A Ka‐band power divider/combiner using two side‐inserted magnetic coupling semicircular ring probes

A Ka‐band power divider/combiner with dual magnetic coupling semicircular ring probes is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a broadband microstrip‐to‐waveguide transition with semicircular ring probe is designed based on the side‐inserted structure of magnetic field excitation in a rectangular waveguide. The insertion loss of the proposed transition is less than 0.7 dB in Ka‐band assisted by the dual symmetrical broadband probes and rectangular waveguide. Then, the divider/combiner is proposed using the new transition with magnetic coupling from narrow wall into the rectangular waveguide. The bandwidth of the divider/combiner is more than 9 GHz (from 27 to 36.7 GHz), and the insertion loss of the single divider/combiner is less than 3.3 dB. Finally, the performance of the proposed divider/combiner is validated through simulations and measurements. The proposed design has potential applications in microstrip circuits.     

Substrate integrated waveguide dual‐frequency dual‐sense circularly polarized cavity‐backed slot antenna

A novel design of dual‐frequency dual‐sense circularly polarized (CP) substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavity‐backed slot antenna is presented for dual‐band wireless communication systems. The proposed antenna consists of square SIW cavity, asymmetrical bow‐tie‐shaped cross slot and probe feed. Due to use of asymmetrical bow‐tie‐shaped cross slot, circularly polarized wave radiates at two different frequencies with opposite sense of polarizations. The RHCP radiation occurs at (10.45‐10.54) GHz (Lower band) and LHCP occurs at (11.26‐11.34) GHz (Upper band). Moreover, in each band, sense of polarization can be change by changing the feed position. The front to back radiation ratio (FTBRR) is more than 10.5 dB and cross polarization level is lower than ?20 dB in both the bands.     

Four‐way waveguide power divider design for W‐band applications

In this article, a four‐way waveguide power divider is proposed for W‐band applications. The waveguide power divider employs an improved H‐plane T‐junction configuration. With the introduction of a metallic tetrahedral protrusion into the waveguide junction, good impedance matching can be achieved within a wide frequency range. First, a two‐way power divider is designed and analyzed, achieving almost identical amplitude and phase response at its two output ports. Then, other two same T‐junctions are cascaded, respectively, at the two output ports of the two‐way power divider to realize the proposed four‐way power divider. The four‐way power divider has been optimized, fabricated, and measured. The measurement results agree with the simulation ones reasonably, which demonstrates that the input return loss of the proposed four‐way power divider maintains above 14 dB across the entire W‐band with an insertion loss of less than 1.3 dB. Therefore, it could find wide applications in W‐band power splitting and combining modules.     

A nonuniform array of slots in the broad‐walls of rectangular waveguides partially filled with dielectric slabs

This article describes a new nonuniform slot antenna array in the broad wall of rectangular waveguides partially filled with a dielectric slab. The slot elements are nonuniformly spaced to achieve a higher side lobe level while the amplitude and phase of their excitations are identical. Each slot element is fed by one dielectric‐loaded rectangular waveguide with one end shorted for structural simplicity. Experimental results for an 8‐element linear slot array operating at X‐band show that the side lobe level is 15 dB over a frequency range from 9.5 GHz to 10.5 GHz. The simulated side lobe level can reach 20 dB for a 16‐element linear array. Experimental results show that the side lobe level of a slot array can be improved using nonuniform element spacing without degrading the broadside radiation and gain. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2008.     

