This letter presents a novel tunable coupling structure to simplify the design complexity of the miniaturized fully tunable filter by using open ring and varactors. Based on the proposed novel tunable coupling structure, a fully tunable bandpass filter is implemented with independently tunable operating frequency and bandwidth. The tunable resonator and tunable coupling structure can be easily combined to improve Out-of-band suppression performance. The design procedure of a fully tunable bandpass filter consists of five tunable cavities and tunable coupling rings is also proposed. A prototype of the proposed fully tunable filter is built to verify the design experimentally. Good agreement between simulated and measured results is obtained.

This paper specifies a concise review of recent research and development in the context of electromagnetic absorbers. An attempt has been made to justify the need for economical and thin microwave absorbers for achieving good absorption characteristics over a wide range of frequencies within a specified band of electromagnetic spectrum. This paper mainly focuses on the challenges encountered while designing a perfect electromagnetic absorber which can absorb electromagnetic radiations of any polarization that may appear from any direction and may occur over a broader bandwidth. The absorbers which are competent enough to withstand all these challenges are capable to suppress the reflection and transmission of unknown electromagnetic radiations efficiently to the lowest possible level. Several prospects of nanotechnology in flexible absorber design are also described to enhance absorber characteristics. This paper also provides a futuristic glimpse on several applications of such absorbers for commercial and military purposes.

This paper presents slow-wave transmission lines based on non-periodic reactive loading. Specifically, the loading elements are stepped impedance shunt stubs (SISS). By sacrificing periodicity using SISS tuned to different frequencies, multiple transmission zeros above the pass band arise, and the rejection level and bandwidth of the stop band is improved as compared with those of periodic structures. Through a proper design, it is possible to achieve compact lines, simultaneously providing the required electrical length and characteristic impedance at the design frequency (dictated by specifications), and efficiently filtering the response at higher frequencies. These lines are applied to the design of a compact power splitter with filtering capability in this work. The length of the splitter, based on a 35.35 Ω impedance inverter, is reduced by a factor of roughly two. Moreover, harmonic suppression better than 20 dB up to the fourth harmonic is achieved.

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.

The paper describes the design and development of a low profile wide scanned conformal active 1 × 32 phased array antenna for Ku-band SATCOM applications. The realized antenna is diagonally polarized and covers full transmit frequency band (i.e. 13.75–14.5 GHz) of Ku band SATCOM. All the developed sub-systems of the antenna, i.e. conformal radiating array, conformal transmit module, manifold network, and beam steering unit are described. The VSWR of the antenna is better than 1.65 over the complete transmit frequency band. The antenna has the beam steering capability of ±60° in the array plane. Designed antenna is best suited for airborne applications, where antenna profile contributes considerable aero drag and RCS to the host platform.

A polarization and band reconfigurable cross-slot antenna for multiband applications is presented in this paper. The antenna consists of four p–i–n diodes embedded in the cross-shaped slot in a ground plane and excited by a microstrip feed line. The p–i–n diodes are placed in such a way that they produce multiple bands, with linearly and circularly polarized (CP) radiation. By switching the states of the p–i–n diodes, the sense of rotation of the electric field in CP radiation can be reconfigured. The proposed structure can be configured to produce two bands that radiate linearly polarized waves or three bands, where, two are linearly polarized and one is CP. The proposed design concepts are validated bythe CST studio suite as well as measurementsare carried out on fabricated prototypes.

In this paper, a novel multilayer substrate integrated dual-mode dielectric resonator (DR) filter is proposed. The square dual-mode DR is made of the high permittivity substrate by removing the undesired portions and the surface coppers so that the relatively high unloaded quality factor of the dominate TM11 pair can be obtained which compared to these fully dielectric-filled substrate integrated waveguides. Meanwhile, it can be easily integrated in an equivalent cavity implemented by multilayer printed circuit boards for filter design, showcasing low in-band loss, light weight, and compact size. For demonstration, a multilayer substrate integrated DR bandpass filter centered at X-band is designed and measured. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results can be observed, and the measured insertion loss at the passband center frequency (8.38 GHz) is 1.1 dB.

In this paper, the solution of the inverse scattering problem for determining the shape and location of perfectly conducting scatterers by making use of electromagnetic scattered fields is presented. Based on the boundary condition and the measured scattered field, a set of nonlinear integral equations is derived and the imaging problem is reformulated into an optimization one. Then, two evolutionary algorithms are used to solve the inverse scattering problem. To further clarify, our contribution is to test two well-known algorithms in the literature to the problem of microwave imaging. The hybrid approaches combine the standard particle swarm optimization (PSO) with the ideas of the simulated annealing and extremal optimization algorithms, respectively. Both of them are shown to be more efficient than original PSO technique. Reconstruction results by using the two presented schemes are compared with exact shapes of some conducting cylinders; and good agreements with the original shapes are observed.

