The authors propose a waveguide π-junction with an inductive wall. Galerkin's method of moments is applied to analyze it and small reflection and desired power division ratio is realized. Good agreement between the calculated result and the measured one verifies the design of a unit π-junction. The characteristics of aπ-junction with a wall are almost the same as those of a conventional π-junction with a post. Important advantage of the new π-junction with a wall is that it can be manufactured in the die-cast process of the waveguide while a post in the conventional one must be attached in an additional process. A 16-way power divider consisting of 8 π-junctions is designed at 11.85 GHz and the characteristics are predicted.

A radial line slot antenna (RLSA) is a high efficiency and high gain planar antenna. The efficiency of RLSA becomes lower as the aperture size reduces due to rotational asymmetry of the illumination. A concentric array RLSA (CA-RLSA) was proposed to overcome this difficulty. It adopted three new techniques; (1) not spirally but concentrically arrayed slots, (2) a rotating mode feed circuit, (3) matching slot pairs eliminating termination loss. This paper proposes the basic slot design for (1) and (2) of CA-RLSA. Excellent characteristics of very small CA-RLSAs based upon this design are confirmed by measurements.

The advantages of the use of directional antennas for portable telephones are demonstrated. They contribute to (1) reduction of power absorption into a head, (2) reduction of multi-path interference, and (3) power saving and increase of a battery life time. This paper compares directional and omni-directional antennas existing near the head of operator, in terms of radiation patterns with a head and the power absorbed into a head. It is pointed out that radiation patterns with a head are more or less directive for both types of antennas, while the power absorbed into a head is much smaller for directional antennas.

ESPAR (Electronically Steerable Passive Array Radiator) antennas were proposed as candidates for low-cost analog adaptive beamforming. The radiation pattern is controlled in an azimuthal plane by variable reactors loaded on each passive element. This paper estimates the frequency bandwidth of an ESPAR antenna in a single beam scanning operation. Bandwidth in terms of gain is predicted statistically as functions of beam direction and dynamic range of variable reactance. The -3 dB bandwidth of 7-element ESPAR antennas can be about 30%, 25% and 15% for the range of reactance of -100Ω Xn 100Ω, -50Ω Xn 50Ω and -100Ω Xn 0Ω, respectively, while the improper choice of reactance sets results in narrow bandwidth less than 5%.

This paper presents the analysis and design of a reflection-cancelling transverse slot-pair array antenna with baffles by using the Spectrum of Two-Dimensional Solutions (S2DS) method. For the transverse slot array, the slot spacings with more than one free-space wavelength cause the grating-lobes. The baffles suppress the grating-lobes effectively. A one-dimensional slot array is extracted from the 2D array with in-phase excitation by assuming periodicity in the transversal direction. The uniform excitation over the finite array is synthesized iteratively to demonstrate the fast and accurate results by S2DS. A unit design model with the baffles is introduced to determine the initial parameters of the slot-pairs, which greatly accelerate the iterations process. Experiments at 25.3 GHz demonstrate the suppression of the grating lobes to the level less than -20.0 dB and also the good uniformity of the aperture field distribution.

We have proposed a unique and simple modification to the definition of surface-normal vectors in Physical optics (PO). The modified surface-normal vectors are so defined as that the reflection law is satisfied at every point on the surface. The PO with currents defined by this new surface-normal vector has the enhanced accuracy for the edged scatterers to the level of Geometrical Theory of Diffraction (GTD), though it dispenses with the knowledge of high frequency asymptotic techniques. In this paper, firstly, the remarkable simplicity and the high accuracy of the modified PO as applied to the analysis of Radar Cross Section (RCS) is demonstrated for 2 dimensional problems. Noteworthy is that the scattering not only from edge but also from wedge is accurately predicted. This fringe advantage is confirmed asymptotically by comparing the edge and wedge diffraction coefficients of GTD. Finally, the applicability for three dimensional cube is also demonstrated by comparison with experimental data.

Honeycomb structures are widely used in aerospace industry because of the lightweight and durable properties they provide. Here we propose to use a honeycomb core as the wave guiding structure in Radial Line Slot Antennas (RLSAs). This paper quantifies the propagation characteristics, especially the loss due to the honeycomb. At 32GHz, by choosing the proper cell size, both good isotropy and reasonably low effective dielectric constants are realized with the honeycomb as a spacer in a radial line waveguide. To estimate the material loss factor, several methods are compared and a factor of about 0.014∼0.018dB/mm is predicted and measured. A fabricated 90cm diameter honeycomb RLSA suffers about a 3.5∼5dB loss, which coincides with the estimates using the predicted loss factor.

