Towards 76-81 GHz Scalable Phase Shifting by Folded Dual-strip Shielded Coplanar Waveguide with Liquid Crystals

Abstract

Unconventional folded shielded coplanar waveguide (FS-CPW) has yet to be fully investigated for tunable dielectrics-based applications. This work formulates designs of FS-CPW based on liquid crystals (LC) for electrically controlled 0-360˚ phase shifters, featuring a minimally redundant approach for reducing the LC volume and hence the costs for mass production. The design exhibits a few conceptual features that make it stand apart from others, noteworthy, the dual-strip structure with a simplified enclosure engraved that enables LC volume sharing between adjacent core lines. Insertion loss reduction by 0.77 dB and LC volume reduction by 1.62% per device are reported at 77 GHz, as compared with those of the conventional single-strip configuration. Based on the proof-of-concept results obtained for the novel dual-strip FS-CPW proposed, this work provides a springboard for follow-up investible propositions that will underpin the development of a phased array demonstrator.

Performance Limits of 433 MHz Quarter-wave Monopole Antennas due to Grounding Dimension and Conductivity

“…A range of solvers in HFSS are available, differing in the computation methods, (e.g., FEM, IE, SBR+ Solver, FEBI, IE-Region, DDM, FA-DDM, Transient, CMA, and Eigenmode solvers), while CST is eminent in its time (or frequency) domain solvers based on finite integration techniques (FIT). Compared with HFSS [13] and CST [14] based simulations conducted in our previous works, the MATLAB Antenna toolbox employed in this paper is based on the frequency-domain Method of Moment (MoM) approach, which exhibits a series of advantages, i.e., suitability for quick prototyping, quasi-open source (in low cost), flexibility (in coding and tuning parameters), fast (in particular for array simulations), availability to run programmes online (via the cloud), and ease of communication among www.aetic.theiaer.org engineers with diverse technical backgrounds. It is well worth noting that existing papers using MoM-based MATLAB codes for antennas development are largely concerning microstrip patch antennas [15,16] at 2.4 GHz, whereas quarter-wave monopole antennas have seldom been reported.…”