In this paper, the designs and experimental performances of wideband (higher than one octave) high-efficiency, high-power amplifiers (HPA) working in the 1–4 GHz range, using the same GaN process, are presented. They are based on the Bode–Fano integrals, which can be applied to a trade-off calculation between bandwidth and efficiency. Firstly, an microwave intregrated circuits (MIC) wideband HPA, externally matched, is presented. It generates a continuous wave (CW) output power (Pout) greater than 40 W, a power gain (GP) higher than 9.2 dB and a corresponding power added efficiency (PAE) (drain efficiency (DE)) ranged between 36 and 44% (40 and 48%) over the 1–3 GHz bandwidth. Two other amplifiers have been designed upon the same theoretical methodology, with a passive GaAs MMIC circuit technology, enabling to reduce the final size down to 420 mm2. The first internally matched Quasi monolithic microwave intergrated circuits (Quasi-MMIC) single-ended HPA generates a pulsed Pout greater than 25 W, GP higher than 9.8 dB, and a corresponding PAE (DE) ranged between 37 and 52.5% (40 and 55%) over the 2–4 GHz bandwidth. The second internally matched Quasi-MMIC HPA, based on balanced architecture, generates a pulsed Pout higher than 45 W, GP higher than 9.5 dB and PAE (DE) ranged between 33 and 44% (38 and 50%) over the 2–4 GHz bandwidth. These results are among the best ones published in terms of PAE and Pout in instantaneous octave bandwidth in the 1–4 GHz frequency range.

This paper presents the behavior of three iterations of a coplanar waveguide fed CANTOR Set fractal antenna. This kind of antennas allows having a broadband behavior and important gains. Also, the setup of slots allows having more lower resonant frequencies and therefore designing miniaturized antennas with good performances. The proposed antennas are suitable for 2.5/3.3/5/5.5 GHz worldwide interoperability for microwave access and for 2.4–2.5/4.9–5.9 GHz wireless local area networks applications. The simulations were performed in FEKO 6.3. The measurements were performed with Vector Network Analyzer HP 8719C.

In this study, the problem of backward heating in microwave ablation technique is examined and an electromagnetic solution based on the use of high impedance graphene material is presented for its mitigation. In this context, a one-atom-thick graphene layer is added on the coaxial double slot antenna. In addition to the electromagnetic behavior, thermal effects caused by the graphene-covered antenna are emphasized. The graphene's conductivity being highly dependent on its chemical potential and the relaxation time, a parametric study is performed to determine a range of tolerances within which the graphene-coated antenna outperform a typical graphene-free antenna. The range of values is found to be 0 < μc < 0.5 eV and τ < 0.4 ps, for the chemical potential and the relaxation time, respectively. The backward heating problem being prevented, the ablation region is ensured to be spherical around the tip of the antenna. Effects of the graphene layer to the heat dissipation in the tissue, the necrotic tissue ratio (damage to the cancerous tissue of the caused by electromagnetic energy), and the treatment time using the coaxial double slot antenna were examined. The results show that the heat dissipation is concentrated around the slots (region of cancerous tissue) and a higher necrotic tissue ratio can be achieved with a graphene-covered double slot antenna in a shorter time.

This paper presents the technical realization of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar MIRA-CLE Ka (MIMO radar-configurable in Ka-band). This system is a stationary imaging radar without any mechanical moving parts. It is highly portable, ready to use in only a couple of minutes, and it is able to process one radar image per second during continuous radar measurements in the current stage of development. In addition to the image processing, it is possible to detect changes in range of 0.1 mm in the illuminated scene. The MIMO system operates in Ka band and consists of 16 receive and 16 transmit elements, so that 256 virtual elements are generated during signal processing. The size of the antenna's frontend is about 80 cm in width. Owing to its compact size, flexibility, and realtime capability, the system offers a wide field of applications.

