Ridge Gap Waveguide Based Liquid Crystal Phase Shifter

Matthias Nickel; Alejandro Jimenez-Saez; Prannoy Agrawal; Ahmed Gadallah; Andrea Malignaggi; Christian Schuster; Roland Reese; Henning Tesmer; Ersin Polat; Dongwei Wang; Peter Schumacher; Rolf Jakoby; Dietmar Kissinger; Holger Maune

doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2989547

IEEE Access (Jan 2020)

Ridge Gap Waveguide Based Liquid Crystal Phase Shifter

Matthias Nickel,
Alejandro Jimenez-Saez,
Prannoy Agrawal,
Ahmed Gadallah,
Andrea Malignaggi,
Christian Schuster,
Roland Reese,
Henning Tesmer,
Ersin Polat,
Dongwei Wang,
Peter Schumacher,
Rolf Jakoby,
Dietmar Kissinger,
Holger Maune

Affiliations

Matthias Nickel: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Alejandro Jimenez-Saez: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Prannoy Agrawal: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Ahmed Gadallah: ORCiD; IHP-Leibniz-Institut fü innovative Mikroelektronik, Im Technologiepark 25, Frankfurt, Germany
Andrea Malignaggi: IHP-Leibniz-Institut fü innovative Mikroelektronik, Im Technologiepark 25, Frankfurt, Germany
Christian Schuster: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Roland Reese: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Henning Tesmer: Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Ersin Polat: Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Dongwei Wang: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Peter Schumacher: ORCiD; Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Rolf Jakoby: Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
Dietmar Kissinger: ORCiD; Institute of Electronic Devices and Circuits, Ulm University, Ulm, Germany
Holger Maune: Institute of Microwave Engineering and Photonics, Technische Unversität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2020.2989547
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 8
pp. 77833 – 77842

Abstract

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In this paper, the gap waveguide technology is examined for packaging liquid crystal (LC) in tunable microwave devices. For this purpose, a line based passive phase shifter is designed and implemented in a ridge gap waveguide (RGW) topology and filled with LC serving as functional material. The inherent direct current (DC) decoupling property of gap waveguides is used to utilize the waveguide surroundings as biasing electrodes for tuning the LC. The bed of nails structure of the RGW exhibits an E-field suppression of 76 dB in simulation, forming a completely shielded device. The phase shifter shows a maximum figure of merit (FoM) of 70 °/dB from 20 GHz to 30 GHz with a differential phase shift of 387° at 25 GHz. The insertion loss ranges from 3.5 dB to 5.5 dB depending on the applied biasing voltage of 0 V to 60 V.

Published in IEEE Access

ISSN: 2169-3536 (Online)
Publisher: IEEE
Country of publisher: United States
LCC subjects: Technology: Electrical engineering. Electronics. Nuclear engineering
Website: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=6287639

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