The leadless cardiac pacemaker is a pioneering device for heart patients. Its rising success requires the design of compact implantable antennas. In this paper, we describe a circularly polarized ...Hilbert curve inspired loop antenna. The proposed antenna works in the WMTS (Wireless Medical Telemetry Services) 1.4 GHz and ISM (Industrial, Scientific, and Medical) 2.45 GHz bands. High dielectric constant material Rogers RT/Duroid 6010 LM (Formula: see text=10) and fractal geometry helps to design the antenna with a small footprint of 9.1 mm
(6 mm × 6 mm × 0.254 mm). The designed antenna has a conformal shape that fits inside a leadless pacemaker's capsule is surrounded by IC models and battery, which are tightly packed in the device enclosure. Subsequently, the integrated prototype is simulated deep inside at the center of the multi-layer canonical heart model. To verify experimentally, we have put dummy electronics (IC and battery) inside the 3D printed pacemaker's capsule and surfaced the fabricated conformal antenna around the inner curved body of the TCP (Transcatheter Pacing) capsule. Furthermore, we have tested the TCP capsule by inserting it in a ballistic gel phantom and minced pork. The measured impedance bandwidths at 1.4 GHz and 2.45 GHz are 250 MHz and 430 MHz, whereas measured gains are - 33.2 dBi, and - 28.5 dBi, respectively.
The design of a novel partially reflective surface (PRS) antenna with the capability of beam steering is presented in this paper. The beam steering is realized by employing a reconfigurable PRS ...structure to achieve a changeable reflection phase as well as using a phased array as the source to excite the PRS antenna. A prototype antenna including the biasing network is fabricated and measured. It achieves a consistent beam steering from - 15° to 15° with respect to the broadside direction across an overlapped frequency range from 5.5 to 5.7 GHz with measured realized gains over 12 dBi. Good agreement between the simulated and measured results for the input reflection coefficients and radiation patterns is achieved, which validates the feasibility of the design principle. Compared with other beam steering PRS antennas, the proposed one enables a larger beam steering angle with comparable gains, requires a simpler biasing network, and is more compact.
The characteristic basis function method (CBFM) has been hybridized with the adaptive cross approximation (ACA) algorithm to construct a reduced matrix equation in a time-efficient manner and to ...solve electrically large antenna array problems in-core, with a solve time orders of magnitude less than those in the conventional methods. Various numerical examples are presented that demonstrate that the proposed method has a very good accuracy, computational efficiency and reduced memory storage requirement. Specifically, we analyze large 1-D and 2-D arrays of electrically interconnected tapered slot antennas (TSAs). The entire computational domain is subdivided into many smaller subdomains, each of which supports a set of characteristic basis functions (CBFs). We also present a novel scheme for generating the CBFs that do not conform to the edge condition at the truncated edge of each subdomain, and provide a minor overlap between the CBFs in adjacent subdomains. As a result, the CBFs preserve the continuity of the surface current across the subdomain interfaces, thereby circumventing the need to use separate ldquoconnectionrdquo basis functions.
We describe a numerically efficient strategy for solving a linear system of equations arising in the Method of Moments for solving electromagnetic scattering problems. This novel approach, termed as ...the characteristic basis function method (CBFM), is based on utilizing characteristic basis functions (CBFs)-special functions defined on macro domains (blocks)-that include a relatively large number of conventional sub-domains discretized by using triangular or rectangular patches. Use of these basis functions leads to a significant reduction in the number of unknowns, and results in a substantial size reduction of the MoM matrix; this, in turn, enables us to handle the reduced matrix by using a direct solver, without the need to iterate. In addition, the paper shows that the CBFs can be generated by using a sparse representation of the impedance matrix-resulting in lower computational cost-and that, in contrast to the iterative techniques, multiple excitations can be handled with only a small overhead. Another important attribute of the CBFM is that it is readily parallelized. Numerical results that demonstrate the accuracy and time efficiency of the CBFM for several representative scattering problems are included in the paper.
An inverse method of moments (MoM) approach is developed to estimate the equivalent electric/magnetic current sources to predict radio frequency interference (RFI) in electronic devices. The proposed ...method is designed to reconstruct the noise sources in electronic devices containing multiple radiating elements by using a finite metal object carrying electric surface currents. The surface current elements are further applied to calculate the electromagnetic fields on arbitrary observation planes near the device under test (DUT). The method is validated through numerical simulation examples, including electric-type CPU noise, magnetic-type non-planar HDMI connector noise, printed circuit board (PCB) with Wi-Fi and PIFA antennas, and heat sink embedded in the DUT. The results confirm less than 0.4 dB difference in the predicted pattern at the antenna operating frequency when a triangular segmentation is applied in the vicinity of the noise source area, and the equivalent surface current is calculated at the edges of the Rao-Wilton-Glisson (RWG) meshes. The proposed method is a promising 'source reconstruction' candidate for predicting the near-field radiation characteristics of electronic devices with multiple peaks and nulls in the near-field radiation pattern. The method helps estimate the level of RFI by summing up the contributions of all the dipoles of the equivalent noise source derived by solving forward and inverse problems. The RFI results based on the inverse MoM approach are validated by comparing them with those obtained from CST simulation, and good agreement is achieved between the two.
