David E. Senior

Pathologic effects of ESWL on canine renal tissue

The introduction of extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy (ESWL) has provided an avenue for dealing with many urinary stones noninvasively. The margin of safety for the kidney during shock wave administration is largely undefined. A pilot study was performed where six kidneys in five female mongrel dogs were shocked. Group A kidneys were given 1,776, 4,500, 6,000, or 8,000 shocks, respectively, at 18-24 kV. Group B kidneys received 1,600 and 8,000 shocks (18-24 kV). The number of shocks per electrode ranged from 500 to 4,538 and averaged 2,490. The dogs were sacrificed forty-eight to seventy-two hours (Group A) or twenty-eight to thirty-two days (Group B) post-treatment. Modest damage (hematoma and/or interstitial hemorrhage) was noted in all kidneys. Evidence of permanent change (fibrosis) was noted in both Group B kidneys. Complete necrosis of the kidney was not seen after administration of 8,000 shocks. These preliminary data indicate that lithotripsy can, in some circumstances, produce renal damage in the canine model.

Hawkins-hunter retrograde transcutaneous nephrostomy: A new technique

Retrograde nephrostomy, a new technique to aid in stone management, has been performed successfully in dogs. It has also been used without complication in a human patient to help remove a renal stone percutaneously under local anesthesia. The technique consists of placing a coaxial catheter over a guidewire under fluoroscopy into the exact calyx desired and advancing a long needle out to the skin to establish a transcutaneous tract. The advantages of the technique include increased control and precision of tract placement, efficient working angles for percutaneous stone removal, and the ability to perform the procedure under local anesthesia.

A Compact Omnidirectional Self-Packaged Patch Antenna With Complementary Split-Ring Resonator Loading for Wireless Endoscope Applications

A patch loaded with a complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR) is fabricated on a flexible substrate and folded in a cylindrical shape, forming a self-packaged folded patch antenna with a quasi-omnidirectional radiation pattern. The space inside the cylindrical cavity is electromagnetically shielded by the ground plane of the patch, and therefore electronic circuits can be accommodated in it with little electromagnetic interference (EMI) from the antenna or other external electronics. The CSRR contributes to size reduction. As a test vehicle, a 2.4-GHz ISM-band folded patch antenna is designed, fabricated, and characterized for a wireless capsule endoscope application, where the implemented antenna has a patch length of 10.5 mm (0.11λ ) and a folded cylinder diameter of 10 mm. A 74% size reduction is achieved after CSRR loading. The antenna located at the outermost surface not only functions as an electromagnetic radiator and an EMI shield, but also serve as a mechanical packaging structure.

Electrically Tunable Evanescent Mode Half-Mode Substrate-Integrated-Waveguide Resonators

Electrically tunable evanescent mode half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) resonators are implemented for S band applications. An HMSIW loaded with a complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) achieves forward electromagnetic wave transmission below the characteristic waveguide cutoff frequency due to evanescent wave amplification. A variable capacitor connected to one of the conductors of the CSRR changes its effective capacitance to ground, resulting in frequency tuning of the resonator. Three different configurations are investigated with a varactor diode connected between the ground and three different contact points of the CSRR. The external Q factor is slightly affected by the frequency tuning. More than 15% tunability is achieved around 3.4 GHz. Full wave structure simulation results are in good agreement with those of measurement.

Single and dual band bandpass filters using complementary split ring resonator loaded half mode substrate integrated waveguide

High performance microwave bandpass filters with low insertion loss, high selectivity, compact size and multiple bands are widely used for wireless and satellite communication systems [1]. During the years, bandpass waveguide filters have used all kinds of metallic and non-metallic insertions in order to improve performance and reduce size [2]. Since the first experimental demonstrations of metamaterial particles exhibiting either negative permeability such as the split ring resonators (SRR), or negative permittivity such as the complementary split ring resonators (CSRR), different implementations combining waveguide with such structures have been widely investigated for bandpass filters [3–4], mainly motivated by their extraordinary property of generating backward wave transmission below the waveguide cutoff frequency. On the other hand, the need for new applications and integration with digital circuitry is the motivation for proposing and implementing planar microwave filters with performances similar to those provided by the bulky waveguide filters. The substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) and the half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) [5–6] have been selected as the key wave guiding structures for the implementation of low loss, high quality factor and improved selectivity waveguide bandpass filters on printed circuit board (PCB) technology. In addition, taking into account the possibility of having forward wave propagation below the waveguide cutoff frequency, the substrate integrated waveguide has been combined with complementary split ring resonators (CSRR) for the implementation of compact size and high selectivity bandpass filters [7].

