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This paper explores the potential use of fused deposition modeling (FDM) technology for manufacturing microwave and millimeter-wave dielectric resonator antennas (DRAs) for 5G and beyond communication systems. DRAs operating at microwave and millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency bands were simulated, fabricated, and analyzed in terms of manufacturing quality and radio frequency (RF) performance. Samples were manufactured using a 3D printer and PREPERM® ABS1000 filament, which offers a stable dielectric constant (εr = 10 ± 0.35) and low losses (tan δ = 0.003) over wide frequency and temperature ranges. Surface profile tests and microscope measurements revealed discrepancies in the dimensions in the xy-plane and along the z-axis, consistent with the observed shift in resonant frequency. Despite these variations, reasonably good agreement between RF-simulated and measured results was achieved, and the DRA array successfully covered the intended mmWave band. However, challenges in achieving high precision may restrict applications at higher mmWave bands. Nevertheless, compared with conventional methods, FDM techniques offer a highly accessible and flexible solution with a wide range of materials for home and micro-manufacturing of mmWave DRAs for modern 5G systems.

A dual-band (K-/Ka-band) antenna array is presented. An ultra-wideband antenna element in the shape of a double-ridged waveguide is used as a radiation slot, and a novel dual-periodic ridge gap waveguide (RGW) with an interdigital-pin bed of nails (serving as a filter) is used to realize dual-band operation. By periodically arranging the pins of two different heights in two dimensions, the proposed RGW with interdigital-pin bed of nails is able to realize and flexibly adjust two passbands. The widely used GW-based back cavity boosts the realized gain and simplifies the feed network design. A 4 × 4 prototype array was designed, fabricated, and measured. The results show that the array has two operating bands at 24.5–26.4 GHz and 30.3–31.5 GHz, and the realized gain can reach 19.2 dBi and 20.4 dBi, respectively. Meanwhile, there is a very significant gain attenuation at stopband.

Abstract A novel 24 GHz circularly polarised metasurface rectenna for wireless power transmission is designed in this study. Based on experimental measurements and retro‐simulation, an effective approach is proposed to extract the parasitic parameters of a Schottky diode. A highly efficient millimetre wave rectifier with a measured efficiency of 63% is constructed based on the exact equivalent circuit parameters of a diode. A circularly polarised metasurface antenna is adopted as the receiving antenna, and the gain is enhanced by introducing metal vias around the metasurface. The antenna and the rectifier are connected directly via a microstrip line. Measurements show that the metasurface antenna has a gain of 11.3 dBic and an axial ratio of 2.5 dB at 24 GHz. The measured conversion efficiency of the rectenna reaches 63% at 300 Ω load when the input power is 15.2 dBm. The rectenna has the advantages of low profile, which can be conformal to the electrical equipment.

This paper introduces novel dual-polarized/duplex filtering antennas with a novel filtering feeding network. The feeding network consists of an all-resonator structure, which shares a common dual-mode resonator. This structure facilitates the isolation of two well-isolated channels through the exploitation of the even and odd modes of the dual-mode resonator. By applying balanced excitation to the odd mode and unbalanced excitation to the even mode, the two modes can be separated, creating a hybrid-like feeding structure. Despite the common resonator, the channels exhibit high isolation, and the overall size of the filtering circuit is much smaller than conventional cascaded-resonator designs. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed feeding network, we have designed, fabricated, and measured a dual-polarized and a duplex filtering antenna. The simulated and measured results agree well, showing isolations greater than 34 dB and 38 dB for dual-polarized and duplex cases, respectively. Our proposed antennas are compared with state-of-the-art developments, demonstrating the advantages of compact size, flexible decoupling frequency ratio, and high isolation.

Abstract The design, fabrication, and measurement of a 7 × 7 mm‐wave array antenna have been presented for 5G communications. The substrate integrated waveguide (SIW)‐fed antenna element is formed of four parts: a rectangular radiating patch, a coupling slot cut onto the broadwall of the SIW, a transition layer, and a feeding layer at the bottom. The bandwidth and radiation efficiency has been improved by embedding an air cavity below the radiating patch, as the effective dielectric constant of the substrate is reduced. Moreover, a prototype has been fabricated and measured to verify the design principles. The finite array operating over 23–28 GHz has achieved active voltage standing wave ratios of less than 2 and 2.5 in the E‐ and H‐planes while scanning up to 45° respectively. Compared with the theoretical ideal gain, the average gain drop of the measured embedded element gain is 0.73dB.