In this paper, a novel low-profile planar monopole internal antenna for GSM/DCS/PCS/ IMT/UMTS/WLAN/ISM/LTE operation in the mobile phones is designed and developed. The proposed antenna is composed of multi-branches, F-shaped slots in the system ground plane and tapered feeding line which can improve the impedance matching at the feeding point. The antenna occupying a small area of 18.5 × 46 mm2 is placed on the top no-ground portion of the system circuit board, which makes it suitable for practical mobile applications. A prototype of the proposed antenna is fabricated and tested. In addition, the planar monopole antenna can provide two wide lower and upper bands to respectively cover the frequency range of 848–1152 MHz, and 1736–3000 MHz, for the GSM850/GSM900/DCS1800/PCS1900/IMT2000/UMTS2100/WLAN2400/ISM2450/LTE2300/LTE2500 operation in the mobile phone. Good radiation patterns and antenna peak gain for frequencies over the operating bands have been observed. The antenna is simulated and designed by using Ansoft HFSS and CST Microwave Studio. Details of the antenna design, results on the reflection coefficient, radiation characteristics, directivity, antenna gain, realized gain, and efficiency of the antenna are given and discussed. Finally, the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the proposed antenna placed at the bottom of the mobile phone is also investigated. The obtained SAR values meet the limit of 1.6 W/kg for the 1 g head tissue and 2.0 W/kg for the 10 g head tissue.

With the aim of performing perimeter surveillance of high-speed railway networks, this paper presents the design of a passive multistatic radar system based on the use of Long-Term Evolution (LTE) downlink signals as the illumination of opportunity. Taking into account the specifications and standard of the LTE system, the ambiguity function of measured downlink signals is analyzed in terms of range and Doppler resolution, ambiguities, and sidelobe level. The deployment of the proposed passive radar is flexible and scalable, and it is based on multichannel software defined radio receivers that obtain the reference and surveillance signals by means of digital beamforming. The signal processing and data fusion are based, respectively, on the delay-Doppler cross-correlation with the reconstructed reference signals and a two-stage tracking at sensor and central level. Finally, the performance of the proposed system is estimated in terms of its maximum detection range and simulation results of the detection of moving targets are presented, demonstrating its technical feasibility for the short-range detection of pedestrians, vehicles, and small drones.

Fifth generation (5G) is the current hot topic of the world's leading telecommunication companies. The compact designs of antennas made it possible for them to resonate at higher frequencies, thus to enable the devices to attain higher data rate as compared to 4G technology. Data rate of 5G technology for low mobility users is expected to be 50.0 Gbps and for high mobility users it is 5.0 Gbps. On the other hand, International telecommunication union's objective for 5G is 3 times more spectrally efficient thanlong-term evolution (LTE). The paper has carried out meticulous study over the impact of 5G antennas on the size of antenna, size/type of substrate, gain, efficiency, and isolation, etc. Also, different arrays andmultiple input multiple outputs (MIMOs) with patch antenna, magneto electric-dipole, microstrip grid array antenna, folded dipole, series-fed array, connected antenna array, MIMO are studied. The paper also includes the existing technology i.e 4G LTE and their isolation enhancement approaches. Many of the designs used the reflector plates to reduce the back lobe radiation problem in MIMO/array antennas to increase front-to-back ratio. The gain in 5G antennas can be increased by using balun, parasitic element as directors, multiple notch structures, three identical slot sub-arrays, etc. Mathematical equations of multi-element/port antennas are included to model the designed antennas. The beam steering is also included for the 5G technology in this paper.

A compact ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filter (BPF) based on surface-to-surface transition technology with features of extended stopband and integrated interference mitigation characteristics is proposed. The basic structure consists of a modified multiple-mode resonator (MMR)-based co-planar waveguide in the ground surface and coupled in broadside manner with the microstrip lines on the top surface. Later, two open-circuited stubs are embedded in the feeding lines and two complementary split ring resonators are etched in the MMR to implement multiple in-band transmission zeros so as to circumvent interference. A prototype is fabricated and measured to validate the results obtained in simulation. The proposed UWB-BPF is compact in size with overall dimensions of 17.82 by 11.08 mm2.

A shorted magneto electric dipole with orthogonal dual polarization is designed for modern wireless communications. The proposed antenna is a wideband dual-polarized antenna consisting of magneto electric dipoles, which are fed by novel hook-shaped strip feeds. The antenna proposed in this paper is simulated using EM simulation software called high-frequency structure simulator. The simulated and measured results are presented. This antenna achieves 45.4% of impedance bandwidth of −10 dB RL for frequency range from 1.7 to 2.7 GHz. This frequency range covers the wireless communications applications like GSM 1800/1900, WCDMA, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, etc.

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.

