Amplitude Imbalance Research Articles

Inkjet‐printed capacitively loaded Marchand baluns with enhanced fractional bandwidths

AbstractA comprehensive design methodology for the realization of ultra‐wideband and highly miniaturized capacitively loaded Marchand baluns (MBs), suitable for integration into balanced antenna systems is presented. A design technique to maximize the fractional bandwidth (FBW) for a given manufacturing process is demonstrated for the first time. Furthermore, a novel MB integration scheme using broadside‐coupled lines and 3D vertically integrated capacitors in a two‐material inkjet printing process is uniquely proposed. The concept has been experimentally validated within the S and C bands. It exhibits a footprint of 0.128 × 0.098 λg2, centre frequency of 4.4 GHz, and FBW of 121%. Its power loss, phase imbalance and amplitude imbalance were measured between 0.8 and 2.2 dB, 3 ± 2°, and 0.4 ± 0.4 dB, respectively.

Two CMOS Wilkinson Power Dividers Using High Slow-Wave and Low-Loss Transmission Lines.

This work presents two Wilkinson power dividers (WPDs) using multi-layer pseudo coplanar waveguide (PCPW) structures. The PCPW-based WPDs were designed, implemented, and verified in a standard 180 nm CMOS process. The proposed PCPW features high slow-wave and low-loss performances compared to other common transmission lines. The two WPDs are based on the same PCPW structure parameters in terms of line width, spacing, and used metal layers. One WPD was realized in a straight PCPW-based layout, and the other WPD was realized in a meandered PCPW-based layout. Both the two WPDs worked up to V-band frequencies, as expected, which also demonstrates that the PCPW guiding structure is less susceptible to the effects of meanderings on the propagation constant and characteristic impedance. The meandered design shows that the measured insertion losses were about 5.1 dB, and its return losses were better than 17.5 dB at 60 GHz. In addition, its isolation, amplitude imbalance, and phase imbalance were 18.5 dB, 0.03 dB, and 0.4°, respectively. The core area was merely 0.2 mm × 0.23 mm, or 1.8 × 10-3λo2.

Misaligned Waveguide-Based Branch Waveguide Structure for Amplitude Imbalance Improvement in Branch-Guide Coupler

Misaligned Waveguide-Based Branch Waveguide Structure for Amplitude Imbalance Improvement in Branch-Guide Coupler

Fusion design of six-port waveguide coupler integrating tight and loose coupling

This paper introduces a fusion design method of a six-port waveguide (WG) coupler integrating tight and loose coupling together. The couplers exhibit a compact size due to the stacked configuration of three WGs. A methodology for designing the integrating tight and loose coupler is presented. The tight and loose coupling is achieved by setting a rectangular slot in the common narrow wall along with one or two cross slots in the common broad wall. Inspired by the superposition of TE10 and TE20 modes used to design the short-slot −3-dB coupler. The loose-coupling part of the fusion design is analyzed theoretically utilizing modes superposition. Based on the theoretical analysis, the loose coupling can be precisely designed, meanwhile, low coupling-level fluctuation can be obtained in the operating band. For demonstration, two design examples are designed and a prototype centered at about 3.73 GHz is fabricated. The fractional bandwidth (FBW) (|S11| < −15 dB) is about 28.4 %. Within it, the tight coupling (−3 dB) coupler achieves ± 0.5 dB amplitude imbalance. Meanwhile, the loose coupling (−20 dB) coupler achieves little fluctuation of < 0.56 dB and its isolation is better than 25 dB.

A 4 × 4 Butler matrix with switching/steering beams based on new tunable phase difference couplers

Abstract Basically, a 4 × 4 Butler matrix (BM) connected to an antenna array allows to have four beams, each oriented in a specific direction depending on the excitation port. In this paper, an almost continuously steerable beam system based on a conventional 4 × 4 BM with adjustable phase shift is presented and demonstrated. Here, varicap diodes are used instead of an additional phase shifter. Under different bias levels applied to the couplers throughout these varicap diodes, an output variable phase difference was obtained. A prototype of the proposed tunable BM integrated with an antenna array operating at 3.5 GHz was fabricated and tested. The experimental results show a good agreement with those simulated. A reflection and isolation coefficient better than −15 dB over the entire desired frequency band and an amplitude imbalance lower than ±1.5 dB were achieved. The measured radiating beam under different DC biasing can be oriented from ±6° to ±18° when port 1 or 4 is excited and oriented from ±32° to ±43° for ports 2 and 3.

