Many scientists and engineers contributed – more or less successfully – to the development of radio and wireless. This historical survey describes briefly the projects realized more than a century ago by some of them, at the early beginnings of wireless. It is hoped, in this manner, to draw attention to the unknown or forgotten researchers who built up the considerable body of knowledge that led to Marconi's remarkable achievements.

This paper reports a new compact dual-band axially corrugated profiled horn feed (DBCPH) for prime-focus reflector antenna at C-band (uplink and downlink frequency bands with bandwidth ratio of 1.6). DBPCH consists of one sinusoid profiled section and two internal axial corrugations (internal short-circuited ring slots), for obtaining a multimode horn feed. Such a blended structure is optimized over the specified frequency bands (3.68–3.70 and 5.865–5.915 GHz) to achieve various performance objectives (such as compactness, return loss, polarization purity, etc.). Measured and predicted results show that DBCPH provides better return loss >18.6 dB, low cross-polarization (better than −32 dB), and adequate edge taper at ±48° (8.5–11.7 dB) along with compact size (1.3λ aperture diameter and 0.88λ length at lower frequency). The horn would be used as a feed element for front-fed prime-focus reflector for pencil beam spacecraft antenna application.

This paper presents the theoretical formulation of a lithographical bending control (LBC) method that uses lithographical degrees of freedom to control the bending of a multilayered beam. LBC is applied to a piezoelectric actuator that uses PZT as the piezoelectric material. The theoretical model is compared with measurements using a weakly fixed bridge structure suited for curvature measurement.

This paper reports a 15 GHz quadrature voltage controlled oscillator (QVCO) designed in a 130 nm CMOS technology. The phase noise performance of the QVCO and of a phase locked loop (PLL) where the QVCO was inserted were compared with the literature and with telecom standards and commercial products for broadcast satellite applications.

Adrenal gland-induced hypertension, also known as secondary hypertension, is a medical condition caused by an underlying adrenal pathology, most typically adrenocortical adenomas. Current clinical practices involve pharmacotherapy or surgical resection to treat adrenal gland diseases that cause hypertension. However, due to the limitations of these treatment options, microwave ablation (MWA) has emerged as a promising minimally invasive alternative. An accurate understanding of the dielectric properties of adrenal glands would support the further development and optimization of MWA technology for treating adrenal tumors. Only a few studies have examined the dielectric properties of both human and animal adrenal glands, and the sample sizes of these studies have been relatively small. Therefore, further dielectric data of human and animal adrenal glands are warranted. This paper presents the ex vivo dielectric properties of the ovine adrenal glands (medulla and cortex) and summarizes the published literature on dielectric data of adrenal glands from porcine, bovine, ovine, and human samples in the microwave frequency range to analyze the consistency and reliability of the reported data. The dielectric properties of the ovine adrenal glands (N = 8) were measured using an open-ended coaxial probe measurement technique at frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 8.5 GHz. This study also investigated the temperature-dependent dielectric properties of the ovine adrenal medulla ranging from 37 to 64°C at frequencies ranging from 0.5 to 8.5 GHz. The dielectric properties of the ovine adrenal medulla measured in this study were found to be consistent with the literature. Moreover, the review suggests that variations exist in the dielectric properties of the adrenal medulla and cortex among species. The study also found that the dielectric properties of the adrenal medulla decrease with increasing temperature, similar to other tissues for which temperature-dependent dielectric data have been reported. This summary of dielectric data of adrenal glands and the temperature-dependent dielectric properties of the ovine adrenal medulla will accelerate the development of MWA technologies for hypertension treatment.

In this paper, a wideband bandpass filter using multi-mode resonator and mixed electromagnetic (EM) coupling is presented. To increase the bandwidth while not enlarge the circuit size, multi-short-stub multi-mode resonator, which produces multiple resonances, is utilized. Furthermore, the capacitive gap between open ends of the stubs is utilized to realize electric coupling between the multi-mode resonator and quarter-wavelength stepped impedance resonator. Meanwhile, a high-impedance transmission line between them is used to implement magnetic coupling. This mixed EM coupling can produce transmission zero near the passband, consequently improving the frequency selectivity of proposed filter. Measured results of the filter prototype are in good agreement with the simulated ones. The filter is with an insertion loss at central frequency of 15.86 GHz about 2.5 dB, a 3 dB bandwidth about 5.72 GHz (the fractional bandwidth about 36%), and the variation of group delay over the whole passband <0.28 ns. Additionally, the effective circuit size of the filter is about 0.126 λg2, where λg is the wavelength of 15.86 GHz. All these results have shown that proposed filter is promising for future high-precision imaging system or high-speed communication application.