This paper proposes a simple and practical scheme to decide the direction of a phased array antenna beam in wireless access systems using Radio-over-Fiber (RoF) technique. The feasibility of the proposed scheme is confirmed by the optical and wireless transmission experiments using 2GHz RoF signals. In addition, two-dimensional steering operation in the millimeter-wave band is demonstrated for targeting future high-speed wireless communication systems. The required system parameters for practical use are also provided by investigating the induced transmission penalties. The proposed detection scheme is applicable to two-dimensional antenna beam steering in the millimeter-wave band by properly designing the fiber length and wavelength variable range.

The physical optics (PO) approximation is one of the widely-used techniques to calculate scattering fields with a reasonable accuracy in the high frequency region. The computational load of PO radiation integral dramatically increases at higher frequencies since it is proportional to the electrical size of scatterer. In order to suppress this load, a variety of techniques, such as the asymptotic evaluation by the stationary phase method (SP), the equivalent edge currents (EECs), the low-order polynomial expansion method and the fast physical optics (FPO), have been proposed and developed. The adaptive sampling method (ASM) proposed by Burkholder is also one of the techniques where the sampling points in radiation integral should be adaptively determined based upon the phase change of integrand. We proposed a quite different approach named ``Localization of the radiation integrals.'' This localization method suggests that only the small portions of the integration with a slow phase change contribute to the scattering field. In this paper, we newly introduce the ASM in the localization method and applied the proposed method into the radar cross section (RCS) analysis of 2-dimensional strip and cylinder. We have confirmed that the proposed method provides the frequency-independent number of division in the radiation integrals and computational time and accuracy. As the starting point for extension to 3-D case, the application of the proposed method for a reflection from an infinite PEC plane and a part of sphere was also examined.

Dense millimeter-wave networks are a promising candidate for next-generation cellular systems enabling multiple gigabit-per-second data rates. A major disadvantage of millimeter-wave systems is signal disruption by rain, and here we propose a novel method for rain sensing using dual-frequency measurements at 25 and 38GHz from a small-scale Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) millimeter-wave network. A real-time algorithm is developed for estimating the rain rate from attenuation using both ITU-R relationships and new coefficients that consider the effects of the rain Drop Size Distribution (DSD). The suggested procedure is tested on measured data, and its performance is evaluated. The results show that the proposed algorithm yields estimates that agree very well with rain gauge data.

This paper discusses how to design a Radial Line Slot Antenna (RLSA) whose waveguide is filled with high loss dielectric materials. We introduce a new design for the aperture slot coupling synthesis to restrain the dielectric losses and improve the antenna gain. Based on a newly defined slot coupling, a number of RLSAs with different sizes and loss factors are analyzed and their performances are predicted. Theoretical calculations suggest that the gain is sensitive to the material losses in the radial lines. The gain enhancement by using the new coupling formula is notable for larger antenna size and higher loss factor of the dielectric material. Three prototype RLSAs are designed and fabricated at 60GHz following different slot coupling syntheses, and their measured performances consolidate our theory.

Radiation integral areas are localized and reduced based upon the locality of scattering phenomena. In the high frequency, the scattering field is given by the currents, not the entire region, but on the local areas near the scattering centers, such as the stationary phase points and edge diffraction points, due to the cancelling effect of integrand in the radiation integral. The numerical calculation which this locality is implemented into has been proposed for 2-dimensional problems. The scattering field can be approximated by integrating the currents weighted by the adequate function in the local areas whose size and position are determined appropriately. Fresnel zone was previously introduced as the good criterion to determine the local areas, but the determination method was slightly different, depending on the type of scattering centers. The objective of this paper is to advance the Fresnel zone criteria in a 2-dimensional case to the next stage with enhanced generality and applicability. The Fresnel zone number is applied not directly to the actual surface but to the virtual one associated with the modified surface-normal vector satisfying the reflection law. At the same time, the argument in the weighting function is newly defined by the Fresnel zone number instead of the actual distance from the scattering centers. These two revisions bring about the following three advantages; the uniform treatment of various types scattering centers, the smallest area in the localization and applicability to 3-dimensional problems.