An Omnidirectional Wrappable Compact Patch Antenna for Wireless Endoscope Applications

An inductively loaded compact patch antenna for a radiation frequency of 433 MHz is designed taking into consideration a human-body model and fabricated on a flexible liquid crystalline polymer (LCP) substrate, which is subsequently wrapped into a cylindrical shape to achieve a monopole-like omnidirectional radiation pattern for wireless endoscope applications. The wrapped patch antenna has a stretched length of 31 mm (0.07λg), and its cylindrical form has a diameter of 10 mm and a width of 18.5 mm, whose dimensions are designed to be comparable to those of a commercially available capsule endoscope. Compared to a traditional patch antenna with the same radiation frequency, an 86% length reduction is achieved. Omnidirectionality is desired to increase the space coverage in communication between the randomly moving capsule inside and the receiver outside the body. The enclosed cylindrical cavity, surrounded by the ground plane of the patch, provides an electromagnetic interference (EMI) protected room that is useful for the placement of other electronic components. Multiple inductive notches on a patch designed for antenna size reduction are described by an equivalent circuit model. Human-body phantom solution is used for antenna characterization. The antenna, located at the outermost layer, serves not only as a good radiating unit, but also as the EMI protecting, mechanically supporting, packaging layer of the endoscope system.

Wireless passive sensing application using a cavity loaded evanescent mode half mode substrate integrated waveguide resonator

In this work, an evanescent mode half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) resonator is designed for a wireless passive sensing application at 5 GHz. The wireless pressure sensor has been implemented by placing a small Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) cavity, covered with a metal coated membrane, on top of the original resonator or by using a cavity ground plane. When the metal coated membrane is deformed or deflected by an external pressure, it perturbs the electric field of a complementary split ring resonator (CSRR) patterned on top of the HMSIW, producing a shift in the resonance frequency. Because it operates in a microwave frequency spectrum, it offers a high pressure-frequency sensitivity. Resonance frequency as a function of an applied pressure has been presented. Also, a broadband antenna has been integrated to perform wireless interrogation of the sensor.

A surface micromachined broadband millimeter-wave filter using quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide loaded with complementary split ring resonator

A millimeter-wave bandpass filter (BPF) using complementary split-ring resonator (CSRR) loaded quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide (QMSIW) cavities is presented in this work. The CSRR-loaded QMSIW cavity resonates below the original QMSIW resonance frequency, which further reduces the size with respect to its SIW counterpart. The reduced quality factor Q of the cavity makes it useful for BPFs with broad fractional bandwidth (FBW). A micromachined 4th order Chebyshev BPF is demonstrated at the unlicensed 57 GHz to 64 GHz frequency band. A FBW of more than 11.6% with an in-band return loss of better than 15 dB, and an insertion loss of less than 2.5 dB are obtained.

A compact self-packaged patch antenna with non-planar complimentary split ring resonator loading

A self-packaged folded patch antenna in a rectangular waveguide shape is greatly reduced in size by loading a complimentary split ring resonator (CSRR) on the edge of its ground plane. The dimensions of the proposed antenna are 15mm×15mm×20mm, showing 72% volume reduction compared to one without CSRR loading at the same radiation frequency of 2.4GHz. Impedance matching between the patch and the feeding line is obtained by adjusting the gap between two edges of the folded patch not necessitating an additional impedance matching circuit. Also, the inside cavity surrounded and packaged by the folded patch is electromagnetically well shielded from the external circuit. This antenna offers a quasi-omni-directional radiation pattern. All those features make the proposed antenna very suitable for a compact sensor network application. To our knowledge, this is the first report a non-planar CSRR applied to antenna size reduction.

Electrically small tunable split ring resonator antenna

Since its physical implementation in 1999 by Pendry et al. [1], metamaterials which demonstrate negative permittivity and permeability have been raised as an interesting research topic in the microwave society for their unique features. Split ring resonator (SRR) is one of the most popular structures which could introduce negative permeability. Usually, a SRR is composed of two homocentric metallic rings, where each of them has a slot on the ring. The SRR works as an L-C resonance network whose resonance frequency can be determined by [2]