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At least 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1993

Full wave characterization of microstrip open end discontinuities patterned on anisotropic substrates using potential theory

A technique for a full wave characterization of microstrip open end discontinuities fabricated on uniaxial anisotropic substrates using potential theory is presented. The substrate to be analyzed is enclosed in a cutoff waveguide, with the anisotropic axis aligned perpendicular to the air-dielectric interface. A full description of the sources on the microstrip line is included with edge conditions built in. Extention to other discontinuities is discussed.

Toncich, S. S.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Measurements of the dielectric properties of simulated comet material as part of the KOSI 10 experiment

The dielectric constant epsilon of the snow-mineral used for the comet simulation in the German KOSI 10 experiment was measured in the radio frequency range from 2 to 4 GHz. The traditional microwave bridge method was used, but instead of using a waveguide that contains the sample material small lambda/4 antennas were used as sensors. A change in the dielectric properties indicates a change in density and/or composition, respectively. The method is presented as an analytical tool for measuring such density or composition changes during alteration snow-dust materials. The KOSI (determined from the German: Kometen Simulation) experiments, performed in the Space simulator of the DLR/Institut for Raumsimulation, during the last years revealed many processes that presumably take place on comets. So far, modifications of the internal structure could be identified only during the post-experiment inspection via hardness tests. It was the aim of the KOSI 10 and KOSI 10a experiments to emphasize on a synoptic detection of events like particle emission or crust formation. The composition of the KOSI 10 sample material was an ice-mineral mixture with about 10 percent mineral (olivine) content. An excellent method to investigate the change of the density of the probe material during its exposure to the artificial sun in situ is to do it via the measurement of the dielectric constant. The traditional method to determine epsilon, by using a microwave-bridge to measure the transmission and the reflection factor of the sample material for electromagnetic waves in the radio frequency range, was modified, since the commonly used practice to fill the sample material into a waveguide was not compatible with the need for in situ measurements during the simulation experiment.

Ulamec, S.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Method and apparatus for low-loss signal transmission

The present invention relates to the field of radio-frequency (RF) waveguides. More specifically, the present invention pertains to a method and apparatus that provides ultra-low-loss RF waveguide structures targeted between approximately 300 GHz and approximately 30 THz. The RF waveguide includes a hollow core and a flexible honeycomb, periodic-bandgap structure surrounding the hollow core. The flexible honeycomb, periodic-bandgap structure is formed of a plurality of tubes formed of a dielectric material such as of low-loss quartz, polyethylene, or high-resistivity silicon. Using the RF waveguide, a user may attach a terahertz signal source to the waveguide and pass signals through the waveguide, while a terahertz signal receiver receives the signals.

Siegel, Peter↗
NASA NTRS2001

Radiation Losses Due to Tapering of a Double-Core Optical Waveguide

The theoretical model we designed parameterizes the power losses as a function of .the profile shape for a tapered, single mode, optical dielectric coupler. The focus of this project is to produce a working model that determines the power losses experienced by the fibers when light crosses a taper region. This phenomenon can be examined using coupled mode theory. The optical directional coupler consists of a parallel, dual-channel, waveguide with minimal spacing between the channels to permit energy exchange. Thus, power transfer is essentially a function of the taper profile. To find the fields in the fibers, the approach used was that of solving the Helmholtz equation in cylindrical coordinates involving Bessel and modified Bessel functions depending on the location.

Lyons, Donald R.↗
NASA NTRS2007

High Temperature Characteristics of Coplanar Waveguide on R-Plane Sapphire and Alumina

This paper presents the characteristics of coplanar waveguide transmission lines on R-plane sapphire and alumina over the temperature range of 25 to 400 C and the frequency range of 45 MHz to 50 GHz. A Thru-Reflect-Line calibration technique and open circuited terminated stubs are used to extract the attenuation and effective permittivity. It is shown that the effective permittivity of the transmission lines and, therefore, the relative dielectric constant of the two substrates increase linearly with temperature. The attenuation of the coplanar waveguide varies linearly with temperature through 200 C, and increases at a greater rate above 200 C.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Broadside-coupled coplanar waveguides and their end-coupled band-pass filter applications

New broadside-coupled coplanar waveguides, suitable for applications requiring wide bandwidths, tight couplings, and large mode effective-dielectric-constant ratios, are presented. Their analysis and investigation are described. Simple equations relating the per-unit-length capacitances of the c- and pi-modes and the per-unit-length capacitance matrices of the coupled structures to those obtained when applying even- and odd-symmetric voltages are also derived. New broadside end-coupled band-pass filters have been developed at X-band (8-12 GHz) with less than 1.5 and 1.0 dB passband insertion losses using the proposed four-ground-plane and two-ground-plane coplanar waveguide structures, respectively. Good agreement between the experimental results and those predicted theoretically was also observed.