Low complexity on-board vector calibration network for optimal microwave wireless power transmission and enhanced RF-to-DC conversion efficiency

A low complexity on-board vector calibration network for optimal microwave wireless power transmission (MWPT) efficiency is proposed in this work. The proposed technique is based on sequentially tracking the minimum power level of two antenna elements in an array for both phase and amplitude error discrimination. Unlike conventional vector calibration networks based on a down-conversion topology, the proposed architecture can perform vector calibration by only monitoring the magnitude of each antenna element. Thus, high system efficiency can be achieved by reducing hardware costs and eliminating any unnecessary power consumption by extra active devices. Further, phase and amplitude imbalances between antenna elements in an array can be accurately captured with higher precision compared to the conventional rotating-element electric-field vector (REV) method. The proposed technique achieved higher resolutions for both amplitude and phase error detection than REV, which suffers from low resolution near the maximum or minimum field crests. To verify the MWPT efficiency improvement based on the proposed calibration network, a 1 × 4 phased array MWPT system was fabricated and tested at 5.8 GHz with a reference rectenna. With the calibrated power transmission, the total RF-DC conversion efficiencies at ± 45° beamforming angles were improved by up to a maximum of 138.79%.

Synthesis and design of miniaturized poly-phase differential phase shifters with filtering function

In this paper, a class of miniaturized poly-phase differential phase shifters with filtering function is proposed, synthesized and developed. The proposed design is constructed by using parallel-coupled microstrip lines as the phase-shifting element in all branches. Operational mechanisms for these parallel-coupled microstrip lines are given. Closed-form formulas of insertion phase and phase slope are derived to guide a practical design procedure for phase shifters with arbitrary shifted phases and minimized phase errors. Benefitting from the compact size of those parallel-coupled microstrip lines, the proposed design is much smaller when compared with state-of-the-art works. To validate the proposed concept and synthesis method, a class of five-way poly-phase (ΔΦ = 45°, 90°, 135°, and 180°) differential phase shifter centered at 3 GHz is designed, fabricated, and measured. Measured results indicate that, achieved relative phase shifts are 45° ± 2.7°, 91° ± 2.9°, 135° ± 3.2°, and 181° ± 3.9° within a 33 % fractional bandwidth, with amplitude imbalances smaller than 0.2 dB among different ways.

Influence of quadrature transformation imbalance on the noise immunity of signal reception with amplitude-phase shift keying

Objectives. At the present time, amplitude-phase shift keyed (APSK) signals are actively used in satellite communication systems. In particular, they are applied in systems which operate in a limited radio frequency spectrum with increased data transmission quality requirements. Such systems use multi-channel type receivers with maximum likelihood decision on the received symbol (correlation receiver) or quadrature type receivers. The noise immunity of these receivers is directly dependent on the quality of the formation of reference oscillations. These oscillations are reference signals for correlation receivers and in-phase and quadrature components for quadrature receivers. The aim of the work is to analyze the influence of the amplitude and phase parameter spread of the in-phase and quadrature channels on the noise immunity of receiving APSK signals with a circular shape of the signal constellation.Methods. Methods of statistical radio engineering, theory of optimal signal reception, and computer simulation are used.Results. The study established the characteristics of noise immunity of the APSK signal reception depending on the spread of parameters of the quadrature converter. The theoretical calculations were confirmed by the results of modeling the transmission of APSK signals in a Gaussian communication channel. A comparison with systems using quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) was carried out, in order to assess system stability in the presence of spread parameters among other similar systems.Conclusions. The studies enabled us to conclude that an imbalance of the quadrature reference oscillations can lead to a significant decrease in the noise immunity of radio systems using APSK signals. The minimum energy loss due to imbalance of quadrature reference oscillations is achieved when the imbalance value is less than 10% in amplitude and 2°–3° in phase. The amplitude imbalance of quadrature reference oscillations when receiving QAM signals is more pronounced than in the case of APSK signals. The phase imbalance affects approximately the same.

