All-dielectric miniature wideband rf receive antenna

Wen Cheng Wang; Weiping Lin; Hank Marshall; Robert B. Skolnick; David T. Schaafsma

doi:10.1117/1.1645259

1 March 2004 All-dielectric miniature wideband rf receive antenna

Wen Cheng Wang, Weiping Lin, Hank Marshall, Robert B. Skolnick, David T. Schaafsma

Optical Engineering, Vol. 43, Issue 3, (March 2004). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.1645259

An integrated Mach-Zehnder interferometer made of electro-optic (EO) polymers with a dimension of 3×1.2 cm was fabricated as a wideband rf receive antenna. When an electric field is applied to the interferometer arm(s) made of EO material, a phase delay is generated that results in a net imbalance in the interferometer, and thus a change in the output intensity. This output intensity change, which contains electric field strength and temporal profile information, is then read by a photodetector and processed. This antenna was tested in a µ-strip traveling wave electromagnetic cell at frequencies from 100 MHz to 1.04 GHz. The test results show the antenna had a good linear response over a 70-dB power range. The lowest possible measured E_min was about 4 mV/m (or 2.1 pW/cm²) at 1-kHz resolution bandwidth with a laser power of 0.4 mW (–4 dBm) measured after the sensor. The measured E-field signal increases with increasing laser power, which indicates that significant sensitivity improvement can be easily obtained by lowering passive losses. The antenna sensitivity can be further improved by lowering the device insertion loss, optimizing the photodetector and detection circuitry, and using EO polymers with higher EO coefficients.

©(2004) Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE)

Citation Download Citation

Wen Cheng Wang, Weiping Lin, Hank Marshall, Robert B. Skolnick, and David T. Schaafsma "All-dielectric miniature wideband rf receive antenna," Optical Engineering 43(3), (1 March 2004). https://doi.org/10.1117/1.1645259

Published: 1 March 2004

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available