In this paper, a compact tri-band asymmetric coplanar strip (ACS)-fed meander-line antenna for wireless communications is proposed. Two inverted-L-shaped resonators are added to a simple meandered radiator for standard tri-band operation. Parametric studies indicate that operating frequencies of the proposed antenna are determined by the dimensions of the two inverted-L-shaped resonators. The measured results show that the proposed antenna can achieve three frequency bands; i.e. 1.48–1.63, 2.25–2.48, and 4.22–6.0 GHz. These bands can successfully cover the global positioning system L1, wireless local area network (WLAN), and HIPERLAN/2 operation bands, respectively. The proposed antenna exhibits good radiation patterns with reasonable gain and high radiation efficiency across the operating bands. In addition, the proposed antenna has compact size and simple feeding scheme, which make it suitable to be integrated within the portable device for wireless communications.

This article discusses the reduction of nonlinearities in analog-to-digital (A/D) converters using digital signal processing (DSP). Also modeling of certain essential nonlinearities is considered in detail. The main focus is on wideband radio receivers, such as the emerging cognitive radio applications, where a collection of signals at different frequency channels is converted to digital domain as a whole. Therefore, the overall dynamic range can easily be in the order of tens of dBs and thus even mild nonlinear distortion can cause strong carriers to block weaker signal bands. In this article, a mathematical model for clipping distortion due to improper input signal conditioning is derived through Fourier analysis. Additionally, stemming from the analysis an adaptive DSP-based post-processing method for reducing the effects of clipping and integral nonlinearity (INL) in A/D converters is presented with illustrative examples using both computer simulations and laboratory radio signal measurements.

The implementation of advanced multi-level modulation schemes such as quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK) in contrast to the conventional on–off keying is crucial to further boost the terahertz (THz) communications speed. Thereby, carrier phase noise reduction in the THz range is one of the key goals that need to be urgently achieved. In this paper, the photonic-based THz sources and the phase noise problem are briefly summarized. Then, a low phase-noise photonic source based on the stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) optical fiber cavity is first applied for a 300-GHz-band QPSK wireless communication link. The highest data rate at forward-error-correction limited condition was 15 Gbaud utilizing the SBS-based photonic source with a small transmit power of ~ −36 dBm. Its transmission characteristics are evaluated and compared with the conventional optical frequency comb generator (OFCG)-based source at 5 Gbaud. The proposed SBS-based photonic source has been proven to offer better performances than the OFCG-based source with respect to the phase noise, optical carrier to noise ratio, and bit error rate in communications.

In this work, the design, fabrication, and testing of low sidelobe level (SLL) Butler matrix-based beamformers is presented. The paper is divided in two parts. The first part deals with the conventional technique of simultaneous excitation of input ports. The second part introduces some novel modified low SLL Butler matrices, as an alternative advantageous design choice. Circuit architecture makes use of asymmetric branch line couplers able to provide high values of output power division ratios. Radiation patterns with SLLs far lower than −23 dB are achieved, without the use of any additional circuitry, in opposition to the case of simultaneous port excitation. Apart from SLL reduction, the switched line-phase shifter technique is applied in order to increase the number of radiated beams and improve scanning coverage. The beamformers are suitable for interference suppressing point-to-multipoint ground communications, satellite and radar/EW/SIGINT systems. Several microstrip circuit prototypes are designed, fabricated, and tested, whereas extended simulation and measurements results are adduced.

This article shows the design of two different low phase noise (LPN) planar X-band frequency oscillators using two various microstrip filters (MFs). These two MFs act as a frequency stabilization part in the loop of the microwave oscillator. The first one, the modified Jerusalem MF (MJ-MF), is based on the Jerusalem scheme. The second one, the complementary modified Jerusalem MF (CMJ-MF), is complementary of the MJ-MF. Finally, by employing the branchline coupler, the LPN MF oscillator is achieved. The MJ-MF (narrowband filter) LPN X-band oscillator operates at 8.17 GHz and denotes a phase noise (PN) of −161 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz frequency offset. The CMJ-MF (wideband filter) LPN X-band oscillator operates at 8.14 GHz and mentions a PN of −157 dBc/Hz at 1-MHz frequency offset.