In this paper, high-gain cavity backed patch antenna arrays are proposed based on low temperature co-fired ceramic technology at 140 GHz. By introducing a substrate integrated cavity to the patch antenna element, the gain is enhanced by 3.3 dB. Moreover, a rectangular ring is loaded around the patch for better impedance matching and further gain enhancement. The final simulated maximum gain of the proposed antenna element is 9.8 dBi. Based on the proposed high-gain antenna element, a 4 × 4-element array and an 8 × 8- element array are presented. The 4 × 4-element array shows a measured maximum gain of 16.9 dBi with 9.5 GHz bandwidth (136.2–145.7 GHz) and the 8 × 8-element array shows a measured maximum gain of 21.8 dBi with 9.8 GHz bandwidth(136.7–146.5 GHz), respectively.

This paper presents a simple and compact coplanar waveguide (CPW)-fed circular-shaped reconfigurable patch antenna with a switchable circular polarization (CP) sense. The circular patch is cut at the ends vertically and switches are introduced to connect the patch ends. By controlling the ON/OFF status of the two switches, the polarization of the antenna can be switched between two states: left-hand circular polarization and right-hand circular polarization. The patch is designed on a very thin RT Duroid substrate of dielectric constant (εr) of 2.2 and thickness of 0.254 mm. The overall antenna dimensions are 35 × 30 mm. The antenna is designed and simulated using finite-element method -based EM simulator, HFSS. For each switching condition the return loss curve, radiation pattern are obtained. Axial ratio curves for polarization diversity cases are also plotted. Parametric studies have been made in order to get optimized values for certain antenna dimensions such as thickness, CPW ground to feed gap, etc.

A flexible and adaptive energy-efficient high-speed wireless hub is developed in polymer foil as a Hybrid System-in-Foil (HySiF) using Chip-Film Patch (CFP) technology. In this matter, the SiGe BiCMOS silicon chips (2.39 × 1.65 mm2) are thinned down to 45 μm and are embedded face-up inside a two-polymer CFP carrier. The active pads of the embedded silicon chips inside foil are extended to the surface of the foil to interconnect to the antenna on the foil. The integrated hybrid system has a signal transmission at 5–6 GHz frequency band. The overall thickness of the system is below 100 μm and its bendability is down to 4 mm radius of curvature. The designed and fabricated PA silicon chips operate at 50 mA with a 1.5 V supply voltage. Therefore, in addition to the high lateral thermal resistance of the thinned chip, self-heating loop inside polymer due to the low thermal conductivity of the embedding polymer raises the system temperature. Consequently, the thermal behavior and RF performance of the PA chip under different conditions are investigated. Moreover, the antenna with the required carrier frequency is simulated, fabricated, and measured on top of the polymer foil as a stand-alone system in the flexible CFP.

In this paper, a self-actuated frequency-selective radome is presented and applied to a microstrip antenna. The radome acts as a self-triggered switchable screen to achieve adaptive electromagnetic protection in the L band. A prototype of the radome is fabricated to measure its transmission performance. The switchable characteristic is verified by a high-power radiation experiment carried out in a waveguide system. Besides, the antenna is placed under the radome to realize integration analysis, and the radiation performance of the composite antenna radome is measured in the anechoic chamber.

This paper presents the design and implementation of power amplifiers using high-power gallium nitride (GaN) high electronic mobility transistor (HEMT) powerbars and monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). The first amplifier is a class AB implementation for worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) applications with emphasis on a low temperature cofired ceramics (LTCC) packaging solution. The second amplifier is a class S power amplifier using a high power GaN HEMT MMIC. For a 450 MHz continuous wave (CW) signal, the measured output power is 5.8 W and drain efficiency is 18.5%. Based on time domain simulations, loss mechanisms are identified and optimization steps are discussed.

Two types of optoelectronic oscillators delivering high spectral purity microwave signals are presented in this paper. These oscillators use the Pound–Drever–Hall laser stabilization technique to lock the laser carrier onto two different types of passive optical resonators featuring high-quality factors: a fiber ring resonator (FRR) and a whispering gallery mode monocrystalline disk-shaped micro-resonator. The different noise processes occurring inside these oscillators are discussed. Particular attention is given to the conversion of the laser's amplitude and frequency noise into RF phase noise via the laser stabilization loop and the resonator, and via the photodetector nonlinearity as well. A modeling approach using CAD software is also proposed to qualitatively evaluate laser noise conversion through the optical resonator. Moreover, different contributions of nonlinear optical scattering noise are discussed, mainly in the case of the FRR-based oscillator. When controlling these nonlinear optical effects in the case of the FRR, low-phase noise operation of the oscillator has been achieved, with a −40 dBc/Hz noise level at 10 Hz offset frequency from a 10.2 GHz RF carrier.

