operation at 26.5 GHz is described. A lumped‐element model is obtained from measurements and physical consideration. Experimental results show a capacitance‐tuning ratio of 3.7:1. The capacitor's characterization results are used for designing the phase shifter. A phase shift of 40.5° at 26.5 GHz for a loaded‐line type has been measured. There is good agreement between simulated and measured results. A companion article (Part II) describes the application of these variable capacitors to the design of reflection‐type phase shifters. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 13: 321–337, 2003.     

MEMS variable‐capacitor phase shifters part II: Reflection‐type phase shifters

A novel design procedure for reflection‐type phase shifters using capacitive devices is developed. Using this approach, a phase shifter for operation at 26.5 GHz is developed using MEMS variable capacitors reported in Part I of this article. A design optimization procedure is discussed. Design of a CPW hybrid at 26.5 GHz (as needed for this phase shifter) is also discussed. Experimental results validate the design procedure and yield a phase shift of 179.30° at 26.5 GHz. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 13: 415–425, 2003.     

A broadband out‐of‐phase gysel power divider based on a dual‐band circuit with a single fixed isolation resistor

Based on the double‐sided parallel‐strip lines with an inserted conductor as a virtual ground, a high power divider with dual‐band/broadband response and frequency‐independent 180° phase difference between the output ports is implemented in this paper. The circuit topology employs a single commercially available external isolation resistor as well as moderate line impedances (15–100 ohm), making it suitable for high‐power applications. Precise closed‐form design equations on the basis of even‐ and odd‐mode analysis are derived. In addition to the wide range of frequency band ratios from 1 to 2.65, broadband response is also obtained by selecting the proper value of frequency band ratios. To substantiate the design equations and theory, a circuit with 2:1 frequency ratio and 84.5% bandwidth referring to 16 dB isolation and 12 dB return loss values is developed. To the authors' knowledge, this is the widest bandwidth reported for out‐of‐phase high power dividers. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2016.     

A planar ultra‐wide band asymmetric rat‐race hybrid coupler

In this article, an asymmetric ultra‐wideband rat‐race hybrid coupler with 180° phase shift is proposed. The primary goal of this work is to design a planar ultra‐wideband hybrid coupler with a microstrip structure by avoiding via holes and multi‐layer design. The bandwidth of an asymmetric ring hybrid is enhanced using shorted coupled lines, perturbation impedance techniques, and matching stubs. This hybrid coupler was designed and fabricated using Taconic TLX‐8 substrate with a thickness of 0.5 mm. The results of the simulation and measurement are promising and meet the desired specifications. This hybrid coupler yields a fractional bandwidth of 56% at the center frequency of 5.95 GHz based on ±1 amplitude imbalance between two output ports.     

Filtering balanced‐to‐single‐ended power dividing network

In this article, the filtering balanced‐to‐single‐ended power dividing networks are proposed. Except the fundamental functions of differential‐mode transmission, common‐mode suppression, and out‐of‐phase single‐ended output ports with isolation, the proposed designs show the advantages of wide controllable range of differential‐mode bandwidth, multiple transmission zeros (TZs), and wide bandwidth for high out‐of‐band suppression. The frequencies of TZs, bandwidth, isolation, and common‐mode suppression can be controlled by the parameters. For demonstration, three prototypes (Deigns I, II, and III) with two, four, or six TZs are implemented. The measured results show that design I (II and III) has an insertion loss of 0.38 dB (0.7 dB and 0.8 dB), an operating bandwidth of 12.5% (7.5% and 6.9%), and a bandwidth for 30‐dB out‐of‐band suppression of 0.06f₀ (0.09f₀ and 0.14f₀). The isolation and common‐mode suppression inside the passbands of the three prototypes are all larger than 17 and 38 dB, respectively.     

Microstrip stepped‐impedance ring all‐pass filter and wideband 90° phase shifter

A new all‐pass filter (APF) is proposed. The APF is based on a symmetrical ring, consisting of four sections of transmission line, which are identical in electrical length, different in characteristic impedance. Two input/output ports are connected orthogonally to the ring. The APF is analyzed by using the odd‐even model, and the all‐pass condition is then theoretically obtained. Meeting the condition, the circuit is all‐pass in frequency, but nonlinear in transmission phase. The nonlinear transmission phase with frequency may be adjusted by changing the lines' impedances, while remaining the all‐pass property. Then the APF is used to design a wideband 90° differential phase shifter with adjustable bandwidth. Samples are designed, fabricated and measured. Good agreements are achieved among the theoretic, numerical and experimental results. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:191–195, 2014.     