A superheterodyne transmission scheme is adopted and analyzed in a 300 GHz wireless point-to-point link. This was realized using two different intermediate frequency (IF) systems. The first uses fast digital synthesis which provides an IF signal centered around a carrier frequency of 10 GHz. The second involves the usage of commercially available mixers, which work as direct up- and down-converters, to generate the IF input and output. The radio frequency components are based on millimeterwave monolithic integrated circuits at a center frequency of 300 GHz. Transmission experiments over distances up to 10 m are carried out. Data rates of up to 60 Gbps using the first IF option and up to 24 Gbps using the second IF option are achieved. Modulation formats up to 32QAM are successfully transmitted. The linearity of this link and of its components is analyzed in detail. Two local oscillators (LOs), a photonics-based source and a commercially available electronic source are employed and compared. This work validates the concept of superheterodyne architecture for integration in a beyond-5G network, supplying important guidelines that have to be taken into account in the design steps of a future wireless system.

In this paper, we present several dielectric waveguide (DWG) setups that enable the transition between radar front ends and antennas in challenging, industrial environments. Apart from good propagation behavior, DWG provide a nearly dispersion free transmission over large distances. Furthermore, they can be used as an electrical insulator in places with critical creep distances, in high temperature environments, and for applications with limited installation space. Fundamentals concerning the ideal propagation mode and adequate waveguide–fiber transitions are presented. Results of electromagnetic simulations as well as measurements on manufactured DWG are discussed in detail. The presented excellent propagation behavior proves the effectiveness of the proposed setup.

In this paper, a three layered stacked circularly polarized rectangular dual band microstrip antenna with a defected ground structure (DGS) and a feed network with stub (showing dual wideband characteristic) is designed, fabricated, and tested for WLAN, Zig bee, Wi-Max, and IMT band applications. The proposed antenna is fabricated on an FR4 substrate with dielectric constant (εr) of 4.4; tanδ of 0.0024 and a height of 1.57 mm.The antenna has a surface area of 4.8 × 4.1 cm2 and a total height of 5.1 mm. The designed antenna covers two wireless bands from 2.39 to 2.64GHz and 3.39–3.76 GHZ with impedance bandwidths (VSWR < 2) of 250 MHz (9% bandwidth centered at 2.515 GHz) and 370 MHz (10% bandwidth centered at 3.57 GHz), respectively. This antenna is capable of covering IEEE 802.11b/g/n standards of WLAN from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz, bluetooth applications from 2.4 to 2.483 GHz, ZigBee applications from 2.4 to 2.485 GHz, IEEE 802.16/ Wi-MaX applications from 3.4 to 3.69 GHz and international mobile telecommunications (IMT) band from 3.4 to 3.6 GHz. As the antenna is circularly polarized, the misalignment of the receiver with transmitter does not affect the performance of the system. The antenna designing was done using CST MWS V'10 and the prototype of the designed antenna was tested for the validation of S11 (dB) and gain results against the simulated ones experimentally. The proposed antenna shows a gain of 4.08 dBi at 2.5 GHz and a gain of 5.024 dBi at 3.51 GHz.

This paper presents a substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) mixed electric and magnetic coupling structure implemented on a single-layer substrate to create finite transmission zeros (TZs), which can be used to design microwave filters with higher frequency selectivity. Mixed coupling is realized by three slot-lines on the top metal plane combined with an iris-window between two adjacent SIW cavities. The electric and magnetic coupling can be separately controlled by adjusting the dimensions of the slot-lines and the width of the iris-window, and a controllable TZ below or above the passband can be produced. Furthermore, a detailed analysis of the mixed coupling structure is presented. To demonstrate the validity of the proposed structure, third- and fourth-order cross-coupled generalized Chebyshev bandpass filters are designed and fabricated using the standard printed circuit board process. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulation results. The filters exhibit simple structure and good frequency selectivity.

In this paper, it is proposed to use a cylindrical cell for the characterization of dielectric material. The extraction of complex permittivity is based on inverse gradient approach where the full-wave simulation results are mapped to experimental data to extract the complex permittivity. As the operational frequency of radio frequency (RF)/microwave devices is increased, it becomes difficult to accurately model waveguide transitions using traditional methods based on meshing such as finite-element method (FEM) where mesh size is determined according to the wavelength. Moreover, these techniques usually require extensive computational resources. Mode matching technique (MMT) is the full-wave tool implemented in this current work. It is used to compute the generalized scattering matrices (GSMs) of the different discontinuities of test setup. These GSMs model precisely discontinuities as they include the effects of all higher-order modes propagating and evanescent. Simulation and experimental results are included to validate the proposed approach for the rigorous modeling of those discontinuities and hence the extraction of complex permittivity.

