In this paper, we report the analysis, design, and implementation of stacked transistors for power amplifiers realized on InP Double Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors (DHBTs) technology. A theoretical analysis based on the interstage matching between all the single transistors has been developed starting from the small-signal equivalent circuit. The analysis has been extended by including large-signal effects and layout-related limitations. An evaluation of the maximum number of transistors for positive incremental power and gain is also carried out. To validate the analysis, E-band three- and four-stacked InP DHBT matched power cells have been realized for the first time as monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs). For the three-stacked transistor, a small-signal gain of 8.3 dB, a saturated output power of 15 dBm, and a peak power added efficiency (PAE) of 5.2% have been obtained at 81 GHz. At the same frequency, the four-stacked transistor achieves a small-signal gain of 11.5 dB, a saturated output power of 14.9 dBm and a peak PAE of 3.8%. A four-way combined three-stacked MMIC power amplifier has been implemented as well. It exhibits a linear gain of 8.1 dB, a saturated output power higher than 18 dBm, and a PAE higher than 3% at 84 GHz.

In this study, wideband bandpass power divider with good out-of-band performance is proposed. Two bandpass filters (BPFs) are utilized to substitute the quarter-wavelength transmission line in conventional Wilkinson power divider. A resistor is specially arranged between two BPFs for a good isolation. Four transmission zeros (TZs) are found to be distributed in the lower and upper stopband of the power divider. Moreover, the locations of two TZs can be shifted by tuning the impedance ratio of the center-loaded open stub, which is propitious to improve the frequency selectivity. Even- and odd-mode methods are applied to analyze the proposed power divider and closed-form design formulas are obtained. Finally, two prototype power dividers with measured rejection level in the upper stopband larger than 29.1 and 32 dB till to 2.7f0 and 2.69f0, respectively, are designed and fabricated to testify the proposed design concept. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results is observed, validating the validity of the proposed design principle.

In this paper, a 3 dB H-plane substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) power divider/combiner with improved isolation is reported. By adding two isolated ports into the Y-junction, it will perform like a multi-port coupler, so that the isolation between its dividing ports can be effectively improved as the newly-added ports are properly matched. To verify the availability and effectiveness of this concept, two prototypes, one is terminated by coaxial terminations and the other is loaded with lumped resistors, are developed. Their measured results are separately in good agreement with their corresponding simulations. Meanwhile, isolations better than 16 dB with fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 35 and 25% are achieved, respectively, as well as low phase and amplitude imbalances. Compared with some reported similar SIW power dividers, the proposed ones exhibit wider FBW with similar isolation, insertion loss, phase, and amplitude balance performance.

This paper investigates metamaterials composed of resonant particles with negative electric polarizability located in a three-dimensional net. The main problem in fabricating these materials is the spread of the resonant frequencies of particular planar resonators. This spread is caused by the tolerances of the fabrication process for planar resonators. The simulation shows that there is a limit to the dispersion of resonant frequencies that allow the metamaterial to behave as a metamaterial with negative effective permittivity. Two metamaterials with a negative real part of the effective permittivity were designed on the basis of simulations. The first metamaterial has a regular periodic structure. The second is a metamaterial in which the resonant particles are randomly distributed both in space and in orientation, and it offers an isotropic response. This metamaterial was fabricated by inserting planar resonators into plastic shells that can be poured into any volume and ensure a random distribution of the resonant particles in space. The results of the simulations have been verified by measurements.

A compact monopulse comparator with complete nulling in all DELTA channels is designed and fabricated. The proposed comparator has small dimension and consists of interconnections of four broadband branch-line couplers and several 90° phase shifters with multistage Schiffman coupled-lines. This comparator has been characterized by its eight-port S-parameters to generate the SUM and DELTA channel frequency responses. Over 30-dB null depth was achieved in DELTA channels across the SUM channels in pass band from 14.8 to 18.2 GHz frequency range.

In this study, a new microstrip patch antenna with wideband radar cross-section (RCS) reduction is presented. The RCS of the proposed antenna was reduced by subtracting the current-direction slots of the patch, with the radiation performance sustained not only for the current-direction subtraction, but also for the no modification in the ground plane. Modified and reference antenna were fabricated and measured. The simulation and measurement results showed that the modified antenna reduced the in-band and out-band RCS simultaneously with no detriment to the radiation performance. In the frequency band from 3.9 to 8.1 GHz, the RCS of the modified antenna was reduced in the whole band compared with the RCS of the reference antenna. The maximum RCS reduction was 7 dB at a frequency of 6.7 GHz.

The next generation of wireless networks (5G) employs directional transmission at millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies to provide higher bandwidth and faster data rates. This is achieved by applying antenna arrays with proper beam steering capabilities. Rotman lens has long been used as a lens-based beamformer in electronically scanned arrays and its efficient design is important in the overall performance of the array. Minimizing the phase error on the aperture of the antenna array is an important design criterion in the lens. In this paper, a 7 × 8 wideband Rotman lens is designed. Particle swarm optimization is applied to minimize the path length error and thereby the phase error. The optimized lens operates from 25 to 31 GHz, which covers the frequency bands proposed by the Federal Communications Commission for 5G communications. The proposed optimized lens shows a maximum phase error of <0.1°. The proposed Rotman lens is a good candidate to be integrated with wideband microstrip patch antenna arrays that are suitable for 5G mmW applications.