Ka‐band phased patch array antenna integrated with a PET‐controlled phase shifter

In this article, a 4 × 4 linear‐phased patch array antenna, consisting of four 1 × 4 patch subarrays and a true time‐delay multiline phase shifter, is proposed on a thin film liquid crystal polymer substrate at Ka‐band. The patch antenna is designed with a gain of 6 dBi at 35 GHz and a bandwidth of 23% centered at 35 GHz. To enhance the gain and symmetrize the beam patterns of the 4 × 4 array, a 1 × 4 patch subarray in the E‐plane was designed and characterized. The subarray produces an enhanced gain of 11 dBi and a wide beamwidth of ±38° in the H‐plane for beam steering. The proposed phase shifter comprises a 1 × 4 microstrip line power splitter and a piezoelectric transducer‐controlled phase perturber. A large phase variation of up to 370° and a low insertion loss of less than 2 dB were demonstrated for the phase shifter at Ka‐band. The integrated phased array attains a gain of 15.6 dBi, and a continuous true‐time delay beam steering of up to 33 ± 1° from 31 to 39 GHz. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:199–208, 2016.     

Composite corporate traveling‐wave power dividers for slot array waveguide antennas

A composite corporate traveling‐wave power divider is presented. The single‐layer structure is composed of three parts: two interdigital traveling‐wave subsections combined with a power splitter. An iterative design technique is described in which the divider is split into a number of basic blocks. Large‐scaled networks are then easily designed because the whole structure does not need to be simulated. A method to take into account the insertion losses is also proposed and bandwidth enhancement is discussed, which is done by increasing the number of corporate layers. Experimental results are also shown for a 1:4 subsection. It provides equal output power with 0.5 dB of insertion loss. The phase‐shift between output ports is close to the specifications of ?150° at 30 GHz, with an error of less than 2°. It is also shown that this topology is well suited for frequency scanning antenna. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

Low‐temperature‐applicable polymer‐stabilized blue‐phase liquid crystal and its Kerr effect

Abstract— A type of polymer‐stabilized blue‐phase liquid crystal, which can be used in a low‐temperature environment, is proposed. The blue‐phase range after polymerization was widened to more than 73°C, and the blue‐phase texture is very stable even at a temperature as low as ?35°C. The electro‐optical performances dependence on polymer concentration was investigated. The results indicate that the saturation voltage increases and the hysteresis enhances as the polymer concentration increases. The rise and decay times could reach as low as 391 and 789 μsec, respectively. Such material also shows good electro‐optical behavior at a temperature of ?35°C. In addition, the Kerr constant was tested under a uniformly distributed electric field to be 2.195 nm/V² at room temperature and 2.077 nm/V² at ?35°C. The Kerr constant tested under white‐light illumination was 1.975 nm/V², which shows a small dispersion.     

A phase tunable hybrid coupler with enhanced bandwidth

The majority of the previous works on tunable coupler concentrates on the tunability of the frequency and amplitude. The capability to control the phase characteristics draws little attention. However, the tunability in phase becomes more and more important, as the flexible control in phase affects the performance significantly in the modern wireless communication systems. Regarding this, several phase tunable couplers were proposed but with narrow bandwidth. In this article, a novel phase‐tunable coupler with enhanced bandwidth is proposed. It is constructed by introducing two varactor loaded coupled line sections between two branch line sections. By varying the capacitances loaded on and between the coupled lines, the continuously tunable phase difference can be achieved between two output ports without affecting the equal power division characteristics. The analysis of the ideal model and detailed circuit has been conducted to obtain the design formulas and guidelines. For demonstration, a phase tunable coupler operating at 1.8 GHz was designed, fabricated, and measured. It exhibits a tunable phase difference from 60° to 120° by varying the two biasing voltages. Meanwhile, the equal power division, good return loss, and high isolation are still maintained. The desired characteristics have been implemented over a wide bandwidth from 1.6 GHz to 2.0 GHz.     

Differential phase shifters using corrugated,ridge, and fin loaded waveguides

One means of converting the port conditions of a magic‐tee into those of a 90° hybrid is to introduce external sections of waveguide at the symmetrical H‐plane output ports having the necessary 90° phase difference. The purpose of this article is to describe a number of realizations of such differential phase shifters (DPS), including an exact synthesis procedure not requiring computer optimization. A typical design consists of a capacitively loaded waveguide for one section and an essentially inductive waveguide for the other. The latter is simply a uniform waveguide of reduced width when compared with that of the capacitive section. An example capacitive ridge DPS exhibits a maximum phase error of ±2° over a 20% bandwidth in WR75 waveguide with a return loss of better than 40 dB and an insertion loss <0.06 dB. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2009.     

