By introducing an L-shaped metal plate connecting with the spiral monopole antenna, a planar compact ultra-high-frequency (UHF) tag antenna for radiofrequency identification system is proposed. With the overall antenna size of only 13 × 9 × 1.6 mm3, the proposed tag antenna provides the measured impedance bandwidth of 12 MHz to comply with Taiwan UHF operating band (922–928 MHz). The measured peak gain and antenna efficiency are approximately −1.1 dBi and 27% for Taiwan UHF band, respectively. Meanwhile, the measured reading distance can approach 250 m. Good tag sensitivity is obtained across the desired frequency band.

In this paper, a small ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna with two stop bands by a compact electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) cell loaded with two new open meander slots is presented. With the coupling of the EBG cell to the feedline, the stop bands are formed. The designed EBG cell is a mushroom type that has the advantages of being able to independently control the stop bands, high responsiveness selectivity of stop bands, easy switching, the need for fewer EBG cells, and low impact on the working characteristics of the antenna. To have a better understanding of the proposed EBG mechanism, characteristic mode analysis is used. The size reduction of the suggested antenna is obtained by halving the reference antenna relative to the axis of symmetry. The measurement results for −10 dB adaptation are from 2.73 to 13 GHz with stop bands at 3.51 GHz (12.9%) and 5.34 GHz (14.1%). The radiation behavior of the minimized antenna is similar to that of a reference antenna. Minimized UWB antenna with transmission function and group delay with small variations in the operating frequency range is suitable for small multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) and diversity systems.

In this paper a novel compact multi-band printed coplanar waveguide (CPW)-feed antenna for wireless local area network (WLAN)/WiMAX/RFID applications is proposed. The proposed antenna is composed of a multi-triangular structure as metal ground plane and the radiation element with four different branches, both of the structures are printed on the same side of a substrate and the antenna is fed by a CPW. By carefully tuning the locations and the sizes of these four branches, the antenna can yield three different resonating frequencies to cover the desired bands for WLAN/WiMAX/RFID applications. The simulated and measured results demonstrate that the proposed antenna has the impedance bandwidth (for return loss less than −10 dB) of 700 MHz (2.2−2.9 GHz), 540 MHz (3.16–3.7 GHz), and 850 MHz (5.05–5.9 GHz), respectively, which can cover the WLAN 2.4/5.8 GHz bands, the WiMAX 2.5/3.5 GHz bands, and the RFID 2.45/5.8 GHz bands.

A new simple compact ultra-wideband (UWB) dielectric resonator antenna is presented. The antenna consists of a modified stepped microstrip-fed monopole printed antenna loaded with a rectangular dielectric resonator, truncated ground plane, and a parasitic strip underneath the dielectric resonator (DR). Using an optimized truncated ground plane and a combination of stepped feed line with DR an ultra-wide impedance bandwidth of 153% for (∣S11∣ ≤ −10 dB), covering the frequency range of (3.7–28 GHz) is achieved. The added parasitic strip can improve the radiation pattern, especially at high frequencies. The proposed antenna covers almost the entire UWB (3.1–10.6 GHz), Ku (12.4–18 GHz), and K (18–26.6 GHz) frequency bands. Also this antenna has an omnidirectional and stable radiation pattern over the whole operating frequency range and a compact size of (15 × 20 × 5.8 mm3) that make it suitable for wideband wireless system applications. This structure is light weight and can be easily fabricated. A prototype is built and measured. The simulated and measured results are in good agreement.

This paper proposes a practical approach for developing a new class of compact slow-wave coplanar waveguide (CPW) series/shunt stubs, which offer 40% reduction in size relative to a conventional design. It demonstrates that the technique using interdigitated capacitive loading can provide size and cost reductions, while also providing performance enhancements such as better return loss. The experimental prototypes presented in this paper demonstrate the validity of the design method and the ability to print interdigitated capacitors inside the center conductor of the series/shunt stubs. The principle of achieving such high-quality circuits is detailed and is also confirmed by theoretical and experimental results, which are in reasonable agreement up to at least 70 GHz. The paper also presents a family of novel topologies of slow wave bandpass filters based on the proposed capacitively loaded CPW series/shunt stubs.