This paper presents a miniaturized 3-dB branch-line coupler based on slow-wave microstrip transmission lines. The miniaturized coupler operating at 2.45 GHz is designed and implemented on a double-layer printed circuit board substrate with blind metallic vias embedded in the lower substrate layer providing the slow-wave effect. Based on this concept, a 43% size miniaturization is achieved as compared with a classical microstrip branch-line coupler prototype. The measured S parameters present a return loss of 25.5 dB and an average insertion loss equal to 0.05 dB at the operating frequency.

In this paper, an asymmetric coplanar strip (ACS)-fed quad-band monopole antenna for the global positioning system (GPS), wireless local area network (WLAN), and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) applications is proposed. It is composed of an F-shaped monopole and a partial ground plane, which are both printed on one side of a low-cost FR4 substrate with a compact volume of 40 × 20 × 1.6 mm3. By cutting an open-ended Γ-shaped slot into the F-shaped monopole, four distinct resonant modes are successfully generated. The design process, especially the geometrical configuration of the critical Γ-shaped slot is studied in detail. The proposed antenna has been fabricated and experimental results show that the −10 dB impedance bandwidth can fully cover the 1.575-GHz GPS (1.57–1.59 GHz), 2.4/5.2/5.8-GHz WLAN (2.4–2.485, 5.15–5.35, and 5.725–5.825 GHz), and 2.5/3.5/5.5-GHz WiMAX (2.50–2.69, 3.30–3.70, and 5.25–5.85 GHz) applications with nearly omni-directional radiation patterns and satisfactory gains.

The progressions in the field of wireless technology can be highly attributed to the development of antennas, which can access high data rates, provide significant gain and uniform radiation characteristics. One such antenna called the Vivaldi antenna has attracted the utmost attention of the researchers owing to its high gain, wide bandwidth, low cross-polarization, and stable radiation characteristics. Over the years, different procedures have been proposed by several researchers to improve the performance of the Vivaldi antennas. Some of these different approaches are feeding mechanisms, integration of slots, dielectric substrate selection, and radiator shape. Correspondingly, the performance of a Vivaldi antenna can be increased by including dielectric lens, parasitic patch in between two radiators, corrugations, as well as metamaterials. This paper gives a systematic identification, location, and analysis of a large number of performance enhancement methods of Vivaldi antenna design depicting their concepts, advantages, drawbacks, and applications. The principal emphasis of this article is to offer an outline of the developments in the design of Vivaldi antennas over the last few years, where the most important offerings, mostly from IEEE publications, have been emphasized. This review work aims to reveal a promising path to antenna researchers for its advancement using Vivaldi antennas.

This paper presents a detailed procedure to design substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) Tee-junctions with wide-range split-power ratio (from 1:1 to 1:8) and phase-balanced outputs. A set of curves was generated using an electromagnetic (EM) simulator to graphically determine the required parameters for the desired junction. Since such curves are provided, no further electromagnetic simulation is required when applying the proposed method. Input return loss at central frequency is guaranteed to be better than 18 dB. If an optimization procedure is required, the parameters obtained from this methodology may be used as initial values for such a process. Moreover, design rules are given for implementing 1 → 2N unequal power dividers with phase-balanced outputs. To demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed graphical method, three implementation examples are provided: two Tee-junctions and a 1 → 4 power divider.

This paper presents a broadband miniaturized Fabry–Perot cavity resonator antenna (CRA) made of novel electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) superstrate as partially reflecting surface (PRS) and reactive impedance surface (RIS) backed rectangular patch antenna. To the best of the authors' knowledge, the proposed EBG exhibits the highest stopband bandwidth (BW) with a bandgap existing between 7.37 and 12.4 GHz (50.9%). Frequency-selective property of the EBG is utilized under plane wave incidence to demonstrate it as PRS superstrate in CRA antenna. The cavity is excited with a rectangular microstrip antenna which is made of two dielectric substrates with an additional RIS layer sandwiched between them. The RIS provides wideband impedance matching of the primary feed antenna. A 7 × 7 array of the EBG superstrate is loaded over the patch antenna having an overall lateral dimension of only 45 × 45 mm2 or 1.62 λ0 × 1.62 λ0 where λ0 is the free space wavelength at the center frequency of 10.8 GHz. The proposed Fabry–Perot CRA (FP-CRA) achieves gain enhancement of 6.59 dB as compared with the reference antenna and has a 10 dB return loss BW of 23.79% from 10.07 to 12.79 GHz. A prototype of the FP-CRA is fabricated and experimentally tested with single and dual layers of EBG superstrate. Measured results show BWs of 21.5 and 24.8% for the two cases with peak realized gain of 12.05 and 14.3 dBi, respectively. Later a four-element antenna array with corporate feeding is designed as the primary feed of the CRA. The simulation result shows a flat gain of >13 dBi with gain variation <1.2 dB over the impedance BW of 13.2%.