Nguyen, Cam↗
NASA NTRS1984

Coupling coefficient of gain-guided lasers

An analytical model is presented for the coupling coefficient for two gain-guided coupled waveguides, e.g., semiconductor laser arrays. A common parabolic gain distribution is assumed for the lasers, and the effective dielectric constant distribution is approximated in terms of the bulk refraction index, wavelength, power filling factor, and the antiguiding factor. The fundamental mode is then formulated and used in an integral for the coupling coefficient. The dependence of the coefficient of various waveguide parameters is described.

Katz, J.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Response of a grounded dielectric slab to an impulse line source using leaky modes

This paper describes how expansions in leaky (or improper) modes may be used to represent the continuous spectrum in an open radiating waveguide. The technique requires a thorough knowledge of the life history of the improper modes as they migrate from improper to proper Riemann surfaces. The method is illustrated by finding the electric field resulting from an impulsively forced current located in the free space above a grounded dielectric slab.

DIELECTRIC SLABS↗
NASA NTRS1972

Dielectric loaded aperture antennas.

This paper describes a primarily experimental study of the effect of placing dielectric obstacles having various geometries directly upon the aperture of circular and rectangular waveguide antennas. It is found that plexiglas spheres, and in some cases plexiglas cubes, one to four wavelengths in dimension, produce directive patterns with low sidelobes. The measured gain in some cases is 6 dB greater than the gain of an optimum horn having an equal aperture size.

Croswell, W. F.↗
NASA NTRS1977

An optically pumped submillimeter wavelength regenerative amplifier

An optically pumped regenerative submillimeter laser amplifier is described. The amplifier uses a waveguide cavity resonator, and a Fabry-Perot interferometer composed of two dielectric-coated mirrors serves as input and output port for the submillimeter signal. Use of two mirrors enabled obtaining variations of up to 6:1 in transmission by varying the mirror spacing. When the 373-micron transition in CH3CN is excited in the oscillator by the CO2 laser pump beam, the received signal with amplification is about nine times the unamplified signal.

Galantowicz, T. A.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Design and evaluation of an electromagnetic beam waveguide for measuring electrical properties of materials

A beam waveguide was designed that is based upon the propagation characteristics of the fundamental Gaussian beam and the focusing properties of spherical dielectric lenses. The 20-GHz, two-horn, four-lens system was constructed and experimentally evaluated by probing the field in a plane perpendicular to the beam axis at the center of the beam waveguide system. The critical parameters were determined by numerical sensitivity studies, and the lens-horn critical spacing was adjusted to better focus the beam at the probe plane. The measured performance was analyzed by consideration of higher order Gaussian-Laguerre beam modes. The beam waveguide system was successfully used in the measurements of the electromagnetic transmission properties of Shuttle thermal-protection tiles while the tile surface was being heated to reentry-level temperatures with a high-power laser.

Bailey, M. C.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Finite Ground Coplanar (FGC) Waveguide: Characteristics and Advantages Evaluated for Radiofrequency and Wireless Communication Circuits

Researchers in NASA Lewis Research Center s Electron Device Technology Branch are developing transmission lines for radiofrequency and wireless circuits that are more efficient, smaller, and make lower cost circuits possible. Traditionally, radiofrequency and wireless circuits have employed a microstrip or coplanar waveguide to interconnect the various electrical elements that comprise a circuit. Although a coplanar waveguide (CPW) is widely viewed as better than a microstrip for most applications, it too has problems. To solve these problems, NASA Lewis and the University of Michigan developed a new version of a coplanar waveguide with electrically narrow ground planes. Through extensive numerical modeling and experimental measurements, we have characterized the propagation constant of the FGC waveguide, the lumped and distributed circuit elements integrated in the FGC waveguide, and the coupling between parallel transmission lines. Although the attenuation per unit length is higher for the FGC waveguide because of higher conductor loss, the attenuation is comparable when the ground plane width is twice the center conductor width as shown in the following graph. An upper limit to the line width is derived from observations that when the total line width is greater than ld/2, spurious resonances due to the parallel plate waveguide mode are established. Thus, the ground plane width must be less than ld/4 where ld is the wavelength in the dielectric. Since the center conductor width S is typically less than l/10 to maintain good transverse electromagnetic mode characteristics, it follows that a ground plane width of B = 2S would also be electrically narrow. Thus, we can now treat the ground strips of the FGC waveguide the same way that the center conductor is treated.