Wideband 4×4 Nolen Matrix with 360° Continuously Tuned Differential Phase and Low In-Band Phase Deviation Error

In the paper, a wideband tunable 4×4 Nolen matrix is proposed. By using the presented topology of the Nolen matrix, tunable output port phase differences can be realized by inserting one type of tunable phase shifters (T-PS). Besides, the in-band phase deviation error is minimized by adding compensation phase shifters (C-PSs) to the output ports of the Nolen matrix. Analytical design methods based on signal flow graphs and complex exponential signal are given to obtain the rigorous relationships of the coupling and phase shifts in the Nolen matrix. Besides, a detailed method for output ports phase slope compensation is provided. For validation, a prototype centered at 5.8 GHz is designed and fabricated. Measurement results agree well with the simulated ones. By using only one voltage to control the phase shifts of the T-PS in a 90° range for each input excitation of the Nolen matrix, a full 360° range of the progressive phase difference is realized by switching four input ports. The measured fractional bandwidth under 10 dB return loss and isolation is larger than 24.5% with the in−band±1.5 dB amplitude imbalance and ±15° phase deviation error for ports 1-4 excitations. Besides, for a more strict criterion of ±1 dB amplitude imbalance and 10° phase deviation error, the measured bandwidths are larger than 15% for all port excitations.

Ka-Band Miniaturized 90 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor Wideband Rat-Race Coupler Using Left-Handed and Right-Handed Transmission Lines

The traditional rat-race coupler comprises a quarter-wavelength transmission line and a three-quarter-wavelength transmission line. In this design, the slow-wave structure transmission line is employed to replace the conventional quarter-wavelength transmission line, and the three-quarter-wavelength transmission line is substituted with the left-handed transmission line. By using the TSMC CMOS 90 nm fabrication process, a circuit is created with a chip size of 300 μm × 200 μm, corresponding to the electrical size at 39 GHz of 0.039λ0 × 0.026λ0. The measured results demonstrate that the operating bandwidth is 35 to 43 GHz, with an amplitude imbalance of around 0 dB, a phase error within 1°, a return loss of less than 26 dB, and an isolation better than 40 dB.

A broadband 3-way power divider based on gap waveguide for Ka-band applications

The present study aims to design a broadband gap waveguide-based 3-way power divider in Ka-band. Gap waveguide technology is employed to remove serious challenges of fabrication in mmWave frequencies using printed and hollow waveguide technologies. The validation of proposed structure is performed with experimental measurements. There are better isolation and return loss between the output ports than around 20 dB over 27.4–35.1 GHz frequency range. There is less amplitude imbalance between the output ports than ± 0.42 dB. A close agreement exists between measured and simulated results. The results are beneficial for the design, fabrication, integration and expansion of mmWave components.

Terahertz couplers based on branch lines and waveguide resonators

AbstractThis paper presents two waveguide quadrature hybrids in the WR‐3 band, which are designed to be fabricated by computer numerical control milling process with relaxed branch width requirements. An E‐plane four‐branch directional coupler gives an amplitude imbalance less than 0.8 dB and a phase difference between 88° and 94° from 240 to 324 GHz. Another design is an H‐plane bandpass coupler composed of cavity resonators, showing a bandwidth of 2% near 300 GHz.

A New Design for Improving Amplitude Imbalance of Branch-Guide Coupler Utilizing Branch Structure With Dual Transmission Zeros

A New Design for Improving Amplitude Imbalance of Branch-Guide Coupler Utilizing Branch Structure With Dual Transmission Zeros

A 77 GHz Power Amplifier with 19.1 dBm Peak Output Power in 130 nm SiGe Process.