This paper presents a fully digital transmitter chain from baseband to antenna, including a modulator, two truly digital (i.e. fully switched) microwave power amplifiers and a transmit/receive switch. Both, amplifier and switch monolithic microwave integrated circuits were implemented in a GaN HEMT process. The novel amplifier design provides greatly reduced complexity, needing only three voltage sources. Measurements were conducted using 5, 20, and 100 MHz wide baseband signals. Carrier frequencies cover the 900 and 2000 MHz bands. For the 5 MHz BB signal an ACLR of over 52 dB is reached, fulfilling the 3GPP specs for base station use while still maintaining a final-stage drain efficiency of 46% at 6.5 dB peak to average power ratio. Full-scale output power at 30 V supply voltage was measured to exceed 3 W at 80% drain efficiency. Further features of this digital amplifier approach include small form factor and frequency agility, making it an ideal candidate for software defined radio.

This study introduces an alternative approach to the numerical solution of two-dimensional (2D) electromagnetic scattering problems by a numerical method of moments (MoM). The real source position vector is replaced by a complex quantity, then Green's function generates a complex source point beam, therefore the interactions between the far zone elements in the impedance matrix are neglected, except the basis functions near to the edges, strongly localizing the impedance matrix. The memory storage increases with the number of edges, but for a fixed number of the edges, it is linearly proportional with N, i.e. O(N). Consequently, the overall running time can be drastically reduced and the far zone scattering pattern and the near field can be found. The proposed procedure is first explained for the single perfectly electrically conducting (PEC) strip geometry, then extended to the scattering by 2D PEC objects with closed polygonal cross-sections. Numerical results are presented for a strip and a square cylinder in both polarizations. The relative errors are also compared with the standard MoM.

In this paper, a compact wideband tightly-coupled dipole antenna array has been developed. Dipole elements are placed in the triangular lattice to reduce the side lobe level in the radiation pattern of one of the planes. To obtain the initial dimensions, 1-D infinite array analysis of the proposed array is carried out. The infinite array is designed to operate in 5–14.3 GHz (96.3% impedance bandwidth) frequency band. The antenna array can be used in C and X band applications. Inter-element coupling is utilized to achieve ultra-wideband performance in the proposed array. A 2 × 8 elements finite array is designed with the feed network. An ultra-wideband parallel strip to microstrip transition is used to feed the array elements. A metallic shielding for the feed network helps in reducing the back lobes. The overall size of the array with the reflector and the feed network is 148 mm × 224 mm × 54.5 mm. To validate the proposed concept, the antenna array is fabricated and tested. Impedance bandwidth of 2.8:1 along with broadside radiation pattern throughout the band of interest is observed.

This work describes the design of a rectenna array exploiting orthogonal, closely-spaced UHF monopoles for orientation-independent RF energy harvesting to energize a passive tag, designed for UWB localization, with wake-up radio (WUR) capabilities. To reach this goal, different RF networks are studied to simultaneously realize RF decoupling of the antenna elements and matching of the radiating elements to the non-linear network of rectifiers. The design is performed for a wide power range of the RF incoming signals that need to be exploited for both energizing the passive tag and for providing energy autonomy to a WUR sub-system, used to minimize the long-term power consumption during tag standby operations. Two meandered cross-polarized monopoles, located in close proximity, and thus highly coupled, are adopted for orientation-insensitive operations. The combining RF network is reactive and includes an unbalanced power divider to draw a fraction of the harvested energy to a secondary way for WUR operations. The performance of the harvester is first optimized by EM/non-linear co-design of the whole system over an interval of low RF power levels. The system has been realized and experimentally validated: the superior results obtained, in terms of both dc voltage and power, with respect to a standard single-monopole rectenna, justify the deployment of the presented tag for the energy autonomy of future generation radio-frequency identification tags for indoor localization.

Bessel-beam launchers are promising and established technologies for focusing applications at microwaves. Their use in time-domain leads to the definition of a new class of devices, namely, the X-wave launchers. In this work, we discuss the focusing features of such devices with a specific interest at millimeter waves. The spatial resolutions of such systems are described under a rigorous mathematical framework to derive novel operating conditions for designing X-wave launchers. These criteria might be particularly appealing for specific millimeter-wave applications. In particular, it is shown that an electrically large aperture is not strictly required, as it seemed from previous works. However, the use of an electrically small aperture would demand a considerably wideband capability. The various discussions presented here provide useful information for the design of X-wave launchers. This aspect is finally shown with reference to the practical design of two different X-wave launchers.

A hybrid thin film multilayer antenna for automotive radar is presented in this work. A 2 × 8 aperture coupled stacked patch antenna array is realized on a single layer printed circuit board (PCB) using a novel thin film-based approach. Using a compact 180° phase difference power divider, inter-element spacing in a 2×2 sub-array is reduced. Measurement results show a 19% (67.9–82.5 GHz) impedance bandwidth and a wideband broadside radiation pattern, with a maximum gain of 15.4 dBi realized gain at 72 GHz. The presented antenna compares favorably with other multilayer PCB antennas in terms of performance, with the advantage of simpler manufacturing and robust design. The antenna can be employed in mid-range automotive radar applications.