Innovation-driven strategic partnership between industry and academia in nurturing the growth of technology for global halal sector

What is more interesting about the concept of halal food and sustenance mentioned in the Al-Quran is the adjective "toyyib" which follows. Toyyib (or toyyibah; toyyibat or tuuba as plural) in terms of the meaning, is something good or the opposite of bad. So, if the so-called "halalantoyyiban", it means something that is Halal that comes with it the goodness. There are four (4) places in the Qur'an where Allah use ‘toyyib’ as an adjective to describe Halal food or sustenance, in Surah al-Baqarah, verse 168; Surah al-Maaidah, verse 88; Surah al-Nahl, verse 114 and Surah al-Anfal, verse 69. Islam asserts that things that are “barakah” may spread goodness to many people for a long period of time. Indeed, efforts to look for Halal and good sustenance form one economic power at the level of individuals, society and nation, that it must serve as the basis of life as one that needs to be achieved by each individuals as well as a government. The terms “look for Halal and good sustenance” itself represents the importance of innovation for Halal, and thus comes with it the “effort to look for Halal and good sustenance”, literally means that this has created a demand of consumers from the economic perspective. Innovation is the most important way of taking Halal food to the next level. Innovation comes with it the utilization of technology, and the utilization of technology comes with it economic growth. The wisdom of Islam demands that Muslims are to equip themselves to economic strength, since it is linked to the top element in the rank of “maslahahdaruriyah”, that is to maintain the sanctity of Islam and faith on an individual. To bring technology to innovation requires intense research. The route for research to innovation would require strategic partnership between academia and industry as the main players in Halal industry. With innovation, Halal market player (industry) can identify new opportunities that by searching a gap in the market, a new trend and changes in customer behaviour. To attain this level, Halal entrepreneurs should be always screening several ideas into a manageable number of high potential options for further development, and for academicians to take this further in their research and development. This mutual understanding and partnership will only be materialised through the innovation-driven partnership model between industry and academia

A New Super Wideband Fractal Monopole-Dielectric Resonator Antenna.

The small physical size and multiband capability are significant in the design of ultrawideband (UWB) antennas. Fractal geometry provides a good method for achieving the desired miniaturization and multiband performances. Furthermore, using a dielectric resonator improves bandwidth and radiation characteristics. A combination of these methods in the UWB antenna design is presented. The proposed design is a new hybrid dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) excited by a new fractal monopole antenna. The simulation and optimization have been carried out using Ansoft HFSS. The simulation and measurement results show that the proposed structure provides a huge bandwidth ranging from 2 to 40 GHz. Radiation patterns and gains show a good agreement over the bandwidth

Compact wideband bandpass filter using single corners-cut isosceles triangular patch resonator

Compact and simple bandpass filter (BPF) structure using microstrip isosceles triangular patch resonator (ITPR) is proposed. The new filter design technique is based on two main ideas: Firstly, cutting the corners of the triangular structure, to make the filter size more compact. Secondly, etching slit in staircase form near the base of the triangle in order to improve the filter performances. The proposed filter was designed and fabricated on Taconic CER-10 substrate with a relative dielectric constant of 10 and a thickness of 0.64 mm using standard photolithography process. The final dimension of the proposed filter is measured at 5.7 mm×7.6 mm. Measured S-parameters showed that the filter achieves a 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 55% at center frequency of 10.36 GHz, with measured insertion loss of 2.08 dB and measured return loss better than 10 dB. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated results

A compact fractal-based asymmetrical dipole antenna for RFID tag applications

Size reduction, among many other parameters, is one of the main challenges encountering antenna design for RFID tag applications. For this, different fractal geometries are found to be a good candidate. In this paper, a design of compact fractal-based asymmetrical dipole antenna integrated with Split Ring Resonator (SRR) is proposed. A Minkowski fractal tag loaded with a square SRR on its backplane, is designed for Ultra High Frequency (UHF) band Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). Modeling and performance assessment of the proposed antenna are carried out using CST microwave studio. Results reveal that the antenna has a size of 82×87×1.6 mm 3 and provides a read range of 2.17 m. These parameters together with other radiation characteristic make it suitable for RFID applications

Compact wideband multilayer microstrip coupled lines bandpass filter for X-band application

A wideband bandpass filter for X-band application using multilayer microstrip coupled lines is presented in this article. Strong coupling required for wideband filter is realized by arranging multiple layers of microstrip lines on two different dielectric substrates and by overlapping these lines. The filter is fabricated on 0.254 mm thickness R/T Duroid 6010 and R/T Duroid 5880 with dielectric constant 10.2 and 2.2, respectively, by using standard photolithography process. Good results are obtained where the frequency responses exhibit that the filter successfully covers whole X-band frequencies by producing 44% bandwidth at 10.2 GHz center frequency with fifth-order Chebyshev response. Measured responses show good agreement with the simulated responses. The measured insertion loss for the multilayer filter is better than 2.5 dB, and the passband return loss is better than −12.4 dB. ©2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 52: 448–450, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience. wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.2491

