Robert Platteborze

Short-term project on microwave passive planar circuits: an educational approach

The paper presents a short-term project on microwave planar circuits proposed to undergraduate students at Universite Catholique de Louvain, Belgium, in the frame of a basic course on microwave engineering. It helps the students to familiarize with all circuit aspects at microwaves and millimeter waves: they design, analyze, realize, and measure a planar passive component operating in the frequency range 0-40 GHz. Their attention is especially focused on microwave concepts: modeling a transmission line behavior and its limitations, spurious effects at high frequencies (radiation, coupling, and reactive behavior from higher order modes), influence of etching, mechanical tolerances, and wide-band behavior. The educational relevance of the project results from the opportunity given to the students to obtain in a very short period of time an actual component by combining up-to-date theoretical models, modern etching facilities, and measurement equipment, like in industry. Such an opportunity is rather unique and of prime interest for their possible future career in the growing area of microwave and millimeter wave communications.

Designing and Making Planar Circuits : A Thorough Study of the Global Accuracy Achieved by Students

The paper describes the facilities used by the students in our Laboratory to realise planar circuits such as microstrips, slotlines, finlines and coplanar waveguides. The precision and the limitations have been carefully measured to verify that the overall accuracy is appropriate for the various structures. A study of the sensitivity of the models to the geometrical parameters of the lines has been undertaken. The first results are given.

Microwave undergraduate education at UCL Belgium: From planar passive components to wide band tuned devices

This paper presents microwave education facilities set up at U.C.L. for the five past years. Emphasis is led on the design, realisation and measurement of planar subsystems which components are progressively studied during the undergraduate education in electrical engineering at U.C.L. This is illustrated by the presentation of various realisations presently developed in the frame of an engineering thesis by fifth-year students in view of synthesizing a coplanar YIG oscillator.