In this paper, optimization of a microstrip patch antenna is presented. The optimization uses a genetic algorithm in the IE3DTM Simulator. The optimization is done in several steps, first by changing the position of parasitic patches on the top layer, second by placing a feeding patch at the middle layer of geometry, and third by indirect coupling between the top and middle layer patches. Overall, we have performed many possible iterations and found appropriate geometry. From this appropriate geometry we have achieved maximum directional gain (6.2–8.8 dBi) over a 6 GHz bandwidth slot, 38% impedance bandwidth of the X-band and 14.8% impedance bandwidth of the Ku-band. The broadband frequency of operation is demonstrated by single geometry. The geometry of a single probe fed rectangular microstrip antenna incorporating a slot, gap coupled with a parasitic and an active patch on geometry, has been studied. We have investigated the height between active and parasitic patches as 0.0525λ and the height between parasitic patches itself as 0.0525λ. We have investigated the enhancement in maximum directional gain by stacking geometry with one active patch and two parasitic patches of different dimensions. This optimized antenna is used for X-band and Ku-band applications. The hardware validation and simulation results are matched to the proposed design.

This work presents a novel frequency miniaturized reconfigurable dual-mode stub-loaded resonator switchable from bandpass filter to single/double-notched bandnotch filter. The proposed filter topology employs RF PIN diodes as the switching device. Based on the odd- and even-mode equivalent circuits, the resonant characteristics of the proposed microstrip resonator are investigated. The defected ground structure pattern enhanced the performance; the 3-dB bandwidth reached 63%, with insertion loss of −0.5 dB. There was great sharpness of 55 dB in the low-frequency edge (from 1.7982 to 1.8466 GHz) and 33 dB in the high-frequency edge (from 3.4329 to 3.4995 GHz). The frequency-reconfigurable microstrip filter has been designed, fabricated, and measured for application in narrow band and ultra-wideband.

A high-directivity switched-beam antenna in the V-band is presented and includes a circularly-polarized transmit-array realized in a low-cost printed technology associated with a focal source array integrated on high-resistivity silicon. The measurements show a maximum gain of 12.1 dBi, a 3-dB gain-bandwidth of 57.8–70 GHz, and an axial ratio below 5 dB. The antenna exhibits five beams pointing from −22° to +23° in one plane, its size of 25 × 25 × 10 mm3 is compatible with the integration in different multimedia communication devices.

A compact printed reconfigurable monopole antenna with switchable band-notches is designed and manufactured. The proposed antenna mainly consists of a disc-like radiator with two pairs of T-shaped strips protruded inside a rectangular aperture. Five PIN diode switches are employed to bridge or open the slots, which allow the antenna to be configured into three different structures functioning as an ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna, or an antenna with notched frequencies at WLAN or WiMAX band. Design and optimization of the antenna are done using CST Microwave Studio. After fabrication on an FR4 substrate with dimensions of 35 mm (width) × 41 mm (length) × 1.5 mm (thickness), numerical and experimental results of the proposed reconfigurable antenna are presented and discussed. The experimental results confirm the design as a good candidate for UWB applications.

Various wireless applications are currently under development for the unlicensed 60 GHz band. This paper describes three examples with different system requirements. The first two are point-to-multipoint wireless networks (in an airplane and in a car) and the third one is a short range point-to-point connection. Special requirements of the applications are a high number of users for the point-to-multipoint connection and a high data rate of 10 Gbit/s for the point-to-point connection system. Implementation aspects are pointed out, which are important to demonstrate the functionality of the system in a relevant environment and are key aspects to develop the related products. For example, integration aspects of the antenna into an airplane passenger seat and the receiver concept of the radio frequency-(RF) front-end to reducing the power consumption at ultrahigh data rates are described. Additionally, to determine the geometrical system architecture, ray-tracing simulations inside an aircraft and inside a car were performed.