A W‐band broadband power divider/combiner using two parallel antisymmetric tapered probes

In this article, a broadband microstrip‐to‐waveguide transition with antisymmetric tapered probe as well as a W‐band power divider/combiner using dual proposed antisymmetric tapered probes is presented. Because of tapered microstrip shapes and metallic steps, the proposed transition is proved to be broadband, efficient, and compact. The insertion loss of the transition sample is less than 0.56 dB between 75 GHz and 100 GHz. Under the assistance of the gradually changed waveguide and dual parallel tapered probes, the operating band of the power divider/combiner has been significantly improved, which is adequate to work in the whole W‐band. A back‐to‐back prototype of the divider/combiner is fabricated and measured. The measured insertion loss of the single divider/combiner is less than 0.29 dB between 90 GHz and 100 GHz, and agrees well with the simulations. Because the circuit size is smaller than 8.0 mm × 2.2 mm (Thanks to the excellent performance and compact size), the proposed design can find wide applications in miniaturized MCM/MMIC systems.     

Simple,compact and broadband right‐angle transition between substrate integrated waveguide and rectangular waveguide at Ka‐band

In this article, a simple compact broadband right‐angle transition between substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and rectangular waveguide (RWG) working at Ka‐band is proposed. Three coupling slots etched on the interface are developed to couple the electromagnetic field from SIW to RWG. A metallic via is introduced into the end slot to enhance the inductance and all the slots are developed in different dimensions for multi‐resonance. By proper optimizing, three resonances are obtained which broadens the impedance matching effectively. All details of the transition are designed on the SIW part for the purpose of simple and compact. Two back‐to‐back prototypes working at Ka‐band are designed, fabricated and measured. The measured results show that the mean value of insertion loss for a single transition is about 0.51 dB and the return loss is better than 15 dB over the full Ka‐band. The proposed right‐angle transition has advantages of simple assembly, compact size and broadband characteristics and it can be a good candidate for millimeter‐wave applications.     

A novel power divider with ultra‐wideband harmonics suppression based on double‐sided parallel spoof surface plasmon polaritons transmission line

A novel wideband power divider with ultra‐wideband suppression of harmonics is proposed in this paper. The power divider is composed of double‐sided parallel spoof surface plasmon polaritons transmission line (DSP‐SSPP‐TL) with periodical grooved bow‐tie cells. The cut‐off frequency of DSP‐SSPP‐TL can be flexibly adjusted by changing the parameters of bow‐tie cells. To demonstrate that, dispersion relations of the bow‐tie cells with different parameters are simulated, and three DSP‐SSPP‐TL counterparts are experimented. Then, a power divider centered at 3.31 GHz (f₀) is designed, fabricated, and measured. Experimental results indicate that the 10‐dB return loss bandwidth of the proposed power divider is about 146% from 0.9 to 5.73 GHz, and the upper stopband is extended up to 40 GHz (12.1 f₀) with the suppression level above 32 dB. Moreover, ultra‐wideband isolation between two output ports of the proposed power divider could be achieved by employing two lumped resistors between two DSP‐SSPP‐TLs.     

Polarizer superstrate and SRR‐loaded high‐gain dual band dual polarized waveguide slot array antenna

This article presents a high‐gain dual band dual polarized waveguide slot array antenna. Three split ring resonators (SRRs) are placed on the transverse plane of a slotted waveguide at uniform distance to achieve dual band response whereas a polarizer superstrate has been used to change the linear polarization of the lower band to circular polarization. Ansys HFSS 14.0 has been used for simulation and optimization purpose. Proposed antenna shows two 10 dB return loss bandwidth covering the frequency range 8.41‐8.88 and 9.31‐10.43 GHz, respectively. The lower band offers a circular polarization and upper band offers a linear polarization.     

