116 research outputs found
Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure
A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium
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Extraordinary acoustic transmission via supercoupling and self-interference cancellation
Supercoupling is a widely researched topic in wave engineering, which has been used to build coupling channels that can, in principle, support total transmission and complete phase uniformity, independent of the length of the channel. This has generally been accomplished by employing dispersion in media that display a near-zero index. In the field of acoustics, prior works have required the presence of periodic embedded resonators, such as membranes or Helmholtz resonators, in order to observe near-zero properties. Here it is shown, theoretically and experimentally, that supercoupling can occur in an acoustic channel without the presence of embedded resonators. A compressibility-near-zero (CNZ) acoustic channel was observed to show remarkable properties analogous to those found in electromagnetics. Furthermore, these principles are employed to develop an acoustic power divider, which takes advantage of the CNZ properties of the channel to also exhibit phase invariance at the output. In the next section, another extraordinary acoustic transmission phenomenon is explored, regarding the potential for sending and receiving from a single acoustic transducer at the same time and at the same frequency. This is made possible through an electrical circuit that is designed to cancel self-interfering signals in acoustic measurement systems. Systems that employ self-interference cancellation (SIC) are often referred to as simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) or in-band full duplex (IBFD) systems, which have recently enabled sending and receiving of Radio Frequency (RF) signals at the same time and at the same frequency. This has led to commercialization efforts with the promise of doubling the throughput of traditional radio systems including Wi-Fi and 5G cellular communications. Prior to these advances, researchers in vibration control explored self-sensing actuator systems, also referred to as sensoriactuators or sensorless control systems. Inspired by these developments, these approaches are combined and extended to explore STAR functionality in an acoustic measurement system. First, self-interference cancellation (SIC) is applied to time-domain measurements to demonstrate the potential for a practical, single-transducer ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) system to measure echo returns while it is actively transmitting at the same frequency. Theoretical models and experimental results are presented and discussed.Electrical and Computer Engineerin
1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface
A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance
ECOS 2012
The 8-volume set contains the Proceedings of the 25th ECOS 2012 International Conference, Perugia, Italy, June 26th to June 29th, 2012. ECOS is an acronym for Efficiency, Cost, Optimization and Simulation (of energy conversion systems and processes), summarizing the topics covered in ECOS: Thermodynamics, Heat and Mass Transfer, Exergy and Second Law Analysis, Process Integration and Heat Exchanger Networks, Fluid Dynamics and Power Plant Components, Fuel Cells, Simulation of Energy Conversion Systems, Renewable Energies, Thermo-Economic Analysis and Optimisation, Combustion, Chemical Reactors, Carbon Capture and Sequestration, Building/Urban/Complex Energy Systems, Water Desalination and Use of Water Resources, Energy Systems- Environmental and Sustainability Issues, System Operation/ Control/Diagnosis and Prognosis, Industrial Ecology
Analysis of Substrate Integrated Waveguides
By using a transverse resonance technique, the frequency characteristics of slotted substrate integrated waveguides (SSIWs), slotted half mode substrate integrated waveguides (slotted HMSIWs) and slotted parallel plate SIWs loaded with capacitances and inductances are analyzed theoretically and related to those of conventional waveguides. In practice, the slotted SIWs and HMSIWs are distributed structures, so that they are loaded with ladders of capacitances and inductances across their slots. The cut-off frequencies of the slotted SIWs and HMSIWs loaded with specific capacitances and inductances are then calculated from our analytic technique. These numerical predictions are both compared with and also in some cases used to clarify the corresponding values of cut-off frequencies estimated by HFSS and also by CST Microwave Studio by means of using S-parameters. Field plots for some of these practical examples are used to provided further insights regarding the design and operation of these structures. A tuneable resonator and tuneable single port narrow band antenna are designed. A rudimentary design of a bandpass filter (in the form of a SIW loaded with both inductances and capacitances in series across the slot) is also outlined.
Finally, a modal analysis technique for a general composite waveguide structure, essentially consisting of three sections of SIW, is developed from first principles. This method is used to establish matrices which are used to calculate the S-parameters of the full structure. Though the technique itself is not entirely original, its application is a novel one which can be applied to a whole range of hybrid waveguide structures. Some specific examples of the general case which have practical importance, namely rectangular SIW sections at either end of a slotted SIW region via means of a step with E-planes and H-planes respectively, are considered. The operational characteristics of these waveguide structures are analyzed by means of examining their S-parameters over a suitable range of frequencies. These predicitions are then compared with, and also in some cases, used to interpret the S-parameter estimates from HFSS. The calculated predictions from the modal analysis for these examples are useful for the determination of frequency characteristics of SSIWs, which are instrumental in the novel design of a plethora of microwave devices. In fact, the mode matching method is compared with CST Microwave Studio to estimate the cutoff frequency of a slot SIW antenna
Lumped silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators for high-speed optical interconnects
The boom in worldwide internet connectivity and cloud services has caused unprecedented need for high-bandwidth connections between and within data centres. Silicon photonics is becoming the platform of choice to provide low-cost, large-volume production of future optical transceivers. However, the scale of modern data centres introduces challenges of speed, reach and, crucially, energy consumption for these devices. Silicon photonic Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) are one possibility for providing electrical-to-optical conversion at the transmit side of such fibre-optic links. In this thesis, comprehensive investigation is carried out into lumped MZMs, specifically, as their unterminated, capacitive load holds promise for lower power consumption than more typical travelling-wave MZMs with resistive terminations.
