Chapters authored
Antenna Designs with Electromagnetic Band Gap Structures
Part of the book: Metamaterial
Non-Invasive Electromagnetic Biological Microwave Testing
Blood glucose monitoring is a primary tool for the care of diabetic patients. At present, there is no noninvasive monitoring technique of blood glucose concentration that is widely accepted in the medical industry. New noninvasive measurement techniques are being investigated. This work focuses on the possibility of a monitor that noninvasively measures blood glucose levels using electromagnetic waves. The technique is based on relating a monitoring antenna’s resonant frequency to the permittivity, and conductivity of skin, which in turn, is related to the glucose levels. This becomes a hot researched field in recent years. Different types of antennas (wideband and narrowband) have been designed, constructed, and tested in free space. An analytical model for the antenna has been developed, which has been validated with simulations. Microstrip antenna is one of the most common planar antenna structures used. Extensive research development aimed at exploiting its advantages such as lightweight, low cost, conformal configurations, and compatibility with integrated circuits have been carried out. Rectangular and circular patches are the basic shapes that are the most commonly used in microstrip antennas. Ideally, the dielectric constant εr, however, and other performance requirements may dictate the use of substrate whose dielectric constant can be greater. As in our prototype blood sensor, the miniaturized size is one of the main challenges.
Part of the book: Microwave Systems and Applications
Microwave Antennas for Energy Harvesting Applications
In the last few years, the demand for power has increased; therefore, the need for alternate energy sources has become essential. Sources of fossil fuels are finite, are costly, and causes environmental hazard. Sustainable, environmentally benign energy can be derived from nuclear fission or captured from ambient sources. Large-scale ambient energy is widely available and large-scale technologies are being developed to efficiently capture it. At the other end of the scale, there are small amounts of wasted energy that could be useful if captured. There are various types of external energy sources such as solar, thermal, wind, and RF energy. Energy has been harvested for different purposes in the last few recent years. Energy harvesting from inexhaustible sources with no adverse environmental effect can provide unlimited energy for harvesting in a way of powering an embedded system from the environment. It could be RF energy harvesting by using antennas that can be held on the car glass or building, or in any places. The abundant RF energy is harvested from surrounding sources. This chapter focuses on RF energy harvesting in which the abundant RF energy from surrounding sources, such as nearby mobile phones, wireless LANs (WLANs), Wi-Fi, FM/AM radio signals, and broadcast television signals or DTV, is captured by a receiving antenna and rectified into a usable DC voltage. A practical approach for RF energy harvesting design and management of the harvested and available energy for wireless sensor networks is to improve the energy efficiency and large accepted antenna gain. The emerging self-powered systems challenge and dictate the direction of research in energy harvesting (EH). There are a lot of applications of energy harvesting such as wireless weather stations, car tire pressure monitors, implantable medical devices, traffic alert signs, and mars rover. A lot of researches are done to create several designs of rectenna (antenna and rectifier) that meet various objectives for use in RF energy harvesting, whatever opaque or transparent. However, most of the designed antennas are opaque and prevent the sunlight to pass through, so it is hard to put it on the car glass or window. Thus, there should be a design for transparent antenna that allows the sunlight to pass through. Among various antennas, microstrip patch antennas are widely used because they are low profile, are lightweight, and have planar structure. Microstrip patch-structured rectennas are evaluated and compared with an emphasis on the various methods adopted to obtain a rectenna with harmonic rejection functionality, frequency, and polarization selectivity. Multiple frequency bands are tapped for energy harvesting, and this aspect of the implementation is one of the main focus points. The bands targeted for harvesting in this chapter will be those that are the most readily available to the general population. These include Wi-Fi hotspots, as well as cellular (900/850 MHz band), personal communications services (1800/1900 MHz band), and sources of 2.4 GHz and WiMAX (2.3/3.5 GHz) network transmitters. On the other hand, at high frequency, advances in nanotechnology have led to the development of semiconductor-based solar cells, nanoscale antennas for power harvesting applications, and integration of antennas into solar cells to design low-cost light-weight systems. The role of nanoantenna system is transforming thermal energy provided by the sun to electricity. Nanoantennas target the mid-infrared wavelengths where conventional photo voltaic cells are inefficient. However, the concept of using optical rectenna for harvesting solar energy was first introduced four decades ago. Recently, it has invited a surge of interest, with different laboratories around the world working on various aspects of the technology. The result is a technology that can be efficient and inexpensive, requiring only low-cost materials. Unlike conventional solar cells that harvest energy in visible light frequency range. Since the UV frequency range is much greater than visible light, we consider the quantum mechanical behavior of a driven particle in nanoscale antennas for power harvesting applications.
Part of the book: Microwave Systems and Applications
Detection of Underground Water by Using GPR
Water is the human vital requirement for life; in these days, decreasing of the fresh water increases the importance of the aquifer water. However, Upper Egypt is higher than north Egypt, so the water map continually changes daily, and the aquifer water is deeper than 10 m. The ground penetrating radar (GPR) system is used for underground water detection. GPR is a promising technology to detect and identify aquifer water or nonmetallic mines. One of the most serious components for the performance of GPR is the antenna system. The technology of the remote sensing and radar is rapidly developing, and it has led to the ultra-wideband electronic systems. All of these factors, such as miniaturized, low cost, possible compromise solution between depth and resolution, scanning in real time, easy to interpret, and decreased the false alarm, are important in designing the ground penetrating system. The electrical properties of the sand and fresh water layers are investigated using laboratory measurement and EM simulation. Different types of antenna may be used in GPR to operate over a frequency range for different penetration depth. Frequency-modulated continuous wave is also used for GPR and for through-the-wall applications. However, most of these kinds of antennas are limited by their large volume for certain applications. Therefore, a compact Vivaldi antenna with EBG and a compact planar printed quasi-Yagi antenna with meandered ground plane are designed to fulfill all above requirement.
Part of the book: Groundwater
Passive Components for Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) Applications
View all chaptersUWB technology brings the convenience and mobility of wireless communications to very high-speed interconnects in the home and office due to the precision capabilities combined with the low power. This makes it ideal for certain radio frequency sensitive environments such as hospitals and healthcare as well as radars. UWB intrusion-detection radar is used for detecting through the wall and also used for security with fuse avoidance radar, precision locating and tracking (using distance measurements between radios), and precision time-of-arrival-based localization approaches. The FCC issued a ruling in 2002 that allowed intentional UWB emissions in the frequency range between 3.1 and 10.6 GHz, subject to certain restrictions for the emission power spectrum. Other definitions for ultra-wideband range of frequency are also used such as any device that has 500 MHz bandwidth or fractional bandwidth greater than 25% is considered an UWB enable high data rate to be transferred with a very low power that does not exceed −41.3 dBm.
Part of the book: UWB Technology