Linear array of woodpile EBG sectoral horn antennas

A technique is described for creating linear array antennas that conform to the natural stacking sequence of the woodpile electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) material. Each element in the linear array consists of a woodpile EBG sectoral horn antenna. The electromagnetic confinement mechanism within each horn antenna relies wholly on the 3-D EBG of the woodpile material. The array element has a typical sectoral horn pattern with a directional beam in one principal plane and a broader beam in the other. The bandwidth of the sectoral horn is almost equal to that of the defect EBG waveguide. Measured and theoretical results for radiation patterns, impedance bandwidth and gain of a sectoral horn antenna made from alumina are described, and theoretical results for a design made from silicon are presented. It is shown that the layer-by-layer nature of the woodpile EBG material enables sectoral horn antennas to be easily stacked together in the E-plane to create linear arrays. Analysis of the mutual coupling as a function of element separation and its effect on reflection coefficient are presented for a two-element linear array in silicon. Theoretical analyses for fixed and scanned beam linear arrays of silicon woodpile EBG sectoral horns are described and finite-difference time-domain results are compared with array theory. The fixed beam arrays are designed for high directivity while the scanned beam array enables wide angle beam steering through the use of parasitic array elements.     

A novel absorb/transmit FSS for secure indoor wireless networks with reduced multipath fading

A novel absorb/transmit frequency selective surface (FSS) is presented for 5-GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) applications. The novelty of the design is that it is capable of absorbing, as opposed to reflecting, WLAN signals while passing mobile signals. The FSS consists of two layers, one with conventional conducting cross dipoles and the other with resistive cross dipoles. The absorption of the WLAN signal is important to reduce additional multipaths and resultant fading otherwise caused by the FSS. The structure has good transmission characteristics for 900/1800/1900-MHz mobile bands and performs well for both horizontal and vertical polarizations. The distance between the two layers is less than a quarter free-space wavelengths. Theoretical and experimental results are presented.     

Woodpile EBG phase shifter

A phase shifter in an alumina woodpile electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) defect waveguide that operates at microwave frequencies is demonstrated. The phase shift is introduced by sequentially adding low dielectric constant rods to the voids directly above the defect waveguide. The addition of the extra rods creates selected phase delay without significantly affecting the transmission performance of the woodpile waveguide. Measured and computed results in Ku-band are presented to confirm the performance of the device     

Analysis of a novel expanded tip wire (ETW) antenna for microwave ablation of cardiac arrhythmias

A novel expanded tip wire (ETW) catheter antenna is proposed for microwave ablation for the treatment of atrial fibrillation (AF). The antenna is designed as an integral part of coaxial cable so that it can be inserted via a 6F catheter. A numerical model based on the rotationally symmetric finite-difference time-domain technique incorporating the generalized perfectly matched layer as the absorbing boundary condition has been utilized to accurately model the interaction between the antenna and the myocardium. Numerical and in-vitro experimental results are presented for specific absorption rate, return loss and heating pattern produced by the antenna. Both numerical modeling and in-vitro experimentation show that the proposed ETW antenna produces a well-defined electric field distribution that provides continuous long and linear lesions for the treatment of AF.     

Rotationally symmetric FDTD for wideband performance prediction of TM01 DR filters

The generalized perfectly matched layer (GPML) coupled with rotationally symmetric (RS)‐FDTD method has been utilized to extract the S‐parameters for several probe‐coupled TM₀₁ dielectric resonator (DR) filters to directly obtain the theoretical wideband spurious performance. The computationally efficient (RS)‐FDTD method has also been used to obtain accurate filter parameters for TE₀₁ and TM₀₁ dielectric resonators loaded in cylindrical cavities. The RS‐FDTD method combined with digital filtering and the Matrix Pencil technique are used to analyze the resonant frequencies, inter‐resonator coupling, and external Q values. When perturbation theory is used with RS‐FDTD, accurate values of unloaded Q are obtained. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 12: 259–271, 2002.     

Microwave filters with improved spurious performance based onsandwiched conductor dielectric resonators

Microwave filters based on a novel resonator comprised of a sandwiched conductor dielectric resonator (SCDR) loaded in a cylindrical cavity are analyzed in this paper. The SCDR is a compact resonator that exhibits good spurious performance. Resonant frequencies of the lower order modes are analyzed, and mode charts, unloaded Q, slot coupling, and screw coupling graphs are presented. S-parameters are computed using the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method for one- and four-pole SCDR filters and compared with measured results. The measured spurious performance for the four-pole elliptic function filter shows a large improvement over conventional dielectric-resonator filters. The measured results agree closely with predicted values obtained using the FDTD method