In this paper, an antenna with 8 GHz (7–15 GHz) bandwidth is designed, simulated, fabricated, and measured. Commonly, for the effective use of electromagnetic sources, mode converters are used to transform donut-shaped patterns to directive patterns. This paper introduces a novel antenna called the pattern director antenna (PDA) that solves most problems associated with the azimuthally symmetric output modes of high-power microwave sources. The PDA accepts directly (without the need for mode conversion) an azimuthally symmetric generated mode of an electromagnetic source and converts it to radiate a directive pattern. For the proof of concept and validation of the design by simulations, the 3D printing technology [using polylactic acid (PLA)] is used to fabricate the PDA and measure its radiation patterns and return loss. The selected material is cheap and also environmentally friendly. The antenna was coated with aluminum to become a conductor. The gain is from 16.8 to 21.8 dB in the frequency range. The S11, main lobe deviation (MLD), and sidelobe level (SLL) are less than −15 dB, 2°, and −7 dB, in all frequency range, respectively. The simulation results are in good agreement with the measurement.

In this paper, a novel microstrip bandpass filter is proposed to enhance sideband selectivity, suppress harmonic frequency up to three-order as well as to keep a miniaturized size for frequency synthesizer application. The filter is constructed by four λ/4 folded stepped-impedance resonators (FSIRs) and two λ/2 stepped-impedance resonators at input/output ports to create three pairs of coupling paths and then to produce three cross-coupling transmission zeros (TZs) as well as to achieve a size miniaturization with 96% reduction compared with the conventional filter. By adding a common grounded metallized via hole among four λ/4 FSIRs of the filter, additional four mixed electric and magnetic coupling paths are set to generate extra four TZs. With these seven TZs, the proposed filter achieves a good sideband selectivity and harmonic suppression. Finally, the filter is designed, fabricated, and measured, its measured results are in well agreement with its simulated results.

A novel transmission-line model is used for the analysis of planar structures, including wire-medium (WM) slabs with vertically aligned wires. The network formalism allows for an effective determination of the relevant spectral Green's functions, of the modal dispersion equation via transverse resonance, as well as of the far-field radiation pattern produced by simple sources via reciprocity, as opposed to the more cumbersome field-matching approach. Numerical results, validated also against state-of-the-art simulation software, confirm the accuracy and effectiveness of the proposed approach. In particular, modal and radiation features are presented for a class of leaky-wave antennas based on planar WM loaded configurations covered by partially reflecting screens, for which leaky unimodal regimes are achieved by minimizing spurious radiation from the quasi-transverse electromagnetic (TEM) mode.

This paper describes a linear-polarized reflector that reflects incident wave almost parallel to its surface at 60 GHz, when illuminated by an impinging plane wave with normal incidence. This structure is designed as a simple and low-cost passive repeater with both a quasi-endfire radiation and a flat profile. Working as a transmission relay, it is a quite potential and possible solution to improve the radio-coverage in the T-shaped corridor, which is a typical scenario of non-light-of-sight (NLOS) environment for 60 GHz indoor communications. The proposed repeater consists of an array of parallel grooves with appropriate depths, drilled in a metallic plate. Full-wave simulations and theoretical investigations are carried out to demonstrate the working principle and to optimize the performance. Then, an 80-groove breadboard in the size of 200 mm × 200 mm is fabricated and measured to explore the feasibility of the concept. In a practical measurement, when the distance from the repeater to transmitting antenna (Tx) is 2 m, and to the receiving antenna (Rx) is 1.5 m, the repeater exhibits a main beam at ±75° with gain up to 22.7 dB. The communication between Tx and Rx in NLOS areas is thus successfully recovered.

