Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

Presents a listing of the editorial board, board of governors, current staff, committee members, and/or society editors for this issue of the publication.

Emerging broadband and millimeter-wave frequency applications, including 5G wireless communications, high-speed optical networks, radars, sensors, imaging and security systems, and measurement instrumentation, continue to expand and grow in the next decade. One of the key components of these systems is the broadband (including sub-6 GHz) and millimeter-wave power amplifier. The specific requirements

This article reviews the state-of-the-art millimeter-wave (mm-wave) power amplifiers (PAs), focusing on broadband design techniques. An overview of the main solid-state technologies is provided, including Si, gallium arsenide (GaAs), GaN, and other III–V materials, and both field-effect and bipolar transistors. The most popular broadband design techniques are introduced, before critically comparing

This article presents a frequency-reconfigurable outphasing GaAs power amplifier MMIC operating over an 18–38-GHz range with 2–6-GHz RF bandwidth per frequency setting. The architecture is based on a broadband power combining structure providing nonisolating power combining. Reconfigurable shunt elements based on p-i-n diode switches control the Chireix reactance compensation to enable frequency-reconfigurable

Investigations into integrated millimeter-wave (mmW) Class-F −1 power amplifier (PA) in stacked configuration have not been reported previously. This article presents a novel two-stage double-stacked heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) Class-F −1 PA in the 130-nm SiGe-BiCMOS technology. The proposed amplifier operates at the mmW center frequency of 38 GHz. The driving stage of the amplifier is

This article presents a compact 150-GHz transmitter with 12-dBm $P_{\mathrm{ sat}}$ and 17-dB conversion gain. This $D$ -band transmitter is composed of a frequency doubler, a micromixer, a two-stage $g_{m}$ -boosting power amplifier (PA), and an on-chip dielectric resonate (DR) antenna. At sub-terahertz, the output power and the gain are the limiting factors for the transmitter’s performance. In this

In this article, a two-stage broadband GaAs power amplifier (PA) is presented, which consists of an improved Darlington power stage and a drive stage. As the most important part of the two-stage PA, the proposed Darlington power stage can simultaneously achieve large bandwidth and watt-level output power. The circuit analysis of the Darlington structure is carried out for large-size transistors. The

This article proposes a design methodology of dual-band outphasing power amplifier (OPA) based on two noncommensurate transmission lines (NCTLs). The devised NCTLs are used to replace the imperative reactance compensation and impedance matching networks in a conventional design. In virtue of this, the overall complexity of the combiner can be greatly reduced without sacrificing the load modulation

In this article, an artificial neural network (ANN)-based large-signal model (LSM) of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) with accurate buffer-related trapping effects characterization and modeling is proposed. A hybrid small-signal parameter-extraction method for AlGaN/GaN HEMTs is used to acquire the parasitic parameters. To simplify the modeling procedure of the drain–source current

In this article, we present the analysis, design, and implementation of a wideband 10-W monolithic microwave integrated circuit power amplifier (PA), fabricated in a low-cost 0.1- $\mu \text{m}$ gallium nitride (GaN) on Si technology. The design is focused on the realization of a low-loss and wideband impedance transformation networks across 2–20 GHz using a reactive matching (RM) technique. The two-stage

A broadband and compact harmonic-tuned power amplifier (PA) is presented for 5G and mobile satellite communication (SATCOM). A noninverting 1:1 transformer is the core of the output matching and provides an embedded second harmonic trap in a compact layout. The proposed PA is fabricated by the BiCMOS SiGe-8XP technology. At $P_{1\,\text {dB}}$ , an output power of 11 dBm and a collector efficiency

A novel frequency-agile power amplifier (PA) designed with a modified class-J theory enforcing constant maximum and minimum instantaneous drain voltages for all frequencies is presented. The resulting high-efficiency class-J mode that requires a reconfigurable drain supply exhibits clockwise fundamental- and second-harmonic load impedance trajectories versus frequency facilitating the PA design. This

Performance limits and design techniques for millimeter-wave amplifiers employing switches for multiband operation are presented in this article. A bidirectional dual-band amplifier is designed in a 130-nm silicon–germanium (SiGe) process. The amplifier can shift its operational frequency between 28 or 60 GHz and can operate in low-noise receive or high-power transmit mode. The frequency shift and

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers.