Design and analysis of wideband eight‐way SIW power splitter for mm‐wave applications

High‐performance, wideband three‐stage power splitters based on substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) are presented. Broadband‐tapered microstrip transitions are used for feeding the SIW structures, which provide 7.5 GHz bandwidth from 21.5 to 29 GHz with return loss below ?20 dB. In addition, various T junctions are tuned, not only to provide broadband performance up to mm‐wave frequencies but also offer low‐phase and amplitude imbalance when cascaded in multistage 1 × 8 splitters. 1 × 4 and 1 × 2‐T junctions are adjusted through parametric analysis to provide wide bandwidth of 3.5 GHz at 24.5 GHz and ?15 dB reflection coefficient. The optimal microstrip transitions and T junctions are used to design a broadband, eight‐way power splitter with 15 dB return loss from 23.0 to 26.4 GHz and phase and amplitude imbalance of ±2.5° and ±0.8° dB, respectively. Furthermore, optimum positions of all inductive posts in terms of guided wavelength are also provided for assisting the direct design of mm‐wave, high‐performance power splitters.     

High gain transmitarray antenna based on ultra‐thin metasurface

This article presents a bandwidth enhanced transmitarray (TA) antenna based on ultra‐thin metasurface (MS) for high gain operating at X‐band. The antenna consists of a three layers continuous flat structure and an aperture coupled microstrip antenna as the feed source. The relative phase shift of 360° is achieved by the unit cell design based on ultra‐thin MS, and the quasi‐spherical wave could be focused as plane wave when the wave goes through TA. The aperture coupled microstrip feed is designed with a bandwidth of 20.6%, and the bandwidth enhanced property of feed source will reduce the negative effect of elements mutual coupling on TA and increase the bandwidth of the TA antenna. The TA antenna gain increases from 8.25 to 18.98 dB and with a side lobe level of ?14.3 dB. Owing to the low‐profile and easy configuration, this kind of TA antenna has great potential, wireless communication.     

A compact proximity‐fed 2.4 GHz monostatic antenna with wide‐band SIC characteristics for in‐band full duplex applications

This article presents a dual polarized, proximity‐fed monostatic patch antenna (single radiator for both transmit and receive modes) with improved interport isolation for 2.4 GHz in‐band full duplex (IBFD) applications. The proximity‐fed radiating patch offers comparatively wider impedance bandwidth for presented design. Very nice self‐interference cancelation (SIC) levels for intended impedance bandwidth have been achieved through differential receive (R_x) mode configuration. The differential R_x mode based on 180° ring hybrid coupler acts as a signal inversion mechanism for effective suppression or cancelation of in‐band self‐interference (SI) that is, the leakage from transmit port. The implemented prototype of proposed antenna achieves ≥87 dB peak isolation for dual polarized IBFD operation. Moreover, the recorded interport isolation for validation model ≥60 dB within 10 dB‐return loss bandwidth of 90 MHz (2.36‐2.45 GHz). The measured radiation characteristics of implemented antenna demonstrate nice gain and low cross‐polarization levels for both transmit (T_x) and receive (R_x) modes. The dimensions of implemented antenna are 70 × 75 × 4.8 mm³. The novelty of this work is wide‐band SIC performance for monostatic antenna configuration with compact structure of presented design.     

Novel wideband metal‐only transmitarray antenna based on 1‐bit polarization rotation element

In this article, a novel wideband metal‐only transmitarray based on 1‐bit polarization rotation element is proposed. First, a novel wideband polarization rotation element is designed, which consists of four metallic layers without any substrate layers. The element can be used to rotate polarization of the transmission wave by 90° with respect to that of the incident wave. The element and its mirror image can provide 0° and 180° phase shifts with 1‐bit phase quantization in the 9.2 to 11.2 GHz band with more than 80% polarization conversion rate. Then, by using the proposed element, a 21 × 21‐element transmitarray with a standard pyramidal horn feed is designed and fabricated. The measured results show that the transmitarray achieves 16.8% 1‐dB gain bandwidth with a peak gain of 21.6 dBi. Its cross‐polarization and side‐lobe levels are below ?20 and ?10 dB, respectively, in the operating band. The measured results agree well with the simulation ones, validating effectiveness of the transmitarray design method.     