Novel dual‐band asymmetric U‐shaped slot antenna for dual‐circular polarization

A novel dual‐band, dual‐circularly polarized antenna is proposed and fabricated. The proposed antenna consists of an asymmetric U‐shaped slot and an inverted L‐shaped slot which are designed to excite two orthogonal E vectors with equal amplitude and 90° phase difference (PD), in addition, fed by a coplanar waveguide (CPW) Furthermore, a left‐hand circular polarization in the direction of z > 0 and a right‐hand circular polarization instead of the opposite direction both at the lower and upper bands are exhibited by the radiations of the antenna. Good agreement is achieved between the measurement and simulation, which indicates that a 10‐dB bandwidth of 38.75% from 2.56 to 3.8 GHz and 21.8% from 10.01 to 12.53 GHz, while a 3‐dB axial‐ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 13.4% from 2.77 to 3.2 GHz and 9.23% from 10.25 to 11.25 GHz at two operation bands, respectively, are covered in the designed antenna. To explain the mechanism of dual‐band dual‐circular polarization, the analysis of magnetic fields distributions and a parametric study of the design are given. Meanwhile, compared to other recent works, a single layer structure, wider axial ratio and impedance bandwidths and a more compact size are the key features of the proposed antenna.     

A Ka band microstrip to waveguide transition using a quasi‐triangle probe

In this article, a new Ka band microstrip to waveguide transition with combination of electric and magnetic coupling is introduced by using a quasi‐triangle structure. Consequently, the length of the proposed transition has been significantly diminished. A back‐to‐back prototype was fabricated based on the optimized dimensions to validate the design concept. The measured and simulated results are in a good alignment. The experimental results show that the return loss is better than 14.8 dB across the frequency range of 32‐40 GHz with an insertion loss of lower than 0.9 dB. The conversion efficiency for the single transition, therefore, is larger than 90.5%. Because of its broad operation bandwidth, low insertion loss, and compact size, the proposed embedded transition could find wide applications in most modern miniaturized MMIC devices and systems.     

Low loss and broadband transition between substrate integrated waveguide and rectangular waveguide

In this article, a novel transition between substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and rectangular waveguide is proposed. A pair of antipodal tapered probes is developed to convert the E‐field of SIW to that of waveguide, acting as an antipodal dipole antenna to improve the performance of the SIW‐to‐waveguide transition. A back‐to‐back prototype of the proposed transition is fabricated and measured, the results show that the transition achieve a bandwidth of 51.1% from 23.7 to 40 GHz, and a size reduction of 75.3% compared to the SIW‐to‐waveguide transition using antipodal fin‐line. A tolerance analysis is performed via the simulation to verify the reliability of this transition design. For further validation, the antipodal tapered probes are employed for the design of partially filled SIW‐to‐waveguide transition. From its experimental results, it demonstrates that the loss of a single SIW‐to‐waveguide is less than 0.26 dB over the frequency range of 24.9–40 GHz. In addition, such proposed SIW‐to‐waveguide transition is suitable for hermetic packaging due to the inherent property in transition structure. These results show that the proposed transition can offer the advantages of broad bandwidth, low loss, compact size, and stable performance at millimeter‐wave frequencies. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 26:54–61, 2016.     

UWB coplanar waveguide‐fed coplanar strips rectangular spiral antenna

This article proposes an ultra‐wideband coplanar strips (CPS) rectangular spiral antenna that is fed by coplanar waveguide (CPW). The CPS is formed by gradually reducing the width of the CPW ground planes without the need of a balun. The antenna operates in the frequency band (3.5‐10.6 GHz) and has miniaturized size of 50 × 40 × 0.508 mm on a Rogers RO4003C substrate. The CPS spiral is terminated with a 100 Ω chip resistor for matching. A parametric study was performed to choose the CPS spiral dimensions. A good agreement is found between simulations and measurements in the radiation pattern and the return loss which was found to be better than 10 dB over the band. The measured peak gain ranges between 1 and 4.7 dBi.     