Abstract A C‐band substrate integrated waveguide based frequency‐scanning continuous transverse stub (CTS) array with high gain and low sidelobe level (SLL) is presented in this paper. The newly suggested linear source generator (LSG) consists of a feeding probe, a main reflector, a sub‐reflector, and two metal matching vias. By introducing one matching via on the left side of probe and another one on the right side of the sub‐reflector, a broadband LSG is obtained to excite the CTS array with a wide scanning range. The operating mechanism of the two matching vias is analysed. In order to reduce SLL, a serial‐fed array with asymmetrically distributed stub width is designed according to Chebyshev distribution for the first time. A prototype of 12‐element array is designed, simulated and measured, and excellent agreements are achieved. The measured beam‐scanning range is from −52° to 2° within the operating frequency of 5.6–8 GHz, in which |S11| is less than −10 dB. The maximum gain is 22 dBi and the SLL varies between −21 dB and −18.2 dB. The proposed design approach can be applied to other bands and other level distributions. The proposed frequency scanning array has great potentials in radar and detection systems.

Abstract Background Glioblastoma is the most common primary brain tumor and remains uniformly fatal, highlighting the dire need for developing effective therapeutics. Significant intra- and inter-tumor heterogeneity and inadequate delivery of therapeutics across blood–brain barrier continue to be significant impediments towards developing therapies which can significantly enhance survival. We hypothesize that microRNAs have the potential to serve as effective therapeutics for glioblastoma as they modulate the activity of multiple signaling pathways, and hence can counteract heterogeneity if successfully delivered. Methods Using a computational approach, we identified microRNA-34a as a microRNA that maximally reduces the activation status of the three core signaling networks (the receptor tyrosine kinase, p53 and Rb networks) that have been found to be deregulated in most glioblastoma tumors. Glioblastoma cultures were transfected with microRNA-34a or control microRNA to assess biological function and therapeutic potential in vitro. Nanocells were derived from genetically modified bacteria and loaded with microRNA-34a for intravenous administration to orthotopic patient-derived glioblastoma xenografts in mice. Results Overexpression of microRNA-34a strongly reduced the activation status of the three core signaling networks. microRNA-34a transfection also inhibited the survival of multiple established glioblastoma cell lines, as well as primary patient-derived xenograft cultures representing the proneural, mesenchymal and classical subtypes. Transfection of microRNA-34a enhanced temozolomide (TMZ) response in in vitro cultures of glioblastoma cells with primary TMZ sensitivity, primary TMZ resistance and acquired TMZ resistance. Mechanistically, microRNA-34a downregulated multiple therapeutic resistance genes which are associated with worse survival in glioblastoma patients and are enriched in specific tumor spatial compartments. Importantly, intravenous administration of nanocells carrying miR-34a and targeted to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) strongly enhanced TMZ sensitivity in an orthotopic patient-derived xenograft mouse model of glioblastoma. Conclusions Targeted bacterially-derived nanocells are an effective vehicle for the delivery of microRNA-34a to glioblastoma tumors. microRNA-34a inhibits survival and strongly sensitizes a wide range of glioblastoma cell cultures to TMZ, suggesting that combination therapy of TMZ with microRNA-34a loaded nanocells may serve as a novel therapeutic approach for the treatment of glioblastoma tumors.

Based on a newly proposed planar Yagi antenna with magnetic and electric dipoles, a compact $1\times 4$ broadband dual-polarized (DP) array with endfire radiation is designed in this paper. The magnetic Yagi antenna operates on the vertical polarization while the electric one operates on the horizontal one. The compact configuration of $0.5\,\,\lambda _{0}\times 0.63\,\,\lambda _{0}\times 0.09\,\,\lambda _{0}$ benefits from the novel half-mode magnetic Yagi antenna and the arrangement with the electric Yagi antenna. The broadband characteristic comes from the directors of the magnetic and electric Yagi antennas and the reflector of magnetic Yagi antenna. The simulation and the measurement verify this design. The measured common bandwidth of $\vert S_{11}\vert < -10$ dB for both polarization ports is 23.8–30.1 GHz (23.7%), and the gains vary between 3 dBi and 4 dBi within 24.2–30 GHz band range. The $1\times 4$ DP array with $0.5~\lambda _{0}$ element space has the beam scanning range of ±43 ° at the endfire direction and the gain of higher than 7.1 dBi. The scanning performances are experimentally validated by two phase-shift feed networks for 0 ° and 30 ° main beam directions. The proposed endfire DP array has the good features of compact structure, a low profile and no clearance requirement, which is easy to integrate in 5G terminals.