A wideband reflectarray antenna using single‐layer dipole element attached with T‐shaped stubs

A wideband reflectarray antenna consisting of single‐layer dipole element attached with T‐shaped stubs is proposed. By varying the lengths of the T‐shaped stubs, the unit cell can provide a linear phase curve covering about 420°. Critical design parameters are analyzed to understand its wideband operating mechanism. Using this novel type of unit cells, a 441 element 25° offset‐fed reflectarray with grid spacing of λ/3 at 10 GHz is designed, fabricated, and measured. The experimental results show that the proposed reflectarray can achieve 1‐dB gain bandwidth of 24% and 1.5‐dB gain bandwidth of 37%. In addition, aperture efficiency of 66.6% and cross polarization level of 29 dB are obtained at 10 GHz, respectively.     

Wideband bandpass filtering branch‐line balun with high‐isolation

The wideband bandpass filtering branch‐line balun with high isolation is presented in this paper. The proposed balun can be designed for wideband performances by choosing a proper characteristics impedance of input vertical transmission line and odd‐mode impedance of parallel‐coupled lines. The proposed balun was designed at a center frequency (f₀) of 3.5 GHz for validation. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulations. The measured power divisions are ?3.31 dB and ?3.24 dB at f₀ and ?3 ± 0.17 dB within the bandwidth of 0.95 GHz (3 GHz to 3.95 GHz). The input return loss of 24.09 is measured at f₀ and higher than 20 dB over the same bandwidth. Moreover, the measured output losses are better than 11 dB within a wide bandwidth. The isolation between output ports is 20.32 dB at f₀ and higher than 13.2 dB for a broad bandwidth from 1 GHz to 10 GHz. The phase difference and magnitude imbalance between two output ports are 180° ± 4.5° and ± 0.95 dB, respectively, for the bandwidth of 0.95 GHz.     

Broadband printed quadrifilar helix antenna using parasitic strip technique

A circularly polarized (CP) printed quadrifilar helix antenna (QHA) with enhanced bandwidth is proposed in this communication. This QHA is fed by a feeding structure with superior performance, which uses wide‐band 90° and 180° planar bulun. The feeding network can simply realize the 90° phase shift and four equal power divisions within a wide band range. Enhanced impedance matching and CP radiation characteristics can be achieved with the parasitic strips between helix arms. The study of proposed antenna performance with different geometric parameters has been conducted. The final antenna exhibits a good impedance bandwidth (IBW) of approximately 37.4% (1.65‐2.41 GHz), and the 3‐dB axial‐ratio bandwidth (ARBW) is over 43.9% (1.6‐2.5 GHz). Broad pattern coverage, pure CP radiation at all designed bands and a wide 3 dB axial‐ratio beam width of 150° makes this antenna an excellent candidate for satellite communications and navigation systems.     

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filter with the modified Minkowski‐island‐based fractal patch

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filters (BPFs) using modified Minkowski‐island‐based (MIB) fractal patch are proposed in this article. The BPF is mainly formed by a square patch resonator in which a modified MIB fractal configuration with second‐order iteration is embedded in the patch. By the equivalent circuit model with diamond structure, the wide‐band responses are analyzed. The design procedure included equivalent circuit model is available for wide‐band design. For wide‐band characteristics, at 5.0 GHz central frequency, it has good measured characteristics including the wider bandwidth of 3.14–6.89 GHz (3‐dB fractional bandwidth of 75%), low insertion loss of 0.39 dB, and high rejection level (?48.5/?44.9 dB). The patch size is 7.4 λ 7.4 mm² (0.25 λ_g × 0.25 λ_g) with 14.1% reduction. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:170–176, 2014.     

Synthesis of frequency‐independent phase shifters using negative group delay active circuit

This article describes a synthesis method dedicated to the design of frequency‐independent phase shifters (PSs). This innovative PS structure consists in a transmission line cascaded with a negative group delay (NGD) active circuit so that the absolute constant group delays generated by both of them are identical but of opposite signs. So, in principle, it exhibits a constant overall phase and a group delay close to zero. Broadband linear positive phase slopes are obtained through use of an NGD active circuit whose characteristics are recalled prior to the extraction of the PS synthesis relations. The design and simulations of a PS of compact size are reported. The experimental results confirm the expected frequency‐independent transmission‐phase value of 145° ± 10° with an insertion gain of 2 ± 2 dB over a 160% relative frequency band. At last, future prospects allowed by the specific properties of this PS are presented. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE , 2010.