This article reports a two-stage differential structure power amplifier based on a 130 nm SiGe process operating at 77 GHz. By introducing a tunable capacitor for amplitude and phase balance at the center tap of the secondary coil of the traditional Marchand balun, the balun achieves amplitude imbalance less than 0.5 dB and phase imbalance less than 1 degree within the operating frequency range of 70-85 GHz, which enables the power amplifier to exhibit comparable output power over a wide operating frequency band. The power amplifier, based on a designed 3-bit digital analog convertor (DAC)-controlled base bias current source, exhibits small signal gain fluctuation of less than 5 dB and saturation output power fluctuation of less than 2 dB near the 80 GHz frequency point when the ambient temperature varies in the range of -40 °C to 125 °C. Benefiting from the aforementioned design, the tested single-path differential power amplifier exhibits a small signal gain exceeding 16 dB, a saturation output power exceeding 18 dBm, and a peak saturation output power of 19.1 dBm in the frequency band of 70-85 GHz.

Effects of drive imbalance on the particle emission from a Bose–Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional lattice

Time-periodic driving has been an effective tool in the field of nonequilibrium quantum dynamics, which enables precise control of the particle interactions. We investigate the collective emission of particles from a Bose–Einstein condensate in a one-dimensional lattice with periodic drives that are separate in modulation amplitudes and relative phases. In addition to the enhancement of particle emission, we find that amplitude imbalances lead to energy shift and band broadening, while typical relative phases may give rise to similar gaps. These results offer insights into the specific manipulations of nonequilibrium quantum systems with tone-varying drives.

Simplified colorless characterization scheme for coherent receivers in DWDM scenarios using a single interferer

Intradyne coherent receivers, capable of detecting an individual wavelength-division multiplexed channel just by tuning the local oscillator frequency, is of great interest for the development of high-capacity flexible optical networks. Nevertheless, the unavoidable amplitude imbalances inherent to any realistic coherent receiver induce an interference contribution from the self-beating of the coincident channels present at its input. The characterization of this degraded colorless reception operation is of fundamental importance, but it usually requires the use of rather complex experimental setups, especially when the effects of tens of interference channels should be evaluated. In this work we propose a novel experimental setup that only requires the use of a single intense interferer to emulate those coincident channels, thus drastically simplifying the characterization process. In addition, we develop a general expression for the signal-to-noise ratio of the system that theoretically justifies the intended setup and demonstrate by massive numerical simulations its accuracy in different scenarios. We believe that the proposed approach may contribute to facilitate the experimental characterization of high-performance colorless coherent receivers.

A 40-50 GHz RF Front-End with Integrated Local Oscillator Leakage Calibration.

This article presents a transmitter (TX) front-end operating at frequencies covering 40-50 GHz, including a differential quadrature mixer with integrated amplitude and phase imbalance tuning, a power amplifier, and a detection mixer (DM) that supports local oscillator (LO) leakage signal or image signal calibration. Benefiting from the amplitude and phase imbalance tuning network of the in-phase quadrature (IQ) signal generator at the LO input, the TX exhibits more than 30 dBc image signal rejection over the full frequency band without any post-calibration. Based on the LO leakage signal fed back by the DM integrated at the RF output, the LO leakage of the TX has been improved by more than 10 dB through the LO leakage calibration module integrated in the quadrature mixer. When the intermediate frequency (IF) signal is fixed at 1 GHz, the TX's 1 dB compressed output power (OP1 dB) is higher than 13.5 dBm over the operating band. Thanks to the LO leakage signal calibration unit and the IQ signal generator, the TX is compliant with the error vector magnitude (EVM) requirement of the IEEE 802.11aj standard up to the 64-quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) operating mode.

The Design of a 1-6 GHz Broadband Double-Balanced Mixer.

