Broadband electronically tunable planar active radiating elements and spatial power combiners using notch antennas

A Gunn device has been integrated with two types of active planar notch antennas. The first types uses a coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonator an a stepped-notched antenna with bias tuning to achieve a bandwidth of 275 MHz centered at 9.33 GHz with a power output of 14.2±1.5 dBm. The second type uses a CPW resonator with a varactor for frequency tuning to achieve a bandwidth of over 1.3 GHz centered at 9.6 GHz with a power output of 14.5±0.8 dBm. This is equivalent to over 14% electronic tuning bandwidth. Both configurations exhibit a very clean and stable output signal. A theoretical circuit model was developed to facilitate the design. The model agrees well with experimental results. Injection-locking experiments on the second configuration show a locking gain of 30 dB with a locking bandwidth of 30 MHz at 10.2 GHz. Power combining experiments of two-varactor-tuned CPW active notch antenna elements in a broadside configuration have achieved well over 70% combining efficiency throughout the wide tuning range. The circuits have advantages of small size, low cost, and excellent performance