The measured relative phase shifts are shown in Figures 4(a) and 4(b) for both the single-and double-segment phase shifters, respectively, from 0.7 to 1.4 GHz. We obtain 65.8 degree average relative phase shift with a 2.9 degree maximum phase error over the measured octave frequency band from the single-segment circuit as shown in Figure 4(a). The control voltages for varactors were separately optimized in order to obtain reasonably good performance in terms of the phase shift, return loss, and insertion loss. Further study has to be done to implement introduced phase shifters with a single control voltage for engineering applications. For the double-segment phase shifter, the average relative phase shift becomes 128 degrees (about twice as much as the single-segment shifter's). Phase shift at the frequencies lower than 0.7 GHz and higher than 1.4 GHz rise faster than at the center frequency. This is due to rapid phase changes of the HPF in the lower frequencies and of the LPF in the higher frequency range, as shown in Figures 1(a) and 1(b). This is the main factor that limits the frequency bandwidth. However, the problem can be mitigated to widen the bandwidth by aiming for less phase change from the single-segment and increasing the number of segments.
CONCLUSIONA simple method to design a broadband phase shifter is introduced. Two phase shifters are demonstrated with one and two of the alternately cascaded LPF-HPF-LPF structures, which consist of inductors and varactors. The amount of relative phase shift across 0.7-1.4 GHz range is 65.8 and 128 degrees for the singleand double-segment circuits, respectively. The total phase shift grows in proportion to the number of segmental phase shifters, resulting in an architecture that can achieve up to 360 degrees.ABSTRACT: Two small antipodal Vivaldi antennas for ultrawide band early breast cancer detection are proposed. The antennas are designed to operate in the spectrum from 1 to 10 GHz, according to the requirements of wave penetration in the breast and imaging resolution. Simulated and measured reflection parameters of the proposed antennas are evaluated. Numerical results also show the proposed antennas have good near-field radiation performance. Finally, an antenna array consisting of eight antipodal Vivaldi antennas, appropriate to collect the tumor scattering signal in the breast is presented.