Leung Chiu

A wideband compact parallel-strip 180/spl deg/ Wilkinson power divider for push-pull circuitries

A Wilkinson power divider with a differential output implemented in parallel-strip-line (PSL) is proposed. Taking full advantages of the PSL technology and a three-stage cascaded design, more than 170% impedance and isolation bandwidths are obtained. Inherent to the PSL structure, the 180deg differential output is frequency-independent. A class-B push-pull power amplifier employing the devised concept is designed, showing a peak efficiency of 44% over a 4-GHz bandwidth. Without exploiting any extra and external low-pass filters, the proposed design can produce startling second-harmonic suppressions (more than 50dB) over the whole working dynamics and operated bandwidth

A Parallel-Strip Ring Power Divider With High Isolation and Arbitrary Power-Dividing Ratio

In this paper, a new power divider concept, which provides high flexibility of transmission line characteristic impedance and port impedance, is proposed. This power divider is implemented on a parallel-strip line, which is a balanced transmission line. By implementing the advantages and uniqueness of the parallel-strip line, the divider outperforms the conventional divider in terms of isolation bandwidths. A swap structure of the two lines of the parallel-strip line is employed in this design, which is critical for the isolation enhancements. A lumped-circuit model of the parallel-strip swap including all parasitic effects has been analyzed. An equal power divider with center frequency of 2 GHz was designed to demonstrate the idea. The experimental results show that the equal power divider has 96.5% -10-dB impedance bandwidth with more than 25-dB isolation and less than 0.7-dB insertion loss. In order to generalize the concept with an arbitrary power ratio, we also realize unequal power dividers with the same isolation characteristics. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed power divider will increase with the dividing ratio, which is opposite to the conventional Wilkinson power divider. Unequal dividers with dividing ratios of 1 : 2 and 1 : 12 are designed and measured. Additionally, a frequency independent 180 power divider has been realized with less than 2 phase errors.

Ultrawideband Printed Log-Periodic Dipole Antenna With Multiple Notched Bands

A printed log-periodic dipole antenna (PLPDA) with multiple notched bands is proposed for ultrawideband (UWB) applications. The impedance bandwidth of 3.1 GHz-10.6 GHz with VSWR less than 2 is achieved based on the wideband property of the PLPDA as well as the half mode substrate integrated waveguide (HMSIW) Balun. Different from omnidirectional UWB antennas, the end-fire radiation pattern of the PLPDA is more stable within the UWB band. Multiple notched bands are generated by integrating U-shaped slots into the PLPDA for blocking the interference from other narrow band wireless communication systems. Several antennas with the notched frequencies of 3.5 GHz, 5.5 GHz, 6.8 GHz, and 8.5 GHz are designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured results are in agreement with the predicted results.

Wideband Parallel-Strip Bandpass Filter Using Phase Inverter

A new wideband parallel-strip bandpass filter using phase inverter with stubs is proposed. With the wideband phase inverter in the parallel-strip line structure, the measured fractional passband bandwidth is 123% with a flat group delay response. Also, over 90% impedance bandwidth is obtained for the return loss higher than 20 dB. The theoretical simulation, electromagnetic simulation, and measured results show good agreement with this proposed design.

Investigation of a Wideband 90

This paper presents a new class of wideband 90° hybrid coupler with an arbitrary coupling level. The physical size of the proposed coupler is close to that of a conventional two-section branch-line coupler, but it has an additional phase inverter. The impedance bandwidth of the proposed coupler is close to that of a four-section branch-line coupler. The proposed coupler is a backward-wave coupler with a port assignment different from that of a conventional branch-line coupler. The design formulas of the proposed coupler are proved based on its even- and odd-mode half structures. We demonstrated three couplers at the center frequency of 2 GHz with different design parameters.

^{\circ}

A compact, low profile, super high antenna gain, and broadband antenna, based on the printed log-periodic dipole array (PLPDA) antenna and the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technologies, has been proposed. It is so called substrate integrated waveguide clamped-mode printed log-periodic dipole array (SIW clamped-mode PLPDA) antenna. The arrangement of the dipole elements and feed lines in the SIW clamped-mode PLPDA antenna is designed and optimized. The proposed SIW clamped-mode PLPDA antenna was designed, fabricated, and tested, while a single SIW PLPDA antenna and a 2-element SIW PLPDA array were designed for comparison. The impedance bandwidth and the far-field radiation patterns in both E-plane and H-plane were measured. The measured results show that the performance of the SIW clamped-mode PLPDA antenna is similar to that of the 2-element SIW PLPDA array over the working frequency range 25 GHz-40 GHz, while the proposed antenna has only half the number of dipole elements and feed lines.

