Investigation on Performance of Microstrip Patch Antenna for a Practical Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Application

The performance of a microstrip patch antenna for a practical wireless local area network application is investigated in this research. This design is built around the transmission line concept. The antenna design substrate is FR4 (lossy) with a dielectric constant (Er) of 4.3 dielectric material, and the ground and patch materials are copper (annealed). The substrate is 71.62mm in width and 55.47mm in length. The height of the dielectric material is 1.6mm, which is the normal size for FR4 material. The conducting patch element has a width of 35.81mm and a length of 27.73mm for a resonance frequency of 2.573 GHz. A simulation with CST studio suite was used to optimise the antenna design. Keywords: Microstrio patch antenna, CST suite, WLAN application, Transmission line, Antenna design

The scaled RCS measurement method for lossy targets via dynamically matching the reflection coefficients in the THz band

In the terahertz band, the dispersive characteristic of dielectric material is one of the major problems in the scaled radar cross section (RCS) measurement, which is inconsistent with the electrodynamics similitude deducted according to the Maxwell’s equations. Based on the high-frequency estimation method of physical optics (PO), a scaled RCS measurement method for lossy objects is proposed through dynamically matching the reflection coefficients according to the distribution of the object’s facets. Simulations on the model of SLICY were conducted, the inversed RCS of the lossy prototype was obtained using the proposed method. Via comparing the inversed RCS with the calculated results, the validity of the proposed method is demonstrated. The proposed method provides an effective solution to the scaled RCS measurement for lossy objects in the THz band.

Characterisation of glue behaviour under thermal and mechanical stress conditions

New low-cost measuring devices require that the box housing and electronics have the cost aligned with the sensing system. Nowadays, metallic clips and/or glue are commonly used to fix the electronics to the box, thus providing the same motion of the structure to the sensing element. However, these systems may undergo daily or seasonal thermal cycles, and the combined effect of thermal and mechanical stress can determine significant uncertainties in the measurand evaluation. To study these effects, we prepared some parallel plates capacitors by using glue as a dielectric material. We used different types of fixing and sample assembly to separate the effects of glue softening on the capacitor active area and plates distance. Therefore, we assessed the sample modification by measuring the capacitance variation during controlled temperature cycles. We explored possible non-linear behaviour of the capacitance vs. temperature, and possible effects of thermal cycles on the glue geometry. Further work is still needed to properly assess the nature of this phenomenon and to study the effect of mechanical stress on the sample’s capacitance.

Design and Fabrication of a Ka Band RF MEMS Switch with High Capacitance Ratio and Low Actuation Voltage

In this paper a high capacitance ratio and low actuation voltage RF MEMS switch is designed and fabricated for Ka band RF front-ends application. The metal-insulator-metal (MIM) capacitors is employed on a signal line to improve the capacitance ratio, which will not degrade the switch reliability. To reduce the actuation voltage, a low spring constant bending folding beam and bilateral drop-down electrodes are designed in the MEMS switch. The paper analyzes the switch pull-in model and deduces the elastic coefficient calculation equation, which is consistent with the simulation results. The measured results indicated that, for the proposed MEMS switch with a gap of 2 μm, the insertion loss is better than −0.5 dB and the isolation is more than −20 dB from 25 to 35 GHz with an actuation voltage of 15.8 V. From the fitted results, the up-state capacitance is 6.5 fF, down-state capacitance is 4.3 pF, and capacitance ratios is 162. Compared with traditional MEMS capacitive switches with dielectric material Si3N4, the proposed MEMS switch exhibits high on/off capacitance ratios of 162 and low actuation voltage.

Effects of Varying the Fin Width, Fin Height, Gate Dielectric Material, and Gate Length on the DC and RF Performance of a 14-nm SOI FinFET Structure

The FinFET architecture has attracted growing attention over the last two decades since its invention, owing to the good control of the gate electrode over the conductive channel leading to a high immunity from short-channel effects (SCEs). In order to contribute to the advancement of this rapidly expanding technology, a 3D 14-nm SOI n-FinFET is performed and calibrated to the experimental data from IBM by using Silvaco TCAD tools. The calibrated TCAD model is then investigated to analyze the impact of changing the fin width, fin height, gate dielectric material, and gate length on the DC and RF parameters. The achieved results allow gaining a better understanding and a deeper insight into the effects of varying the physical dimensions and materials on the device performance, thereby enabling the fabrication of a device tailored to the given constraints and requirements. After analyzing the optimal values from different changes, a new device configuration is proposed, which shows a good improvement in electrical characteristics.

Compact, flexible and highly selective wideband complementary FSS with high angular stability

This article presents a novel miniaturized (0.105λ0 × 0.105λ0) flexible complementary frequency selective surfaces (CFSS) structure with sharp band edge selectivity and very high angular stability. To explore two diverse applications as a passband and stopband filter, a novel complementary convoluted square loop (CCSL) type structure has been designed and investigated on ultrathin dielectric material of thickness 0.0023λ0. The second-order wide controllable passband with fractional bandwidth of 19.23% (−3 dB) and remarkably wide stopband of 64.7% (−10 dB) and 54.8% (−20 dB) respectively have been achieved by using a cascaded resonating structure which is composed of asymmetrical meandered CCSL array, arranged on two ultrathin dielectric layers with air foam separation. This particular format would lead to sharp band edge selectivity with steep roll-off (72.43 dB/GHz) and an excellent passband selectivity factor (0.731). An equivalent lumped LC circuit in conjunction with the transmission line model has also been adopted to comprehend the physical mechanism of the proposed single layer and double layer structures. Further, better passband and stopband angular stability at an oblique incident angle of 45° and the bending characteristics have also been investigated thoroughly for the proposed flexible CFSS to check their employability in different conformal structures with WiMAX passband and WLAN stopband application.

ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF MUNG BEANS (Vigna Radiata L.)

This paper contains the results of measuring the electrical properties of mung beans (Vigna radiata L.) set. The conductivity and relative permittivity are the main parameters of dielectric material electrical properties. The electrical properties of mung beans samples had not been sufficiently measured, and the aim of this work was to perform the measurements of these properties. Measurements were performed under variable moisture content and the frequency of electric field from 0.1 kHz till 200 kHz for conductivity and in the range from 1 MHz to 16 MHz for relative permittivity, using RLC meter and Q meter, respectively. It was concluded that relative permittivity, and conductivity increased with increase of moisture content, resistivity, impedance, loss tangent, and relative permittivity decreased as the frequency of electric field increased, respectively.