In this paper, active frequency selective surfaces (FSS) having a squared aperture with a metal plate loading are described. Active FSS elements using switched PIN diodes are discussed with an equivalent circuit model. A unit cell consists of a square aperture element with metal island loading and one PIN diode placed at the upper gap, considering the vertical polarization. The electromagnetic properties of the active FSS structure are changed by applying dc bias to the substrate, and they can be estimated by the equivalent circuit model of the FSS structure and PIN diode. This active FSS design enables transmission to be switched on or off at 2.3 GHz, providing high transmission when the diodes are in an off state and high isolation when the diodes are on. The equivalent circuit model in the structure is investigated by analyzing transmission and reflection spectra. Measurements on active FSS are compared with numerical calculations. The experimentally observed frequency responses are also scrutinized.

To realize the compact ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filters, a novel filter prototype with two short-circuited stubs loaded at both sides of a stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) via the parallel coupled lines is proposed based on a distributed filter synthesis theory. The equivalent circuit of this filter is established, while the corresponding 7-pole Chebyshev-type transfer function is derived for filter synthesis. Then, a distributed-circuit-based technique was presented to synthesize the elements' values of this filter. As an example, a FCC UWB filter with the fractional bandwidth (FWB) @ -10 dB up to 110% was designed using the proposed prototype and then re-modeled by commercial microwave circuit simulator to verify the correctness and accuracy of the synthesis theory. Furthermore, in terms of EM simulator, the filter was further-optimized and experimentally-realized by using microstrip line. Good agreements between the measurement results and theoretical ones validate the effectiveness of our technique. In addition, compared with the conventional SIR-type UWB filter without short-circuited stubs, the new one significantly improves the selectivity and out-of-band characteristics (especially in lower one -45 dB@1-2 GHz) to satisfy the FCC's spectrum mask. The designed filter also exhibits very compact size, quite low insertion loss, steep skirts, flat group delay and the easily-fabricatable structure (the coupling gap dimension in this filter is 0.15 mm) as well. Moreover, it should be noted that, in terms of the presented design technique, the proposed filter prototype can be also used to easily realize the UWB filters with other FBW even greater than 110%.

This Letter employs transmission-line theory for the impedance-matching circuits for a single-chip power amplifier (PA) and verifies for 5 GHz-band wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11a) applications. The presented matching circuits are composed of conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CPW) meander-line resonators and impedance (K) inverters. One of the advantages of the presented circuits is that it can save on-chip space occupied by the matching circuits compared to that using the spiral inductors, thus reducing the cost. The prototype chip, which consists of PA and matching circuits, is designed employing the presented theory and fabricated. A few of the measured results to verify the design theory are presented.

The input impedance of an antenna fluctuates because of various usage conditions, which causes a mismatch between an internal circuit and an antenna. An automatic matching system solves this problem, then this paper presents a reconfigurable impedance tuner that has a set of fixed capacitors controlled by switching p-i-n diodes. A fast control algorithm for selecting the appropriate conditions of an impedance tuner is proposed and mounted on FPGA to demonstrate the performance.

A low distortion and low noise differential amplifier using the difference between the even- and odd-mode impedances is proposed. In order to realize an amplifier with high OIP3 and low NF characteristics, the impedance of the bias circuit should be low (<300 Ω) at the difference frequency and high (>4 kΩ) at the carrier frequency. Although the frequency response of the bias circuit impedance can only meet these conditions with difficulty, owing to the 20 MHz Tx signal bandwidth for 3G LTE, the proposed amplifier can achieve the impedance difference using the properties of a differential configuration where the difference frequency signal is the even-mode and the carrier frequency is the odd-mode. It has been demonstrated that the NF of the proposed amplifier, which has been fabricated in 0.18 µm SiGe BiCMOS technology operating at 2.14 GHz, can be kept to 1.6 dB or less and an OIP3 of 9.0 dBm can be achieved, which is 3 dB higher than that of a conventional amplifier, in the condition where the power gain is greater than 18 dB.

Three dimensional (3D) integrated circuits (ICs) have the potential to significantly enhance VLSI chip performance, functionality and device packing density. Interconnects delay and signal integrity issues are critical in chip design. In this paper, we extend the idea of redundant via insertion of conventional 2D ICs and propose an approach for vias insertion/placement in 3D ICs to minimize the propagation delay of interconnects with the consideration of signal integrity. The simulation results based on a 65 nm CMOS technology demonstrate that our approach in general can result in a 9% improvement in average delay and a 26% decrease in reflection coefficient. It is also shown that the proposed approach can be more effective for interconnects delay improvement when it is integrated with the buffer insertion in 3D ICs.