In this article, airborne broadband (maximum 400 MHz bandwidth) C-band circularly polarized synthetic aperture radar (SAR) is proposed and developed for further study on airborne compact polarized synthetic aperture radar (CP SAR) system using circular polarization. This article explains the scattering characteristic of circular polarization as the concept of circularly polarized SAR, system configuration, RF system and antenna, ground test, and flight test of circularly polarized SAR in Hinotori-C2 (Firebird-C2) mission onboard CN235MPA aircraft on 14 and 15 March 2018 at South Celebes, Indonesia. The result of the flight test depicts multipath full polarimetric circularly polarized images that show good performance of circularly polarized SAR and matched well to the result of the ground test of a multipolarized single pulse. The circularly polarized scattering clarification using trihedral, cylindrical, and omni corner reflectors (TCR, CCR, and OCR), assessment of circularly polarized image analysis, and image classification using the conventional axial ratio (AR), ellipticity (ε), and polarization ratio (ρ) are discussed. The proposed circularly polarized SAR will enrich the existing CP SAR systems and could be employed in further study of CP SAR calibration technique, also applications development for the environment and disaster monitoring using CP SAR.

In this paper, a tightly coupled dipole reflectarray antenna as well as a variant-coupling-capacitance method to improve the antenna aperture efficiency is presented. Tightly coupled elements and true-time-delay lines are employed in the design of a wideband reflectarray. The proposed reflectarray can operate from 2 GHz to 5 GHz with the gain varying from 11.3 dBi to 21 dBi. Moreover, we propose a variant-coupling-capacitance method to improve the reflectarray aperture efficiency at lower frequency. By changing the coupling capacitance between neighboring elements according to their positions in the reflecting surface, a more linear equivalent distance delay line is achieved. Hence, phase error is reduced. According to measurement, the reflectarray gain in 2 GHz using the proposed method is increased by 3 dBi compared with the previous design. Aperture efficiency in 2 GHz is improved by 21.6%.

Low-terahertz (Low-THz, 100 GHz-1.0 THz) technology is expected to provide unprecedented data rates in future generations of wireless system such as the 6th generation (6G) mobile communication system. Increasing the carrier frequencies from millimeter wave to THz is a potential solution to guarantee the transmission rate and channel capacity. Due to the large transmission loss of Low-THz wave in free space, it is particularly urgent to design high-gain antennas to compensate the additional path loss, and to overcome the power limitation of Low-THz source. Recently, with the continuous updating and progress of additive manufacturing (AM) and 3D printing (3DP) technology, antennas with complicated structures can now be easily manufactured with high precision and low cost. In the first part, this paper demonstrates different approaches of recent development on wideband and high gain sub-millimeter-wave and Low-THz antennas as well as their fabrication technologies. In addition, the performances of the state-of-the-art wideband and high-gain antennas are presented. A comparison among these reported antennas is summarized and discussed. In the second part, one case study of a broadband high-gain antenna at 300 GHz is introduced, which is an all-metal model based on the Fabry-Perot cavity (FPC) theory. The proposed FPC antenna is very suitable for manufacturing using AM technology, which provides a low-cost, reliable solution for emerging THz applications.

Plane Wave Generator (PWG) has attracted great research interest in the industry and academia for sub-6 GHz massive MIMO base station (BS) measurement, thanks to its low-cost and smaller system setup. One major concern in the small setup is its high reflectivity level inside the anechoic chamber, which might distort the quiet zone performance significantly. Meanwhile, it is critical that the quiet zone performance is insusceptible to system inaccuracies. However, these two aspects are largely overlooked in the plane wave synthesis (PWS) study in the literature. In this article, a new PWS strategy is proposed based on parametrized field distribution over an enlarged sampling area. The proposed method offers robust design and low reflectivity level. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed PWS strategy is demonstrated in a numerical simulation.