Detailed characterisations and simulations of dual-drive silicon photonic lumped MZMs are made to investigate the key trade-off of modulation bandwidth and drive voltage.
Drivers with low source impedance are investigated as a means of boosting lumped MZM bandwidths, while advanced modulation formats such as four-level pulse-amplitude modulation (PAM4) and electrical duobinary modulation (EDB) are also leveraged to provide more spectrally-efficient signals. In particular, experimental demonstration is made of a novel low-impedance, switched-capacitor PAM4 driver for a lumped MZM in a 30 Gb/s silicon photonic link over 10 km of optical fibre. Simulations are carried out to optimise the bias and doping levels of lumped MZMs used with such drivers. Predistortion methods are investigated through experiments and simulations as alternative ways to increase the bandwidth. A simple first-order FIR filter is shown experimentally to enable 25 Gb/s NRZ modulation with a low-bandwidth MZM, while more optimised precompensation enables 50 Gb/s PAM4 and EDB. Finally, simulations using an accurate equivalent circuit model for the lumped MZM demonstrate the potential for a well-designed driver with lowered source impedance and controlled amounts of inductive peaking to reduce the need for transmitter-side precompensation
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Surpassing Fundamental Limits through Time Varying Electromagnetics
Surpassing the fundamental limits that govern all electromagnetic structures, such as reciprocity and the delay-bandwidth-size limit, will have a transformative impact on all applications based on electromagnetic circuits and systems. For instance, violating principles of reciprocity enables non-reciprocal components such as isolators and circulators, which find application in full-duplex wireless radios, radar, biomedical imaging, and quantum computing systems. Overcoming the delay-bandwidth-size limit enables ultra-broadband yet extremely-compact devices whose size is not fundamentally related to the wavelength at the operating frequency. The focus of this dissertation is on using time-variance as a new toolbox to overcome these fundamental limits and re-imagine circuit and system design.
Traditional non-reciprocal components are realized using ferrite materials that loose their reciprocity under the application of external magnetic bias. However, the sheer volume, cost and weight of these magnet based non-reciprocal components coupled with their inability to be fabricated in conventional semiconductor processes, have limited their application to bulky and large-scale systems. Other approaches such as active-biased and non-linearity based non-reciprocity are compatible with semiconductor processes, however, they suffer from other poor linearity and noise performance. In this dissertation, using passive transistor switch as the modulating element, we have proposed the concept of spatio-temporal conductivity modulation and have demonstrated a gamut of non-reciprocal devices ranging from gyrators to isolators and circulators. Through novel circuit topologies, for the first time, we have demonstrated on-chip circulators with multi-watt input power handling, operation at high millimeter-wave frequencies, and tailor made circulators for emerging technologies such as simultaneous-transmit-and-receive MRI and quantum computing.
Delay-bandwidth-size trade-off is another fundamental electromagnetic limit, that constrains the delay imparted by a medium or a device within a fixed footprint to be inversely proportional to the signal bandwidth. It is this limit that governs the size of any microwave passive devices to be inversely proportional to its operating frequency. As a part of this dissertation, through intelligent clocking of switched capacitor networks we overcame the delay-bandwidth-size limit, thus resulting in infinitesimal, yet broadband microwave devices. Here we proposed a new paradigm in wave propagation where the properties such as the propagation delay and characteristic impedance does not depend on the constituent elements/materials of the medium, but rather heavily rely on the user-defined modulation scheme, thereby opening huge opportunities for realizing highly-reconfigurable passives. Leveraging these concepts, we demonstrated wide range of reciprocal an non-reciprocal devices including ultra-compact delay elements, highly-reconfigurable microwave passives, ultra-wideband circulators with infinitesimal form-factors and dispersion-free chip scale floquet topological insulators. Application of these devices have also been evaluated in real-world systems through our demonstrations of wideband, full-duplex receivers leveraging switched capacitors based true-time-delay interference cancelers and floquet topological insulator based antenna interfaces for full-duplex phased-arrays and ultra-wideband beamformers.
Furthermore, to cater the growing RF and microwave needs of future, large-scale quantum computing systems, we demonstrated a low-cryogenic, wideband circulator based on time modulation of superconducting devices. This superconducting circulator is expected to operate alongside the superconducting qubits, inside a dilution refrigerator at 10mK-100mK, thus enabling a tightly integrated quantum system. We also presented the design and implementation of a cryogenic-CMOS clock driver chip that will generate the clocks required by the superconducting circulator. Finally, we also demonstrated the design and implementation of a low-noise, low power consumption, 6GHz - 8GHz cryogenic downconversion receiver at 4K for cryogenic qubit readout
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