Space Qualification of Metalized Additive Manufactured Filters

[EN] The space industry is seeking new solutions for the development of lightweight, inexpensive and easy-to-manufacture on-board communication payload devices. One of the proposed technologies is additive manufacturing (AM) of polymeric materials that are subsequently metallized. The devices developed using this technique must be operational in the particular space environment conditions. In this work we study the integrity of filters made by additive manufacturing against the extreme conditions of mechanical stress, temperature and power management as described in the standard of the European Space Agency (ESA) for satellite payload. To carry out this qualification for space, two types of X-band filters with identical frequency responses have been designed and manufactured: a classic H-plane waveguide cavities filter, and three filters on surface-mount technology (SMT). Two of the SMT filters are low height rectangular cavities filters, while the third one is a high circular cavities filter. This selection was intended to verify that the AM technique offered good results regardless of the devices topology. Two mechanical vibration tests were performed: sinusoidal sweep and random vibration. These tests emulate the transport and launching conditions of the satellite payload. Furthermore, it was measured the mechanical natural frequency of the filters, and its variation after being exposed to the tests in order to evaluate their physical integrity. The thermal analysis was performed emulating the temperature profile experienced by the satellite payload during working conditions. Then, the power handling tests were carried out. The secondary electron emission yield of the material (metallized polymer) was firstly measured. The power levels, location and frequency at which a multipactor discharge would occur were analyzed for both, low-height and standard-height, filters. Finally, both filters were subjected to those power levels, under high vacuum conditions, to check if the said multipactor discharges occurred. The mechanical stress and temperature tests prove that the developed filters can survive the hard launching and operation conditions of commercial satellite payloads. The multipactor tests report the high power levels that the devices can handle without risk of radiofrequency (RF) breakage. All these tests allow to fully qualify the proposed manufacturing technique for spatial applications.This work was supported in part by the Agencia Valenciana de la Innovacion Research Project under Grant INNVA1/2020/84; in part by the Agencia Estatal de Investigacion, Spain, through the Fellowship for Training PhDs under Grant BES-2017-079728; and in part by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (MICIN), Spanish Government through the Research and Development Project PID2019-103982RB-C41 under Grant MICIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033.Bachiller Martin, MC.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Ferrer, Á.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2022). Space Qualification of Metalized Additive Manufactured Filters. IEEE Access. 10:96952-96966. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.320540896952969661

Reconfigurable Resonator in Decoupled Empty SIW Technology Using Liquid Crystal Material

"This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in Electronics Letters and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at IET Digital Library"[EN] This paper presents a novel continuously tunable microwave resonator based on Liquid Crystal (LC) material. The reconfigurable device is implemented in Decoupled Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide (DESIW) technology. DESIW technology allows both magnetic and electric DC (or low frequency) biasing of the LC. The resonator is continuously tunable in a range of 600 MHz, resulting in a measured tunability range of 8.5% around a centre frequency of 7 GHz. Moreover, the measured insertion loss of the reconfigurable device is between 4.3 dB and 6.8 dB, thus obtaining a Q-factor of 190-172.This work was partially funded by the Generalitat Valenciana research project PROMETEOII/2015/005, by the Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Spain) under the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors FPU14/00150, and by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (Spain) under R&D project TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2019). Reconfigurable Resonator in Decoupled Empty SIW Technology Using Liquid Crystal Material. Electronics Letters. 55(16):907-910. https://doi.org/10.1049/el.2019.1088S9079105516Sekar, V., Armendariz, M., & Entesari, K. (2011). A 1.2–1.6-GHz Substrate-Integrated-Waveguide RF MEMS Tunable Filter. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 59(4), 866-876. doi:10.1109/tmtt.2011.2109006Adhikari, S., Ban, Y.-J., & Wu, K. (2011). Magnetically Tunable Ferrite Loaded Substrate Integrated Waveguide Cavity Resonator. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, 21(3), 139-141. doi:10.1109/lmwc.2010.2102746Prasetiadi, A. E., Karabey, O. H., Weickhmann, C., Franke, T., Hu, W., Jost, M., … Jakoby, R. (2015). Continuously tunable substrate integrated waveguide bandpass filter in liquid crystal technology with magnetic biasing. Electronics Letters, 51(20), 1584-1585. doi:10.1049/el.2015.2494Yaghmaee, P., Fumeaux, C., Bates, B., Manabe, A., Karabey, O. H., & Jakoby, R. (2012). Frequency tunable S-band resonator using nematic liquid crystal. Electronics Letters, 48(13), 798. doi:10.1049/el.2012.1366Sánchez, J. R., Bachiller, C., Esteban, H., Belenguer, A., Nova, V., & Boria, V. (2017). New decoupled empty substrate integrated waveguide realisation. Electronics Letters, 53(17), 1203-1205. doi:10.1049/el.2017.1240Yang, D.-K., & Wu, S.-T. (2006). Fundamentals of Liquid Crystal Devices. doi:10.1002/0470032030Belenguer, A., Esteban, H., & Boria, V. E. (2014). Novel Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide for High-Performance Microwave Integrated Circuits. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, 62(4), 832-839. doi:10.1109/tmtt.2014.2309637Munk, B. A. (2000). Frequency Selective Surfaces. doi:10.1002/0471723770Esteban, H., Belenguer, A., Sanchez, J. R., Bachiller, C., & Boria, V. E. (2017). Improved Low Reflection Transition From Microstrip Line to Empty Substrate-Integrated Waveguide. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, 27(8), 685-687. doi:10.1109/lmwc.2017.272401