In this article, a meander line-shaped pentaband (2.18–2.24, 2.38–2.46, 2.65–2.70, 3.10–3.32, 3.38–3.46 GHz) four-element multiple-input–multiple-output antenna is presented. The proposed antenna is also circularly polarized in two bands (at 2.2 and 2.4 GHz) with dual-polarization like right-handed at port 1 or 3 and left-handed at port 2 or 4, which is widely used for mobile satellite services (MSS) and Internet of Things applications. This antenna is designed and fabricated with compact size 50 × 70 × 1.6 mm3 on the FR-4 substrate with good diversity performance in pentaband. Simulated results of antenna-like return loss, isolation, and parameters-related diversity have also been tested experimentally in a controlled environment, which is within the permissible limit. The designed antenna will be appropriate for MSS, industrial scientific and medical (ISM), broadband radio services and educational broadband services, WiMAX radio location services, and amateur radio services. Meanwhile, specific absorption rate of the designed antenna has been examined in an empirical environment for the Fresnel radiating near-field applications.

This paper investigates the effect of spontaneous polarization of magnetron-sputtered aluminum nitride on the electrical properties and reliability of Radio Frequency – Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems capacitive switches. The assessment is performed with the aid of application of thermally stimulated polarization currents in metal-insulator-metal capacitors and temperature dependence of device capacitance. The study reveals the presence of a surface charge, which is smaller than that expected from material spontaneous polarization, but definitely is responsible for the low degradation rate under certain bias polarization life tests.

Owing to dynamic nature of vehicular environments, it becomes essential to achieve effective communication via vehicle-to-vehicle and infrastructure-to-vehicle. This leads to the need for an antenna system that supports multiple frequency bands, high gain, broadside radiation pattern, and circular polarization. We propose single-arm penta-band-based spiral antenna with dimensions of 51 × 35 × 1.574 mm3 resonating at navigational wireless frequencies 1.2 GHz for IRNSS and 1.5 GHz for GPS; wireless communication frequencies 2.45 and 3.3 GHz and dedicated short range communication frequency 5.8 GHz. Linear taper feed has been introduced to achieve good impedance matching and the outer edge feed of the spiral on the same plane helps to achieve circular polarization. The measurement result proves the betterment in impedance of the spiral antenna that varies from 50 –55 Ω across the desired operating frequencies.

This paper presents for the first time a novel concept of a microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) waveguide switch based on a reconfigurable surface, whose working principle is to block the wave propagation by short-circuiting the electrical field lines of the TE10 mode of a WR-12 rectangular waveguide. The reconfigurable surface is only 30 µm thick and consists of up to 1260 micromachined cantilevers and 660 contact points in the waveguide cross-section, which are moved simultaneously by integrated MEMS comb-drive actuators. Measurements of fabricated prototypes show that the devices are blocking wave propagation in the OFF-state with over 30 dB isolation for all designs, and allow for transmission of less than 0.65 dB insertion loss for the best design in the ON-state for 60–70 GHz. Furthermore, the paper investigates the integration of such microchips into WR-12 waveguides, which is facilitated by tailor-made waveguide flanges and compliant, conductive-polymer interposer sheets. It is demonstrated by reference measurements where the measured insertion loss of the switches is mainly attributed to the chip-to-waveguide assembly. For the first prototypes of this novel MEMS microwave device concept, the comb-drive actuators did not function properly due to poor fabrication yield. Therefore, for measuring the OFF-state, the devices were fixated mechanically.

