Resonant substrate integrated near-field sensors are used for characterization of aqueous solutions at three different frequencies. In addition, Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells in a culture medium are characterized with the same sensors. Different concentrations as well as different vital states of cell suspensions are examined. The complex permittivity of the samples is evaluated using a linear

A millimeter-wave monolithic integrated circuit consisting of a W-band (75?100 GHz) single-pole-five-throw (SP5T) switch and multiple internal active and passive loads for radiometer calibration was designed and manufactured in a low noise 50 nm GaAs metamorphic high electron mobility transistor technology. This highly compact and integrated front-end device for radiometer systems is capable of ul

This paper reports on the design of a new power cell dedicated to Ku-band power amplifier (PA) applications. This cell called ?integrated cascode? has been designed in order to propose a strong decrease in terms of circuit size for PA. The technology used relies on 0.25-?m GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors (PHEMT) of United Monolithic Semiconductors (UMS) foundry. A distributed

This paper presents a novel technology for the implementation of substrate-integrated waveguide (SIW) structures, based on a paper substrate and realized by an inkjet-printing fabrication process. The use of paper permits to implement low-cost microwave structures and components, by adopting a completely eco-friendly implementation technology. SIW structures appear particularly suitable for implem

In this paper, we present a non-resonant high impedance reflectometer with a reference impedance close to one of the tip probe of a near-field microwave microscope. We show that for an apex of the tip probe of 100 µm there is an optimum reference impedance close to 1 k?. To validate this approach a microwave circuit that makes use of lumped elements has been fabricated. A proof of concept is also

Cognitive radio (CR) has generated a lot of interest because of the promise of wide instantaneous bandwidths which will improve data rates. Current social trends suggest that CR nodes will ultimately be mobile and handheld. This produces a need for small wideband antennas. The Chu limit imposes a restriction on what is obtainable with passive matching. In this paper, it is shown how a negative imp

This paper presents a hybrid antenna design for an optically powered super high frequency (SHF) radio frequency identification transponder applicable for the integration into metal. The key feature of the antenna is its ability to receive microwave signals at SHF for data communication and optical signals for the power supply of the transponder. The antenna design is based on a circular waveguide

The direct measurement of the radiation pattern of an antenna is often unreachable. A near-field sampling followed by a near-field/far-field (NF/FF) transformation is therefore substituted. This process is, in most cases, applied to antennas placed in free-space or over a perfect electric conductor. On the contrary, few results concern real environment conditions. Nevertheless, it is well known th

In this paper, the design of compact diplexers and triplexers with dual-mode cavities is presented. Such devices are composed of coupled resonators without additional waveguide element, leading to a more compact architecture. Two topologies of compact diplexers are implemented and compared to a standard manifold diplexer. A hardware prototype is fabricated and measured for experimental verificatio

This paper shows the contribution of slow-wave coplanar waveguides on the performance of power amplifiers operating at millimeter-wave frequencies in CMOS-integrated technologies. These transmission lines present a quality factor Q two to three times higher than that of the conventional microstrip lines at the same characteristic impedance. To demonstrate the contribution of the slow-wave transmis

This paper presents two feeding techniques for the radiation characterization of integrated antennas at millimeter-wave frequencies. The first method involves feeding the antenna-under-test (AUT) with a radiofrequency (RF) probe. We compare the measurements obtained with a standard RF probe, an extended probe, and an extended probe with reversed connector orientation. We find that the reversed ori

We present the non-linear electrical properties of simple two-terminal switching devices based on vanadium dioxide (VO) thin films. The current?voltage characteristics of such devices present negative differential resistance (NDR) regions allowing generating electrical self-oscillations across the investigated devices, with frequencies ranging from several kHz up to 1 MHz. We investigate and compa

This paper presents the research done at LAAS-CNRS and in the context of ?NANOCOMM? project. This project aims to demonstrate the potential of nanotechnology for the development of reconfigurable, ultra-sensitive, low consumption, and easy installation sensor networks with high performance in terms of reliability in line with the requirements of aeronautics and space. Each node of the sensor netwo

We propose in this paper a 4-channel time-domain test bench for the characterization and linearity enhancement of microwave power amplifiers (PAs). The proposed time-domain measurement system utilizes four track and hold amplifiers (THAs) for direct subsampling of radiofrequency (RF) signals. The use of wideband THAs to replace samplers or mixers enables reducing analog IF circuit complexity. It p

The design of a high-stability radiometer is presented in this paper. It is used to characterize the stability of a microwave active cold load at L-band. The two-load radiometer takes advantage of a noise injection technique to improve its sensitivity. A temperature-stabilized enclosure is used to minimize gain and noise temperature fluctuations of the receiver. The radiometer sensitivity is 0.031

A new design method for multi-access antennas is presented. This method is based on a modal analysis assuming the microstrip antennas as a resonant cavity. Using this cavity approach, the eigenmodes perturbation induced by the cavity deformation (adding slots or short circuits) is studied. As an application, a solution of multi-access antenna with two ports, with operating frequency bands centered

In designing a Foreign Object Debris (FOD) detection system on airport runways, this paper deals with the performance of a 77 GHz reflectarray antenna (RA). Debris may be very small and have low radar cross section (RCS), leading to design a high gain primary-fed offset RA. To minimize the aperture blockage, the main radiation lobe is in the specular direction. The antenna has a maximum gain of 40

The paper outlines an exhaustive computer-aided design (CAD) procedure for the circuit-level simulation of entire multi-input multi-output (MIMO) links. The multiple transmitting and receiving antennas are treated as multiport radiating systems characterized by electromagnetic (EM) analysis. The effects of mutual couplings in terms of the frequency-dependent near-field and far-field performance of

A novel topology for millimeter-wave-integrated transformers is proposed. The windings are stacked and secondaries are designed with different trace widths and different diameters from that of the primary, in order to obtain relatively high-inductance transformation ratios. Measurement and simulation results of 65 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) and 130 nm combination of Bipolar

LInear amplification using Non-linear Components (LINC) is an architecture that achieves linear power amplification for radio-frequency (RF) transmitters. This paper describes the impact of RF power amplifiers (PAs) class on the overall system performances. The linearity and efficiency of the LINC transmitter with different PA classes (AB, B, C, D, E, F, F, and J) are evaluated and compared, in te

The possibility to characterize infinite and periodic frequency-selective surfaces (FSS) filters that have two orthogonal axes of symmetry inside a waveguide is reported. Thus, preliminary measurements can rapidly be obtained at low cost with few elementary cells instead of using a large FSS panel in free space. This is possible because of the equivalence that exists between the electromagnetic fi

This paper presents an analysis of totem-pole (TP) stages for driver applications and summarizes the major design constraints for an optimization with respect to P1dB, OIP3, and bandwidth. It is shown, that for matched drivers, in contrast to the widely applied common collector (CC) stage, class-AB TP stages offer higher output power and much higher power-added efficiencies (PAE) at comparable ban