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A high-scanning rate leaky-wave antenna (LWA) working at Ka-band with continuous backward-to-forward beam-scanning capability, good open stopband (OSB) suppression and wide scanning angle is exhibited. The proposed LWA is made by etching an array of cascaded high-Q resonators and open discontinuities on the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW). The resonator is designed by combining two symmetrically unbalance split ring resonators (USRRs) on the top surface of the SIW. The LWA's working mechanics were thoroughly investigated through band structure theory. An in-depth interpretation of the LWA's characteristics is provided by studying the surface current distribution and the equivalent circuit model of the resonator structure. The LWA's OSB is effectively alleviated by properly selecting the length of the radiation slot. Yet, the antenna scanning rate is directly improved by the oscillation quality of the resonators (i.e., USRRs), which is realized by tuning the split gap of the USRR. In the experiments, a prototype of the proposed LWA was fabricated and measured. The simulated and measured data show good agreement in terms of the antenna's scanning range and radiation gain. The measured results indicates that a continuous beam scanning from −56° to +48° is rendered over the frequency band from 32 to 36 GHz, which implies a spectral scanning rate of 8.84° per percentage. Finally, it is shown that the average gain can reach up to 9.1 dBi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The independent control of two orthogonal polarizations that possess dual functionalities is highly desirable in antenna and wireless communication technologies. Spin-decoupled metasurfaces with integrated dynamic and geometric phases have been proposed to generate two independent right-handed and left-handed circularly polarized (RCP and LCP, respectively) waves. However, the RCP and LCP phases are correlated by a linear equation of the dynamic and geometric phases. In this article, we propose a meta-atom in which the 1 b phase of two orthogonal polarizations can be controlled independently. Moreover, a high-gain broadband millimeter-wave multidimensional metasurface to generate an $x$ -polarized $l=0$ beam with a 10° beam deflection and a $y$ -polarized $l=+1$ beam independently is simulated, fabricated, and tested. The proposed metasurface operating over the frequency range of 16–28 GHz has the maximum gains of 28.7 and 23.8 dBi for the $l=0\,\,x$ -polarized waves and $l=+1\,\,y$ -polarized waves, respectively. Compared with spin-decoupled metasurfaces, the proposed metasurface provides a simpler design process to generate two independent vortex beams for the two orthogonal polarizations. The proposed vortex metasurface also has the advantages of dual polarization, high gain, wide relative bandwidth, and is broadband. The proposed metasurface has potential application in high-capacity communication systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A circularly-polarized (CP) traveling-wave endfire antenna featuring low profile, high gain, and simple feeding structure is presented in this communication. Offset parallel strips with proper dielectric loading are employed in a low-profile substrate to achieve two orthogonal electric field components with equal magnitude and 90° phase difference for CP endfire radiation. Meanwhile, periodic phase-loading technique is used to achieve a proper phase constant for high endfire gain. A prototype is designed and fabricated to verify the proposed method. Experimental results demonstrate CP endfire radiation within a frequency band of 9.78–10.09 GHz. The average endfire gain is 10.3 dBic with an average efficiency of 62.5%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extremely high scanning-rate beam-steering antenna based on coupled resonators is proposed in this communication. Coupling resonators in a controlled manner provides a sharp phase variation across a narrow frequency band, which contributes to the extremely high scanning rate. To steer the beam across broadside, alternating +90° and −90° impedance inverters are employed in the topology. Such a coupled-resonator array antenna is modeled and analyzed by coupling matrix technique, which was conventionally used in filter design. To illustrate the proposed technique, two examples with 50 and 100 MHz bandwidths are designed. Experimental validation is also provided for the 50 MHz bandwidth example, which demonstrates that the proposed antenna reaches a high relative scanning rate of $52.8^{\circ }/\%BW$ with efficiency of 75%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a ${D}$ -band ${E}$ -plane 90° filtering coupler and a ${D}$ -band six-port junction (SPJ), both working at 150 GHz. The coupler is formed by ten resonators, having a fourth-order Chebyshev response. Two of the couplers were combined with a 90° 3-dB branch-line coupler to build the filtering SPJ with 20 resonators in total. Inheriting from the filtering coupler, the SPJ also has a fourth-order Chebyshev response. A coupling matrix (CM) consisting of both resonant and nonresonant nodes, based on the coupling topology, was constructed to predict the theoretical responses. Guided by this CM, the coupler and the SPJ were designed and modeled. In addition, two silicon-based absorber chips were designed and implemented as two matched loads in the filtering SPJ. The SPJ was optimized, fabricated, and tested. The center frequency of the SPJ is 150 GHz and the bandwidthis 4 GHz. Simulation shows 0.5–0.7-dB insertion loss at 150 GHz and a maximum 3° phase error in the working band. The measurement gives the same center frequency andbandwidth. The response shows 0.7–2.0-dB insertion loss at 150 GHz and a maximum 15° phase error in the working band. