In this paper, the design and development of a novel active antenna including circuits for Ultra-wide band (UWB) pulse generation and transmission have been described. In this design a pulse with pulse-width approximately 150 ps and amplitude 500 mV (peak-to-peak) was generated using a single high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) as the active device (and an optional Schottky diode for enhanced performance), this being the simplest circuit for generating UWB pulses as far as we know. This circuit was integrated with a newly designed UWB planar microstripfed slot antenna, which is an active antenna in the sense that in addition to radiating the signal, it also acts as a filter, which tailors the spectrum of the transmitted pulse to a shape close to that recommended for UWB communications. We have also given a quantitative analysis, which explains the operation of the circuit.

The impedance matching problem in the presence of signal and noise coupling in compact MIMO arrays is addressed. By maximizing an upper bound of the ergodic capacity for an N×N MIMO system with signal and noise coupling at the receiver in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) scheme, a set of equations is formulated to find the optimal matching circuit. A closed-form result for the optimum matching circuit is given. For two-element arrays, we show numerically that significant performance improvement can be achieved by introducing the optimal matching.

Models of covariant linear electromagnetic constitutive relations are formulated that have wide applicability to the computation of susceptibility tensors for dispersive and inhomogeneous media. A perturbative framework is used to derive a linear constitutive relation for a globally neutral plasma enabling one to describe in this context a generalized Landau damping mechanism for non-stationary inhomogeneous plasma states.

The design of an octagonal-shaped microstrip-fed planar monopole antenna for ultrawideband (UWB) operation is studied. Two inverted T-shaped slits are embedded on the ground plane to allow band rejection characteristic from 5 to 6 GHz (for VSWR < 2). To enable switching capability for this band rejection function, a PIN diode is connected to each slit via a specified chip inductor that will be further investigated. Several prototypes were constructed and the measured results show that the proposed antenna can provide an operating bandwidth from 3.07 to 10.7 GHz, except for the rejected band. Simulation analyses are also carried out to validate the experimental results.

A novel compact ultra-wideband (UWB) band-pass filter (BPF) based on surface-coupled structure is proposed. The surface-coupled structures and Y-shaped shorted stub resonator are adopted as quasi-lumped circuit elements to achieve UWB pass-band. To avoid the interference of the wireless local area network (WLAN) at 5.25 and 5.775 GHz, two different quarter-wavelength lines are arranged on the ground of UWB BPF to generate dual narrow stop bands. Being developed from the quasi-lumped elements, the proposed UWB BPFs have very compact size. The fabricated UWB BPFs have the advantages of low insertion loss, good selectivity and flat group delay. Good agreement between equivalent circuit modeled, simulated and measured responses of these filters is demonstrated.

The limitation of the pulse repetition frequency (PRF) of an airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) system is not a serious problem to obtain high azimuth resolution and wide swath imaging compared with a spaceborne SAR system. Hence, continuous high azimuth resolution imagery over a wide area can be obtained using an antenna having a wide beamwidth. Since a small antenna with a large beamwidth has very low gain, which results in difficulty in detection; the azimuth beam pattern optimization of a large active phased array antenna is needed for airborne SAR system optimization. To improve the airborne SAR system performance, such as the noise-equivalent sigma zero (NEσ₀), the azimuth resolution, the radiometric accuracy (RA), and the azimuth ambiguity ratio (AAR), we present an optimal azimuth beam pattern mask template and suggest an azimuth beam pattern satisfying the mask template using the particle swarm optimization (PSO). The mode having the proposed beam pattern guarantees continuous and high resolution images, simultaneously. Using a point target simulation, the advantages of the mode are shown compared to strip-map and spotlight modes.

We apply the ESPRIT algorithm to decompose the currents on a helical antenna into different traveling wave modes. The strengths, phase velocities and decay constants of the various modes are extracted across frequencies. Their contributions to the antenna performance including gain, polarization and time-domain radiated pulse shape are investigated. Our results show that the T₀⁺ mode is a dominant contributor to the helix gain at the low end of the frequency band while the T₁⁺ mode contributes significantly to the gain at higher frequencies. It is also found that the reflected current modes from the open end reduce the circular polarization purity of the helix. Lastly, it is observed that the T₁⁺ and T₀⁺ modes contribute constructively to a low-dispersion pulse from the antenna.

