Effect of stepped‐impedance resonators on rectangular metamaterial unit cells

In this article, effect of the stepped‐impedance resonator (SIR) miniaturization technique on rectangular metamaterial unit cells is investigated and the influence of the method's structural parameters on the characteristic impedance and the distance between higher resonance modes is discussed. According to the results, the ideal unit cell for this method should be thick enough and have an impedance ratio greater than one. Furthermore, the SIR technique is applied on a conventional two‐turn spiral metamaterial unit cell and a new compact spiral unit cell is introduced. The effect of this method on the unit cell parameters is investigated and the new unit cell is compared to the conventional spiral. According to the results, a miniaturization factor of 0.75 can be achieved with the new unit cell. To validate the results, a two dimensional array of the unit cell is fabricated and its S‐parameters are measured using the free space method. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:582–590, 2015.     

Broadband compact stacked T-shaped DRA with equilateral-triangle cross sections

A compact T-shaped dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) with two equilateral-triangle cross sections is investigated in this letter. The DRA is vertically placed on a finite ground plane and excited by a coaxial probe to provide broadband and conical radiation patterns. In order to examine the proposed design, simulations and measurements were employed to investigate the proposed antenna, and a good agreement between them was obtained. The proposed design produces an impedance bandwidth of more than 60% from 1.6 to 3.1GHz, which effectively covers several promising application bands in contemporary wireless communication systems, such as digital communication systems (DCS: 1710-1880MHz), personal communication systems (PCS: 1850-1990MHz), universal mobile telecommunication systems (UMTS: 1920-2170MHz), wireless local area networks (WLANs: 2.4-2.485GHz). Additionally, stable conical patterns were also obtained within the interest frequency band.     

Ultra‐wideband slot antenna for wireless communication systems

In this article, a new ultra‐wideband rectangular‐slot antenna is proposed and developed for multiband wireless communication systems. The radiating slot is fed by a microstrip line with a microstrip fork‐shaped tuning stub. The frequency characteristic and radiation performance of the proposed antenna are successfully optimized, and a prototype is fabricated and tested. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidth can cover the band from 1.85 to 6.1 GHz with return loss of better than 10 dB, and the corresponding radiation displays omnidirectional patterns across the interested bands. With these frequencies, the proposed structure is especially suitable for applications in wireless communication systems, where a single antenna is needed to operate simultaneously at different bands, such as PCS (1.85–1.99 GHz), UMTS (1.92–2.17 GHz) and all WLAN bands (2.4–2.48 GHz and IEEE802.11a WLAN applications at 5.15–5.35 GHz and 5.725–5.825 GHz). © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

A novel feed for a multifrequency hybrid resonator antenna

A novel feed technique for a hybrid resonator antenna is proposed and developed. The antenna consists of microstrip-patch radiator and a pair of twin resonator slots. The proposed feed mechanism is based on a new coupling aperture technique, in which a single microstrip feed line is etched on the same side of the substrate as the radiating patches. The patches are coupled to the feed line through a twin slots located in the ground plane. By selecting suitable structure parameters for the slots and the patches, multifrequency operation is obtained. The proposed antenna structure is suitable for the development of large antenna arrays.     

Analysis of a new multiband multiport circuit for phase detection applications

A new multiband multiport circuit is presented in this letter. This circuit, designed for microwave phase detection applications, can be used in multiband direct conversion front-ends, phased-array antenna drivers or other microwaves amplitude or phase measurements. A complex vector, named /spl Gamma/, based on multiport output voltages, is introduced for direct RF phase measurements. An excellent match of simulation and measurement results is obtained in all frequency bands.     

