Broadband, high gain slot loaded square microstrip array antenna

Abstract

at most. The losses of the microchannels specifically start to increase after 5 GHz especially for the first channel, but with proper changes and better fabrication of the microchannels, better loss characteristics can be obtained.The effect of the depth of the microfluidic channels were also examined, and it was observed that the wider and deeper channels provide a smoother flow of mercury, thus enabling better performance in terms of linearity. Return losses, S 11 and S 22 of the shifter are observed to be below À5 dB for the whole range and below À10 dB for certain frequencies. However, wider and deeper channels translate to a larger mercury mass, which will reduce the mechanical resonant frequency and will likely increase the settling time between phase shift steps. It also needs to be mentioned that the settling time will be influenced by the resonances of the complete system and for low set-tling times a stiff design is required. Use of piezoelectric actuators, along with standard design principles to eliminate resonances will help accomplish this goal. CONCLUSIONSA novel microwave MEMS phase shifter based on microfluidic design has been proposed and demonstrated. S-parameters and phase shift values versus the change of the transmission line lengths were shown. The shifter is able to present 360 degrees of phase shift, and it has a high resolution, a high power handling capacity, and a theoretically high bandwidth that is limited by the quadrature coupler used in the design. REFERENCES