High Tc superconductor, ferroelectric thin films and microwave devices

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) and Superconducting Filters

Substrate integrated waveguides (SIW) provide an excellent compromise between size and loss reduction for applications in planar circuits. SIW filters provide a better Q-factor than microstrip filters and a significant reduction in size compared to waveguide filters. The use of multi-band filters has become increasingly more common because they provide the opportunity to reduce the total footprint in both RF transmitters and receivers. This thesis investigates the design process of a single-band quasi-elliptic and dual-band SIW filter. We use several methods to design the single-band SIW, and compare the simulated results of each. These filters are designed on 0.508mm thick Rogers4003C substrate, fabricated, and measured. The introduction of negative cross-coupling in SIW structures is achieved by using etched coplanar waveguide (CPW) lines. This negative cross-coupling allows for the introduction of transmission zeros in both designed filters. We carefully investigate the transition technology to ensure that we achieve a wideband match between microstrip and SIW. The thickness of the substrate provides some challenges in the matching, so we take extra consideration to overcome this. The second part of this thesis explores the design of lumped element superconducting bandpass filters. When designing filters in the kHz and MHz range, several challenges arise. The first is the ability to use certain software: Sonnet and HFSS both have a limited ability to simulate low-frequency components. More specifically, Sonnet demonstrates an inability to accurately simulate inductors, while simulation times in HFSS are prohibitively long. Momentum thus proves to be the best EM simulator for this task. The second challenge is the need to miniaturize these filters. At such low frequencies, the filter’s footprint is quite large, therefore the reduction in size is extremely important. We implement traditional methods, such as stacked spiral inductors and vertically integrated capacitors, and achieve further size reduction by modifying the circuit topology to reduce the components with the largest footprints. We also introduce transmission zeros to improve the upper and lower band rejection. We then design a three-pole classical Chebyshev filter and a three-pole quasi-elliptic filter that uses a miniaturized circuit topology. Finally, we design a 10% six-pole superconducting slotline resonator filter. Slotline resonators provide an excellent quality factor, even at higher frequencies. A CPW-to-slotline transition is implemented so that the device can be measured using a ground-signal-ground probe. The resonators implemented use dual-spiral inductors and interdigital capacitors. This allows for flexibility when choosing the resonant frequency. All superconducting filters are fabricated using the MIT-Lincoln Lab (MIT-LL) multilayer niobium fabrication process

Tunable Superconducting Microwave Filters

Adaptive microwave systems can benefit from the use of low loss tunable microwave filters. Realizing these tunable filters that show low loss characteristics can be very challenging. The proper materials, tuning elements, and filter designs need to be considered when creating a low loss tunable filter. The integration of low loss microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and superconducting circuits is one method of achieving these types of tunable filters. The thesis introduces new multi-layer low temperature superconducting (LTS) filters and diplexers and novel topologies for tunable filters and switched multiplexers. An efficient method of designing such filters is proposed. A fabrication process to monolithically integrate MEMS devices with high temperature superconducting (HTS) circuits is also investigated in this thesis. The reflected group delay method, usually used for filter tuning, is further developed for use in designing microwave filters. It is advantageous in the design of filters to have electromagnetic simulation results that will correlate well to the fabricated microwave filters. A correction factor is presented for use with the reflected group delay method so the group delay needs to be matched to the appropriate value at the center frequency of the filter and be symmetric about the center frequency of the filter. As demonstrated with an ideal lumped element filter, the group delay method can be implemented when a closed form expression for the circuit is not known. An 8-pole HTS filter design and an 8-pole multi-layer LTS filter design demonstrate the use of the reflected group delay method. Low temperature superconducting filters, couplers and diplexers are designed and fabricated using a multilayer niobium fabrication process traditionally used for superconducting digital microelectronics. The feasibility of realizing highly miniaturized microwave niobium devices allows for the integration of superconducting digital microelectronics circuits and analog microwave devices on a single chip. Microwave devices such as bandpass filters, lowpass filters, bandstop filters, quadrature hybrids, and resistive loads are all demonstrated experimentally. New tunable filter designs are presented that can make use of MEMS switches. A manifold-coupled switched multiplexer that allows for 2^N possible states is presented. The tunable multiplexer has N filters connected to two manifolds and has embedded switches, which detune certain resonators within the filters to switch between ON and OFF states for each channel. The new concept is demonstrated with a diplexer design and two 3-pole coplanar filters. The concept is further developed through test results of a fabricated HTS triplexer and electromagnetic simulations to demonstrate a superconducting manifold-coupled switched triplexer. Another filter design is presented that makes use of switches placed only on the resonators of the filters. This filter design has N possible states and the absolute bandwidth can be kept constant for all N states. Finally, the integration of HTS circuits and MEMS devices is investigated to realize low loss tunable microwave filters. The hybrid integration is first performed through the integration of an HTS microstrip filter and commercially available RF MEMS switches. A fabrication process to monolithically integrate MEMS devices and high temperature superconducting circuits is then investigated. The fabrication process includes a titanium tungsten layer, which acts as both a resistive layer and an adhesion for the dielectric layer, an amorphous silicon dielectric layer, a photoresist sacrificial layer, and the top gold layer. The fabrication process is built up on a wafer with a thin film of a high temperature superconducting material covered with a thin film of gold. Several processes are tested to ensure that the superconducting properties of the thin film are not affected during the MEMS fabrication process