This research work presents an implantable antenna that operates at 5.8 GHz. By using a radiator with a loop-based design, the antenna can be made smaller. Radiator is made up of three connected rectangular loops. On the substrate’s back side, an I-shaped ground plane is used. As substrate and superstrate, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) with dimensions of 7 mm × 5 mm × 0.3 mm is used. The conducting sections are made using copper foil that is 30 µm thick. The suggested antenna is examined by the implantable medical device using realistic human scalp phantom models and a homogenous skin box. Simulated study revealed that it operates around 5.8 GHz with a bandwidth from 5.69 to 5.92 GHz. The specific absorption rate was 0.28 and 0.26 W/kg for skin box and human scalp phantoms, respectively, at 1 mW input power across 1 g volume tissue.

This paper proposes planar antennas with quadri-polarization diversity using a pair of orthogonal linear polarizations and a pair of orthogonal circular polarizations (CP). A novel feeding network with four input ports and four output ports is presented, allowing antenna polarization diversity by selecting different input ports, which can generate right-handed CP, left-handed CP, horizontal linear polarization, and vertical linear polarization. The first design uses two square patch resonators to synthesize the four polarizations; the second design comprises four circularly polarized patches to synthesize the four polarizations with an improved axial-ratio (the ratio of orthogonal components of an E-field) bandwidth. The proposed designs do not require for embedding PIN diodes and DC-biasing circuits, making them suitable for use in higher-frequency applications where using lump elements would be difficult. The novel antennas provide potential polarization diversity features which can be used for many applications. Details of the antenna design are shown, and the measurement and simulation results are also provided to validate the proposed concept.

This paper describes the design considerations, integration issues, packaging, and experimental performance of recently developed D-Band dual-channel transceiver with on-chip antennas fabricated in a SiGe-BiCMOS technology. The design comprises a fully integrated transceiver circuit with quasi-monostatic architecture that operates between 114 and 124 GHz. All analog building blocks are controllable via a serial peripheral interface to reduce the number of connections and facilitate the communication between digital processor and analog building blocks. The two electromagnetically coupled patch antennas are placed on the top of the die with 8.6 dBi gain and have a simulated efficiency of 60%. The chip consumes 450 mW and is wire-bonded into an open-lid 5 × 5 mm2 quad-flat no-leads package. Measurement results for the estimation of range, and azimuth angle in single object situation are presented.

In this paper, a new methodology to compare the robustness of sensor structures employed in radiofrequency design for test (RF DFT) architectures for RF integrated circuits (ICs) is proposed. First, the yield loss and defect level of the test technique is evaluated using a statistical model of the Circuit under Test (obtained through non-parametric statistics and copula theory). Then, by carrying out the dispersion analysis of the sensor architecture, a figure of merit is established. This methodology reduces the number of iterations in the design flow of RF DFT sensors and makes it possible to evaluate process dispersion. The case study is a SiGe:C BiCMOS LNA tested by a single-probe measurement.

In this work, a compact, wideband, circularly polarized wearable antenna is proposed using asymmetric coplanar strip feeding for wireless health monitor applications in the ISM frequency band. The proposed antenna consists of a composite right/left transmission line (CRLH TL) inspired structure to achieve compactness and a rectangular ring slot is created in the metallic ground to enhance the CP radiation of the antenna. A 5 × 5 artificial magnetic conductor unit cell-based metasurface is designed which is operating at 2.4 GHz as a ground plane for the CRLH-based CP antenna. Implementation of AMC-based metasurface as a ground plane results in enhancement of radiation characteristics of CRLH TL antenna. The proposed antenna has a small footprint of 50 × 50 mm2 with measured impedance bandwidth of 2.3–3.2 GHz. The 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of the proposed antenna is 2.36–2.78 GHz with peak gain of 5.89 dBi. Simulation and experimental results show that proposed AMC-based antenna is robust in terms of structural deformation. Further, to validate the performance of the antenna for biomedical applications, we have simulated the proposed antenna with human phantom model. The proposed antenna exhibits stable scattering and radiation characteristics with the phantom body environment and due to the inclusion of AMC structure, the proposed design satisfies maximum specific absorption rate value given as per the IEEE standard safety guidelines.

