Novel design approaches for microwave active circuits using composite right-/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line (TL) stubs are presented. We show that, by modifying the dispersion diagram of the CRLH TL stub, the frequency band or the harmonic tuning capability can be enhanced in such a way that it would have been difficult or impractical if done using conventional micro-strip line stubs. The frequency response of the CRLH TL stub can be controlled almost arbitrarily while at the same time reducing the stub length significantly, because the dispersion curve in the left-handed region and in the right-handed region is controlled independently. As a proof of concept, a triple-band rectifier, single-band and dual-band harmonic tuning circuits for class-F amplifiers are demonstrated.

Discontinuity such as a bend in a micro-strip line is known as one of major radiation sources. The total radiation from the micro-strip line is, however, being generally investigated because of the difficulties in identifying the radiation from some specific location. In this paper, paying attention to the feature of TDR (Time-Domain Reflectometry) measurement, we made an attempt to extract the radiation only from the bend in a micro-strip line. Such an approach is useful in understanding its radiation mechanism. As a result, we found that the larger the bend angle is, the larger the radiation power becomes. The radiation power achieved 3.5% at maximum when the bending angle was 90at the frequencies below 1 GHz. We also examined the validity of the TDR analysis in comparison with network analyzer measurement. We obtained the radiation power versus frequency from the measured scattering parameters, which exhibited a fair agreement with the TDR result.