A review on the Surface Integrated Waveguide (SIW): integrating a rectangular waveguide in a planar (M)MIC

The paper provides a review on the Surface Integrated Waveguide approach to microwave and millimeter wave circuits. Although the history of SIWs is comparatively recent, this guiding structure has proven the capability to integrate within a (M)MIC approach a rectangular waveguide, allowing for the development of high Q and low-loss component that cannot be implemented in quasi-TEM transmissive media, like the stripline, the microstrip and coplanar waveguide. During the last few years SIW components and circuits have shown excellent capabilities in microwave and millimeter wave applications, providing low-cost, miniaturized implementations for a variety of passive components, such as filters, directional couplers, resonators, and antenna feeding systems. Micromachining has demonstrated the capabilities of the SIW approach within the framework of monolithic integrated passive components, while SIW implementations in flexible substrates will pave the way to low-cost, consumer electronic products that could not be realized in conventional quasi-TEM transmission lines

Analysis and characterizations of planar transmission structures and components for superconducting and monolithic integrated circuits

The analysis and modeling of superconducting planar transmission lines were performed. Theoretically, the highest possible Q values of superconducting microstrip line was calculated and, as a result, it provided the Q value that the experiment can aim for. As an effort to search for a proper superconducting transmission line structure, the superconducting microstrip line and coplanar waveguide were compared in terms of loss characteristics and their design aspects. Also, the research was expanded to a superconducting coplanar waveguide family in the microwave packaging environment. Theoretically, it was pointed out that the substrate loss is critical in the superconducting transmission line structures

Substrate Integrated Waveguide Horn Slot Antenna Array

Substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) is a rectangular dielectric-filled waveguide, which is synthesized in a planar substrate with arrays of metallic vias to realize bilateral side walls and its transitions with planar structures. These vias act as walls of the waveguide supporting current flow, thus allowing for waveguide mode propagation. Substrate integrated waveguide is suggested for low-loss, low-cost and high density integration applications. SIW preserves the advantages from both the traditional rectangular waveguide and microstrip for easy integration. It is used in designing passive circuits such as resonators, couplers, filters, power dividers, circulators, and antennas. Here, full wave analysis is used to design microwave components such as power dividers, T-junctions and right angle bends. Then a transmission line concept is used to construct a feeding network based on these components to speed up the design process. This concept is verified with full wave analysis. Co-simulation technique is investigated and implemented for the feeding network using these passive components resulting in reduced computation time. The response of the feeding network with the antennas such as an H-plane horn in an array environment is investigated. In the process, modified designs for the H-plane horn with a novel concept of a slot on the H-plane horn are achieved and used as elements for the linear arrays

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

Design and Measurement of a Millimeter-wave 2D Beam Switching Planar Antenna Array

A millimeter-wave 2-D beam switching microstrip patch antenna array excited by a 4x4 substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) Modified Butler Matrix is designed and experimentally evaluated in this thesis. A novel architecture is introduced for the Butler Matrix feed network to give designers a choice for phase shifter location to pursue a smaller circuit area. In addition, it enables the designer to control the BM phased outputs for achieving a set of desired 2-D beam directions, e.g., ϕ0=45°, 135°, 225°, and 315° at θ0=45°, with a passive beam switching network for a given array geometry. Full-wave simulation results show when the so designed 4x4 Butler Matrix feeds a 2x2 planar patch antenna array, 4-quadrant beam switching is achieved. To meet the goal of providing a low cost small footprint solution, the presented Modified Butler Matrix features straight SIW phase shifter using periodic apertures. The Modified Butler Matrix is fabricated on a single layer Rogers RO4350B substrate, achieving a circuit area of 222.5 mm2, which is a 54% improvement over previously published 60 GHz results. The fully-integrated antenna array system is created by development of a new SIW to planar patch antenna transition structure which maintains a total antenna frontend area of 333 mm2, just 42% of the area of the next closest SIW 2-D beam switching publication at 60 GHz. For verification of beam switching via over the air (OTA) measurements at 60 GHz, a benchtop anechoic chamber with proper transmitter and receiver antenna positioners is designed and fabricated using in-house maker laboratory resources. 2-D beam steering is proved in the intended 4 quadrants of radiation space at ϕ0=50°, 140°, 220°, and 300° and θ0=30±5° demonstrating meeting the design specifications with a very good margin. As well, for each switched beam the gain of antenna array was measured to be between 4.8 to 6 dBi at 60 GHz which is within 1dB deviation from the simulated results

Sixty-GHz integrated RF head Final report

Integrated 60.8 GHz RF receiver and low noise IF preamplifier developmen

The Concept of Substrate Integrated E-plane Waveguide and Circuits

In this thesis, a new type of substrate integrated waveguide is proposed for implementing E-plane type of waveguide circuits on printed circuit boards. obviously, these E-plane type of circuits cannot be realized by the conventional substrate integrated waveguide. The so-called substrate integrated E-plane waveguide consists of two circuit boards attached to each other. Two copper strips are inserted in between two circuit boards, where plated through holes are penetrated through them along the transmission direction. The plated through holes and copper strips altogether played as side walls of a conventional waveguide to support longitudinal and vertical currents. Simulation is carried out and the result shows that the proposed waveguide is able to guide horizontally polarized electromagnetive wave. An E-plane inductive septa filter, two one-dimensional E-plane offset waveguide filters, and an air-filled evanescent-mode band-pass filter are proposed as examples to prove that E-plane type of circuits are able to be built based on this new synthesized waveguide structure