This paper proposes a new positioning system utilizing mobile readers that are programmed to move in a zigzag pattern to locate the tags. The proposed zigzag mobility pattern is able to cover an area completely within a given period, determine optimal number of required mobile readers, and find out reader placement and movement pattern. The received signal strength (RSS) model is used to exchange the information over a short range by estimating the position of the tag by means of distance information between the reader and the tag. The results obtained from this study point out that the proposed method is able to provide near exact tag position. The proposed method can achieve average error as low as 0.6 m. With this proposed method, the scanning of large areas, such as warehouses, libraries, and storage areas can be done very quickly. Mobile reader is proposed because it is cost-effective, fast, and is able to provide relatively accurate results.

This paper reports an exact and explicit representation of the differential operators from Maxwell's equations. In order to solve these equations, the spline basis functions with compact support are used. We describe the electromagnetic analysis of the lamellar grating as an eigenvalues problem. We choose the second degree spline as basis functions. The basis functions are projected onto a set of test functions. We use and compare several test functions namely: Dirac, Pulse and Spline. We show that the choice of the basis and test functions has a great influence on the convergence speed. The outcomes are compared with those obtained by implementing the Finite-Difference Modal Method which is used as a reference. In order to improve the numerical results an adaptive spatial resolution is used. Compared to the reference method, we show a significantly improved convergence when using the spline expansion projected onto spline test functions.

Although MUSIC (MUltiple SIgnal Classification)-type algorithm has shown feasibilities as a non-iterative imaging technique of thin penetrable electromagnetic inclusion from its far-field multi-static response (MSR) matrix, it induces a poor result whenever one tries to obtain such inclusion of both dielectric and magnetic contrast with respect to the embedding homogeneous space R² case. In this paper, we develop an improved non-iterative imaging algorithm based on the modeling of multi-frequency MSR matrix according to a rigorous asymptotic expansion of the scattering amplitude. Numerical examples exhibit that presented algorithm performs satisfactorily for single and multiple thin inclusions, even with a fair amount of random noise.

In the framework of the Green function method, we theoretically study the photonic band structure of one-dimensional superlattice composed of alternating layers of right-handed and left-handed materials (RHM and LHM). The dispersion curves are studied by assuming that the dielectric permittivity and magnetic permeability are frequency dependent in each layer. It is shown that such structures can exhibit new types of electromagnetic modes and dispersion curves that do not exist in usual superlattices composed only of RHM. With an appropriate choice of the parameters, we show that it is possible to realize an absolute (or omnidirectional) band gap for either transverse electric (TE) or transverse magnetic (TM) polarizations of the electromagnetic waves. A combination of two multilayer structures composed of RHM and LHM is proposed to realize, in a certain range of frequency, an omnidirectional reflector of light for both polarizations.

A novel robust adaptive beamforming method for conformal array is proposed. By using interpolation technique, the cylindrical conformal array with directional antenna elements is transformed to a virtual uniform linear array with omni-directional elements. This method can compensate the amplitude and mutual coupling errors as well as desired signal point errors of the conformal array efficiently. It is a universal method and can be applied to other curved conformal arrays. After the transformation, most of the xisting adaptive beamforming algorithms can be applied to conformal array directly. The efficiency of the proposed scheme is assessed through numerical simulations.

We investigated the properties of pulse propagation on coupled nonlinear transmission lines to develop a method for doubling repetition rate of incident pulse streams. Coupled nonlinear transmission lines are two transmission lines with regularly spaced Schottky varactors coupled with each other. It is found that both of the modes developed in a coupled line can support soliton-like pulses because of Schottky varactors. We discuss the fundamental properties of each soliton-like pulse, including the width and velocity, and propose a method of doubling repetition rate of incident pulse streams by managing these soliton-like pulses.

Micrometer and sub-micrometer sized non-magnetic particles were manipulated by an external strong magnetic field (e.g. 10 Tesla) with a high gradient. During the strong magnetic field effects, segregation of the non-magnetic particles was observed which could not be realised only with gravitational field. Numerical calculations were subsequently carried out to understand the effects on the insulating particles in a conductive liquid matrix. The migration of micrometer sized particles is obviously enhanced by the magnetic field gradient. Combining the experimental results and theoretical analysis, particle-particle magnetic interaction was found to influence the overall segregation of the particles as well. Magnetised by the strong magnetic field, magnetic interaction between non-magnetic particles becomes dominant and a self-assembly behavior can be demonstrated. Various factors such as the magnetic dipole-dipole interaction and chain-chain interaction, are governing the particles assembly. According to calculations, magnetic field should be strong enough, at least 7 T in order to obtain the assembly morphologies in the present case.