High gain dual-band couple feed transparent THz antenna for satellite communications

An Indium-doped tin oxide (ITO) based optically transparent aperture coupled rectangular patch antenna is resonated at 0.750 and 1.1 THz and then its performances is analyzed. The aperture couple feed method has been used to feed the antenna. The antenna characteristics such as bandwidth and radiation properties are investigated. The proposed antennas' specifications are investigated and then compared with both gold, copper and conventional aperture coupled rectangular antenna at the desired resonant frequencies (0.75 and 1.1 THz). Then to improve performance of the antenna, the patch is covered by a layer of Carbon Nano Tube (CNT). The proposed transparent antenna have achieved impedance bandwidth of 38% and 19% in the band of 0.75 GHz and 1.1 THz respectively. The proposed antenna has a peak gain of 7.7 and 10.3 dB which is better than conventional rectangular patch antenna gain; besides, the radiation efficiency is more than 85% across the operation frequency band. The design technique was verified through the simulation and the results show its capability to improve overall performance of the THz antennas

High gain coplanar UHF RFID tag antenna using inductively coupled feed for metallic applications

In this design, a coplanar slim antenna had been proposed and designed for UHF RFID (860-960) MHz metallic objects. The slim antenna was presented with proximity coupled feeding, two symmetrical coplanar ground layers, and a transmission line fed by a U-shaped inductively coupled feed. Furthermore, the U-shaped inductive feeder consisted of two opposing symmetrical U-shaped structures to feed the top radiator of the antenna. The size of the antenna was 97.5 × 50 × 1.5 mm3 at 915 MHz. As a result, the peak gain for the antenna reached up to 5 dBi at 915 MHz. Furthermore, the bandwidth of the antenna was 24.875 MHz (900.125-925) MHz (the power reflection coefficient was lower than -3 dB), while the reading range reached up to 11 meters. Besides, the results obtained from the measurement displayed very good impedance matching due to the flexibility generated by the U-shaped inductive feeder. Moreover, the results retrieved exhibited very good agreement with the results obtained from the simulations

Low side lobe level multilayer antenna for wireless applications

A low cost and easy fabrication multilayer antenna for wireless applications was presented to cover the industrial, scientific, and medical ISM band of (5.725-5.875) GHz with a gain of 11.7 dB. The antenna was composed of a feeding patch fabricated on a Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 substrate, and three superstrate layers of Rogers RO3006 were located above the feeding patch at a specific height for each layer. The superstrate layers were added to enhance the bandwidth and gain of the antenna and reduce its side-lobe level and return loss. The simulated and measured results of the operating frequency, return loss, bandwidth, and gain for the antenna were presented. CST Microwave Studio was used in this design's simulation

2.45 GHz patch antenna based on thermoplastic polymer substrates

In this paper, the development of patch antenna based on recycle and natural material as substrate is presented. The patch antenna has been designed, simulated, fabricated and tested successfully. Two types of antenna material were chosen as the antenna substrates. They were Polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA), a compounded synthetic resin produced from the polymerization of methyl methacrylate and Polylactic acid (PLA) which is extracted from fully renewable resources such as corn, sugar beet or rice. The PMMA and PLA both have dielectric constant of 2.546 and 2.6 respectively. The PMMA and PLA substrates were prepared using hot press machine at the same thickness of 1.6 mm. The patch antenna based on PMMA and PLA substrate were designed at operating frequency of 2.45GHz. It was observed that, both substrates PMMA and PLA have simulated return loss of 16.36 dB and 19.65 dB respectively. Then, the measured return loss were observed at 18.98 dB and 16.15 dB for PMMA and PLA respectively. The radiation pattern was observed to have similar trend for both substrates. In order to verify the performance of the newly develop substrate as patch antenna, FR4 was selected, designed and tested as patch antenna at the same operating frequency. In comparison to FR4, both materials PMMA and PLA, can be an option substrate material for RF and microwave application

Aligned gap multiple split ring resonator biosensor for DNA hybridization detection at microwave frequency

In this paper, the interest of microwave signals for biological detection applications using metamaterial structure as a biosensor element has been demonstrated. Microwave sensing is highly challenging for biological detection as it presents the attractive advantages of being contactless, non-invasive at low power level and yet its label free. The resonant frequency of the sensor is measured as 4.96 GHz. The shift in resonant frequency is employed as the sensor output for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) detection. The resonance frequency is shifted to the left when single stranded deoxyribonucleic acid (ssDNA) is immobilized onto gold surface and further shifted when hybridization or the binding event between the molecule of ssDNA and cDNA occurred. The sensitivity of this biosensor is up to 10 MHz/Molar with the detection limit of Molar is conducted during this experiment