Ponchak, George E.↗
NASA NTRS2013

High-Reliability Waveguide Vacuum/Pressure Window

The NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) uses commercial waveguide windows on the output waveguide of Ka-band (32 GHz) low-noise amplifiers. Mechanical failure of these windows resulted in an unacceptable loss in tracking time. To address this issue, a new Ka-band WR-28 waveguide window has been designed, fabricated, and tested. The window uses a slab of low-loss, low-dielectric constant foam that is bonded into a 1/2-wave-thick waveguide/flange. The foam is a commercially available, rigid, closed-cell polymethacrylimide. It has excellent electrical properties with a dielectric constant of 1.04, and a loss tangent of 0.01. It is relatively strong with a tensile strength of 1 MPa. The material is virtually impermeable to helium. The finished window exhibits a leak rate of less than 3x10(exp -3)cu cm/s with helium. The material is also chemically resistant and can be cleaned with acetone. The window is constructed by fabricating a window body by brazing a short length of WR-28 copper waveguide into a standard rectangular flange, and machining the resulting part to a thickness of 4.6 mm. The foam is machined to a rectangular shape with a dimension of 7.06x3.53 mm. The foam is bonded into the body with a two-part epoxy. After curing, the excess glue and foam are knife-trimmed by hand. The finished window has a loss of less than 0.08 dB (2%) and a return loss of greater than 25 dB at 32 GHz. This meets the requirements for the DSN application. The window is usable for most applications over the entire 26-to-40-GHz waveguide band. The window return loss can be tuned to a required frequency by var y in g the thickness of the window slightly. Most standard waveguide windows use a thin membrane of material bonded into a recess in a waveguide flange, or sandwiched between two flanges with a polymer seal. Designs using the recessed window are prone to mechanical failure over time due to constraints on the dimensions of the recess that allow the bond to fail. Designs using the sandwich method are often permeable to helium, which prohibits the use of helium leak detection. At the time of this reporting, 40 windows have been produced. Twelve are in operation with a combined operating time of over 30,000 hours without a failure.

Britcliffe, Michael J.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Technique for measuring the dielectric constant of thin materials

A practical technique for measuring the dielectric constant of vegetation leaves and similarly thin materials is presented. A rectangular section of the leaf is placed in the tranverse plane in a rectangular waveguide and the magnitude and phase of the reflection coefficient are measured over the desired frequency band using a vector network analyzer. By treating the leaf as an infinitesimally thin resistive sheet, an explicit expression for its dielectric constant is obtained in terms of the reflection coefficient. Because of the thin-sheet approximation, however, this approach is valid only at frequencies below 1.5 GHz. To extend the technique to higher frequencies, higher order approximations are derived and their accuracies are compared to the exact dielectric-slab solution. For a material whose thickness is 0.5 mm or less, the proposed technique was found to provide accurate values of its dielectric constant up to frequencies of 12 GHz or higher. The technique was used to measure the 8 to 12 GHz dielectric spectrum for vegetation leaves, teflon and rock samples.

Sarabandi, K.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Effect of Parasitic Dielectric Resonators on CPW/Aperture-Coupled Dielectric Resonator Antennas

The effects of parasitic dielectric resonators on the HE (sub 11 sigma) and HE (High Efficiency) (sub 13 sigma) modes of a cylindrical dielectric resonator antenna (DRA) have been studied. The DRA was excited electromagnetically with a grounded coplanar waveguide through an aperture in the common ground plane. Strong couplings were observed for the HE (sub 11 sigma) mode with the parasitic element superimposed on the driven DRA, and for the HE (sub 13 sigma) mode with parasitic elements placed on both sides of the driven DRA. Results indicate significant enhancement in bandwidth for both modes, and good radiation patterns for the HE (sub 11 sigma) mode.

Simons, R. N.↗
NASA NTRS1973

The electromagnetic radiation from simple sources in the presence of a homogeneous dielectric sphere

In this research, the effect of a homogeneous dielectric sphere on the electromagnetic radiation from simple sources is treated as a boundary value problem, and the solution is obtained by the technique of dyadic Green's functions. Exact representations of the electric fields in the various regions due to a source located inside, outside, or on the surface of a dielectric sphere are formulated. Particular attention is given to the effect of sphere size, source location, dielectric constant, and dielectric loss on the radiation patterns and directivity of small spheres (less than 5 wavelengths in diameter) using the Huygens' source excitation. The computed results are found to closely agree with those measured for waveguide-excited plexiglas spheres. Radiation patterns for an extended Huygens' source and for curved electric dipoles located on the sphere's surface are also presented. The resonance phenomenon associated with the dielectric sphere is studied in terms of the modal representation of the radiated fields. It is found that when the sphere is excited at certain frequencies, much of the energy is radiated into the sidelobes. The addition of a moderate amount of dielectric loss, however, quickly attenuates this resonance effect. A computer program which may be used to calculate the directivity and radiation pattern of a Huygens' source located inside or on the surface of a lossy dielectric sphere is listed.

Mason, V. B.↗