Ka-band analog front-end for software-defined direct conversion receiver

A six-port Ka-band front-end architecture based on direct conversion for a software-defined radio application is proposed in this paper. The direct conversion is accomplished using six-port technology. In order to demodulate various phase-shift-keying/quadrature-amplitude-modulation (PSK/QAM) modulated signals at a high bit rate, a new analog baseband circuit was specially designed according to the I/Q equations presented in the theoretical part. An experimental prototype has been fabricated and measured. Simulation and measurement results for binary PSK, quaternary PSK (QPSK), 8 PSK, 16 PSK, and 16 QAM modulated signals at a bit rate up to 40 Mb/s are presented to validate the proposed approach. A software-defined radio can be designed using the new front-end and only two analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) because the I/Q output signals are generated by analog means. Previous six-port receivers make use of four ADCs to read the six-port dc levels and require digital computations to generate the I/Q output signals. With the proposed approach, the load of the signal processor will therefore be reduced and the modulation speed can be significantly increased using the same digital signal processor.     

Compact ultra‐wideband slot antenna with three notched‐band characteristics

A very compact ultra‐wideband (UWB) slot antenna with three L‐shaped slots for notched‐band characteristics is presented in this article. The antenna is designed and fabricated using a new stepped slot with different size, integrated in the ground plane, and excited by a 50 Ω microstrip transmission line. The stepped slot is used to minimize the dimensions of the antenna and to achieve an impedance bandwidth between 2.65 and 11.05 GHz with voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) less than 2. The length of the stepped slot is equal to a quarter wavelength to create a resonance in the desired frequency. Three L‐shaped slots with various sizes are etched in the ground plane to reject three frequency bands in C‐band (3.7‐4.2 GHz), WLAN (5.15‐5.825 GHz), and X‐band (7.25‐7.75 GHz), respectively. The notched‐band frequency can be controlled by changing the length of the L‐shaped slot. The proposed antenna has a very small size (20.25 × 8 × 1.27 mm³) compared with previous works. The measured and simulated results show a good agreement in terms of radiation pattern and impedance matching.     

Analytic study on CP enhancement of millimeter wave DR and patch subarray antennas

This article presents a comparative analysis for the performance of single, 2 × 2, and 4 × 4 dielectric resonator (DR) and patch circularly polarized (CP) antenna subarrays at 30 GHz. In order to enhance the CP bandwidth, the subarray elements are fed by two kinds of sequential feeding techniques using parallel and hybrid ring feeds. The 4 × 4 patch antenna subarrays fed by parallel and hybrid ring feeding networks are fabricated and tested. Measurements show acceptable agreement with simulation results. The experimental results show a bandwidth of 36.9% for both (?10 dB) impedance matching and (3 dB) axial ratio CP patterns for the patch subarray antenna with hybrid ring feeding. For the parallel feeding, the corresponding bandwidth is 28.81%. The proposed antennas combine desirable features such as wide impedance and AR bandwidths, low profile, and easiness of fabrication and therefore is a good candidate for millimeter wave systems around 30 GHz.     

A new high gain-slot antenna

A novel design for a high gain-slot antenna is proposed. In the proposed design, by properly etching nonradiating open circuit slots and crossovers along the axis of the radiating slot, the aperture field on every slot dipole forms in phase-electric fiend standing wave distributions. As a result, the radiating slot can achieve a high gain. To validate the proposed design, the simulated and measured results of a prototype are presented.     

Design,analysis, and measurement of a new dual‐band compact hybrid resonator antenna

A new dual‐band compact hybrid resonator antenna is proposed in this article. The analysis is based on electric‐field and magnetic‐field integral equations. In the proposed design, the structure uses a combination of a thin circular disk dielectric resonator (DR) and a microstrip‐fed dog‐bone slot. This dog‐bone slot works as a half‐wavelength radiator and as a feed circuit for the DR. By optimizing the structure's parameters, the hybrid structure allows not only the DR to resonate at one frequency band but also the dog‐bone slot to resonate at the other one with the required frequency separation. Based on the above design concept, an antenna prototype for wireless communication applications centered at 1.9 and 2.45 GHz is successfully designed, fabricated, and tested. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.