This paper investigates a wideband and low axial ratio circularly polarized (CP) antenna, which is composed of a monopole on a novel polarization rotating reflective surface (PRRS) based on a corner-truncated artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) structure. By adjusting the dimensions of truncated corner properly, the PRRS has two polarization rotation (PR) frequency points. Then, a large PR band of 18% (5.55–6.65 GHz) can be achieved with two adjacent PR frequency points coming together. The profile of the newly PRRS is only0.04λ0. With corner-truncated AMC-based PRRS loading, a measured impedance bandwidth of 1.8 GHz (5.4–7.2 GHz) and the 3 dB axial ratio bandwidth of 1 GHz (5.55–6.65 GHz) could be obtained by the monopole antenna and validated by measurements. The values of AR were well below 1 dB at most of the CP region, which show a perfect CP performance. Moreover, the proposed antenna has exhibited a large axial ratio beamwidth in both the xoz- and yoz-planes and a peak gain of 6.1 dBic within the operational bandwidth.

A compact printed reconfigurable monopole antenna with switchable band-notches is designed and manufactured. The proposed antenna mainly consists of a disc-like radiator with two pairs of T-shaped strips protruded inside a rectangular aperture. Five PIN diode switches are employed to bridge or open the slots, which allow the antenna to be configured into three different structures functioning as an ultra-wideband (UWB) antenna, or an antenna with notched frequencies at WLAN or WiMAX band. Design and optimization of the antenna are done using CST Microwave Studio. After fabrication on an FR4 substrate with dimensions of 35 mm (width) × 41 mm (length) × 1.5 mm (thickness), numerical and experimental results of the proposed reconfigurable antenna are presented and discussed. The experimental results confirm the design as a good candidate for UWB applications.

The Misell algorithm is one of the most widely used phase retrieval holography methods for large reflector antennas to measure surface deformation. However, it usually locks in a local minimum because it heads downhill from an initial estimation without any consideration whether it heads for a global minimum or not. The core problem of the Misell algorithm is to find an initial estimation near the global minimum to avoid local stagnation. To cope with the problem, we construct a hybrid Misell algorithm, named modified very fast simulated annealing (MVFSA)-Misell algorithm, to search for the global minimum with a high efficiency. The algorithm is based on the combination of the MVFSA algorithm and Misell algorithm. Firstly, the MVFSA is utilized to obtain a rough position near the global minimum in limited steps. Then, the Misell algorithm starts from the rough position to converge to the global minimum with high speed and accuracy. The convergence characteristic of the proposed algorithm was discussed in detail through digital simulation. Simulation results show that the algorithm can reach global minimum in a very short time. Unlike the traditional Misell algorithm, the hybrid algorithm is not influenced by initial phase estimation.

Design and fabrication of a microstrip feedline-based Vivaldi antenna in the frequency range of 6.0–8.0 GHz have been presented. The Vivaldi antenna is a planar antenna, fabricated at the microstrip feedline by having an exponentially tapered slot profile on it. An optimized computer-aided design has been developed and simulated for the desired radiation parameters like voltage standing wave ratio, bandwidth, directionality, beam-width, etc. The optimized design has been fabricated and tested. Wherever the results are not found as desired; problem has been comprehensively investigated and analyzed. This is found associated with a discontinuity at feed line, fabrication tolerance constraints and parasitic capacitance at the edges or the bent of the microstrip feedline which introduce the parasitic reactance in antenna design. Here, the presented work explores a generalized theoretical procedure for the compensation of associated problem by incorporating the reactive patch on the feedline. The developed theory is applied in fabrication and tested for the desired results.

In recent years, millimeter wave (MMW) has received tremendous interest among researchers, which offers systems with high data rate communication, portability, and finer resolution. The design of the antenna at MMWs is challenging as it suffers from fabrication and measurement complexities due to associated smaller dimensions. Current state-of-the-art MMW dual-band antenna techniques demand high precision fabrication, which increases the overall cost of the system. Henceforth, the design of an MMW antenna with fabrication and measurement simplicity is quite challenging. In this paper, a simple coplanar waveguide (CPW) fed single-band MMW antenna operating at 94 GHz (W band) and a dual-band MMW antenna operating concurrently at 60 GHz (V band) and 86 GHz (E band) have been designed, fabricated, and measured. A 50 Ω CPW-to-microstrip transition has also been designed to facilitate probe measurement compatibility and to provide proper feeding to the antenna. The fabricated single frequency 94 GHz antenna shows a fractional bandwidth of 11.2% and E-plane (H-plane) gain 6.17 dBi (6.2 dBi). Furthermore, the designed MMW dual-band antenna shows fractional bandwidth: 2/6.4%, and E-plane (H-plane) gain: 7.29 dBi (7.36 dBi)/8.73 dBi (8.68 dBi) at 60/86 GHz, respectively. The proposed antenna provides a simple and cost-effective solution for different MMW applications.

In this work, an UWB/narrow band reconfigurable elliptical-shaped monopole antenna for cognitive radio applications with sequential perception and operation modes is presented. The proposed approach consists in integrating a reconfigurable filter, in an UWB antenna ground plan, by the mean of four horizontal slots and integrated switches that allow inserting/removing/varying zeros and poles in the frequency response. By acting on the slot lengths in order to alter their resonance frequencies, the different switch configurations allow the antenna to switch between an UWB mode that could be used for the perception (sensing) and different narrowband modes, mono-band and dual-band, that could be used for the operation at 2.4 or/and 3.5 GHz. To validate the concept, an experimental prototype has been fabricated and a good agreement between the simulated and the measured S-parameters has been obtained. While the presented work uses the presence/absence of a perfect conductive strip (PEC) to model real switch operation, it is believed that the obtained results conjugated with previous work using real switches on a very similar structure allows validating approach.