Controlled Out-of-Band Rejection of Filters based on SIW with Alternating Dielectric Line Sections

© 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permissíon from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertisíng or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] A study for managing the out-of-band rejection in a new topology of filters based on substrate integrated waveguide with alternating dielectric line sections (ADLSs) is presented in this letter. ADLS is a filtering structure consisting on line sections of the same width but with alternating air and dielectric filling. The design of the lengths of each section provides the central frequency and the bandwidth of bandpass filter response. The proper selection of the structure substrate dielectric permittivity can increase the rejection band up to 2 f(o). Moreover, the selection of the filter order (i.e., the number of sections with and without dielectric) can affect the depth of the rejection band. A study of the width and the depth of the rejection band is performed with different permittivities and orders for two different filters. Then, for validation purposes, the prototypes of both filters have been manufactured and measured.This work was supported in part by the Generalitat Valenciana Research Project under Grant PROMETEOII/2015/005, in part by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte, Spain, through the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors under Grant FPU14/00150, and in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain, through Research and Development Project under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2019). Controlled Out-of-Band Rejection of Filters based on SIW with Alternating Dielectric Line Sections. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. 29(4):258-260. https://doi.org/10.1109/LMWC.2019.2902034S25826029

Compact Microstrip to Empty Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line Transition

[EN] Substrate integrated waveguides are increasingly being used due to their capability of combining the advantages of planar circuits and traditional waveguides. The development of empty substrate integrated waveguides has substantially reduced the related insertion losses, since waves propagate through air instead of propagating through a lossy dielectric medium. Recently, a new empty coaxial structure, completely built with printed circuit boards and integrated in a substrate, has been proposed. It has been named empty substrate integrated coaxial Line (ESICL). The resulting coaxial line has low cost, easy manufacturing, low radiation, low losses, high-quality factor, and is non dispersive. A transition from grounded coplanar waveguide to ESICL already exists. In this work, a transition from microstrip to ESICL is presented for the first time. In order to demonstrate its feasibility, a back-to-back structure and a bandpass filter have been manufactured and measured.This work was supported by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spanish Government, under Research Project TEC2016-75934-C4-3-R and Research Project TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Quiles, F.; Belenguer Martínez, Á.; Martínez-Zamora, JÁ.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Esteban González, H.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2018). Compact Microstrip to Empty Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line Transition. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. 28(12):1080-1082. https://doi.org/10.1109/LMWC.2018.2874280S10801082281

Microwave Filter based on Substrate Integrated Waveguide with Alternating Dielectric Line Sections