The time domain Maxwell's equations are numerically solved using a multigrid method in a scattered field formulation and a cell-vertex based finite volume time domain framework. The multilevel method is an adaptation of Ni's [9] cell-vertex based multigrid technique, proposed for accelerating steady state convergence of nonlinear Euler equations of gas dynamics. Accelerated convergence to steady state of the time domain Maxwell's equations, for problems involving electromagnetic scattering, is obtained using multiple grids without the use of additional numerical damping usually required in nonlinear problems. The linear nature of the Maxwell's system also allows for a more accurate representation of the fine-grid problem on the coarse grid.

A novel tri-band printed monopole antenna with an etched ∩-shaped slot and a parasitic ring resonator is proposed for satisfying wireless local area network (WLAN) and worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) applications simultaneously. The proposed antenna comprises a rectangular radiation patch with an arc-shaped edge and an embedded ∩-shaped slot on the top side and a parasitic ring resonator on the opposite side. The measured results show that the impedance bandwidths of the proposed antenna, defined by voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR)≤1.5, are 350 MHz (2370--2720 MHz), 680 MHz (3390--4070 MHz) and 1080 MHz (4920--6000 MHz), which cover the required band- widths for both WLAN (2400--2480 MHz, 5150--5350 MHz, and 5725--5825 MHz) and WiMAX (2500--2690 MHz, 3400--3690 MHz, 5250--5850 MHz) applications. Furthermore, good monopole-like radiation characteristics with moderate peak gains are obtained over the operating bands.

A new detection algorithm based on constant false alarm rate (CFAR) algorithm, which is applicable to radar image with homogeneous background, is proposed in this paper. This algorithm firstly estimates the parameters of the probability model of background accurately. Then a conventional global CFAR is done using the results of estimation. In estimating the parameters of background, a novel iterative algorithm, which is self-adaptive, is given. The simulation results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed detection algorithm is very close to the theoretical optimum value, and better than CA-CFAR, GO-CFAR and SO-CFAR.

Compact and simple bandpass filter (BPF) structure using microstrip isosceles triangular patch resonator (ITPR) is proposed. The new filter design technique is based on two main ideas: Firstly, cutting the corners of the triangular structure, to make the filter size more compact. Secondly, etching slit in staircase form near the base of the triangle in order to improve the filter performances. The proposed filter was designed and fabricated on Taconic CER-10 substrate with a relative dielectric constant of 10 and a thickness of 0.64 mm using standard photolithography process. The final dimension of the proposed filter is measured at 5.7 mm×7.6 mm. Measured S-parameters showed that the filter achieves a 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 55% at center frequency of 10.36 GHz, with measured insertion loss of 2.08 dB and measured return loss better than 10 dB. The measured results are in good agreement with the simulated results.

We present an iterative inner-outer scheme for the efficient solution of large-scale electromagnetics problems involving perfectly-conducting objects formulated with surface integral equations. Problems are solved by employing the multilevel fast multipole algorithm (MLFMA) on parallel computer systems. In order to construct a robust preconditioner, we develop an approximate MLFMA (AMLFMA) by systematically increasing the efficiency of the ordinary MLFMA. Using a flexible outer solver, iterative MLFMA solutions are accelerated via an inner iterative solver, employing AMLFMA and serving as a preconditioner to the outer solver. The resulting implementation is tested on various electromagnetics problems involving both open and closed conductors. We show that the processing time decreases significantly using the proposed method, compared to the solutions obtained with conventional preconditioners in the literature.

An analytical model for the description of the electromagnetic waves propagation in a layered medium consisting of sectors having the locally spherical symmetric distributions of refractivity is introduced. Model presents analytical expressions for the phase path and refractive attenuation of electromagnetic waves. Influence of the inclined ionospheric layers is a cause of the ionospheric interference in the trans-ionospheric communication satellite-to-satellite or satellite-to-Earth links. It follows from the analytical model that the identification of the inclined ionospheric layers contributions and measurements of their location and parameters may be fulfilled by use of comparative analysis of the amplitude variations and the eikonal acceleration of the RO signals. Model is applied to analysis of the radio occultation (RO) signals propagating through the ionosphere and atmosphere. Model explains existence of the ionospheric contributions in the RO signals at the altitudes 30-90 km of the RO ray perigee as connected with influence of a tangent point in the ionosphere where the electron density gradient is perpendicular to the RO ray trajectory. By use of the CHAMP RO amplitude data a description of different types of the ionospheric contributions to the RO signals is introduced and compared with results of measurements obtained earlier in the communication link satellite-to-Earth at frequency 1.5415 GHz of MARSAT satellite.