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In this letter, two novel broadband circularly polarized slot-microstrip antennas (SMPA) with circular and square structures are elaborated. The circular SMPA is composed of four crown patches as parasitic elements, four crown slots etched on a circular ground plane, and a circular loop sequential phase feeding structure. However, the square SMPA consists of four parasitic rectangular patches, four square slots with cut corners, and a square-loop feeding structure. In the circular SMPA, the parasitic crown patches and crown slots are used to excite multiple circularly polarized (CP) resonant modes, which are fed by a circular loop sequential phase feeding structure through capacitive coupling. Combined with these CP modes, the CP bandwidth of the presented antenna could be improved. Eventually, the proposed circular SMPA has a broad 3-dB axial ratio bandwidth (ARBW) of 20.6% (5.206.40, 5.8 GHz) and a wide 10-dB impedance bandwidth (IBW) of 25.8% (4.926.38, 5.65 GHz), which could occupy the WLAN (5.7255.85 GHz), ITS (5.8 GHz), and WIFI (5.85-5.925 GHz) bands.

In this paper, systematic characterization of the dual probe, which is designed for the near field simultaneous measurement of both electric and magnetic field, is investigated with a microstrip line as the device under test (DUT). The characterization includes frequency response, transmission performance, symmetry, reflection, the intrusion of probe to the DUT, isolation of electric and magnetic field responses, field profile and spatial resolution, and differential electric field suppression. The dual probes with different design are adopted to demonstrate the systematic characterization.

An extended model of through-silicon via (TSV)-based solenoid inductor is proposed to save on-chip areas for 3-D radio frequency (RF) ICs and package integration. To achieve a high inductance density, the nested topology consists of high-density TSVs in high-resistivity silicon substrate and multilayers of metals in compatible CMOS process. Then, an analytical inductance model, considering the mutual inductance of TSVs and complicated metal traces, is established and verified. The inductance variation in physical dimensions is studied based on the modeled and simulated results of a TSV solenoid inductor in single tier. The proposed TSV solenoid typology gets better performance at inductance density and quality factor around some frequencies through analytical model and full-wave simulations. Further studies are directed toward RF application overview according to broadband and low power consumption.

Electromagnetic patterns in near field scanning usually give important information about the source inside an device under test. In this paper, we develop a postprocessing technique, including standard-deviation-based method, principal component analysis, and K -means method, so that the electromagnetic patterns in near field scanning can be extracted fast and grouped automatically and efficiently. The postprocessing techniques are applied to experimental near-field scanning of ICs, such as a microcontroller unit (MCU) and a field programmable gate array (FPGA). The grouping on the electromagnetic patterns of the MCU is in good agreement with the published grouping result, and the grouping on the electromagnetic patterns of the FPGA can find out the additional cluster responsible for additional circuit.

To measure the magnetic near field with high common-mode noise rejection, a probe with the differential and symmetrical structure forming a detection loop is developed. Such measurement is performed by using a two-port vector network analyzer (VNA) and validated by using a microstrip line as a device under test (DUT). In comparison to the measurement with traditional single-output magnetic near field probe, the electric field suppression of the proposed measurement can be improved by at least 10 dB in the frequency range of $3\sim 11$ GHz, while the other characteristics remain unchanged.

In this paper, the radiated emission of a microcontroller integrated circuit is investigated by rotating the test board in a transverse electromagnetic (TEM) cell measurement. The dependence of the radiated emission on the angle of rotation is derived on the basis of the coupling between a microstrip line and the TEM cell, and then validated by the multiple-orientation TEM cell measurements in a quantitative accuracy of fitting. With the validated dependence, the radiated emissions contributed by electric and magnetic coupling are extracted. The extracted emissions are found in agreement with the measurement result by near-field scanning experiments.

With the trend of miniature, high-integrated assembly modules are common in modern industry. The measurement of the flowing current and voltage on a trace is basic for diagnosis and monitoring of these modules. The traditional contact detection method is not practical especially in conditions of high power and small space. In this paper, we demonstrate a novel method for collocated and simultaneous measurements of radio frequency current and voltage on a trace in a noncontact and movable manner. The measurements are achieved by using a compact probe with both voltage and current detectors, as well as an algorithm based on the transfer functions quantifying the capacitive and inductive couplings between the detectors and the tested trace. The proposed method is verified and applied for continuous power measurements, collocated and simultaneous measurements of transient voltage and current pulses and the dynamic voltage and current of a switching device.