In this paper, a novel circularly polarized square slot microstrip antenna is proposed for radio frequency identification (RFID) applications. The circular polarization is achieved by incorporating an arc-shaped strip in the square slot antenna. This antenna is fed by deformed bent feeding line to achieve a broad bandwidth (BW). The key parameters of the antenna are used for parametric study to understand the influence on the antenna performance. To validate simulation results of the design, a prototype is fabricated on the commercially available FR4 material. Measured results show a good agreement with the simulated results. It is found that the antenna shows an impedance BW of 170 MHz (844–1014 MHz) and axial-ratio BW of 170 MHz (834–1004 MHz), which shows that the proposed antenna is a good candidate to be used as a RFID antenna.

Metamaterial transmission lines can be realized as a combination of right- and left-handed transmission line (TL) sections exhibiting positive and negative dispersion. This approach gives additional degrees of freedom for improving the performance of microwave devices. Artificial right- and left-handed sections, which are based on lumped-element unit cells consisting of inductance and capacitances (LC-cells), are used. This makes it possible to decrease dimensions of the devices drastically. Furthermore, using variable capacitors in LC-cells allows designing tunable devices. This paper presents the results of design, numerical simulation, and experimental investigation of a tunable rat-race ring and free-of-spurious response dual-band filter manufactured as integrated ceramic multilayer circuits based on low-temperature co-fired ceramics. Commercial semiconductor varactors have been used as tunable components.

In this paper, a metasurface-based aperture-coupled circularly polarized (CP) antenna with wideband and high radiation gain is proposed and analyzed. The proposed antenna is comprised of coplanar waveguide coupling with 4 × 4 corner truncated square patches, which show compact size and low profile. The mechanism of the CP antenna is analyzed theoretically based on the mode analysis and equivalent circuit analysis. The parameters of feeding structure and truncated corner are studied and optimized to achieve wide impedance bandwidth (BW) and axial ratio (AR) BW. Finally, an overall size of 38.8 mm × 38.8 mm × 3.5 mm (0.71λ0 × 0.71λ0 × 0.064λ0 at 5.5 GHz) CP antenna is proposed and fabricated. The simulated results demonstrate that over 41.7% impedance BW (S11 < −10 dB) of 4.55–6.95 GHz and 3 dB AR BW of 5.05–6.15 GHz (fractional BW is about 19.6%) are achieved. In addition, the antenna yielded a broadside CP radiation with a high gain average about 7.5 dBic. Experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated ones.

In this paper, the design of a graded honeycomb radar absorbing structure (RAS) is presented to realize both a wide bandwidth and absorption over a wide range of angles. For both transverse-electric and transverse-magnetic polarization, a fractional bandwidth of more than 118.6% is achieved for at least a 10 dB reflectivity reduction when the incident angle is <45°, an 8 dB reduction when the incident angle is <55° and a 5 dB reduction when the incident angle is <70°. Meanwhile the 10 dB reduction upper angle limit is approximately 30° for the uniform coating honeycomb RAS in the literature, which loses its absorbing ability when the incident angle is larger than 55°. Furthermore, the total thickness of our design is 10.7 mm, which is only approximately 1.29 times that of the theoretical limitation. The good agreement between the calculated, simulated, and measured results demonstrates the validity of this optimization.

In this paper a novel approach for determining the four noise parameters of FET devices over frequency is presented. Such methodology is made of two parts: the first one allows to straightforwardly extract single-frequency noise parameters from source-pull data; the second one extends this capability to multi-frequency, source-pull data to obtain a full description of device noise behavior over frequency by means of at most 10 constant parameters (depending on the required accuracy). The whole process is automated via a software routine and does not need a previous knowledge of the FET equivalent circuit's topology, or the values of its elements. This peculiarity makes the proposed method very well suited to quick characterization campaigns of active devices, avoiding the burden of a whole set of prior, different measurements and the relevant, critical extraction procedures, which are strongly dependent on the device.

A new microstrip lowpass filter with compact size and ultra-wide stopband using T-shaped resonator is proposed. To make smaller the circuit size of the filter, cursive transmission line is also suggested. Moreover, exact equation of most important transmission zero is calculated based on LC equivalent circuit and transformation function. A demonstration filter with 3 dB cut-off frequency at 1.02 has been designed, fabricated, and measured. Results show that a relative stopband band width of 166.3% (referred to suppression degree of 20 dB) is achieved while obtaining high figure of merit of 46 274.