Development of micromachined millimeter-wave modules for next-generation wireless transceiver front-ends

This thesis discusses the design, fabrication, integration and characterization of millimeter wave passive components using polymer-core-conductor surface micromachining technologies. Several antennas, including a W-band broadband micromachined monopole antenna on a lossy glass substrate, and a Ka-band elevated patch antenna, and a V-band micromachined horn antenna, are presented. All antennas have advantages such as a broad operation band and high efficiency. A low-loss broadband coupler and a high-Q cavity for millimeter-wave applications, using surface micromachining technologies is reported using the same technology. Several low-loss all-pole band-pass filters and transmission-zero filters are developed, respectively. Superior simulation and measurement results show that polymer-core-conductor surface micromachining is a powerful technology for the integration of high-performance cavity, coupler and filters. Integration of high performance millimeter-wave transceiver front-end is also presented for the first time. By elevating a cavity-filter-based duplexer and a horn antenna on top of the substrate and using air as the filler, the dielectric loss can be eliminated. A full-duplex transceiver front-end integrated with amplifiers are designed, fabricated, and comprehensively characterized to demonstrate advantages brought by this surface micromachining technology. It is a low loss and substrate-independent solution for millimeter-wave transceiver integration.Ph.D.Committee Chair: John Papapolymerou; Committee Chair: Manos Tentzeris; Committee Member: Gordon Stuber; Committee Member: John Cressler; Committee Member: John Z. Zhang; Committee Member: Joy Laska

Low Temperature Co-fired Ceramics for System-in-Package Applications at 122 GHz

This work presents a low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology based system-in-package (SiP) operating beyond 100 GHz. The SiP encloses a semiconductor transceiver chip in a pea-sized LTCC package. The SiP is efficient and robust in terms of its electrical, thermal and mechanical characteristics. Moreover, it is low-cost and requires only standard manufacturing and assembly techniques. Finally, two fully-integrated 122 GHz radar sensors are demonstrated in LTCC technology

Pluggable Optical Connector Interfaces for Electro-Optical Circuit Boards

A study is hereby presented on system embedded photonic interconnect technologies, which would address the communications bottleneck in modern exascale data centre systems driven by exponentially rising consumption of digital information and the associated complexity of intra-data centre network management along with dwindling data storage capacities. It is proposed that this bottleneck be addressed by adopting within the system electro-optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs), on which conventional electrical layers provide power distribution and static or low speed signaling, but high speed signals are conveyed by optical channels on separate embedded optical layers. One crucial prerequisite towards adopting OPCBs in modern data storage and switch systems is a reliable method of optically connecting peripheral cards and devices within the system to an OPCB backplane or motherboard in a pluggable manner. However the large mechanical misalignment tolerances between connecting cards and devices inherent to such systems are contrasted by the small sizes of optical waveguides required to support optical communication at the speeds defined by prevailing communication protocols. An innovative approach is therefore required to decouple the contrasting mechanical tolerances in the electrical and optical domains in the system in order to enable reliable pluggable optical connectivity. This thesis presents the design, development and characterisation of a suite of new optical waveguide connector interface solutions for electro-optical printed circuit boards (OPCBs) based on embedded planar polymer waveguides and planar glass waveguides. The technologies described include waveguide receptacles allowing parallel fibre connectors to be connected directly to OPCB embedded planar waveguides and board-to-board connectors with embedded parallel optical transceivers allowing daughtercards to be orthogonally connected to an OPCB backplane. For OPCBs based on embedded planar polymer waveguides and embedded planar glass waveguides, a complete demonstration platform was designed and developed to evaluate the connector interfaces and the associated embedded optical interconnect. Furthermore a large portfolio of intellectual property comprising 19 patents and patent applications was generated during the course of this study, spanning the field of OPCBs, optical waveguides, optical connectors, optical assembly and system embedded optical interconnects

Electromagnetic Interference and Compatibility

Recent progress in the fields of Electrical and Electronic Engineering has created new application scenarios and new Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) challenges, along with novel tools and methodologies to address them. This volume, which collects the contributions published in the “Electromagnetic Interference and Compatibility” Special Issue of MDPI Electronics, provides a vivid picture of current research trends and new developments in the rapidly evolving, broad area of EMC, including contributions on EMC issues in digital communications, power electronics, and analog integrated circuits and sensors, along with signal and power integrity and electromagnetic interference (EMI) suppression properties of materials

Design, measurement and analysis of multimode light guides and waveguides for display systems and optical backplane interconnections

The aim of the research in this thesis was to design and model multimode lightguides for optimising visible light for liquid crystal display systems and to design, model and experimentally test infrared light propagation within polymer multimode waveguides as board-to-board interconnects for high data rate communication. Ray tracing models the behaviour of a novel LCD colour separating backlight to optimize its efficiency by establishing the optimum dimensions and position for a unique micro-mirror array within the light guide. The output efficiency increased by 38.2% compared to the case without the embedded mirror array. A novel simulation technique combined a model of liquid crystal director orientation and a non-sequential ray tracing program was used first time to compute the reflected intensity from a LCOS device for a rear projection TV system. The performance of the LCOS display was characterised by computing the contrast ratio over a ±15° viewing cone. Photolithographically manufactured embedded multimode waveguides made from acrylate Truemode® polymer are characterized by measuring the optical transmission loss of key waveguide components including. straight, bend and crossing. Design rules derived from the experimental measurement were used to optimize optical PCB (OPCB) layout. A most compact and complex optical interconnects layout up-to-date for data centres, including parallel straight waveguide sections, cascaded 90° bends and waveguide crossing other than 90° angles, was designed, tested and used in an optic-electrical demonstration platform to convey a 10.3 Gb/s data. A further new method for reducing the end facet roughness and so the coupling loss, by curing a thin layer of core material at the end of the waveguide facet to cover the roughness fluctuations, was proposed and successfully demonstrated giving the best results reported to date resulting in an improvement of 2.8 dB which was better than the results obtained by using index matching fluid

Microelectromechanical Systems and Devices

The advances of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and devices have been instrumental in the demonstration of new devices and applications, and even in the creation of new fields of research and development: bioMEMS, actuators, microfluidic devices, RF and optical MEMS. Experience indicates a need for MEMS book covering these materials as well as the most important process steps in bulk micro-machining and modeling. We are very pleased to present this book that contains 18 chapters, written by the experts in the field of MEMS. These chapters are groups into four broad sections of BioMEMS Devices, MEMS characterization and micromachining, RF and Optical MEMS, and MEMS based Actuators. The book starts with the emerging field of bioMEMS, including MEMS coil for retinal prostheses, DNA extraction by micro/bio-fluidics devices and acoustic biosensors. MEMS characterization, micromachining, macromodels, RF and Optical MEMS switches are discussed in next sections. The book concludes with the emphasis on MEMS based actuators