This article explores the possibilities of incorporating a defected ground structure (DGS) for widening the 3 dB axial ratio beamwidth (ARBW) of a simple low-profile planar circularly polarized (CP) antenna. Two pairs of DGSs are etched symmetrically along the diagonals of the ground plane to overcome the limited 3 dB ARBW performance of a crossed-slotted circular-shaped planar CP antenna. Here, one pair of DGSs is orthogonal to another pair of DGSs. The distance between the pairs of DGSs plays a key role in enhancing the 3 dB ARBW by 40.62%. A gap of 0.18λ0 is considered between the DGSs to maintain the symmetrical electric field distribution in the substrate. It also helps to reduce orthogonal current components and provides uniformly distributed patch surface currents. These phenomena collectively help the proposed CP antenna to exhibit right-handed circular polarization radiation with the 3 dB ARBW of 186° and 188° in the E-plane and H-plane, respectively. The measured results yield impedance bandwidth (S11 ≤ −10 dB) of 2.6% (2.283–2.342 GHz), CP bandwidth of 0.9% (2.294–2.315 GHz), gain higher than 4.8 dBic, and total antenna efficiency more than 64% across the entire CP band.

In order to merge the advantages of the traditional compressed sensing (CS) methodology and the data-driven deep network scheme, this paper proposes a physical model-driven deep network, termed CS-Net, for solving target image reconstruction problems in through-the-wall radar imaging. The proposed method consists of two consequent steps. First, a learned convolutional neural network prior is introduced to replace the regularization term in the traditional iterative CS-based method to capture the redundancy of the radar echo signal. Moreover, the physical model of the radar signal is used in the data consistency layer to encourage consistency with the measurements. Second, the iterative CS optimization is unrolled to yield a deep learning network, where the weight, regularization parameter, and the other parameters are learnable. A quantity of training data enables the network to extract high-dimensional characteristics of the radar echo signal to reconstruct the spatial target image. Simulation results demonstrated that the proposed method can achieve accurate target image reconstruction and was superior to the traditional CS method, in terms of mean squared error and the target texture details.

In this study, we investigate a concept that can be used to improve the magnetic field homogeneity in a microwave cavity applied in a novel, high-performance atomic frequency standard. We show that by modifying the boundary conditions in the case of a loop-gap geometry, a good improvement of the field homogeneity can be obtained. Such a design demonstrates high potential to improve the frequency stability; it is compact and hence suitable for a future generation of compact, high-precision frequency standards based on vapor cells and a pulsed optical pumping (POP) regime (POP atomic clocks).

This paper reports design and successful development of new and high performance transmit and receive feed systems for reflector antennas at “lower-extended C-band”. The horns are analyzed and optimized using the mode-matching technique-based software CHAMP. Other feed components are designed with the aid of the mode-matching technique and finite element method based softwares viz. MICIAN and HFSS. The predicted radio frequency (rf) performances comply with the measured results with small deviation. Some issues related to feed system such as impact of horn outer structure; such as base for tooling ball, feed bracket for struts etc. on its rf performance are discussed. It is shown that the outer feed structure plays a significant role apart from the internal cavity of the horn for prediction of electrical performance of the feed system. Besides high rf performance; good mechanical properties such as compactness and ease to fabrication are achieved through innovative feed design.

The paper is related to an adaptive satellite communication system for data transmission from small, low cost, low Earth orbit satellites. Tests run in a set-up consisting of a number of software-defined radio (SDR) modules operating as a satellite, a ground station, and a satellite channel simulator, have shown that by changing modulation scheme and code rate one can obtain increase of amount of data which can be downloaded from a satellite during a single pass over a ground station approximately by a factor of 2. To determine data rates obtainable in an SDR system using a common personal computer as a digital signal processing device, execution times of particular processing steps involved in the reception process were measured.

Novel design of low-pass microwave filters based on cascading of identical unit cells is proposed. Dispersion relation is used to determine the cell parameters for a given relative stop-band width. For a filter consisting of two cells, each made of single- or two-section transmission lines, the design formulas and curves are presented. Based on them typical filters are designed, fabricated, and measured. The presented filters feature a deep stop band and a wide rejection band, which can be controlled within the proposed design procedure. The design procedure and the simulation results are verified experimentally by measurement of the fabricated structures containing two and three cells.

In this paper, the influence of tree trunks, cylindrical street furniture such as lamp posts, and traffic on ray tracing simulations in an urban scenario is analyzed. Tree trunks and lamp posts are modeled by cylinders and propagation characteristics computed according to the Uniform Theory of Diffraction. The influence of traffic is analyzed by simulations with moving vehicles. In order to get an understanding of the spatial characteristics of the channel, simulations with static and also mobile receivers have been performed, in line with a measurement campaign in the same environment. The simulation results show a good agreement with the measurements.