A waveguide crossed-slot linear array with a matching element is accurately analyzed and designed by the method of moments using numerical-eigenmode basis functions developed by the authors. The rounded ends of crossed-slots are accurately modeled in the analysis. The initial values of the slot parameters determined by a model with assumption of periodicity of field are modified and refined by the full-wave finite-array analysis for uniform excitation and small axial ratio. As an example, an 8-element linear array is designed at 11.85 GHz, which radiates a circularly polarized wave at a beam-tilting angle of 50 degrees. The radiation pattern, the frequency characteristics of the reflection and the axial ratio are compared between the analysis and the measurement and they agree very well. The calculated and measured axial ratio at the beam direction are 0.1 dB and 1.7 dB, respectively. This method provides a basic and powerful design tool for slotted waveguide arrays.

We proposed a through-hole based transformer between microstrip line and post-wall waveguide (PWW). The transformer is based on a through-hole which is electrically separated from top and bottom broad walls of a waveguide by ring-shaped spaces. The proposed transformer shows a considerable merit compared with a conventional one based on blind-via in terms of fabrication and cost because it can be realized by through-holes in general printed-circuit-board technology. We selected liquid crystal polymer (LCP) as the material of substrates because of its lower dielectric loss and easy fabrication. The transformer was fabricated and measured. The loss associated with the mode conversion is estimated to be around 0.32,dB, and the bandwidth for a reflection smaller than $-15$,dB is 8,GHz, i.e., from 59 to 67,GHz.

As a first step towards the realization of high-efficiency on-chip antennas for 60GHz-band wireless personal area networks, this paper proposes the fabrication of a patch antenna placed on a 200µm thick dielectric resin and fed through a hole in a silicon chip. Despite the large tan δ of the adopted material (0.015 at 50GHz), the thick resin reduces the conductor loss at the radiating element and a radiation efficiency of 78%, which includes the connecting loss from the bottom is predicted by simulation. This calculated value is verified in the millimeter-wave band by experiments in a reverberation chamber. Six stirrers are installed, one on each wall in the chamber, to create a statistical Rayleigh environment. The manufactured prototype antenna with a test jig demonstrates the radiation efficiency of 75% in the reverberation chamber. This agrees well with the simulated value of 76%, while the statistical measurement uncertainty of our handmade reverberation chamber is calculated as ±0.14dB.

A novel strip representation of flat plate is proposed for the bistatic radar cross section (RCS) analysis. Direction of every strip is determined so that the Keller cone at any point may include the observer. A unique set of strips are determined for given directions of incidence and observer. This method is capable of covering all the directions of observer including that of specular reflection. The high accuracy of this method is demonstrated by comparing it with the exact or the moment method solutions for diffraction from a flat disk and a square plate.

A full-wave analysis of antennas with polarization grids is performed. Radiation patterns of antennas for two types of grids (straight strip and curved strip) are presented, where effects of the grid position and the grid paramenters are discussed.

A novel expression for equivalent edge currents including second-order diffraction is proposed for far zone scattering from a flat plate. The ray tracing is greatly simplified by utilizing the concepts of fictitious edges. As incorporated in the modified strip representation, it can predict finite fields everywhere including SB/RB and caustics. Excellent accuracy is demonstrated numerically by comparing it with exact or the moment method solutions for diffraction from a disk and a square plate. Especially, the effects of the second-order diffraction near the plane containing the scatterer are precisely predicted. The potential of these simplest currents is as high as those of other sophisticated methods such as PTD and New Corner Diffraction.

A design of a linearly-polarized non-resonant waveguide broad-wall transverse slot linear array with suppressed grating lobes is presented. Each unit element in the array consists of a transverse slot, an inductive post and a parasitic dipole-pair at a height of half of the free space wavelength. It is designed as an isolated unit without considering mutual coupling by using the Method of Moments (MoM) for radiation suppression in grating beam direction and reflection cancellation at the input. The elements thus designed are used in a travelling wave array environment. It is predicted that the reflection is less than -20 dB at 11.95 GHz while the grating lobes are suppressed by more than 15 dB. The design and the characteristics of the array are confirmed by measurements.