Design and Fabrication of a Wideband, Low-Cost, Lightweight Open TEM Cell
Alireza Monirihamedani ,
Mohammad Reza Moniri Hamedani and
Shiva Hayati Raad
In this paper, a low-cost, lightweight open transverse electromagnetic (TEM) cell with an operating bandwidth from DC up to around 1.5 GHz is designed and fabricated. Initially, a fully metallic open cell is simulated, and associated TEM modes are exhibited by the spatial electric field distributions. The cell length (Lb), width (Wb), and height (Hb) are respectively 398, 200, and 103.93 mm. In the next step, a printed circuit board (PCB) is used as the septum to reduce the device's overall weight. Moreover, longitudinal slots are cut on both sides of the septum to prevent the transverse currents, which results in the excitation of higher-order modes. For further weight reduction, sub-wavelength slots are cut in the metallic sidewalls without affecting the overall performance. The metal filling factor reduction is of great importance for reaching a portable test facility with reduced cost. Finally, the device's input ports are further manipulated to reduce discontinuity by gradually tapering them. The device is realized by the combination of metal sheet, computer numerical control (CNC) water jet, machining, and PCB technologies. The measured scattering parameters confirm the acceptable performance of the fabricated device.