This paper presents a Ka-band series single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch circuit realized in substrate-integrated coaxial line (SICL) environment for time division duplex operation. It is designed with a low-cost printed circuit board (PCB) technique. The size of the proposed circuit is $3.1\lambda_{g} \times 5.9\lambda_{g}$, where λg is the guided wavelength at the center frequency of 27.75 GHz. In this circuit, a SICL-based SPDT switching circuit is proposed with radio frequency (RF) isolation network where the shunt connection of butterfly stubs is in an asymmetric stripline environment. The proposed circuit exhibits less than 2 dB insertion loss at 27–27.9 GHz and less than 2.5 dB insertion loss at 27–28.5 GHz. The design offers good impedance matching in the Transmit (Tx) and Receive (Rx) channels from the common Tx/Rx input channel, along with more than 24 dB isolation between ON and OFF state output channels. The proposed circuit is suitable for millimeter-wave communication systems.

In this paper, the design of a broadband multi-layer microstrip antenna is presented. The broadband characteristics are the results of coupled resonances of the patch and transmission line through the resonant aperture. For this purpose, a cross-shaped transmission line, a ring slot, and a shaped ring patch are used. The simulation and measurement results indicate that a wide impedance bandwidth of 70% for |S11| < −10 dB and a perfect impedance matching 35% for |S11| < −20 dB are achieved. The gain is stable over the impedance bandwidth. The maximum gain of the proposed antenna is 8.8 dBi at 5 GHz. The radiation pattern, radiation efficiency, and cross-polarization are also suitable throughout the impedance bandwidth.

A wideband antipodal Vivaldi antenna has been designed and optimized. A slight improvement is obtained by employing multiple metalense based on circular split-ring resonators to maximize the antenna gain with the maximum bandwidth. The designed antennas have been fabricated and characterized, showing good agreement with simulations. The maximum measured gain is $G = 12\;{\textrm{dB}}$, and the −10 dB bandwidth is from $f = 3\;{\textrm{GHz}}$ to $f = 13\;{\textrm{GHz}}$.

A new quad-band bandpass filter for Global System for Mobile Communications, Wireless Local Area Network, and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access is designed and fabricated using the stub-loaded resonator (SLR) technology without complex fabrication process, such as via-hole or multi-layer substrate. Owing to the embedded SLR, the proposed quad-mode resonator is compact. Equivalent circuits of the proposed quad-mode resonator are analyzed in detail, and high design freedom is shown because of shifting the passband frequencies individually. Good passband selectivity and isolation of the each passband at 1.8, 2.4, 3.5, and 5.2 GHz can be well achieved due to the transmission zeros appeared near the each passband edges. Experimental results show good agreement with the simulated results.

The present paper presents a novel method to cope with the difficulty that an N-order filter can introduce a maximum number of transmission zeros (TZs) – no more than N. The method is described by a coupling topology and realized by a regular fully canonical filter structure to increase one more TZ for an N-order filter without any filter size increase. Besides, the TZ shift property, as another advantage of the proposed topology, is investigated. The coupling topology consists of a group of fully canonical coupling nodes with the harmonic node (non-resonating node (NRN)) excited by a λ/4 resonator. Owing to the unique coupling topology and coupling node distribution as well as the inclusion of an NRN, N + 1 TZs are generated by an N-order bandpass filter, while all the TZs are close to the passband and far away from the harmonic passband resulting the highly selective passbands. For demonstration, two-, three-, and four-order filters are designed and measured with the experimental results that confirm the proposed technique.

A novel wideband nonuniform metasurface antenna with stable gain is demonstrated. The nonuniform metasurface is composed of square patches and rings and is excited by a slot antenna. Based on characteristic mode analysis, two characteristic modes with same current direction are selected to achieve stable radiation performance in a wide frequency range. The wideband operation is achieved by assembling the resonant modes of the metasurface and slot antenna. The measured results show that the −10 dB impedance bandwidth of the proposed antenna is from 4.3 to 8.4 GHz (64.57%), and the 2 dB gain bandwidth is from 4.3 to 6.2 GHz (36.2%) with a peak gain value of 9.42 dBi. Moreover, broadside radiation performance is achieved.