The characteristics of two-stage composite right- and left-handed (CRLH) transmission lines are discussed. The dispersion relationship of both balanced and unbalanced two-stage CRLH lines is described, together with numerical calculations that demonstrate their potential.

Bandpass filters with broad bandwidth (up to 70%), very wide upper stopband (nearest spurious passband occurs up to five times of passband center frequency (f0)), good stopband rejection performance (better than -30-40 dB in the whole stopband region), and matching with the conventional low cost printed circuit board process with low dielectric constant substrates are proposed in this paper. The proposed filters are designed using parallel-coupled vertically installed planar stepped-impedance resonators (VIPSIRs), which adopt the inherent nature of very tight coupling of VIP coupled line and extremely high impedance of VIP line. The extremely tightly coupled line enables the proposed filters having very wide passband and the extremely high impedance of VIP line leads to extremely large low-to-high impedance ratio that pushes the nearest spurious passband up to 5f0. Both VIP coupled line and VIP high impedance line are analyzed and characterized by the design charts. The design procedures based on the design charts are verified by several experimental examples. The measured results agree very well with the simulated ones.

New microstrip bandpass filters with extended stopband bandwidths are proposed by using new asymmetric stepped-impedance hairpin resonators (ASIHRs). The size of the proposed resonators has been reduced around 16%, comparing with the conventional stepped-impedance hairpin resonators (SIHRs) structure. The first bandpass filter is a combination of differ resonators with the same fundamental frequency but differ in harmonic frequencies, resulting in improved suppression spurious responses in stopbands. Furthermore, another bandpass filter uses the ASIHRs periodically loaded on a microstrip line to improve stopband characteristics. The proposed filters not only have compact size of resonators, but also provide improved upper stopband characteristics. The proposed filters provide 20 dB rejection levels in the stopband up to 6f0. The measured filters responses agree very well with the simulated expectations.

Application of microwave and millimeter-wave circuit technologies to InGaP-HBT ICs for 40-Gbps optical-transmission systems is demonstrated from two aspects. First, ICs for various important functions -- amplification of data signals, amplification, frequency doubling, and phase control of clock signals -- are successfully developed based on microwave and millimeter-wave circuit configurations mainly composed of distributed elements. A distributed amplifier exhibits ≥164-GHz gain-bandwidth product with low power consumption (PC) of 71.2 mW. A 20/40-GHz-band frequency doubler achieves wideband performance (40%) with low PC (26 mW) by integrating a high-pass filter and a buffer amplifier (as a low-pass filter). A compact 40-GHz analog phase shifter, 20- and 40-GHz-band clock amplifiers with low PC are also realized. Second, a familiar concept in microwave-circuit design is applied to a high-speed digital circuit. A new approach -- inserting impedance-transformer circuits -- to enable 'impedance matching' in digital ICs is successfully applied to a 40-Gbps decision circuit to prevent unwanted gain peaking and jitter increase caused by transmission lines without sacrificing chip size.

In this paper, a compact ultra-wideband bandpass filter (UWB-BPF) using pseudo-interdigital stepped-impedance resonators (PIDT-SIRs) is designed and implemented on a commercial printed circuit board (PCB) of RT/Duroid 5880 substrate. The first two resonant modes of the SIR are coupled together and they are applied to create a wide passband. The proposed filter at center frequency f0 of 7.1 GHz has very good measured characteristics including the bandwidth of 3.68-10.46 GHz (3-dB fractional bandwidth of 95%), low insertion loss of -0.50.4 dB, sharp rejection due to two transmission zeros in the passband edge created by the inter-stage coupling. Experimental results of the fabricated filter show a good agreement with the predicted results.

A design method for an ultra-wideband bandpass filter (BPF) with four coupled lines has been developed. For demonstration purposes, 50 Ω-matched self-complementary antennas integrated with the ultra-wideband, differential-mode BPF with four coupled lines, a notch filter, and a low-pass filter (LPF) were prepared and tested. An optimized structure for a single-stage, broadside-coupled and edge-coupled four-lines BPF was shown to exhibit up to 170% fractional bandwidth and an impedance transformation ratio of 1.2 with little bandwidth reduction, both analytically and experimentally. Using the optimized structure, 6-stage BPFs were designed to transform the self-complementary antenna's constant input impedance (60πεe- 1/2(Ω)) to 50 Ω without degrading bandwidth. In addition, two types of filter variations--a LPF-embedded BPF and a notch filter-embedded BPF--were designed and fabricated. The measured insertion loss of both filter systems was less than 2.6 dB over the ultra-wideband (UWB) band from 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz. The filter systems were embedded in the wideband self-complementary antennas to reject unnecessary radiation over the next pass band and 5-GHz wireless LAN band.