This brief proposes a 1-6 GHz broadband double-balanced mixer. On the basis of the standard Marchand balun mixer, two techniques to enhance the performance of the mixer are proposed. Firstly, by loading capacitors, the amplitude and phase imbalance of the balun at high frequencies are improved, thereby expanding the relative bandwidth of the mixer by 0.1. Secondly, by cascading a first-order LC filter at the intermediate-frequency (IF) port, the leakage of radio frequency (RF) and local oscillator (LO) signals at the IF port is reduced by approximately 8 dB and 7 dB, respectively. This brief analyzes the various parameters that affect balun indicators and designs a broadband balun with a double-layer spiral line structure. As a result of these technologies, a 1-6 GHz double-balanced mixer is realized. The chip area is 1.13 mm × 0.95 mm, and the isolation between the IF port and the RF port is 34 dB and yields 13.5 dBm input power at 1 dB compression point (IP1 dB). The chip is fabricated via the GaAs pHEMT process.

Hardware-Efficient and Robust DSP Scheme for Coherent DSCM System in Presence of Transmitter IQ Impairments

In this paper, a hardware-efficient and robust DSP scheme for the coherent digital subcarrier multiplexing (DSCM) system in presence of transmitter (Tx) in-phase/quadrature (IQ) impairments is introduced and demonstrated. An analytic complex model is given to describe the effects of IQ skew, IQ amplitude and phase imbalance (referred to as IQ mixing) on the DSCM signal. Based on the model, residual frequency offset, polarization and carrier phase noise are jointly recovered using frequency pilot tones (FPT) in presence of IQ mixing. This process avoids the coupling effect of phase noise and Tx IQ mixing in conventional schemes, which allows the Tx IQ mixing to be compensated for by the following joint equalization of conjugate symmetric subcarriers. Compared to the conventional scheme based on widely linear equalizer, the polarization and carrier phase tracking capability of the proposed scheme is robust to IQ mixing. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme can tolerate a wide range of Tx IQ mixing in the presence of residual frequency offset and carrier phase noise. Since polarization crosstalk is eliminated, the signals of the two polarizations can be equalized separately in the proposed scheme, thus reducing the computational complexity by half. For a 4-subcarrier DSCM system with baud rate of 32 Gbaud, experimental results show that the Q-factor degradation of the proposed scheme is less than 0.5dB in the presence of Tx IQ time skew within <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 15 ps, IQ phase imbalance within <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 20 degrees or IQ amplitude imbalance within <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\pm$</tex-math></inline-formula> 3 dB. With 1dB Q-factor degradation, the proposed scheme can track polarization variation up to 10 Mrad/s, residual frequency offset of 10 MHz or carrier phase noise with 3dB linewidth of 200 kHz in the presence of Tx IQ mixing. Therefore, the proposed scheme provides a hardware-efficient and robust DSP solution for coherent DSCM targeting access network applications.

On Beamforming of DAS Ambient Noise Recorded in an Urban Environment and Rayleigh‐To‐Love Wave Ratio Estimation

AbstractAmbient noise sources in urban environments are generally not perfectly uniformly distributed or travel exactly along the axial direction of the receiver array. The horizontally deployed distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) fiber‐optic cable is able to record both Rayleigh and Love waves. Therefore, resolving the source propagation direction and the content of Rayleigh and Love waves from the DAS ambient noise data is essential to resolve a reliable near‐surface shear‐wave velocity model. However, a standard geophone‐based beamforming procedure may not apply to DAS ambient noise data due to the complex measurements of DAS. To address this issue, we investigate the validity of beamforming results by analyzing the simulated seismic ambient noise recorded by a DAS array close to an L‐shape under different source conditions. Synthetic examples demonstrate the importance of correcting amplitude imbalances and polarity reversals in the DAS ambient noise data to ensure a reliable beamforming analysis. In addition, we estimate the Rayleigh‐to‐Love wave (R/L) ratio from the DAS ambient noise data with the resolved source direction, the known array geometry, and the measured amplitude information. Finally, we apply the method to two 2 min DAS ambient noise data recorded by the Stanford DAS Array‐1. The results suggest that the analyzed data were mainly generated from the local traffic and dominated by Love waves.