In this paper, we introduce a compact 6 × 8 channel multiple-input multiple-output frequency-modulated continuous-wave radar system capable of determining the three-dimensional positions of targets despite utilizing a linear virtual array. The compact system, containing two cascaded radar transceiver ICs, has 48 virtual channels. We conduct a direction of arrival estimation with these virtual channels to determine the azimuth angle. To overcome the spatial limitation of the linear array, we use frequency-steered transmit antennas, which vary their main lobe direction during the frequency chirp, allowing the elevation angle to be determined by using a sliding window fast Fourier transform algorithm. In this study, we present the system’s concept along with the associated signal processing. By taking measurements in different scenarios, each with differently placed corner reflectors, we investigate the capability of the system to separate adjacent targets concerning range, azimuth, and elevation. These measurements are additionally employed to point out the design trade-offs inherent to the system.

A wideband tunable balanced phase shifter is achieved by utilizing varactor-loaded coupled lines (VLCLs)-embedded multistage branch-line structure. The tunable phase shift with low in-band phase deviation is attributed to the regulation in phase shift of the VLCLs and the horizontal microstrip lines in series. The wideband differential-mode (DM) impedance matching and common-mode (CM) suppression are due to multiple DM transmission poles and CM transmission zeros, which are brought about by the cascade of VLCLs and a microstrip line with short-circuited stubs in the DM-equivalent circuit and open-circuited stubs in the CM-equivalent circuit, respectively. Compared with the state-of-the-art tunable balanced phase shifters, the proposed design not only has the advantages of wide operating bandwidth (BW) with low in-band phase deviation but also has low insertion loss and easily fabricated structure. Theoretical analysis and design procedure were conducted, resulting in a prototype covering the frequency of 1.8 GHz. This prototype offers a tunable phase shift capability ranging from 0° to 90°. The prototype exhibits an operating BW of 45%, with a maximum phase deviation of ±6°. It also achieves a 10 dB DM return loss and CM suppression, while maintaining a maximum insertion loss of 2.5 dB.

This paper reports on quasi-elliptic dual-band bandpass filters (BPFs) that were designed for the Filter Student Design Competition of the 2019 European Microwave Week. The proposed lumped-element (LE) BPF concept is based on two dual-band transversal cells and one multi-resonant cell that allow the realization of symmetric and asymmetric dual-band transfer functions shaped by six poles and five transmission zeros. A compact implementation scheme based on LE series resonators is proposed for size compactness and wide spurious free out-of-band response. For proof-of-concept demonstration purposes, a dual-band LE prototype with two passbands centered 1 and 1.5 GHz was designed, manufactured, and measured. It exhibited the following radio frequency measured performance characteristics. Passbands centered at 1.02 and 1.45 GHz, minimum insertion loss levels of 2.0 and 2.7 dB, and bandwidth of 146 and 105 MHz, respectively, for the first and the second passband, and out-of-band rejection >30 dB between 0 and 894 MHz, 1.17–1.34 GHz, and 1.72–6.9 GHz.

A low profile printed slot antenna (PSA) backed by broadband stacked artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) is introduced in this study. First, a suggested PSA with the radiating tapered slots excited by coplanar-waveguide (CPW) is used to expand the bandwidth in the measured range of 9.05–10.95 GHz (S11 ≤ −10 dB). Then, the suggested stacked AMC surface as the ground plane of the antenna is inserted into the PSA to gain improved radiation efficiency. The realized result from the PSA with the 11 × 17 stacked AMC array exhibits −10 dB measured impedance bandwidth from 6.97 to 13.34 GHz (62.73%). The suggested PSA with AMC compared to the PSA without AMC exhibits a size reduction of 52%, enhanced bandwidth of almost 44%, and excellent impedance matching with uni-directional radiation patterns. The novel AMC unit cell is realized based on the recognized method of stacked elements. The stacked AMC design operates at 10.63 GHz with an AMC bandwidth of 8–12.84 GHz (45.8%) for X-band operation. Besides, by introducing a specific method based on the reflection results of the equivalent waveguide feed, the number of AMC unit cells is investigated to obtain an optimal AMC array. In this approach, an equivalent waveguide feed corresponding to the center operating frequency is considered to choose the number of AMC array reflector.