Superconducting Microwave Filters

Superconducting microelectronics (SME) technology has the potential of realizing very high speed digital receivers capable of performing direct digitization of radio frequency signals with very low power consumption. The SME receiver is implemented on a single chip using Niobium based low temperature superconductive (LTS) Josephson Junction (JJ) technology by HYPRES. Analogue RF filters are still required at the receiver front end and are key components of the overall superconductor digital receiver. SME receivers usually require two types of RF filters; a wideband bandpass filter and a bandstop filter (a notch filter). The notch filter is required to eliminate interference and unwanted signals in the passband. In this thesis, design of highly miniaturized lumped element wideband and bandstop filters is investigated and some challenges are addressed. The filters are fabricated by the HYPRES process and therefore can be integrated with the SME receiver on the same chip. In a wideband filter, the coupling between the adjacent resonators is high. Achieving such a strong coupling is one of the challenges of designing wideband filters. The wideband filters realized with distributed elements usually suffer from very low spurious frequency. As the bandwidth of the filter becomes wider, the spurious peak of the second harmonic gets closer to the passband of the filter. In the first part of this work, the possibility of realizing lumped element superconducting bandpass filters (BPF) with a relative bandwidth of 80% is investigated. In the second part of the thesis, design and realization of lumped element superconducting bandstop filters (BSF) is discussed. The challenge for designing a bandstop filter is providing a good match over a wide frequency range. So narrowband inverters cannot be used. Instead, usually λ/4 matched transmission lines provide 90° phase shift between the resonators of a notch filter. The possibility of replacing the long transmission line with other means or eliminating the inverters and using both shunt and series resonators are investigated. Having both series and shunt resonators introduces some new challenges that are addressed in the thesis and discussed thoroughly. A tunable notch resonator is presented. The tunability is provided by a superconducting MEMS varactor that is realized in our group by doing some post processing on the device fabricated by HYPRES. The tunability range of the device at cryogenic temperatures is investigated. A 3-pole tunable BSF is also designed that uses the same tunable resonators. The tunability of the filter is investigated through simulation