An investigation on antenna solutions for expendable origami paper flapping robots is presented. An origami flapping robotic bird that can be produced using standard A4 paper is employed. Antennas resonating at the two commonly used frequency bands, 2.4 GHz and 5.2 GHz, are designed for the limited space available on the folded origami structure. Two developments of the same dual-band monopole antenna are discussed. The first antenna is located on the robot's spine and the second on its tail. A space diversity configuration is also studied. The antennas are printed directly onto a photo paper substrate and then folded into an origami robotic crane's body structure. An ordinary desktop inkjet printer fitted with silver nanoparticle conductive ink cartridges has been employed. CST Microwave StudioTM has been used to design the antennas. A good agreement between the measured and simulated S11 results is achieved with a reasonable -10dB impedance bandwidth realized in the three cases studied. The radiation patterns are omnidirectional in the XZ plane which is desirable for the specific application. The diversity configuration has a mutual coupling of

An investigation of the use of Aerosol jet 3D Printing of frequency selective surface for millimetre and low-THz applications is presented in this article. This 3D printing technique allows the fabrication of intricate details of the designs with high resolution. Band-stop and band-pass FSS are designed and tested. The band stop FSS consisted of a Square loop array that operated in the 26-28 GHz sub-millimetre band. This design is printed on glass substrate and can be used for deployment in windows. The bandpass FSS arrays consisted of simple slot elements arranged in a square lattice and operated at 125 GHz and 280 GHz. The slot arrays were printed on Kapton. Surface profiles demonstrated the uniformity and precision of this printing technique. Simulated and measured results compared well and offered good performances at both the millimetre wave and low-THz bands. The designs find applications in 5G and imminent 6G communications. This printing technique also provides environmentally friendly, rapid, and sustainable alternative for development of highly customised FSS which can be deployed to improve communications in buildings and in future Terahertz applications.

Plane Wave Generator (PWG) has recently attracted great attention from industry and academia for over-the-air (OTA) testing of base station (BS) antennas in the fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication systems. This paper aims to reduce the scattering from the PWG to the antenna under test (AUT), which might be problematic in the near-field OTA testing. First, we introduce a low monostatic radar cross section (RCS) PWG array element design. The PWG is also loaded with pyramidal microwave absorbing material (MAM) to suppress the multi-reflections between the AUT and the PWG. Furthermore, unlike coplanar PWG design generally reported in the literature, a novel non-coplanar design is proposed to realize the destructive interference of the scattered signals from the PWG, thereby significantly reducing the multiple reflections. PWG elements in the non-coplanar design are placed in the propagation direction according to planar and non-planar field distribution on the PWG radiated from the BS AUT. To validate our proposed design, a $4\times 4$ PWG array with a 108 mm element spacing and a non-coplanar structure is developed and experimentally validated. The measured results show that the second incident wave of the proposed non-coplanar PWG array structure based on non-planar field distribution is 7.9 dB lower than that of the classical coplanar PWG design from 2.3 GHz to 3.8 GHz, and 1.9 dB lower than that of the proposed non-coplanar PWG array structure based on planar field distribution, which demonstrates the effectiveness and robustness of our proposed design.

Beamforming networks such as Butler Matrices are important for multibeam array antenna applications. The challenge for Butler Matrix design is that their complexity increases with the number of ports. In this paper, a novel approach of designing a 16 × 16 Butler Matrix with significant structure simplification is presented. The eight-port hybrids with no crossovers are used to simplify the network. To ensure the network has the same magnitude and phase responses as the standard one, the location and phase shifting value of each fixed phase shifter are derived from the S-matrix of each hybrid. A 16 × 16 Butler Matrix network operating from 9 GHz-11 GHz is designed to validate this concept. The compensated microstrip 3-dB/90° directional coupler, the phase shifter with a shunt open-and-short stub and the crossover with a resonating patch are used to reduce the transmission loss and enable broadband operation.

A dual-polarized communication rectenna array with high isolation and low cross polarization for simultaneous wireless information and power transmission (SWIPT) is presented. It consists of a 2 × 2 element receiving antenna array and a high efficiency rectifier based on voltage doubler topology. The receiving element is corner-fed to achieve high isolation of more than 20 dB between the dual-polarized ports, which guarantees low mutual interference between the communication and the rectifying ports. To receive enough electromagnetic (EM) wave for rectifying and meanwhile meet the communication sensitivity, this 2 × 2 array uses its 2 × 2 vertical polarization ports and 1 × 2 horizontal polarization ports for power rectifying, and the rest 1 × 2 horizontal polarization ports for communication. For the communication port, the measured gain is 10.9 dBi and the cross polarization is less than -20 dB. The performance of the whole communication rectenna array has been measured, where a 2 × 4 circularly-polarized array with a gain of 17.5 dBi, settled 1 meter away is used as the transmitter. Measured results show that the system achieves a peak microwave - direct circuit (mw-dc) conversion efficiency of 74.9 % for the CW signal, and 67 % for the QPSK signal with 10 MHz channel bandwidth on the load of 345 Ω at 2.58 GHz operating frequency.