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this[EN] A new topology of microwave filter based on sub- strate integrated waveguide (SIW) with alternating dielectric line sections is presented in this letter. The two alternating sections are waveguides without and with a dielectric material acting, respectively, as the inverters and the resonant sections of the pro- posed filter. This topology allows to easily design and manufacture compact filters with lower losses and higher rejection band than other available SIW realizations. For validation purposes, a prototype of a four-pole bandpass filter, based on alternating dielectric line sections, has been designed and manufactured, including successful experimental results.This work was supported in part by the Generalitat Valenciana Research Project under Grant PROMETEOII/2015/005, in part by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte (Spain) through the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors under Grant FPU14/00150, and in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain) through the Research and Development Project under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R.Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Juliá Morte, M.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Esteban González, H.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2018). Microwave Filter based on Substrate Integrated Waveguide with Alternating Dielectric Line Sections. IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters. 28(11):990-992. https://doi.org/10.1109/LMWC.2018.2871644S990992281

New Decoupled Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide Realization

[EN] This work presents a novel Decoupled Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide (DESIW), which enables AC/DC decoupling in any device that is integrated in it. The decoupling strategy is performed throughout a micro-milling square pattern of easy implementation that increases the insertion losses compared to the standard ESIW. However, the DESIW related losses are still tolerable, allowing the employment of the new periodic structure in many practical applications. In particular, it can be used for the design and manufacturing of reconfigurable devices which need a bias voltage on the whole device, or just on some of its particular areas. A broadband transition from DESIW to microstrip planar lines has been also successfully designed. The new line has been manufactured and measured.This work was partially founded by the Generalitat Valenciana research project PROMETEOII/2015/005, by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte (Spain) under the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors FPU14/00150 and by Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad (Spain) under R&D project TEC2016-75934-C4-R.Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Esteban González, H.; Belenguer Martínez, Á.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2017). New Decoupled Empty Substrate Integrated Waveguide Realization. Electronics Letters. 53(17):1203-1205. https://doi.org/10.1049/el.2017.1240S12031205531

Miniaturization of Power Divider and 90º Hybrid Directional Coupler for C-Band Applications Using Empty Substrate-Integrated Coaxial Lines

(c) 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this[EN] This paper presents the practical realization of a power divider and a 90° hybrid directional coupler in an empty substrate-integrated coaxial line (ESICL) for C-band frequency applications. This new type of transmission line is very promising in terms of electric performance, bandwidth, integration with other planar circuits, and manufacturing simplicity. The ESICL has been designed for obtaining a wide monomode bandwidth with a characteristic impedance of 50 . Furthermore, an improvement of the efficient transition between the ESICL and the grounded coplanar waveguide, used as feeding line, has been also proposed. The passive devices built using this technology are reduced in mass and volume, keeping robustness, and providing a well-balanced power division, as well as reduced losses and high isolation in the whole operational bandwidth. Two prototypes have been manufactured and the experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated designs.This work was supported in part by the Generalitat Valenciana Research under Project PROMETEOII/2015/005, in part by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte, Spain, through the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors under Grant FPU14/00150, and in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain, through the Research and Development Projects under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-1-R and Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-3-R.Merello-Gimenez, JM.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Belenguer Martínez, Á.; Boria Esbert, VE. (2018). Miniaturization of Power Divider and 90º Hybrid Directional Coupler for C-Band Applications Using Empty Substrate-Integrated Coaxial Lines. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 66(6):3055-3062. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2018.2828089S3055306266

Characterization of Nematic Liquid Crystal at Microwave Frequencies Using Split-Cylinder Resonator Method

