Chapter Seventeen: Microwave Devices

Introduction
Conventionally, the lower boundary for microwave signals is set at 1 GHz At low frequencies, the inductance and capacitance of component leads can be ignored; at microwave frequencies, even short connecting leads have significant capacitive and inductive reactance, so component construction becomes critical

Waveguides
Waveguides provide an alternative to conventional transmission lines A waveguide is essentially a pipe through which electromagnetic waves travel Its possible to build a waveguide for any frequency, but waveguides operate essentially as high-pass filters Waveguides have no radiation loss

Modes and Cutoff Frequencies

There are a number of modes that electrical energy can propagate along a waveguide All modes must satisfy certain boundary conditions It is desirable to have only one mode propagating in a waveguide Multimode propagation causes a pulse to arrive at the far end at several different times, one for each mode This effect is called dispersion and limits the usefulness of waveguides with pulsed signals and other forms of modulation

Mode Types
Modes are designated as either transverse electric (TE) or transverse magnetic (TM) The term TE means that there is no component of the electric field along the length of the guide

Group and Phase Velocity

The dominant mode depends upon the shape of the waveguide For a circular waveguide, the dominant mode is TE11, but the TM01 mode is also used because it has circular symmetry The actual speed at which a signal travels down a waveguide is called the group velocity, and is less than the speed of light. For a rectangular guide, group velocity is given by the formula:

P vg ! c 1  2a

Phase Velocity
Phase velocity is the rate at which the wave appears to move along the wall of the guide The phase velocity is always greater than the speed of light A phase velocity faster than the speed of light is possible because it is not really the velocity of anything Phase velocity is used when calculating the wavelength in a guide, but the group velocity is used to determine the length of time it takes for a signal to move from one end to the other

Impedance and Impedance Matching

A waveguide has a characteristic impedance The waveguide impedance is a function of frequency The actual impedance of a waveguide is given by: 377 Z0 ; 2 P 1 2a Matching impedances using waveguides is accomplished by using shorted stubs or by a tuning screw

Coupling Power into and out of Waveguides

There are three basic methods to launch a wave down a guide:
Using a probe that resembles a quarter-wavelength monopole antenna Using a loop to launch the wave Simply putting a hole in the waveguide

Occasionally, directional couplers are used as a variation on the above

Power Coupling

Striplines and Microstrips

Striplines and microstrips are are transmission lines that are constructed on printed circuit boards They have critical frequencies, just as other waveguides do, and their behavior is similar to waveguides

Passive Components
Using waveguides requires the redesign of some components that used with feedlines Typical passive components include:
Bends and Tees Cavity Resonators Attenuators and Loads Circulators and Isolators

Bends and Tees

Anything that changes the shape or size of a waveguide has an effect on the electric and magnetic fields inside As long as bends or twists are gradual, the effect is minimized

Cavity Resonators
A cavity resonator is designed to be resonant with the signal being transmitted Waves are in phase with the incident signal The Q for resonant cavities is very high Cavities are tuned by changing their size Resonant cavities are found in many microwave devices, such as the magnetron and klystron

Attenuators and Loads

At lower frequencies a load is simply a resistor and an attenuator is a combination of resistors designed to preserve the impedance of the system while reducing power to a load At microwave frequencies, ordinary carbon or metal-film resistors have complex equivalent circuits that will affect impedance Waveguide versions of attenuators are carbon flaps and vanes

Circulators and Isolators

Isolators and circulators are microwave components that generally use ferrites in their operation An isolator is a device that allows a signal to pass in only one direction A circulator is a device that allows the separation of signals

Microwave Solid-State Devices

The first transistors were restricted to lowfrequency applications; however, transistors have now been adapted to operate at much higher frequencies Other solid-state devices have been designed to to take advantage of some of the factors that reduce transistor efficiency as frequency increases

Microwave Transistors
Conventional transistors suffer from two major problems at high frequencies:
All the components exhibit stray capacitance and inductance More importantly, the transit time becomes critical at microwave frequencies