A dual-band ten-element MIMO array based on dual-mode inverted-F antennas (IFAs) for 5G terminal applications is presented in this paper. The proposed dual-mode IFA is composed of two radiators, which are etched on the outer and inner surfaces of the side-edge frame. The outer part of the antenna generates the low-order mode at 3.5 GHz, while the inner part radiates another one-quarter-wavelength mode at 4.9 GHz. In this way, the IFA can achieve dual-band operation within a compact size of 10.6 × 5.3 × 0.8 mm3. Based on the proposed antenna, a dual-band ten-element multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) array is developed for 5G terminal applications. By combining neutralization line structures with decoupling branches, the isolations between the elements are improved. To validate the design concept, a prototype of the ten-element MIMO array is designed, fabricated, and measured. The experimental results show that the proposed antenna can cover the 3.3-3.6 GHz and 4.8-5.0 GHz bands with good isolation and high efficiency. Furthermore, the envelope correlation coefficient (ECC), and channel capacity are also calculated to verify the MIMO performances for 5G sub-6GHz applications.

This paper presents a dual-band eight-element multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) array using a multi-slot decoupling technique for the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication. By employing a compact dual-loop antenna element, the proposed array obtains two broad bandwidths of 12.2% and 15.4% for sub-6GHz operation. To reduce the mutual coupling between antenna elements, a novel dual-band decoupling method is proposed by employing a multi-slot structure. The proposed MIMO array achieves 15.5-dB and 19.0-dB isolations across the two operating bands. Furthermore, three decoupling modes generated by different bent slots can be independently tuned. Zero ground clearance is also realized by the coplanar arrangement of the antenna elements and decoupling structures. The proposed MIMO array was simulated, fabricated, and measured. Experimental results agree well with the simulations, showing that the dual-band MIMO array has good impedance matching, high isolation, and high efficiency. In addition, the envelope correlation coefficient and channel capacity are calculated and analyzed to validate the MIMO performance of the 5G terminal array. Such a dual-band high-isolation eight-element MIMO array with zero ground clearance is a promising candidate for 5G or future mobile applications.

This paper introduces an ultra-wideband circularly polarized (CP) asymmetric-S antenna with wide axial ratio beamwidth (ARBW) for C-band applications. The proposed antenna is realized by bending a linearly polarized dipole into asymmetric-S shape with variable trace width, which achieves CP radiation. Unlike the reported symmetric-S antenna, the proposed antenna is constituted with two unequal curved arms to enhance the bandwidth and beamwidth performances. Compared with the symmetric-S antenna, the proposed antenna demonstrates much wider AR bandwidth and wider ARBW over broader frequency range. A prototype is fabricated to verify the design principle. The measured and simulated results are very consistent and both indicate that the proposed antenna has a wide impedance bandwidth (VSWR

This paper presents a close-spaced dual-band 2 × 2 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna with high isolation based on half-mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW). The dual-band operation of the antenna element is achieved by loading a rectangular patch outside the radiating aperture of an HMSIW cavity. The HMSIW cavity is excited by a coaxial probe, whereas the rectangular patch is energized through proximity coupling by the radiating aperture of HMSIW. The antenna elements can be closely placed using the rotation and orthogonal arrangement for a 2 × 2 array. Small neutralization lines at the center of the MIMO antenna can increase the isolation among its elements by around 10 dB in the lower band and 5 dB in the higher band. A prototype of the MIMO antenna is fabricated and its performance is measured. The measured results show that the resonant frequencies are centered at 4.43 and 5.39 GHz with bandwidths of 110 and 80 MHz and peak gains of 6 and 6.4 dBi, respectively. The minimum isolation in both bands is greater than 35 dB. The envelope correlation coefficient is lower than 0.005 within two operating bands.

In this paper, the state-of-the-art integrated filtering antennas with dual-band operation are first reviewed. Then, two designs of dual-band microstrip filtering antennas with a low-frequency ratio are presented. The 1st design is a dual-band dual-polarization (DBDP) antenna with a frequency ratio of 1.2 on a single patch, by employing the coupled resonator technique. Two bands at each polarization are achieved by vertically coupling a hairpin resonator with a patch through a slot in the ground plane and then coupled to a dual-mode stub loaded resonator. Each band exhibits a 2nd-order filtering performance with improved bandwidth and out-of-band rejection. Such an integration technique could significantly reduce the dimension and the complexity of the traditional DBDP antennas/arrays. In the 2nd design, a novel dual-port dual-band antenna (with a frequency ratio of 1.38) with the integrated filtering and duplexing functions is proposed. The frequency duplexing function is implemented by coupling a single patch with two sets of resonator-based filtering channels via a U-slot resonator inserted in the ground. This device seamlessly integrates the functions of duplexers, filters, and antennas in a very compact structure.