These instructions give guidelines for preparing papers for this publication. Presents information for authors publishing in this journal.

This Mini-Special Issue of the IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques (TMTT) includes seven articles from authors who had initially presented their novel work at the 2019 IEEE RFIC Radio Frequency Integrated Circuits (RFIC) Symposium, which was held in Boston in June 2019.

This transactions’ Mini-Special Issue includes 11 expanded articles from the 2019 IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) International Microwave Workshop Series on Advanced Materials and Processes (IMWS-AMP 2019), held in Bochum, Germany, on July 16–18, 2019.

5G is coming and wireless communication not only has changed our life but also is becoming one of the core infrastructure supports for multiple vertical industries. Different industrial applications require different standards with different data-rate demands, accompanied by a burst of new standards and frequency bands. It is the basic requirement that a 5G mobile terminal must support 4G/3G even 2G

In the original article [1] , a declaration of financial interest is missing. The declaration is given as follows:

In the original article [1] , a declaration of financial interest is missing. The declaration is given as follows:

We introduce a transmitter (TX) architecture and a linearization technique for concurrent transmission of two intraband noncontiguous carrier aggregation signals in the 5 GHz frequency band. The technique is based on low-power and narrowband analog signal injection to compensate for out-of-band (OOB) third-order intermodulation distortions (IMD3), together with 2-D digital predistortion to address

A review is presented of the key techniques for high-power, high-efficiency millimeter-Wave (mm-Wave) 5G power amplifier (PA) design in deep submicrometer planar and FinFET bulk CMOS processes. The work utilizes a distributed unit cell-based layout technique for neutralized differential pairs and stacking transistors in bulk CMOS. This article also proposes a prediction of saturated output power (

This article investigates the stochastic Schottky barrier variations of printed distributed Schottky diodes consisting of a self-assembled arrangement of crystalline silicon microcones onto a metal layer. The microcone formation emerges from an inkjet printed Si nanoparticle film after laser sintering, yielding a Schottky diode when a corresponding top metallization is applied. The $I - V$ characteristic

This article presents a wideband self-interference (SI) canceling full-duplex (FD) receiver. In-band linearity requirement for an FD receiver is studied. It is shown that an FD receiver requires a minimum IB-IIP 3 which if not provided, results in sensitivity degradation. To provide the required out-of-band linearity, an eight-phase passive mixer-first architecture is chosen for the receiver. In order

A 180-GHz super-regenerative oscillator capable of 58 dB gain and fast switching at a rate up to 10 GHz is implemented in a 130nm SiGe BiCMOS technology. It is the fastest reported super-regenerative circuit in terms of data-rate and the first one to be packaged in a standalone mm-wave waveguide module. The oscillator has a tuning range of 6.5%, an output power of 0.5 dBm, and occupies an area of 0

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

Multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) technique is one of the critical techniques for 5G and beyond. Each transmitting channel of the MIMO system must be driven by a power amplifier (PA) accordingly, and the output power levels of these PAs are required to be dynamically adjustable according to the data traffics and the high peak-to-average ratio (PAPR) of the transmit signals. For covering different distances

The proposed fully integrated digital-intensive system on chip (SoC) allows dual-mode protocols of Bluetooth low energy (BLE) 5.0 and IEEE802.15.4 with extended-range wireless connectivity and ad hoc mesh networks for Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems in wireless sensor networks. The SoC fully integrates a dc–dc converter, LDOs, a digitally controlled crystal oscillator (DCXO), a PHY, a microcontroller

In this article a compact 120-GHz multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) imaging radar is presented. With a module size of only 25 cm, an angular resolution of less than 0.9° is obtained in elevation and azimuth direction using 24 transmitters and 24 receivers. The hardware is based on a SiGe:C MMIC technology and integrated into a modular frontend and backend structure. This article presents the overall

Tightly packaged receivers pose a challenge for noise measurements. Their only outputs are often diagnostic or benchmark information—“user data” that result from unknown processing. These include data rate test results, signal-to-noise ratio estimated by the receiver, and so on. Some of these are important gauges of communication viability that may be enshrined in performance and conformance specifications

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

Presents a listing of the editorial board, board of governors, current staff, committee members, and/or society editors for this issue of the publication.

Multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) technique is one of the critical techniques for 5G and beyond. For supporting the beamforming configurations of 5G and beyond, millimeter-wave (mm-wave) phased arrays will be adopted, resulting in high requirements of the signal alignments among the arrays.

This article presents a full-wave method to characterize lossy conductors in an interconnect setting. To this end, a novel and accurate differential surface admittance operator for cuboids based on entire domain basis functions is formulated. By combining this new operator with the augmented electric field integral equation, a comprehensive broadband characterization is obtained. Compared with the

The solution of highly nonlinear inverse scattering problems is addressed. An innovative multiresolution microwave imaging technique, which leverages on the profitable integration of the contraction integral equation for inversion (CIE-I) and the iterative multiscaling approach (IMSA), is proposed. Thanks to the joint exploitation of the features of the CIE-I formulation and the IMSA, the arising IMSA-CIE-I

Advances in semiconductor devices have allowed researchers to explore temporal modulation as a means to achieve nonreciprocity. This is of practical importance, since nonreciprocity is often desired in electronic systems that are incompatible with the integration of magnetic materials. Recently, $N$ -path networks, a class of electronic systems, whose behavior was first introduced in the 1950s, have

To alleviate the nonuniform error distribution and slow convergence caused by the uncertainty of sample selection in the training process of artificial neural networks, a semisupervised radial basis function neural network (SS-RBFNN) model with a new sampling strategy is proposed for parametric modeling of microwave components in this article. After evaluating the current training performance, the

In this article, starting from full-wave partial differential equation (PDE)-based Maxwell’s equations where $\mathbf {E}$ and $\mathbf {H}$ are coupled, we derive a closed-form model of the inverse of Maxwell’s system of equations in the physical layout of an integrated circuit, package, and board. In this model, we decompose the inverse rigorously into $R$ , $C$ , $L$ , and full-wave components,

A compact and broadband circular TE 01 -mode oversized deformed waveguide bend for high-power transmission line is proposed in this article. In order to obtain a circular TE 01 mode with high purity output, a deformed waveguide structure, entitled quad-polar waveguide, which can destroy the degeneration between the TE 01 and TM 11 modes and weak mode conversion inside waveguide bend is introduced.

A novel reconfigurable negative group delay (NGD) circuit based on branch-line coupler is proposed in this article. It consists of two branch-line couplers that are connected by two varactors with different capacitance values. By simply adjusting the capacitance values, both the transmission gain/loss and group delay (GD) values of the proposed circuit can be independently adjusted as desired. Full

This article discusses on the measured third-order intermodulation (IMD3) products and third harmonics (H3) appearing in a set of six different solidly mounted resonators (SMR) and bulk acoustic-wave (BAW) resonators with different shapes and stack configurations. The discussion is supported by a comprehensive nonlinear distributed circuit model that considers the nonlinear effects potentially occurring

A microwave device able to detect differential-mode to common-mode conversion (or vice versa) in a four-port balanced circuit is proposed. For mode conversion detection, the balanced circuit should be fed by a differential-mode signal, generated by means of a rat-race balun from a single-ended signal. By connecting the pair of output ports of the balanced circuit under test to one of the two pairs

This article utilizes a topology optimization approach to design planar multilayer transitions between substrate integrated waveguides (SIWs) and rectangular waveguides (RWGs). The optimization problem is formulated based on the modal field analyses and Maxwell’s equations in the time domain solved by the finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. We present a time-domain boundary condition based

Resistive-wall impedance constitutes a significant percentage of the total beam-coupling impedance budget of an accelerator. A number of different reduction techniques have been proposed during the years depending on the specific applications, ranging from higher order modes damping to solutions entailing high electrical-conductivity coatings of the pipe. This article investigates the use of metamaterial-based

This article presents a method for analyzing the coupling between two adjacent substrate-integrated waveguides (SIWs) sharing a common row of metallic cylinders, which is based on the concept of equivalent circuit and wavenumber calculation. When the specific sizes of two adjacent SIWs are known, the scattering parameters of the shared common row of metallic cylinders can be derived, and the equivalent

A Ku / Ka -band oversized waveguide bend, transmitting the power of TE 01 mode at Ka -band and TE 11 mode at Ku -band, is designed for the high-power transmission line. To suppress the generation of parasitic modes, a waveguide bend based on the elliptical waveguide is used to minimize the coupling capacity between the operating modes and the undesired modes. The mode coupling rules inside the elliptical