High-Q Millimeter Wave RF Filters and Multiplexers

For a long period of time, millimeter waves (mm-Wave) were considered unsuitable for wireless data transmission due to high attention while propagating in the atmosphere. Over the past few years, due to the vigorous developments of multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) antenna technology and semiconductor technology, it is now feasible to have reliable wireless data transmissions using mm-Wave. Traditionally, mobile communication networks operate in the frequency spectrum under 6 GHz. In order to meet the ever-increasing demand for high communication data rate and high-quality multi-media services, the current fifth generation (5G) and the emerging 6G mobile communication systems will start to utilize the mm-Wave spectrum due to its bandwidth advantages, which in turn translates into a high data transmission rate. Millimeter-wave technology is also widely used in radar, imaging, medical therapy, and sensing applications. For those reasons, over the past few years, the interest in mm-Wave spectrum has significantly increased. RF filters are essential components in any communication systems to provide frequency selectivity. As the operating frequency of communication systems is extending to the mm-Wave spectrum, the conductor loss, the dielectric loss, and the radiation loss increase rapidly, which makes it challenging to develop high-Q mm-Wave filters. Three-dimensional (3D) waveguide filter structures exhibit excellent RF performance at mm-Wave frequencies and have been widely employed in high-performance RF systems. Nevertheless, as the operating frequency increases to mm-Wave frequency, the physical sizes of the waveguide filters become miniature in size impeding the use of post-fabricated tuning elements to compensate for the manufacturing tolerances of the traditional machining technologies. The silicon-micromachining technology has the potential to develop very accurate miniature 3D filters. This thesis focuses on the development of high-Q ultra-wideband mm-Wave planar filters using multilayer superconductor technology and 3D filter structures using silicon micromachining technology, making use of recent advances in deep reactive ions etching (DRIE) techniques. This thesis first introduces a new technique for filter design and tuning using the phase of the input impedance (PII) as the design parameter. This novel method is applicable to both narrow and wideband filters. Compared with conventional filter design and tuning methods, this approach requires less computation time and provides a clear step-by-step procedure for identifying the proper inter-resonator coupling and the resonant frequencies of the resonators. In practice, the physical realization of the filter always has a non-ideal I/O port, which can introduce an unexpected unknown transmission line between the physical reference plane and the port of the corresponding inverter in the circuit model. In this thesis, the PII response is used to determine the equivalent electrical length of this unknown transmission line. The validity of the proposed technique is demonstrated through the design of a wideband planar filter with a fractional bandwidth of 72%, the tuning of filters with transmission zeros and the design of a wideband diplexer. The multilayer superconductor technology allows to realize high-Q planar structures with highly miniature physical dimensions. The superconductor digital receivers can directly digitalize RF signals up to very high frequencies, eliminating the need to use mixers and oscillators to convert the RF signals to lower frequencies. This thesis demonstrates the feasibility of an ultra-wide band superconductor mm-Wave continuous triplexer that can be integrated with superconductor analog to digital converter (ADC) on a single niobium chip. A wideband high-Q mm-Wave highly miniature niobium-based superconductor multiplexer realized on an 8-layer niobium process has been developed, fabricated, and tested covering the frequency range 20 GHz - 80 GHz. In addition to monolithic integration of the superconductor multiplexer with the superconductor ADC, the thesis also demonstrates the feasibility of mounting the triplexer chip on a multi-chip-module (MCM) substrate using flip-chip technology interfaced with 1 mm mm-Wave connectors. This thesis also demonstrates using a unique behavior of spiral inductors designed intentionally to have a large parasitic capacitance in the realization of a tunable band reject filter. It is shown that, regardless of the operating frequency, the conductivity of the metal strips forming the inductor has a significant impact on how the spiral inductor behaves as an inductor or a capacitor. The concept is used to demonstrate a band reject filter made from a multilayer niobium circuit operating at 4 Kelvin. Such band reject filters are needed in the front-end of superconductor digital receivers to eliminate interference. Micromachining fabrication processes provide much higher manufacturing accuracy than traditional CNC machining technologies. Moreover, the DRIE silicon micromachining process is more economical for mass production and makes it possible to produce highly accurate 3D waveguide structures. This thesis presents filter designs composing of highly miniature silicon-micromachined ridge waveguide resonators. The proposed filter designs provide highly compact physical size with reasonable high Q values. An ultra-high-Q mm-Wave cavity filter employing a silicon-micromachined barrel-shape cavities operating in TE011 mode has been developed, fabricated and tested. The barrel-shape is proposed to realize a high-Q cavity, while circumventing the spurious issues of the degenerate TM modes that exist in traditional cylindrical-shape cavities. The filter was realized on silicon using DRIE techniques

Suppression of spurious harmonic responses in superconducting microstrip spiral filters using gold overlay and stagger tuning

The higher order resonances of microwave superconducting filters with spiral resonators were suppressed, giving a very wide stop-band. In one filter spirals were modified to have equal fundamental resonances, but different higher order resonances, by adding stubs and using non-uniform line width. The higher resonances were reduced to −39 dB, in a stop band up to 4.3 times the pass band centre. In another filter, parasitic resistive resonators were added, suppressing the responses to −57 dB. The resistance is provided by patterning the 200 nm gold overlay already required for the external contacts. The increase in pass band loss is not measurable. Measurements of a single spiral resonator with a gold-YBCO bi-layer (200 and 600 nm respectively) suggest that the resistivity of the gold layer at 15 K is the order of 22 times that of bulk gold, a slight advantage for the present application. At 100 K, it is about double

Novel miniature microwave quasi-elliptical function bandpass filters with wideband harmonic suppression

