Experimental validation of analysis software for tunable microstrip filters on magnetized ferrites

Measurements are presented for microstrip filters on layered media containing magnetized ferrites. The measurements show that the filters can be tuned by adjusting the magnitude of the magnetic-bias field. The measured results are compared with full-wave numerical results obtained by the authors via the method of moments in the spectral domain. The agreement between experimental and numerical results is reasonably good. The results show that the bandwidth of the filters appreciably decreases as the tuning frequency increases for frequencies located above the magnetostatic waves range (MWR). However, tuning is achieved without substantial bandwidth reduction for frequencies located below the MWR.     

Green's functions and magnetized ferrites

Magnetized ferrites play an important role in the field of microwaves as substrates in various electronic elements. The dyadic Green's functions method is used to solve the electromagnetic field problem for such anisotropic (magnetically gyrotropic) materials. The full dyadic problem is reduced to a scalar one where the complete information is contained within a single scalar Green's function. A connection between the Green's functions formalism and that of scalar Hertz potentials is established and some progress is made towards the calculation of the scalar Green's function.     

Full-wave analysis of a wide class of microstrip resonatorsfabricated on magnetized ferrites with arbitrarily oriented biasmagnetic field

A numerical code has. been developed for the full-wave determination of the resonant frequencies and quality factors of microstrip patches with right-angle corners of arbitrary shape in the case in which the substrate of the patches is a magnetized ferrite with arbitrarily oriented bias magnetic field. The code is based on the solution of an electric-field integral equation by means of Galerkin's method in the spectral domain. The evaluation of the infinite integrals arising from the application of the numerical method is efficiently carried out by means of a technique based on the interpolation of the spectral dyadic Green's function. The numerical results obtained indicate that microstrip patches fabricated on ferrite substrates present cutoff frequency regions in which resonances cannot occur owing to the excitation of magnetostatic modes. The limits of these cutoff regions are shown to be dependent on the orientation and the magnitude of the bias magnetic field, on the shape of the patches, and even on the nature of every particular resonant mode. The numerical results also show that the resonant frequencies of microstrip patches. on magnetized ferrites can always be tuned over a wide frequency range provided the orientation of the bias magnetic field is suitably chosen     

Full-wave analysis of circular microstrip resonators inmultilayered media containing uniaxial anisotropic dielectrics,magnetized ferrites, and chiral materials

In this paper, Galerkin's method in the Hankel transform domain is applied to the determination of the resonant frequencies, quality factors, and radiation patterns of circular microstrip patch resonators. The metallic patches are assumed to be embedded in a multilayered substrate, which may contain uniaxial anisotropic dielectrics, magnetized ferrites, and/or chiral materials. The numerical results obtained show that important errors can be made in the computation of the resonant frequencies of the resonators when substrate dielectric anisotropy, substrate magnetic anisotropy and/or substrate chirality are ignored. Also, it is shown that the resonant frequencies of circular microstrip resonators on magnetized ferrites can be tuned over a wide frequency range by varying the applied bias magnetic field. Finally, the computed results show that the resonance and radiation properties of a circular microstrip patch on a chiral material is very similar to those of a circular patch of the same size printed on a nonchiral material of lower permittivity     

High-Selectivity single- and dual-resonator microstrip filters

New selective properties are revealed of the base section of conventional microstrip filters with circuits based on a four-wire system of coupled quarter-wave lines with one half-wave hairpin resonator. The conditions under which this single-resonator section acquires the characteristics of multi-resonator circuits due to the possibility of formation of four zeros and six operating attenuation poles at the end frequencies are determined. The structure does not contain elements short-circuited to the screen, which determines its high manufacturability. It is demonstrated that high-selectivity compact microstrip filters can be designed on the basis of single- and dual-resonator structures, i.e., the structures with the minimum number of resonators.     

HTS microstrip matching networks and filters

High-temperature superconducting (HTS) YBCO microstrip bandpass filters and microstrip impedance matching networks were fabricated, tested and compared with the predicted performance. Vector corrected measurements of these circuits were performed at cryogenic temperatures. Comparisons of the insertion loss for the HTS and corresponding Au filters are presented, as well as the predicted noise figure for the low-noise amplifiers using HTS and Au matching networks     

An alternative approach to FD-TD analysis of magnetized ferrites

This paper presents a new approach to the finite difference-time domain (FD-TD) analysis of magnetized ferrites. An equivalent lumped circuit of an FD-TD cell filled with such a medium is developed. Then the lumped circuit is used to propose a new FD-TD algorithm. This algorithm is verified on canonical examples and is shown to be simple, accurate, robust and computationally more effective than the previously published approaches.     

Characteristics of aperture coupled microstrip antennas on magnetized ferrite substrates

The method of moments in the spectral domain is applied to the full-wave analysis of aperture coupled microstrip antennas in the case where the substrate of the antennas is a layered medium containing magnetized ferrites. The subsectional basis functions used in the analysis make it possible to handle patch antennas and coupling apertures with right angle corners of arbitrary shape. The numerical results obtained show that antennas on ferrite substrates fed by single microstrip lines can radiate both circular and linear polarization, the polarization state being dependent on the orientation of the ferrites bias magnetic field. For a given polarization state, the matching frequency band of the antennas can be tuned over a wide frequency range by adjusting the magnitude of the bias magnetic field. Also, the polarization state can be continuously tuned from circular to linear within the same frequency band by adjusting both the magnitude and the orientation of the bias magnetic field. Some measurements are presented in order to check the validity of the numerical algorithm developed.     