A novel tailored coplanar waveguide circularly polarized antenna controlled by the gravity field

In this article, a tailored coplanar waveguide (CPW) circularly polarized (CP) antenna is designed, whose operating band can be adjusted in a large range by the gravity field through rotating the antenna vertically. Due to the fluidity of liquid metal mercury, which is packaged in the antenna's glass containers, when the antenna is rotated, mercury will lead to different metal resonant units in different directions under the influence of gravity. This antenna utilizes CPW whose metal reflective surface and the main radiating patch are on the same side of the dielectric substrate. The dielectric substrate is made of FR4, and the metal radiation patch and the metal reflective ground are made of copper. Two metal branches separated from the main radiation patch are connected to the main radiating patch by a glass container. To verify concept of the design, equivalent prototypes have been fabricated and measured. The measured results are roughly consistent with simulated results within a reasonable error range. The measured results show that when the antenna turns 90° counterclockwise along the x‐axis (state I), the 10‐dB return loss bandwidth is 13.5% (4.54~5.2 GHz), and the 3‐dB axial ratio (AR) bandwidth is 13.8% (4.5~5.17 GHz). When the antenna turns 90°clockwise along the x‐axis (state II), the 10‐dB return loss bandwidth is 23% (3.73~4.7 GHz), and the 3‐dB AR bandwidth is 23% (3.73~4.7 GHz) within the antenna operating range. In the cases of two different working states, the proposed antenna can effectively cover the 5G communication band.     

A novel balanced wideband power divider based on microstrip‐slot transitions

A novel design of a balanced wideband power divider (PD) with enhanced common‐mode (CM) suppression is proposed. The top and bottom layers of the structure contain tapered microstrip line. Those microstrip lines are coupled via slotline in the ground plane, which is located at the middle layer. With appropriate placement of the slotline, the coupling between the slotline mode and the differential‐mode (DM) signals can be maximized, while that between the slotline mode and the CM signals can be minimized. Simulated and measured results show that the proposed PD has equal power division, low insertion loss, and good return loss. In the measurement, the fractional bandwidth of the measured ?10 dB (DM) return loss is about 101% (1.82–5.35 GHz), the insertion loss for the DM signals is less than 5 dB, the suppression of the CM signals is higher than 45 dB, and the DM isolation is better than 10 dB over the fractional bandwidth. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:437–442, 2014.     

Design of wideband comb shape substrate integrated waveguide multimode resonator bandpass filter with high selectivity and improved upper stopband performance

In this article, a wideband bandpass filter (BPF) is designed using the comb slotted substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) cavities. The comb‐shaped slots engraved on the SIW cavity are used to constitute a novel multiple‐mode resonator (MMR) that accomplishes a wide passband of operation. Further, a Jerusalem cross defected ground structure (DGS) is introduced to miniaturize it and enhance filter performance in the pass band and stop band. The filter is fabricated on RT/Duroid 5880 having dielectric constant 2.2 and tested to prove the validity of design. The filter achieves 3 dB fractional bandwidth of 48%, return loss above 14 dB and insertion loss of 1.1 dB in the passband. Also, the proposed filter has steep selectivity and wide upper stopband with 25 dB attenuation from 16.7 to 24 GHz.     

An efficient method of designing dual‐ and wide‐band power dividers with arbitrary power division

Capability of microstrip nonuniform transmission lines (MNTLs) for construction of dual‐band and broadband unequal Wilkinson power dividers with arbitrary‐way, arbitrary frequency band operations, and arbitrary power divisions is evaluated. Also, the MNTL transformers are introduced for dual‐band/broadband matching of the unequal output impedances of the MNTL power divider with arbitrary output terminal impedances. The strip width of MNTLs is considered variable and is written as a truncated Fourier series expansion. To show the validity of the design procedure, three experimental MNTL Wilkinson power dividers, which are dual‐band two‐ and three‐way power dividers with different power divisions working at 1 and 3.4 GHz and one broadband equal power divider working from 0.4 to 1.8 GHz, have been designed and fabricated. In the first ones with power division of 1.5, outputs isolation and ports matching of less than ?30 dB are achieved. Next, an extended recombinant structure is presented for achieving three‐way MNTL power dividers with dual‐band operation. The measured isolation between outputs and ports matching are better than 30 dB and measured forward transmissions are between ?4.87 and ?5.45 in two passbands of the divider. Also, for the proposed broadband divider, the measured isolation between the outputs is better than 13 dB in 127% desired bandwidth. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2013.     