Two novel designs of dual-mode beam-steerable array antennas are proposed for customer-premises equipment applications. To obtain the optimal distribution of excitations for the arrays, the gain and front-back ratio of the array systems are optimized by using the method of maximum power transmission efficiency. The first design operates at 2.45 GHz and uses four folded monopoles of height

A novel design method of a wideband dual-polarized antenna is presented by using shorted dipoles, integrated baluns, and crossed feed lines. Simulation and equivalent circuit analysis of the antenna are given. To validate the design method, an antenna prototype is designed, optimized, fabricated, and measured. Measured results verify that the proposed antenna has an impedance bandwidth of 74.5% (from 1.69 to 3.7 GHz) for VSWR

This paper presents a novel low-profile high gain frequency reconfigurable patch antenna with unidirectional radiation pattern by using a grid-slotted patch with tunable varactors loading. The antenna consists of two stacked substrates and three metal layers. A grid-slotted patch with two tunable varactors is placed on the top layer, a microstrip line is placed in the middle of two substrates, and the ground plane is on the bottom layer. A single dc voltage applied on two varactors is used to control the working frequencies of the proposed antenna. By altering the bias voltage, the working frequency of the proposed antenna can be continuously changed within a wide range from 2.45 to 3.55 GHz. The antenna maintains broadside radiation and stable radiation pattern in all the operating modes. The measured antenna gain of the proposed antenna rises from 4.25 to 8.49 dBi with the working frequency increases from 2.45 to 3.55 GHz. Compared to other frequency-reconfigurable antennas available in the literature, the proposed antenna has advantages of a wide frequency tuning range over a bandwidth of 1.45:1, high frequency selectivity, low profile (0.016 free-space wavelength at 2.45 GHz), high gain, stable unidirectional pattern, simple structure, and low cost. These advantages make it a promising candidate for cognitive radio and future wireless communication systems.

Tightly coupled array (TCA) antenna has become a hot topic of research recently, due to its potential of enabling one single antenna array to operate over an extremely wide frequency range. Such an array antenna is promising for applications in numerous wideband/multi-band and multi-function wireless systems such as wideband high-resolution radars, 5G mobile communications, satellite communications, global navigation satellite systems, sensors, wireless power transmission, Internet of Things, and so on. Many papers on this topic have been published by researchers internationally. This paper provides a detailed review of the recent development on TCA that utilizes the capacitive coupling. The basic principles and the historical evolution of the TCAs are introduced first. Then, recent development in the analysis and design of TCAs, such as equivalent circuit analysis, bandwidth limitation analysis, array elements, feed structures, substrates/superstrates loading, and so on, are explained and discussed. The performances of the state-of-the-art TCAs are presented and a comparison amongst some TCAs reported recently is summarized and discussed. To illustrate the practical designs of TCA, one case study is provided, and the detailed design procedures of the TCA are explained so as to demonstrate the TCA design methodology. Simulated results including the VSWR at different angles of scanning, patterns, and antenna gain are shown and discussed. A conclusion and future work are given in the end.

This paper proposes a novel transmitarray antenna which can achieve high gain and produce dual-mode orbital angular momentum (OAM) beams in Ku-band. Two back-to-back wideband dual-polarized microstrip antennas are employed as the unit cells, which are connected using metalized via holes. Full 360° phase ranges can be obtained by varying the length of feeding lines in two orthogonal polarizations. Due to high isolation between the two orthogonal polarizations, dual-mode OAM beams can be formed simultaneously by tuning phase distributions in x- and y-polarizations, respectively. The approach for generating OAM beams is explained. To verify this concept, one prototype carrying 0 and +1 mode OAM beams is designed, fabricated, and measured. Experimental results demonstrate that both 0 and +1 mode OAM beams can be generated successfully, and the measured results agree well with the simulated results. Because of high directivity and focusing effects of transmitarray, the proposed +1 mode OAM beam has stable performance at a long propagation distance. The maximum gain reaches 26 and 20 dBi in 0 and +1 mode OAM beams, respectively. Meanwhile, a narrow divergence angle of ±5° is obtained in +1 mode OAM beam. Compared with other OAM antennas reported, main advantages of the proposed antenna include high gain, narrow divergence angle, low cost, planar structure, and the capability of producing dual-mode OAM beams.