Hybrid Coupler With an Arbitrary Coupling Level

The realization of a highly efficient linearized amplifier has emerged as a paramount issue in the design of advanced mobile handsets. In this paper, a new RF amplifier linearization scheme using a compensating transistor combination is proposed. The devised approach ably utilizes all terminals of an additional transistor that offers a unified pre-post-distortion and cubic distortion characteristic for performance improvement. Meticulous modeling along with a power-dependent Volterra series is performed to identify contributions on each mechanism under various power levels. An experimental four-tone test reveals a maximum 28-dB reduction for the intermodulation distortion at 1.95 GHz, which outperforms typical pre-distortions of 5-10 dB. A single-ended two-stage amplifier module demonstrates a state-of-the-art power efficiency of 55% with 27-dB transducer gain at 24-dBm output power. Meanwhile, the adjacent channel power ratio (ACPR 1) is maintained with good margins of -35dBc for a four-channel wideband code-division multiple-access signal under all output dynamics. Graceful degradations on modulation bandwidths, tone spacing, bias, and gain variations are also discussed, showing superb performance with virtually no dedicated retuning circuit parameters for multicarrier applications. By combining a bias control along with the proposed linearization technique, the average efficiency (12%) is 3times higher than that of the fixed bias (3.94%), demonstrating the potential utility on further prolonging battery lifetime in practical scenarios

Super High Gain Substrate Integrated Clamped-Mode Printed Log-Periodic Dipole Array Antenna

Nowadays, demands for compactness, light weight, and broadband have a great impact on design issues at both component and system levels in wireless communications. Multilayered structures fabricated with low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technologies have been developed recently in response to these demands. With this trend, double-sided printed circuits using conventional fabrication techniques with lower cost have been receiving plenty of attention. The parallel-strip line, belongs to the family of balanced transmission lines. The conventional printed circuit board technology is able to realize it easily. It is a simple structure comprised of a piece of dielectric substrate sandwiched by two conducting traces. Signals flowing on the upper and lower conductors are always equal in magnitude and 180° out of phase; therefore, parallel-strip line has an inherent advantage of easy realization of a balanced configuration. Balanced or double balanced microwave circuits, such as amplifier, mixer, and antenna, are frequently employed in high-performance wireless communications systems, and they can be directly fed by parallel-strip lines. In contrast, microstrip line is an unbalanced transmission line; therefore, extra effort of designing balanced to unbalanced structures (balun) is required for using microstrip transmission lines.

High-efficiency linear RF Amplifier - a unified circuit approach to achieving compactness and low distortion

A new passive 2-D Van Atta array is introduced with star-shaped antenna elements. The star-shaped antenna is proposed for low mutual coupling in the array. A single antenna element designed at 5.8 GHz has two orthogonal feeding ports with 23 dB port return loss and 28 dB isolation between ports. The mutual coupling among the antenna elements is less than -15.5 dB, which is 5 dB better than the conventional square patch antenna. Experimental results show that this array keeps a constant retrodirective characteristic at arbitrary injection polarization and direction. A stable bistatic radar cross section (BRCS) within 120deg angle can be achieved at 5.8 GHz

Performance enhancement of microwave circuits using parallel-strip line

A 1-D four-element and 2-D eight-element phase-conjugated retrodirective arrays employing low conversion-loss resistive field-effect transistor mixers and stub-loaded patch elements are proposed. The mixer, systematically designed using a multi- harmonic loading technique, offers a low 5.2-dB conversion loss at a 4.5-dBm local oscillator power level. The stub-loaded patch element is a square patch with a capacitive open stub loaded at each of its four corners, leading to patch-size reduction, lower mutual coupling between adjacent elements, and broader beam width. With the same element spacing of half a free-space wavelength at 5.8 GHz, the mutual coupling is suppressed by 3.1 and 3.3 dB in the E- and if-planes, respectively, when compared to the conventional square patches. Within an angle of plusmn60deg normal to the arrays, distinct linearly polarized retrodirectivities in terms of pattern deformations are experimentally confirmed for both the H-plane of the 1-D array and both E- and H-planes for the 2-D array. Additionally, circularly polarized retrodirectivity are also experimentally confirmed for 2-D arrays.