Filters are integral components in all wireless communication systems, and their function is to permit predefined band of frequencies into the system and reject all other signals. The ever-growing demand in the use of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum for new applications has resulted in the need for high performance microwave filters with strict requirements on both inband and out-of-band characteristics. High selectivity, high rejection, low loss and extremely wide spurious-free performance are required for both transmitter and receiver channels. In addition, these devices need to be highly compact, easy to integrate within transceivers and should be amenable to low cost manufacturing. High selectivity is essential to enable the guard band between adjacent channels to be reduced thus improving the efficiency of the RF spectrum and hence increasing the capacity of the system. A low insertion-loss, high return-loss and small group-delay in the passband are necessary to minimize signal degradation. A wide stopband is necessary to suppress spurious passbands outside the filter’s bandwidth that may allow spurious emissions from modulation process (harmonic, parasitic, intermodulation and frequency conversion products) and interfere with other systems. The EMC Directive 89/336/EEC mandates that all electronic equipment must comply with the applicable EN specification for EMI. This thesis presents the research work that has resulted in the development of innovative and compact microstrip bandpass filters that fulfil the above stringent requirements for wireless communication systems. In fact, the proposed highly compact planar microstrip filters provide an alternative solution for existing and next generation of wireless communications systems. In particular, the proposed filters exhibit a low-loss and quasi-elliptic function response that is normally only possible with filter designs using waveguides and high temperature superconductors. The selectivity of the filters has been improved by inserting a pair of transmission zeros between the passband edges, and implementing notched rejection bands in the filter’s frequency response to widen its stopband performance. The filter structures have been analysed theoretically and modelled by using Keysight Technologies’ Advanced Design System (ADS™) and Momentum® software. The dissertation is essentially composed of four main sections. In the first section, several compact and quasi-elliptic function bandpass filter structures are proposed and theoretically analysed. Selectivity and stopband performance of these filters is enhanced by loading the input and output feed-lines with inductive stubs that introduce transmission zeros at specified frequencies in the filter’s frequency response. This technique is shown to provide a sharp 3-dB roll-off and steep selectivity skirt with high out-of-band rejection over a wide frequency span. In addition, the 3-dB fractional bandwidth of the filters is shown to be controllable by manipulating the filter’s geometric parameters. Traditional microwave bandpass filters are designed using quarter-wavelength distributed transmission-line resonators that are either end-coupled or side-coupled. The sharpness of the filter response is determined by the number of resonators employed which degrades the filter’s passband loss performance. This results in a filter with a significantly larger footprint which precludes miniaturization. To circumvent these drawbacks the second section describes the development of a novel and compact wideband bandpass filter with the desired characteristics. The quasi-elliptic function filter comprises open-loop resonators that are coupled to each other using a stub loaded resonator. The proposed filter is shown to achieve a wideband 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 23% with much better loss performance, sharp skirt selectivity and very wide rejection bandwidth. The third section describes the investigation of novel ultra-wideband (UWB) microstrip bandpass filter designs. Parametric study enabled the optimization of the filter’s performance which was verified through practical measurements. The proposed filters meet the stringent characteristics required by modern communications systems, i.e. the filters are highly compact and miniature even when fabricated on a low dielectric constant substrate, possess a sharp quasi-elliptic function bandpass response with low passband insertion-loss, and ultra-wide stopband performance. With the rapid development of multi-band operation in modern and next generation wireless communication systems, there is a great demand for single frequency discriminating devices that can operate over multiple frequency bands to facilitate miniaturization. These multi-band bandpass filters need to be physically small, have low insertion-loss, high return-loss, and excellent selectivity. In the fourth section two miniature microstrip dual-band and triple-band bandpass filter designs are explored. A detailed parametric study was conducted to fully understand how the geometric parameters of the filters affected their performance. The optimized filters were fabricated and measured to validate their performance

Development of planar filters and diplexers for wireless transceiver front ends

The central theme of this work is the design of compact microstrip bandpass filters and diplexers and the investigation of applications of these circuits in integrated transceiver RF front-end. The core of this thesis therefore presents the following stages of the work: - Analysis of coupled pseudo-interdigital resonators and lines; formulation of approximate transmission zero conditions and the investigation of coupling between these two resonators and related structures. - Development of compact, low loss and high selectivity microstrip pseudointerdigital bandpass filters. The design procedure of the filter consists of three simple steps, starting from the design of a parallel-coupled bandpass filter using the image parameter method applied to coupled microstrip lines. The development of compact microstrip diplexers composed of these filters uses the optimized common-transformer diplexing technique. An experimental verification of the developed filters and diplexers is made. - Investigation of the use of stepped impedance resonators (SIR) for the design of pseudo-interdigital bandpass filters with advanced characteristics. The design of compact dual-band filter using SIR. The investigation of possible improvement of the stopband of bandpass filters using bandstop generating structures. The application of SIR, defected ground structures (DGS), spur-lines, and opencircuited stubs in the design of compact bandpass filters with improved stopband. - The application of the proposed filters and diplexers in the design of integrated antenna filters and antenna diplexers. Improvement of performance of patch antennas, such as suppression of spurious harmonics of single-band antenna and improvement of bandwidth and selectivity of dual-band antenna, as a result of integration with filters. Separation of antennas’ bands and reduction of component count in integrated antenna diplexer