[EN] Liquid crystal (LC) is an anisotropic liquid material, which flows like a liquid, but at the same time, its molecules have an orientational order like in the solid state. Thus, LC is a promising dielectric material for designing reconfigurable devices at microwave frequencies. In order to optimize the design of reconfigurable microwave devices, accurate values of the dielectric permittivity and the loss tangent of LCs are needed. However, new LCs are not well characterized at these frequencies because of its recent use for microwave applications. Therefore, the characterization in this frequency range is required for its practical use within microwave components and devices. In this paper, a split-cylinder resonator method is used for the characterization of four different nematic LCs at two frequency points, i. e., 5 and 11 GHz. This characterization includes the extraction of their complex dielectric permittivity values at these frequencies. The employed method allows to obtain the two extreme permittivity values without applying any external electric or magnetic field to polarize the LC molecules. Two different approaches, a modal analysis method and a full-wave numerical technique, have been used for determining the LC parameters obtaining similar results in both cases.This work was supported in part by the Generalitat Valenciana Research under Project PROMETEOII/2015/005, in part by the Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte, Spain, through the Fellowship Program for Training University Professors under Grant FPU14/00150, in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain through Research and Development Projects under Grant TEC2016-75934-C4-R-1, and in part by the Gobierno de Aragon-Fondo Europeo de Desarrollo Regional (FEDER)-Fondo Social Europeo 2017-2019 under Reference E14-7R.Sánchez-Marín, JR.; Nova-Giménez, V.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Villacampa, B.; De La Rua, A.; Kronberger, R.; Penaranda-Foix, FL.... (2019). Characterization of Nematic Liquid Crystal at Microwave Frequencies Using Split-Cylinder Resonator Method. IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques. 67(7):2812-2820. https://doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.2019.2916790S2812282067

Measurement of the dielectric properties of liquid crystal material for microwave applications

[EN] Liquid Crystal (LC) is an anisotropic liquid material which flows like a liquid, but at the same time its molecules have an orientational order like in the solid state [1]. Thus, LC is a promising dielectric material for designing reconfigurable devices at microwave frequencies. In order to optimize the design of reconfigurable microwave devices, accurate values of the dielectric permittivity and the loss tangent of LCs are needed. However, new LCs are not well characterized at these frequencies because of its recent use for microwave applications. Therefore, the characterization in this frequency range is required for its practical use within microwave components and devices [2]. In this work, the split-cylinder resonator method has been used for the characterization of LCs at two frequency points, i.e. 5 and 11 GHz. The method is based on the measurement of the resonance frequency and quality factor of the two states of the LC molecules for extracting the complex dielectric permittivity [3]. For achieving these two states, no electric or magnetic fields are needed, just the cell must be turned 90º inside the cavity. The dielectric properties (permittivity and loss tangent) of four different LC samples, GT3-23002 from Merck and QYPD193, QYPD142, and QYPD036 from Qingdao QY Liquid Crystal Co, have been obtained. The highest values of the dielectric anisotropy are presented for the samples QYPD036 and QYPD193, together with the highest values of the corresponding loss tangent parameters. Furthermore, it is observed for all the LCs that the loss tangent decreases and the dielectric anisotropy increases at higher frequencies, which must be taken into account in the development of reconfigurable microwave devices.Sanchez, J.; Nova Giménez, V.; Bachiller Martin, MC.; Villacampa, B.; De La Rua, A.; Kronberger, R.; Peñaranda Foix, FL.... (2019). Measurement of the dielectric properties of liquid crystal material for microwave applications. En AMPERE 2019. 17th International Conference on Microwave and High Frequency Heating. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. 506-510. https://doi.org/10.4995/AMPERE2019.2019.998350651

Diseño de transiciones de banda ancha entre línea coplanar y guía de onda Empty Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line

The design of waveguide devices integrated on a substrate (particularly Empty Integrated Substrate Coaxial Line) is one of the areas of research in microwave more practical today because it allows the use of devices (filters, multiplexers, diplexers , ...) with similar features to traditional waveguide but integrated on planar substrates , making them lighter, less bulky and more easy to manufacture. One aspect that must be consider when integrating these devices is the design of the transitions between the coplanar lines and the ESICL device. In this project such transitions will be designed , analyzed and manufactured.El diseño de dispositivos de guía de onda integrados en sustrato (en particular la Empty Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line) es un aspecto de la investigación en microondas más prácticos en la actualidad ya que permite el uso de dispositivos (filtros, multiplexores, diplexores,...) con prestaciones similares a los tradicionales de guía de onda pero integrados en sustratos planares, lo que los hace más ligeros, menos voluminosos y más fáciles de fabricar. Uno de los aspectos que hay que cuidar a la hora de integrar este tipo de dispositivos es el diseño de las transiciones entre las líneas coplanares y el dispositivo ESICL. En este proyecto se diseñarán, analizarán y fabricarán dichas transiciones.Nova Giménez, V. (2016). Diseño de transiciones de banda ancha entre línea coplanar y guía de onda Empty Substrate Integrated Coaxial Line. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/80431.TFG