A compact and broadband TE11-TE01-mode converter, suitable for various industrial applications like bypass level measurements, is presented in this contribution. Based on stepped waveguide technique, the main advantages of the recommended converter design and the specific field distribution of the TE01-mode are discussed in detail. The converter is presented exemplary for a frequency range from 23 to 28 GHz, which corresponds to a bandwidth of approximately 20 % of the center frequency. Numerous three-dimensional electromagnetic field simulations are performed to optimize the converter and to investigate its reflection and transmission behavior. Realized by six different single elements and 11 parts in total, fast and effective simulations can be performed with CST Microwave Studio. Considering realistic production process parameters, like fillets or tolerances, a good return loss better 17 dB, an insertion loss of 0.1 dB, and an excellent mode purity are achieved. Compared with back-to-back, realistic disturber scenario, and far-field measurements with a first prototype, the expected excellent converter behavior can be validated without limitations. Hence, the suitability of the presented converter design is proven and the feasibility is demonstrated.

This is the first report on novel mushroom-type electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structures, consisting of fractal periodic elements, used for enhancing the gain of microstrip patch antennas. Using CST Microwave studio the performance of rectangular patch antenna has been examined on proposed fractal EBG substrates. It is found that fractal EBGs are more effective in suppressing surface wave thus resulting in higher gain. The gain of rectangular patch has been improved from 6.88 to 10.67 dBi. The proposed fractal EBG will open new avenues for the design and development of variety of high-frequency components and devices with enhanced performance.

Medical imaging is of great importance for patients affected by stroke. Since an early examination of the patient is necessary for successful recovery, there is room to improve the existing capabilities of analysis. Common systems like magnetic resonance imaging or computed tomography are precise, but stationary, and therefore, not ideally suited for the early analysis of stroke. The presented multiport vector network analyzer system uses electromagnetic tomography (EMT) as an alternative imaging technique. It consists of a network of distributed electronic sensor nodes which improve important parameters: the parallel measurement setup reduces the measurement time as low as 160 ms for a 200-port S-parameter matrix and it is capable of measuring signal levels down to − 150 dBm. The electronics allow a compact, movable packaging, leading the way for future portable devices. The detection of stroke models was examined by test measurements of a phantom. The data was analyzed by the help of an inverse reconstruction algorithm. The possibility of building portable setups which can be even applied to patients inside an ambulance, makes EMT a suitable alternative for early stroke detection. It can help in shortening the recovery of patients, by providing an early analysis of the brain.

In this paper, an electromagnetic band gap (EBG) metasurface (MS) superstrate-based circularly polarized antenna for the WiMAX (3.5 GHz) band is proposed. The proposed structure comprises a 2 × 2 slot-loaded rectangular patch MS array that can be perceived as a polarization-dependent EBG MS superstrate. Furthermore, to achieve circular polarization, the proposed antenna has an inclined coupling slot onto the ground with a conventional coplanar waveguide feed line. The proposed antenna has a compact structure with a low profile of 0.037λ0 (λ0 stands for the free-space wavelength at 3.48 GHz) and a ground size of 30 × 30 mm2. The measured results show that the −10 dB impedance bandwidth for the proposed antenna is 34.6% and the 3-dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth is 6.8% with a peak gain of 3.91 dBi in the desired operating band. Good agreement between the simulated and the measured results verifies the performance of the proposed antenna.

A simple design for triple-band circularly polarized (CP) wide slot antennas is proposed and experimentally investigated. The proposed antenna having a microstrip-fed rectangular patch with T-shaped notch for triple-band operation and a modified wide square slot on ground plane for CP operation. The measured 10 dB reflection bandwidths are 1.24% (≈340 MHz from 2.56 to 2.9 GHz), 9.63% (≈430 MHz from 4.25 to 4.68 GHz), and 5.34% (≈490 MHz from 8.93 to 9.42 GHz). The generated 3 dB axial ratio bandwidths of the proposed antenna are 7.54, 8.98, and 1.65% at operating frequencies around 2.65, 4.45, and 9.09 GHz, respectively. The measured peak gains within the 3 dB axial ratio bands are 3.03, 3.5, and 5.64 dBi. The simulated and measured results for the return loss, axial ratio, and antenna gain show a good agreement, which validate the antenna design.