Generally electrons travel faster than holes, thus the preponderance of NPN bipolar transistors and N-channel FETs in microwave systems Gallium Arsenide is faster than silicon and is preferred in microwave applications

Gunn Devices
One solution to transit time is to include a phase shift due to transit time as one of the device characteristics The Gunn Device has two terminals, but no junction; it is just a slab of N-type gallium arsenide A Gunn device exhibits what is known as a negative resistance region Negative resistance means that at some part of its current/voltage curve, the current decreases as the voltage decreases

Gunn Device Characteristics

IMPATT Diodes
The IMPATT (impact avalanche and transit time) device has a P-N junction. In fact, it is often a four-layer device The IMPATT operates as a reverse-breakdown device

Other Types of Solid-State Devices

Other solid-state devices used in microwave applications include:
Yttrium-Iron-Garnet Devices PIN diodes Varactor diodes Dielectric Resonators

Microwave Tubes
At lower frequencies, vacuum tubes are still desirable when large amounts of power are required Many of the problems that affect transistors, such as transit times and stray reactance, also affect tubes
Lead inductance can be reduced by making connections to tubes via rings rather than leads Transit time can be reduced by making tubes smaller

Magnetrons
The magnetron is the oldest microwave tube design Magnetrons are high-power, fixed-frequency oscillators
Not noted for stability Simple, rugged and relatively efficient

Klystrons
The klystron is the preferred tube for high-power, high-stability amplification of signals at frequencies from UHF to about 30 GHz There are two types of klystrons:
The reflex klystron Multicavity klystron

The klystron is also known as a linear-beam tube

Traveling-Wave Tubes
Traveling-wave tubes (TWT) can be used as a moderate power amplifier or as an oscillator It is distinguished by its wide bandwidth Communications satellites and their ground stations use TWTs Like the klystron, a TWT needs a magnetic structure to focus the electron beam so that it passes with the helical slow-wave structure

Microwave Antennas
Theoretically, there is no difference between microwave antennas and those for lower frequencies At microwave frequencies, it is possible to build elaborate, high-gain antennas of reasonable physical size The parabolic reflector is typically employed at microwave frequencies, although technically it is a reflector and not an antenna

Horn Antennas
Horn antennas can be viewed as impedance transformers that match waveguide impedances to that of free space The E- and H-plane sectoral horns are named for the plane in which the horn flares The pyramidal horn flares in both planes The conical horn is most appropriate with a circular waveguide

Patch Antennas
A patch antenna consists of a thin metallic patch placed a small fraction of wavelength above the conducting ground plane The patch and ground plane are separated by a dielectric Generally, a piece of double-sided circuit board is used

Other Microwave Antennas

Other types of microwave antennas include:
Slot antenna Fresnel lens

Radar
Radar is an acronym for radio detection and ranging A signal is transmitted towards a target and is bounced back to the source and interpreted Early radars were in the HF or VHF range Radar is divided between two main categories:
Pulse radar Continuous wave radar

Relative motion between the radar and the target can cause a change of frequency called the Doppler Effect and velocity information can be obtained

Pulse Radar
Determining the direction to a target can be very simple; either the antenna is moved or a phased-array antenna is used The distance to the target is calculated by measuring the elapsed time of the returned pulse

Doppler Radar
Pulse radar can only measure velocity in an indirect way It is possible to measure velocity directly using the Doppler Effect

Transponders
Radar echoes are generally simple reflections of the original pulse and not images of the target To identify targets, a transponder using a transmitterreceiver is used, usually on an airplane The transponder responds to a radar pulse by transmitting a signal that identifies itself to the radar

Stealth
It is highly desirable for some military aircraft to not appear on radar, for obvious reasons Techniques to avoid radar detection are known as stealth Two ways of escaping radar detection are:
Absorb radar waves rather than reflect them Scatter radar waves as widely as possible to avoid returning a strong signal to the radar

The B-2 bomber and F-117 fighter are examples of aircraft that use stealth technology