In‐line stepped ridge coaxial‐to‐rectangular waveguide transition with capacitive coupling

An original in‐line coaxial‐to‐rectangular waveguide transition including stepped ridged sections is presented. This device differs from the state of the art because of the coaxial inner conductor not being in electrical contact with the ridge, leading to considerable mechanical advantages. In addition to this, capacitive coupling can extend the bandwidth even with a few matching sections when compared with the traditional counterpart presenting DC contact with the first ridge. An ultra‐compact transition is designed, manufactured, and tested in back‐to‐back configuration. From measured data, a return loss better than 20 dB on a bandwidth of 1.27 GHz (12.2%) is observed in this configuration. An average insertion loss of 0.11 dB can be derived for the standalone transition.     

Full band waveguide turnstile junction orthomode transducer with phase matched outputs

A >40% bandwidth fully scalable turnstile‐based waveguide orthomode transducer having excellent phase performance is described for the WR75 standard rectangular waveguide. Flexible bandwidth tuning is achieved through the use of an interchangeable stepped scattering element. Reduced height waveguide topology provides a simple, compact, and robust design against mechanical tolerances. The intrinsic broadband nature of half‐height E‐plane bends and single‐step power combiners assures high order mode free increased bandwidth in balanced phase operation. The designed orthomode transducer exhibits a return loss better than 23 dB at any port, an insertion loss less than 0.06 dB, and an isolation of 50 dB over the full bandwidth. Moreover, the phase difference between orthogonal polarizations is lower than 0.7° over the band, thus enabling applications where phase‐matched outputs are required. This design has been chosen for the QUIJOTE cosmic microwave background experiment due to its cost‐effective, compact design, and high‐quality performance as well as being readily scalable to the WR51 and WR28 waveguide bands. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2010.     

Ultracompact two‐way and four‐way SIW/HMSIW power dividers loaded by complementary split‐ring resonators

In this paper, two ultracompact power dividers based on the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and half‐mode SIW (HMSIW) technologies loaded by complementary split‐ring resonators (CSRRs) are presented. The presented structures are designed based on the theory of evanescent mode propagation. To obtain a size reduction, the CSRR unit cells are etched on the metallic surface of the SIW and HMSIW structures. First, a two‐way HMSIW power divider is reported. In this circuit, the concept of HMSIW is utilized aiming at a further size reduction in addition to the size reduction by the CSRR unit cells. Then, a four‐way SIW power divider is designed so that the direct coaxial feed is used for the input port and microstrip transmission lines are used for the output ports. Both two‐way and four‐way SIW/HMSIW power dividers at 5.8 GHz covering WLAN are designed, fabricated, and measured. They respectively have 0.18 × 0.21 λg² and 0.38 × 0.21 λg² total size. A fair agreement between simulated and measured results is achieved. The measured insertion losses are 0.5 ± 0.5 and 0.6 ± 0.5 dB for the two‐way and four‐way SIW/HMSIW power dividers, respectively, in the operating band of interest.     

Wideband turnstile junction coaxial waveguide orthomode transducer

A wideband turnstile junction coaxial waveguide orthomode transducer (OMT) is presented in this paper, featuring coaxial waveguide input and orthogonal rectangular waveguide outputs. It primarily comprises of a turnstile junction, bending stepped impedance transformers and power combiners. The symmetrical geometry helps achieve wide operating bandwidth and balanced output phases. The OMT covers the whole Ku band from 12 to 18 GHz, which aims at wideband dual‐polarized signal combination and separation within coaxial‐type multi‐band antenna systems. An experimental prototype is manufactured and the measured results confirm that the reflection coefficient is lower than ?15 dB within the whole band, and the port isolation is better than 35 dB. Turnstile junction coaxial waveguide OMTs can be adopted widely in circular/coaxial waveguide hybrid feeding networks for multi‐band satellite communication/remote sensing antenna systems.