Design of single-feed circularly polarized (CP) microstrip antenna is proposed in this article. The design employs the concept of E-shape patch with inclined fractal defected ground structure (IFDGS), which can improve the impedance bandwidth, gain, and axial ratio (AR) bandwidth. The excellent enhanced impedance bandwidth, axial ratio bandwidth, and gain are achieved by an inclined E-shaped fractal etched on the ground plane. The parameter studies of the E-shaped IFDGS are given to illustrate the way to obtain CP radiation. The third iterative IFDGS is fabricated on easily available FR4 substrate with a size of 0.494 λ0 × 0.494 λ0 × 0.019 λ0 (λ0 is the wavelength in free space at 3.624 GHz). The measured results verify the simulated results and show good agreement. The proposed antenna shows an impedance bandwidth of 12.7% at a centre frequency of 3.47 GHz and 3-dB AR bandwidth for this band is 2.39% at a centre frequency of 3.626 GHz. The measured peak gain for the proposed antenna is found as 8.1 dBi. The proposed antenna can be suitable for mobile WIMAX operation (IEEE 802.16e-2005 standard), wireless communication in CA-band and FCC.

A novel compact ultra-wideband (UWB) eight-way ring-cavity power divider is presented in this paper. To broaden the bandwidth of the power divider/combiner, the stepped-impedance technology is used to realize the impedance match. The network of this eight-way ring-cavity power divider has been analyzed. The measured results reasonably agree with the simulated ones. The measured return loss is greater than 10 dB from 5.2 to 18.6 GHz. The average insertion loss, amplitude imbalance, and phase imbalance are around 9.4 dB (including the 9-dB power-dividing insertion loss), ±0.7 dB, ±6°, respectively, across the entire operating frequency range.

This work focuses on the impact of the build orientation on additively manufactured waveguide-based hybrid couplers for D-band frequency range and relates it to other sources of uncertainty within the overall manufacturing process and measurement instrumentation for the D-band frequency range. The designed specimens are first printed from UV curable photopolymer resin and subsequently metal coated by an electroless silver plating process, which in turn is improved by making use of the slotted waveguide approach. Although the requirements toward geometrical precision to achieve phase errors below 10° are in an order of 0.1 mm, a desktop grade DLP printer is utilized in this work in order to point out the prospects and limitations of additive manufacturing. Furthermore, waveguide paths with bends are part of the model and their impact on the measured attenuation is estimated explicitly.

Despite this narrow field of tolerances, one specimen could have been realized, which achieves a measured output magnitude imbalance of 0.7 dB over the frequency range from 120 to 155 GHz while at the same time exhibiting a phase deviation of only <10° from the desired 90°. With these demonstrated results, the proposed approach provides suitability for future applications in the D-band frequency range.

This paper presents a novel technique to design a Rotman lens feeding a wide bandwidth microstrip patch antenna array for 60 GHz radio frequency identification (RFID) applications. The proposed scheme supports both location positioning and increases the communication range through beam forming. The antenna array is designed using λ/4 microstrip transmission lines to support high gain, directivity, and bandwidth. The progressive phase delay using the Rotman lens is realized independently using transmission lines to reduce the complexity of the design and improve the performance parameters. The dummy ports are terminated by λ/4 radial stubs which eliminates the need for via holes and expensive connectors which reduces the fabrication costs.

A new flexible and miniaturized power divider (PD), based on the Wilkinson PD topology, is carried out in this paper. Flexibility and size reduction are achieved simultaneously thanks to both an open-stub loading the input port and additional transmission lines (TLines) connecting the output ports to the isolation resistance. Design equations and rules are given. As a proof-of-concept, two PDs working at 2.45 GHz were fabricated and measured. Then, on the basis of the previous developments, a 1:4 power-dividing feeding network was realized. It highlights the high performance and flexibility of the proposed PD. Agreement between simulation and measurement results is very good, for PDs as well as for the feeding network, thus validating the proposed approach. This concept is straightforward to be applied at higher frequencies, in particular in the millimeter-wave range on CMOS technologies, where flexibility in the choice of the TLines characteristic impedances and size reduction are mandatory.