This paper presents a novel method to increase an impedance of a current source. The proposed circuit with a cascode and gain-boosting configuration is also presented. The operation has been confirmed by simulation using a 0.18 µm CMOS technology.

As the basic study of the electromagnetic interference (EMI) problem at the circuit elements, the near magnetic field distributions above resistors for the termination of a transmission line are measured to reveal the profile of radiation. Five kinds of resistors and two types of resistance values are sampled. The results showed that the variation of the near magnetic field distribution above the transmission line is effected largely by the reactance of the resistor at the high frequency. These results are the basis for the design of the structure of the component.

This paper describes a high power GaN-FET amplifier which is developed for wideband code division multiple access (W-CDMA) base stations. We design a bias network which is symmetrically arranged to the RF line (two way bias network) in order to reduce impedance at a baseband frequency of the multi-carrier W-CDMA signal. As a result, the amplifier with the two way bias network successfully suppressed memory effects. Therefore, the application of a DPD technique to the GaN-FET amplifier with the two way bias network demonstrates almost 20 dB linearity improvement in IM3 and considerable improvement in higher order IMD, resulting in low IMD of less than -50 dBc at the highest ever reported W-CDMA average output power of 76 W.

Using an electro-absorption duplexer (EAD) we presented a transceiver (TRx) module for dual function of both electrical-to-optical (E/O) and optical-to-electrical (E/O) conversion at 60 GHz band. The EAD chip was fabricated by monolithically integrating both a waveguide photodiode (PD) and an electro-absorption modulator (EAM) in association with traveling wave electrodes. We also investigated the issues of RF packaging in which the optoelectronic and electronic amplifier devices were co-packaged in a single housing. The RF impedance matching was accomplished in assistance with a microstrip bandpass filter.

Novel dual-band bandpass filter (BPF) with quasi-elliptic function response by using the meander coupled step-impedance resonators (SIRs) is presented. By tuning the appropriate impedance ratio (K) and physical length of SIRs, the BPF has good dual-band performance at 2.4 and 5.2 GHz with high selectivity, due to the transmission zeros appeared in two passband edges. Measured results of the proposed BPF have a good agreement with the electromagnetic (EM) simulated results.

Recently, spiral inductors have widely been used instead of resistors in the design of matching circuits to enhance the thermal noise performance of a wireless transceiver. However, such elements usually have low quality factor (Q) and may encounter the self-resonance in microwave-frequency band which permits its use in higher frequencies, and on the other hand, they occupy the large on-chip space. This paper presents a new design theory for the impedance-matching circuits for a single-chip SiGe BiCMOS receiver front-end for 2.4 GHz-band wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11b). The presented matching circuits are composed of conductor-backed coplanar waveguide (CPW) meander-line resonators and impedance (K) inverter. The prototype front-end receiver is designed, fabricated and tested. A few of the measured results to verify the design theory are presented.

This paper proposes a new microstrip stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) used for bandpass filters with reduced size and improved stopband characteristics. A comprehensive treatment of both ends of the resonator with loaded triangular and rectangular microstrips is described. The design concept is demonstrated by two filter examples including four-resonator parallel-coupled Chebyshev bandpass and compact four-resonator cross-coupled elliptic-type filters. These filters are not only compact size due to the slow-wave effect, but also have a wider upper stopband resulting from the resonator bandstop characteristic. The filter designs are described in details. The simulated and experimental results are demonstrated and discussed.

In this paper a new method for the design and optimization of microstrip parallel coupled-line bandpass filters is presented which allows for the specification of frequency bandwidths and arbitrary source and load impedance transformation. The even- and odd-mode theory and the relationships between impedance, transmission and scattering matrices and their properties are used to construct a positive definite error function using the insertion losses at discrete frequencies in the pass, transition and stop bands. The dispersion relations for the coupled line are also taken into account. The minimization of the error function determines the widths, gap spacings and lengths of the coupled-line filter, for the optimum design and realization of filter specifications. The proposed filter design and optimization method is coded by computer programs and the results of simulation, fabrication and testing of sample filters together with comparisons with available full-wave analysis softwares, indicate the efficacy of the proposed method. Filter design with up to 50% bandwidth and the design of shorter lengths of coupled line sections are achievable by the proposed method in part due to the incorporation of impedance matching.