Description and goals of project TEC2017-84724-P

 

SUMMARY:

In this proposal, the members of the research team intend to contribute to the advancement of three research lines that share a very similar conceptual and methodological background as well as the same experimental facilities. The three proposed research lines will exploit the knowledge and expertise acquired during the last few years by the members of the group and, at the same time, would allow them to explore new research paths involving novel implementations of microwave devices in planar technologies. Although the main purpose of the project is to generate knowledge at the fundamental level, considerable effort will also be put on the design and fabrication of a number of passive devices and antennas for wideband and multiband operation, in line with the new demands of the next generation of communication systems.

A first research line of this project is focused on the development of new analytical or quasi-analytical models to deal with planar-like periodic structures (frequency selective surfaces, metasurfaces, absorbers, stacked structures, ...) used for the control of electromagnetic waves from the microwave to the THz ranges. The goal is to provide circuit-based analytical models to explain and characterize the response of such structures, thus facilitating the analysis and design of that class of devices. The developed tools are expected to pave the way to explore new possibilities for enhancing the wideband/multiband operation of the devices required by the new and demanding technological paradigms. Structures involving complex patterns of the individual scatterer element and stacked geometries consisting of several layers of 2D periodic structures will be a subject of specific interest.

A second research line is related to the invention and design of passive devices for balanced differential circuitry operating in the microwave range. Starting from our previous experience on the design of balanced printed filters, the objective is to develop a variety of solutions for the handling of balanced differential multiband and/or multiport devices, including dual-band and multiband balanced filters, multiplexers, dividers, couplers, and filtering antennas. Different strategies based on the use of compact printed resonators, defected ground structures, and multilayer technologies are intended to be combined to create compact devices of this type exhibiting a good response both for the differential and common-mode signals.

Finally, a third line of research proposed in this project aims to exploit the use of substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technology to implement new leaky-wave antennas and other passive devices of interest. The use of high-order modes supported by the SIW waveguide is expected to be useful to increase the directivity and gain of leaky-wave antennas. In order to speed up the design tasks, new models based on the transverse equivalent network approach will be developed. These models would also be useful for the design of power dividers and filters based on this technology, with special emphasis on the implementation of balanced differential filters as those mentioned above.

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