Wide bandwidth and broad beamwidth microstrip patch antenna

A novel wideband and broad-beam microstrip antenna loaded with gaps and stubs is proposed. The antenna is based on a two-layer stacked electromagnetic coupling microstrip patch antenna (ECMSA). The upper patch of the antenna is loaded with two arc gaps and three stubs. The ECMSA is used to achieve wide impedance bandwidth, while the gaps and stubs-loaded patch is used to obtain broad-beam. The impedance bandwidth is up to 34.6%. In this impedance bandwidth, the pattern bandwidth is 13%. In this pattern bandwidth, the 3 dB beamwidth of E-plane and H-plane remain stable and are about ±60°. Simulation results agree well with measured results.     

Spectral-domain analysis of submillimetre-wave microstrip filters

We consider the cut-off frequencies of high-order modes in boxed submillimetre-wave microstrip filters. It is shown that many of the filters in use at the present time are not cut off in the way that the designers imagine. It is also shown that for ease of manufacture the height of the microstrip channel should be 0.7 times the width and the thickness of the quartz substrate should be 0.5 times the width. This optimum geometry suggests that the upper frequency limit of conventional waveguide components is 1THz.     

Spectral domain analysis of coupled microstrip lines on magnetized ferrite substrates

Dispersion characteristics of coupled microstrip lines on ferrimagnetic substrates are presented and their features discussed. The Hertz vector potentials in the spectral domain method are used to calculate the dyadic Green's functions in an impedance matrix form. The behavior of the propagation constants is obtained by using the spectral Galerkin's technique. Numerical results are found as a function of various geometrical parameters and of the externally applied static magnetic field. Nonreciprocal behavior is mainly observed when the static magnetic field is applied in the transverse direction, parallel to the ground plane.     

Analysis of shielded striplines and finlines with finitemetallization thickness containing magnetized ferrites

The applicability of the spectral domain approach is extended to analyze various types of shielded planar transmission lines, taking the anisotropy of the magnetized ferrites and the finite metallization thickness into consideration. The numerical computations include the propagation characteristics of finlines and striplines and the metallization thickness effect in these lines. Numerical data of simpler structures are compared with the available exact solution as well as with published data     

Stacked microstrip antenna with wide bandwidth and high gain

A stacked microstrip antenna with two parasitic elements, one of which increases the impedance bandwidth and the other which enhances the gain, has been investigated experimentally. The effects of each parasitic element have been clarified as well as the characteristics of the stacked three-element antenna and the design procedure for the stacked microstrip antenna have been described     

Fabrication of variable bandwidth filters using arrayed-waveguidegratings

Variable bandwidth filters have been fabricated using silica-based N×N arrayed-waveguide gratings. The centre wavelengths are λ₀=1.55 μm for all channels. The 3 dB bandwidths are 40, 78, 116 and 154 GHz, for the filter with a path length difference ΔL=63 μm. In the filter with ΔL=8.6 μm, the 3 dB bandwidths are 414, 769, 1198 and 1608 GHz. The on-chip losses are 2.1-2.9 dB and sidemode suppression ratios are larger than 27 dB     

Resonance frequency and bandwidth of rectangular microstrip antennaon thick substrate

We report an improved cavity model called modified Wolff model (MWM) to compute the resonance frequency of a rectangular patch antenna on the thick PTFE substrate (0.037λ_g-0.229λ_g). The MWM accounts for the effect of anisotropy and total losses on the resonance frequency, therefore it has a maximum deviation 2% against the experimental results. The previous cavity model, the multiport cavity model, and MOM based commercial software, Ensemble, compute resonance frequency with deviation between 4%-36%. Results on the bandwidth computed by these models have also been compared against the experimental results     

FDTD treatment of partially magnetized ferrites with a newpermeability tensor model

This paper outlines the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) treatment of partially magnetized ferrites characterized by a permeability tensor model, which was recently published. Its causal aspect makes this tensor well adapted to time-domain simulations. Validation is demonstrated for a resonant ferrite structure, Numerical and analytical results are compared, showing good agreement     

Electronically tunable ring resonator microstrip and suspended-substrate filters

Electronically tunable ring resonator microstrip and suspended substrate microwave filters with high tuning speed are presented. The filters are realised using two coupled ring resonators with GaAs varactors as the tuning elements. Computer optimised circuits are used at the input and the output to obtain better than 10 dB return loss across the tuning band. Tuning ranges of 1.075-2.25 GHz for the microstrip filter and 1.35-2.075 GHz for the narrower suspended substrate filter are predicted by computer simulation.<>     

Miniaturised microstrip bandpass filters based on Moore fractal geometry

This paper presents new microstrip bandpass filter design topologies that consist of dual edge-coupled resonators constructed in the form of Moore fractal geometries of second and third iteration levels. The space-filling property for proposed fractal filters has found to produce reduced size shapes in accordance with sequential iteration levels. These filters have been prepared for ISM band applications at a centre frequency of 2.4 GHz using a substrate with a dielectric coefficient of 10.8, dielectric thickness of 1.27 mm and metallisation thickness of 35 µm. The output responses of each fractal bandpass filter have been determined by a full-wave-based electromagnetic simulator Sonnet software package. Simulated and experimental results are approximately compatible with each other. These responses clarify that these fractal filters have good transmission and return loss characteristics with blocked higher harmonics in out-of-band regions.     

The dispersion characteristics of shielded microstrip lines on magnetized ferrite and anisotropic dielectric substrates

The dispersion characteristics of the dominant mode in shielded microstrip lines on magnetized ferrite and anisotropic dielectric substrates have been obtained. The solution is obtained by applying the transverse equivalent transmission line in the spectral domain and Galerkin's method. Numerical results for the frequency-dependent propagation constants are presented which could be used in designing directional couplers and isolators.