This paper presents a wideband antenna with omnidirectional radiation pattern for wireless capsule endoscopy (WCE) systems. The proposed antenna radiates as slot structure formed between a central copper cylinder and a copper strip attached to the interior surface of biocompatible polyimide shell. Main features of the antenna include: 1) an integrated design of the antenna and electronic components in the capsule is employed. And by utilizing the entire inner space of the capsule, the radiating aperture of antenna is increased to the maximum; 2) the copper cylinder can be used to house electronic components, therefore the potential electromagnetic interferences brought by battery and electronic circuits are reduced to the minimum; 3) the antenna in tissue has a wide bandwidth from 0.721 to 1.705 GHz, covering both 0.902-0.928-GHz industrial, scientific, and medical band and 1.395-1.4-GHz wireless medical telemetry service band; and 4) the antenna inside human tissues has stable omnidirectional radiation patterns across all operating frequencies. This is an indispensable characteristic due to unpredictable orientation of the capsule in gastrointestinal tract. The integrated design concept, wideband impedance matching, and stable omnidirectional radiation patterns make the proposed antenna a promising candidate for future WCE system.

There is an urgent demand for massive machine-type terminals to have access into time-division multiple access (TDMA)-based satellite networks by means of random multiple access (RMA). Several RMA protocols have been proposed by exploiting packet repetitions and interference cancellation to achieve high throughput. In this paper, a framework of non-orthogonal slotted aloha (NOSA) protocol is reported to achieve even higher throughput. With a specifically designed tile-based frame structure, it introduces the intra-tile sparse mapping as a special kind of pre-coded packet repetitions and exploits the joint multi-packet detection to blindly detect superimposed packets. By further employing inter-tile packet repetitions and interference cancellation, the NOSA protocol is able to achieve high throughput with affordable complexity while keeping the same transmission efficiency as and comparable power consumptions to available protocols. Simulation results show that the NOSA prototype has the potential in providing RMA for massive machine-type terminals in practical TDMA-based satellite networks.

A fourth-order filtering patch antenna with a novel coupling structure is presented in this paper. Using the proposed coupling structure, both the balanced coupling feed and cross-coupling are realized. Two identical slots etched on the ground plane are utilized to excite the radiating patch with the reduced cross-polarization level. A short slot etched on the ground plane is employed for cross-coupling, which introduces two controllable radiation nulls with a steep roll-off rate. In addition, owing to the split-ring resonators and hairpin resonators, the improved impedance bandwidth is achieved with the fourth-order filtering response. To demonstrate the proposed design techniques, both the filtering antenna element and the low-sidelobe array are designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured results show that the proposed antenna has the impedance bandwidth of 12% (4.78-5.39 GHz) with the total height of 0.06λ0, the cross-polarization level lower than -31 dB, and two radiation nulls with the suppression higher than 31 dB. For the low-sidelobe antenna array, wide impedance bandwidth is also obtained with the sidelobe level below -28.7 dB, the crosspolarization level below -34 dB, and the out-of-band suppression better than 25 dB.

This paper consists of two parts. The first part presents a review of the recent development in broadband circularly polarized filtering antennas. The second part presents a novel design of broadband integrated filtering antenna based on eighth-mode SIW (EMSIW) resonators for rectenna applications. This work has three main novel contributions. First, by adjusting the external quality factors and coupling coefficients of the resonators in this filtering antenna, optimum input impedance with a complex value can be realized within the filtering antenna. Thus there is no need for an external impedance matching network, which is usually required between the antenna and the rectifying circuits; Second, compared with traditional microstrip resonators, high-Q EMSIW cavities are used to increase antenna gain; third, the coupling gap between the EMSIW resonators also acts as the feeding structure of the radiator. So the feeding structures are all on the middle layer. The ground plane on the back side is a complete structure without any defects. This novel structure design improves front-to-back ratio to enhance the antenna receiving efficiency. To validate this method, two C-band circularly polarized integrated filtering antennas with an input impedance of 50 Ω and complex impedance are designed, simulated, and fabricated. The measured results show that the operating frequency bandwidth of the proposed antennas is more than 14.5% at C-band with the gain above 8 dBi. The 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth is larger than 8.5% and the front-to-back ratio is higher than 18 dB. Moreover, the proposed antenna with complex impedance is conjugate matched with the input impedance of a specific rectifying circuit at 5.8 GHz and harmonics suppression at the second-harmonic frequency is achieved.