In order to encrypt/encode data based on the magnitude level of the radar cross-section (RCS), we propose an approach with a precise estimation considering the resonant characteristics of a multipatch backscatter-based chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) dedicated for chipless tags depolarization. The working principle is based on the polarization mismatch between the tag and the reader antenna to control the magnitude of the backscatter, which allows a reliable detection in real environments. We introduce in this paper a new 4-bit chipless RFID tag with an enhanced RCS, based on a triangular patch antenna with multiple resonators. Additionally, we propose an ultra-wideband impulse radar (UWB-IR)-based reader that interrogates the chipless tag with a UWB pulse, and the received backscatter was studied in both time- and frequency-domains. The antenna was operating from 4.7 to 6.1 GHz, a band allocated for RFID systems. The obtained experimental measurement results in the environment of anechoic chamber were exceptionally relevant to validate the simulation results.

In this work, a simple and efficient approach to design a microstrip diplexer is proposed. It is based on the combination of two compact Square Open Loop Resonator band pass filters. These filters are designed for Radio Frequency Identification application at 2.45 GHz frequency. Using the Chebychev approximation, the two filters and diplexer are designed, simulated, fabricated, and measured. The results show that the diplexer presents a high selectivity, a good insertion loss and high isolation (>40 dB) with the compact size. The diplexer also shows a good performance when associated with the patch antenna operating at 2.45 GHz.

This paper presents results of direction of arrival (DOA) estimation using multiple signal classification (MUSIC), Root-MUSIC, and estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance technique algorithms. As is well known, these algorithms are mainly based on the specific properties of the signal covariance matrix as well as the decomposition of the observation space into two subspaces, one for the signal and the other for the noise. Here, we are particularly interested in the quality of sources localization considering only the case of uncorrelated radio frequency signals impinging on an antenna array. A measurement system consisting of a linear array antenna and a five-port network applicable to a demodulator such as a receiver is used for the DOA estimation process. Co-simulations performed with the Advanced Device System and Matlab yielded interesting results not only on their performance but also on their limitation.

In this paper, a semi-flexible 2 × 1 array antenna is proposed with epoxy glass fiber and graphene as patch and ground, respectively. Microstrip patch antenna with a center parasitic patch of half-wavelength and slot in the radiating patch have been incorporated for the bandwidth enhancement in order of 79.56% (2.21–5.13 GHz). The antenna has an overall size of 0.30λ × 0.24λ at a lower frequency of operation (2.45 GHz). The incorporation of slotted Graphene in radiating element leads to a wideband regime with satisfactory gain values of 2.73 and 3.744 dBi at 2.40 and 4.0 GHz, respectively. Antenna radiation efficiency in the range of 78% with linear polarization makes the antenna appropriate for WLAN band and smart wireless devices application.

Antenna-pattern measurements obtained from a double-metal supra-terahertz-frequency (supra-THz) quantum cascade laser (QCL) are presented. The QCL is mounted within a mechanically micro-machined waveguide cavity containing dual diagonal feedhorns. Operating in continuous-wave mode at 3.5 THz, and at an ambient temperature of ~60 K, QCL emission has been directed via the feedhorns to a supra-THz detector mounted on a multi-axis linear scanner. Comparison of simulated and measured far-field antenna patterns shows an excellent degree of correlation between beamwidth (full-width-half-maximum) and sidelobe content and a very substantial improvement when compared with unmounted devices. Additionally, a single output has been used to successfully illuminate and demonstrate an optical breadboard arrangement associated with a future supra-THz Earth observation space-borne payload. Our novel device has therefore provided a valuable demonstration of the effectiveness of supra-THz diagonal feedhorns and QCL devices for future space-borne ultra-high-frequency Earth-observing heterodyne radiometers.

In this paper, an electromagnetic (EM) simulation assisted parameter extraction procedure is demonstrated for accurate modeling of down-scaled transferred-substrate InP HBTs. The external parasitic network associated with via transitions and device electrodes is carefully extracted from calibrated three-dimensional EM simulations up to 325 GHz. Following an on-wafer multi-line Through-Reflect-Line calibration procedure, the external parasitic network is de-embedded from the transistor measurements and the active device parameters are extracted in a reliable way. The small-signal model structure augmented with the distributed parasitic network provides accurate small-signal prediction up to 220 GHz.