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel cascaded dispersive delay structure based on a periodic glide symmetric stub-loaded microstrip transmission line is presented. Two group delay peaks are superposed to realize a group delay response that illustrates linear characteristics versus frequency. Two examples with slopes 0.83 and 2 ns/GHz, respectively, are proposed. Verified by experiments, the simulated and measured group delays show a well agreement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new ultrawideband frequency selective surface(FSS) is proposed, which exhibits six resonances to achieve a flat passband. It consists of a three-dimensional (3-D) configuration. However, unlike many other 3-D FSSs, the proposed structure can be assembled through simple steps involving single-layer printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication only. Its unit-cell consists of a wire-loop conducting pattern, printed on a dielectric substrate. The pattern excites four resonances while two resonances are contributed by the dielectric. These six resonances are properly tuned and coupled to form an ultrawide frequency band from 7.53 to 29.45 GHz. It translates to a $-$ 3 dB bandwidth of 119 $\%$. Our design guidelines and discussions are validated through both simulation and measurement results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a multifilament current method (MFCM) to accurately and efficiently determine the cutoff wavenumbers (cutoff frequencies or eigenfrequencies) of homogeneous anisotropic material-filled metallic waveguides with arbitrary shapes. A set of $z$ -directed filamentary line sources placed outside of a waveguide are responsible for generating the simulated fields within the anisotropic material-filled waveguide in light of the derived 2-D anisotropic dyadic Green’s functions. Instead of solving an excitation-free eigenvalue problem, a substantial line source presented as an excitation is incorporated into the MFCM to formulate an eigenmode analyses technique without spurious eigenmodes. The internal field intensity response versus free space wavenumber are subsequently simulated, and a high magnitude response can be observed when an eigenmode is excited. In this case, the cutoff wavenumbers of physical eigenmodes are revealed by maximum locations of simulated field intensity response. Several numerical examples with different configurations on a waveguide are investigated. The simulated results are compared with those obtained from commercial software packages and an excellent agreement is achieved. In addition, the study of the oscillating phenomenon on magnitudes of filamentary sources and the ill-conditioning issue of constructed impedance matrix with respect to the placement of filamentary sources are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we propose a traveling-wave endfire antenna based on the first higher-order transmission line (TL) mode, and it features wide bandwidth, high gain, and large aperture efficiency. We propose two essential conditions for the realization of the proposed wideband endfire antenna. First, the dispersion curve of the first higher-order mode should be made close to that of the air line across a wide frequency band. Second, the fundamental mode should be suppressed to allow single higher-order mode operation across a wide frequency band. Following these principles, we provide a design for an endfire antenna based on a periodically slotted parallel stripline, where the periodic meandered slots suppress the fundamental mode and hence allow single higher-order mode radiation. To verify the proposed approach, a prototype has been designed and fabricated. The antenna can achieve endfire radiation within a 1:2 frequency band (8.5–17.5 GHz), with an average gain of 10.7 dBi, and large aperture efficiency up to 6.38 dBi/ $\lambda ^{2}_{0}$. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a 23–28-GHz digital-controlled phase-invariant and ultralow gain error variable gain amplifier (VGA) for 5G applications. The mechanisms of gain control and phase variation in CMOS VGA based on single-level transistor structure are analyzed in detail. According to the analysis, an active cross-coupling neutralization (ACCN) technique is proposed. The ACCN technique not only compensates for phase variation, but also makes phase compensation insensitive to the process, supply voltage, and temperature (PVT) variations. For achieving ultralow gain error, an asymmetric capacitive gain resolution improvement (ACGRI) technique is adopted, which realizes a fine gain step with low control circuit complexity. Further to reduce gain error, greatly improving the accuracy and robustness against PVT of gain control is necessary. With regard to this, a current-type digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is also integrated onto the chip. The proposed VGA is demonstrated in 65-nm CMOS technology with a core chip area of 0.14 mm2. Under 5-b digital gain control conditions, the presented VGA achieves a measured linear gain tunability range of 6.2 dB with a 0.2-dB fine tuning step. The measured root mean square (rms) phase error is less than 0.92° across 24–28 GHz with a minimum value of 0.63° at 27.8 GHz. The rms gain error is less than 0.13 dB, with a minimum value of only 0.03 dB at 25 GHz. At the maximum gain state, the proposed CS VGA exhibits a peak gain of 29.4 dB with 3-dB bandwidth of 23.5–27.5 GHz and the minimum noise figure is 4.8 dB at 26 GHz. Besides, the measured OP1dB and OP3dB are 6.3 and 9.6 dBm, respectively. The influence of VT variations on the phase compensation and gain tuning is also measured, and the proposed VGA exhibits strong robustness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effort to confine the electromagnetic field by silicon passive metadevices has made the design of an on-chip wideband sub-terahertz (sub-THz) I/O redriver feasible, paving a new way toward energy-efficient and crosstalk-immune ON–OFF keying (OOK) communications. Two metadevices, namely spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SPPs) metawaveguide and split-ring resonator (SRR), are exploited to build the sub-THz low-crosstalk silicon channel and high-ON–OFF-ratio modulator, respectively. A sub-THz signal source combining the merit of spoof SPPs and SRR is introduced. A 140-GHz dual-channel redriver composed of these metadevices is fully integrated in a 65-nm CMOS technology. The redriver realizes both 27–1 and 231–1 13.5 Gb/s/lane for dual-channel OOK modulation. The measured energy efficiency is 2.6 pJ/bit/lane and the bit error rate (BER) is ≤10−12, demonstrating a crosstalk-immune sub-THz I/O system. The power consumption is 35.1 mW/lane and the active area of the redriver is 0.23 mm2. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A novel $E$ -plane filtering six-port junction (SPJ) based on waveguide is presented. Different from the traditional designs, the proposed SPJ is formed by two identical filtering 180° couplers and two waveguide couplers with 180° and 90° phase shifts. A coupling-matrix (CM) technique, combining both resonant and nonresonant structures, has been developed to represent the entire SPJ. This has been used to predict the theoretical response as well as to investigate the effect of the couplers on the performance of the SPJ. A demonstrator has been designed to work at 10 GHz with a bandwidth of 0.4 GHz. Stub-loaded waveguide resonators have been used to keep a consistent profile and ease the layout of the complicated waveguide network. A good agreement between the CM-based theoretical responses, simulations, and measurement has been achieved. The measured average insertion loss is 0.4 dB, and the maximum in-band phase error is 10°. The measured in-band isolation between two input ports is higher than 26 dB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]