A number of designs for scanning antennas are presented in this work to realize a one- or two-dimensional scan. The first of these is a Luneburg lens, together with a feed array, designed to realize ...a wide-angle scan the second design is based on the use of an electronically reconfigurable phase shifter, which utilizes PIN or varactor diodes inserted between radiating slots in a curved waveguide to provide the desired phase shifts. Next, the paper introduces a novel design to realize both one- and two-dimensional scans, by using reconfigurable metasurface type of panels to provide a wide-angle beam-scanning performance, without compromising either the impedance match or the gain of the array. Additionally, the paper describes several techniques for enhancing the gain of the array to achieve gain levels as high as 30 dB, to render the scanning array competitive with reflectors, for instance.
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The fifth generation (5G) network communication systems operate in the millimeter waves and are expected to provide a much higher data rate in the multi-gigabit range, which is impossible to achieve using current wireless services, including the sub-6 GHz band. In this work, we briefly review several existing designs of millimeter-wave phased arrays for 5G applications, beginning with the low-profile antenna array designs that either are fixed beam or scan the beam only in one plane. We then move on to array systems that offer two-dimensional (2D) scan capability, which is highly desirable for a majority of 5G applications. Next, in the main body of the paper, we discuss two different strategies for designing scanning arrays, both of which circumvent the use of conventional phase shifters to achieve beam scanning. We note that it is highly desirable to search for alternatives to conventional phase shifters in the millimeter-wave range because legacy phase shifters are both lossy and costly; furthermore, alternatives such as active phase shifters, which include radio frequency amplifiers, are both expensive and power-hungry. Given this backdrop, we propose two different antenna systems with potential for the desired 2D scan performance in the millimeter-wave range. The first of these is a Luneburg lens, which is excited either by a 2D waveguide array or by a microstrip patch antenna array to realize 2D scan capability. Next, for second design, we turn to phased-array designs in which the conventional phase shifter is replaced by switchable PIN diodes or varactor diodes, inserted between radiating slots in a waveguide to provide the desired phase shifts for scanning. Finally, we discuss several approaches to enhance the gain of the array by modifying the conventional array configurations. We describe novel techniques for realizing both one-dimensional (1D) and 2D scans by using a reconfigurable metasurface type of panels.
This work presents a novel technique for designing chipless radio frequency identification (RFID) tags which, unlike the traditional tags with complex geometries, are both compact and printable. The ...tags themselves are alphabets, which offers the advantage of efficient visual recognition of the transmitted data in real-time via radio frequency (RF) waves. In this study, the alphabets (e.g., a, b and c) are realized by using copper etching on a thin dielectric substrate (TLX-8) backed by a ground plane. It is shown that the original signature of the frequency response of the backscattered radar cross-section (RCS) of the letter, displays dips that are unique to the individual letters. The tags have been simulated, fabricated and their monostatic cross-sections have been measured by using a dual-polarized Vivaldi antenna in the frequency band ranging from 6 to 13 GHz. The study also includes, for the first time, a detailed analysis of the impact of changing the shape of the tag owing to variation in the font type, size, spacing, and orientation. The proposed letters of the alphabet are easily printable on the tag and provide an efficient way to visually recognized them and, hence, to detect them in a robust way, even with a low coding density of 2.63 bit/cm2. The advantages of the proposed novel identification method, i.e., utilization of the both co- and cross-polar RCS characteristics for the printable clipless RFID tags are the enhancement of the coding density, security and better detection of the alphabet tags with different fonts by capturing the tag characteristics with better signal to noise ratio (SNR). Good agreement has been achieved between the measured and simulated results for both co- and cross-polarized cases.
We apply the characteristic basis function method (CBFM) to compute the electromagnetic fields scattered by three-dimensional dielectric objects in the context of forest scattering simulation. We ...study the effect of some CBFM parameters on the accuracy of the results, and on the performance of the CBFM when compared to the classical MoM. We show that once the CBFM parameters have been appropriately chosen, this new method realizes a significant reduction both in terms of CPU time and memory use, while maintaining a level of accuracy comparable to that of the conventional MoM. Consequently, the CBFM enables us to handle electrically larger forest simulation scenes than is possible with classical MoM for higher frequencies.
This work presents a new technique for enhancing the performance of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna by improving its correlation coefficient ρ. A broadband dielectric structure is ...designed using the transformation electromagnetics (TE) concept to decorrelate the fields of closely placed radiating elements of an MIMO antenna, thereby decreasing ρ and mutual coupling. The desired properties of the broadband dielectric wave tilting structure (DWTS) are determined by using quasi-conformal transformation electromagnetics (QCTE). Next, the permittivity profile of the DWTS is realized by employing air-hole technology, which is based on the effective medium theory, and the DWTS is fabricated using the additive manufacturing (3D printing) technique. The effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified by designing two-element patch-based MIMO antenna prototypes operating at 3 GHz, 5 GHz, and 7 GHz, respectively. The proposed technique helped to reduce the correlation coefficient ρ in the range of 37% to 99% in the respective operating bandwidth of each MIMO antenna, thereby, in each case, improving the isolation between antenna elements by better than 3 dB, which is an excellent performance.