Mushroom-type electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structures are known to operate as high-impedance surfaces at low-frequency bands. They are broadly used in the microwave regime. However, one of the main drawbacks of mushroom-type EBG structures is their narrow bandwidth. In this article, we propose a mushroom-type EBG structure with glide-symmetric edge vias to increase the operational bandwidth. This

In this article, a novel and efficient ultra-wideband power-combining method over K (18–26 GHz) and Ka (26–40 GHz) band is presented. Ridge waveguide power combiners and contactless transition between ridge waveguide and double microstrip lines will be used in this method. By using this method, a 16-way power combiner system is designed to work in the bandwidth of 18–40 GHz through 3-D electromagnetic

High-performance microwave and millimeter-wave filters’ design is a challenging task because the filter characteristic is rather sensitive to the variation of geometric dimensions and electrical sizes. A common practice in filter design is to optimize the design variables starting from a set of initial values. However, if the initial values are not sufficiently close to the optimal solution, the optimization

We propose an impedance-matching technique for metasurfaces generating evanescent fields with complex free-space impedance for subwavelength focusing. The proposed technique is mandatory for the subwavelength focusing far beyond the diffraction limit. First, we theoretically show the fact that the wave impedance becomes a complex number due to the generated evanescent fields and give an explicit form

A new, frequency-domain, behavioral modeling methodology for radio frequency (RF) power transistors, based on canonical section-wise piecewise linear (CSWPL) functions, is presented in this article. The basic theory of the proposed model for fundamental, harmonic, and dc responses is provided within. Compared with the existing nonlinear behavioral models, which require tables of coefficients to account

In this article, a class of improved Schiffman phase shifters with two C-section coupled lines separately operating in the first and second phase periods is presented and analyzed. Theoretical model and closed-form synthesis formulae are utilized to analyze the phase performances of the proposed phase shifters, which reveals significant differences compared to the phase shifters solely operating in

In this article, a novel topology is proposed to design a class of power dividers with the simultaneous realization of wideband power division and port-to-port isolation. On the one hand, in order to achieve a wideband power dividing response, two wideband filtering branches, including multimode resonators and parallel-coupled lines, are formed to replace the quarter-wavelength impedance transformers

An analytic broadband design method for four-port N-branch branch-line couplers with outputs terminated by arbitrary impedances is given. An alternative, more practical design method has also been included, which avoids impedance discontinuities in the branches and retrieves the outputs-in-quadrature property lost in the asymmetrization. The doubly asymmetrical couplers so obtained are then used in

This article presents a type of bandpass filter (BPF)-integrated single-pole double-throw (SPDT) switch using the frequency selective star-junction matching circuit and the switched magnetic coupling (SMC) technique, i.e., the lowpass phase shifter (LP-PS) and the quasi-elliptic lowpass filter (QE-LPF) with specified phase shift. Firstly, a high selectivity third-order BPF-integrated single-pole single-throw

In this article, we present the first demonstration of distributed and symmetrical all-band quasi-absorptive filters that can be designed to arbitrarily high orders. The proposed quasi-absorptive filter consists of a bandpass section (reflective-type coupled-line filter) and absorptive sections (a matched resistor in series with a shorted quarter-wavelength transmission line). Through a detailed analysis

Techniques of common-mode (CM) noise absorption have been developed in recent years, but very few of them can achieve CM bidirectional absorption. This article proposed a novel circuit architecture that can provide bidirectional CM noise absorption theoretically, meaning that the circuit can absorb CM noises from both sides of differential channels. The essential concept is to design the even–even

In order to compensate for amplitude inconsistencies of components and circuits, the equalizer has been proposed and introduced. In the previous reports, the theory of equalizer is mainly based on the resonant circuit. In this article, the substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) equalizer fabricated on a ceramic substrate with surface resistance, operating in a millimeter- wave band, is presented first

In this article, for the first time, a novel four-port coupler with reconfigurable multifunctions of filtering rat-race coupler (FRC), filtering branch-line coupler (FBC), and conventional single-ended two-port multipole bandpass filter (BPF) is proposed. It simply consists of four varactor-loaded stepped-impedance resonators that are arranged symmetrically. Through appropriate coupling-type (electrical