This paper presents a comparison between three evolutionary algorithms (EAs) for pattern synthesis of offset reflector antenna fed by a planar array of horn antennas. To perform the optimization process, an elliptical-shaped beam in the U–V plane (U = sinθ cosφ and V = sinθ sinφ) is considered as the desired far-field radiation pattern. To attain the appropriate excitation value for array elements, three conditions are considered: (1) variable amplitude (with uniform phase distribution), (2) variable phase (with uniform amplitude distribution), and (3) variable amplitude and phase excitation. Obtaining the appropriate excitation value based on the mathematical methods is always complicated and time-consuming. Therefore, genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO) as two well-known EAs have been used widely for different applications and shown the promise to solve complicated problems. This paper compares these two EAs with invasive weed optimization (IWO) which is robust and has simple and powerful process with few tuning parameters. We found that for pattern synthesis of multi-feed reflector antenna in different conditions, IWO can provide accurate and comparable results with GA and PSO methods at approximately same iteration number. The convergence diagrams as well as the optimized radiation patterns for different conditions are presented and compared for GA, PSO and IWO.

An N-band resonator, particularly well-suited for reconfigurability, is presented in this paper together with its synthesis. The resonator is based on the association of an N-band dual-behavior resonator and tunable capacitors. Its topology consists of a parallel association of N + 1 different bandstop structures, each one composed of a stub terminated by a capacitor. N pass bands, separated from each other by a transmission zero, are then obtained. As each bandstop structure independently controls one transmission zero, the use of variable capacitors allows each of them to be tuned independently and then to reconfigure the resonator in terms of transmission zeros and resonant frequencies. After the presentation of the general synthesis, this principle is validated by the realization of a tri-band resonator in microstrip technology.

An impulse response method is carried out to analyze waveguide's information capacity within a coherent communication system. Such capability is typically estimated according to group delay variations (seconds/bandwidth/distance) after carrier-modulated data undergoes a dispersive medium. However, traditional group delay methods often ignore non-linear effects by assuming input data stream only occupies narrow bandwidth such that a propagation constant can be linearized centered at the carrier frequency. Such a constraint can be lifted with a proposed baseband equivalent impulse response method by using frequency domain convolution and multiplication. Once the impulse response in frequency domain is secured, its time domain counterpart can be calculated based on inverse Fourier transformation. Such analysis can fully reveal data pulse's broadening and gauge its inter-symbol interference by simply convolving input data with extracted impulse response, not limited to specific frequency range or type of waveguide.

This paper presents a new macro modeling methodology for solid-state power amplifiers (SSPAs) and packaged transistors used in communication systems. The model topology is based on the principle of harmonic superposition recently introduced by Agilent Technologies' X-parametersTM combined with dynamic Volterra theory. The resulting multi-harmonic bilateral model takes into account the coupling effects of both short- and long-term memory in SSPAs. In this work, the behavioral model was developed from time-domain load pull and used to simulate the amplifier's response to a 16-QAM signal with specific regards to ACPR and IM3.

This paper presents an innovative design of an Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) impulse radiation source. The transmitting system is composed of an UWB antenna with an integrated optoelectronic generator, which is able to feed the system with appropriate waveforms, a pulsed high voltage source, and an optical command system. The radiation source is the elementary part of a forthcoming short-range UWB Radar with autonomous scanning capability. In this paper, we present in detail the necessary subsystems required to design the elementary radiation source. Measurements have been performed to validate the proposed radiation source and this offers a mathematical method of calculation to trace back to the radiated field at 1 m.

In this paper, a leaky-wave antenna (LWA) with wide scanning angle and low cross-polarization is proposed based on a T-type folded substrate-integrated waveguide (FSIW). Transverse slots with a sinusoidal distribution pattern are etched on the surface of the FSIW so that transmission lines with slow-wave characteristics can excite and radiate −1 order harmonics. The length of the transverse slot affects the dispersion characteristics of the transmission line, and the sinusoidal modulation period controls the operating range of the LWA. In the frequency range of 8.3–15 GHz, the proposed LWA achieves a wide scanning ranging from backward −42° to forward +68° continuously. The cross-polarization of the beam is also kept at less than −30 dB during this scanning. A prototype is fabricated and measured to confirm the design, and the measured results show an agreement with the simulated one.

A compact wideband out-of-phase power divider (PD) with improved isolation performance is proposed. This divider is formed by connecting an additional stub for isolation to output ports of a traditional Marchand balun with a defected ground structure (DGS) been used. To verify the design, a prototype divider is fabricated and tested. The measured results validate the 53.86% band-width centered at 3.43 GHz with more than 15 dB return loss at all ports, more than 17 dB isolation, respectively.