This paper proposes a compact rectifier design method for utilizing harmonics. Based on total reflection generated by pure reactance loads at the second harmonic (2nd) and open circuit at the third harmonic (3rd), a compact DC-pass filter is designed to effectively utilize the 2nd and 3rd harmonics excited by the rectifying diode. The amplitudes of the harmonics can be controlled by adjusting the input impedances of the DC-pass filter at harmonics. A prototype operating at 5.8 GHz fundamental frequency is implemented and measured to validate the scenario. When the input power is 18.3 dBm, the measured rectifying efficiency is 71.3%, while the 2nd and the 3rd harmonic amplitudes are −2.4 dBm and 0.1 dBm respectively. This method could also be extended to design a rectifier only utilizing the 2nd or the 3rd harmonic.

In this paper, a polarization-insensitive metasurface, harvesting electromagnetic (EM) energy with high efficiency and frequency stability over a wide range of incidence angles, is proposed. The previously reported metasurfaces suffer from their maximum efficiencies shifting with the frequency when the incidence angle increases. By introducing a square-shaped metal via ring around the elements, the mutual coupling among adjacent cells is reduced so that the proposed metasurface can maintain maximum efficiency at the fixed operation frequency over a wide range of incidence angles. Furthermore, with one single harvesting via in the proper position for the connection of a harvesting load, the metasurface can collect EM energy effectively with both transverse electric (TE) and transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations in one single harvesting load. Compared with the reported metasurfaces, this proposed metasurface has a higher efficiency and fixed operation frequency within a wide incidence range. The energy distribution, harvesting efficiency, and surface current are simulated to investigate the operation mechanism of the proposed metasurface. The simulation results show that the maximum harvesting efficiency is 91% at 5.8 GHz for both TE and TM polarizations at the normal incidence. When the incident angle increases to 75°, the maximum efficiency is achieved at 5.79 GHz (0.19% shift), and the maximum efficiencies of TM and TE polarizations are 91% and 68%, respectively. A 5 × 5 array is fabricated and tested. The experimental results are in good agreement with the simulated ones.

Cube Satellite (CubeSat) technology is an attractive emerging alternative to conventional satellites in radio astronomy, earth observation, weather forecasting, space research, and communications. Its size, however, poses a more challenging restriction on the circuitry and components as they are expected to be closely spaced and very power efficient. One of the main components that will require careful design for CubeSats is their antennas, as they are needed to be lightweight, small in size, and compact or deployable for larger antennas. This paper presents a review of antennas suitable for picosatellite applications. An overview of the applications of picosatellites will first be explained, prior to a discussion on their antenna requirements. Material and antenna topologies which have been used will be subsequently discussed prior to the presentation of several deployable configurations. Finally, a perspective and future research work on CubeSat antennas will be discussed in the conclusion.

The design, implementation, and measurements of a high efficiency and high power wideband GaN HEMT power amplifier are presented. Package parasitic effect is reduced significantly by a novel compensation circuit design to improve the accuracy of impedance matching. An improved structure is proposed based on the traditional Class-F structure with all even harmonics and the third harmonic effectively controlled, respectively. Also the stepped-impedance matching method is applied to the third harmonic control network, which has a positive effect on the expansion bandwidth. CGH40025F power transistor is utilized to build the power amplifier working at 0.8 to 2.7 GHz, with the measured saturated output power 20–50 W, drain efficiency 52%–76%, and gain level above 10 dB. The second and the third harmonic suppression levels are maintained at −16 to −36 dBc and −16 to −33 dBc, respectively. The simulation and the measurement results of the proposed power amplifier show good consistency.

A novel single- or dual-polarized ultra-wideband (UWB) patch antenna fed by coupled feeding mechanism is proposed. The single-polarized antenna consists of a square ring patch and two Γ-shaped patches which are coupled to the radiating patch. The vertical portions of the Γ-shaped patches are connected to the microstrip lines which are printed on the bottom layer of the grounded FR4 substrate. To realize the differential feeding mechanism for enhancing the polarization purity, a tapered balun is employed to excite the antenna. Further to provide dual linear orthogonal polarizations, another pair of Γ-shaped patches is added in the single-polarized UWB antenna. The dual-polarized UWB antenna prototype can achieve two orthogonal polarizations with an impedance bandwidth (S11≤-10 dB) of 113% and isolation of over 25 dB across the entire frequency band.