A near-field scanning is usually time-consuming to map the electromagnetic field along the surface of a device. In this communication, a dual probe is proposed with a U-shaped loop to sense radio frequency (RF) magnetic and electric fields simultaneously, so that the one-time scanning by the dual probe can replace the two-time scanning by single-detector probes. Different from the traditional near-field scanning by using a single-detector probe and spectrum analyzer, the proposed scanning can be achieved by the two-output probe and a two-port vector network analyzer connecting to the probe. The efficient near-field scanning measurements of the electric and magnetic field on a conductor-backed coplanar waveguide transmission line and an RF power divider by using the dual probe are in agreement with those by using two single-detector probes.

This paper presents a noncontact radio frequency voltage sensing of a printed trace by using a capacitive-coupled probe. The noncontact voltage sensing is demonstrated by using an open-end coaxial probe, and achieved through the transfer factor from the printed trace to the probe and a reconstruction algorithm. To validate the voltage sensing, known periodic, and pulse voltages are injected into the printed trace and compared with the reconstructed waveforms. Our results demonstrate that the voltage sensing method can be used for measurement of a random waveform with period even down to 1 ns and single pulse with rise time down to 2 ns. In consideration of the flexible relocation of the probe, the voltage sensing accuracy caused by spatial errors is also investigated.

In this paper, we study the orientation effect of magnetic and electric field-to-line coupling (FtLC) between a microstrip line and a TEM cell by using a square-shaped transmission line pulse as an interference source. With the detections at enough orientations, the electric and magnetic FtLCs can be extracted with high accuracy. It is found that in the TEM cell, the ratio of electric to maximum magnetic FtLC is dominated by the characteristic impedance of the studied microstrip line due to the determined value of width-to-distance. For a certain ratio of electric to maximum magnetic FtLC, there is a singular angle at which the microstrip line gives no response for any electromagnetic interference excitation. Meanwhile, at the supplementary angle, the response of the microstrip line shows no dependence on the termination load.

In this paper, we change terminal loads of a microstrip line to separate electric field coupling and magnetic field coupling between a microstrip line and a transverse electromagnetic (TEM) cell during radiated emission measurement. Such separation can also be validated by another terminal load. After validation, the effect of termination on both couplings is investigated, and the requirements of termination impedance to suppress the two couplings are revealed. In addition, we find that the linear physical models deriving both lumped coupling parameters only hold below a limited frequency.

In this paper, we investigated on -state electroluminescence (EL) characteristics in fresh GaN-based HEMTs under different on -state bias conditions. It demonstrated that: 1) the intensity of the on -state EL emitted by the GaN-based HEMTs with relatively high ${\rm V}_{\rm DS}$ $({\rm V}_{\rm DS}>10\ \hbox{V} )$ monotonically increased as the gate voltage increased; and 2) the distribution of the intensity of the on -state EL was uniform along the gate and across the device before stress tests. The degradation process and mechanisms of the devices in the high temperature operation (HTO) stress were also analyzed based on the on -state EL characterization, the electrical measurement, and failure analysis. It demonstrated the following. First, the on -state EL distribution of the device after step HTO (S-HTO) stress tests was no longer uniform along one of the fingers, which indicated that the degradation was related to this finger. This hypothesis was confirmed by the SEM observation after the deprocess of the gate metal and the SiN passivation layer. Second, a new degradation mechanism of AlGaN/GaN HEMTs that caused the abrupt degradation in the S-HTO stress was identified and related to the emergent, localized, and jagged crack under the gate metal. Third, there was no abrupt degradation in the long-term HTO (LT-HTO) stress test. However, the on -state EL intensity of the inner fingers in the device after the LT-HTO stress test decreased more than that of the outer fingers, which meant that the degradation of the inner fingers was faster than that of the outer fingers as a result of the higher temperature caused by self-heating in the inner region of the device. Finally, the gradual degradation in the LT-HTO stress test was ascribed to the gradual formation of structural damage along the drain side of the whole gate edge, which was confirmed by the SEM observation.