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202

IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, APRIL 2013

Active Integrated Antenna Using


BJT With Floating Base
Madhur Deo Upadhayay, Student Member, IEEE, Ananjan Basu, Member, IEEE, M P Abegaonkar, Member, IEEE,
and S K Koul, Fellow, IEEE

AbstractA feedback-oscillator type active antenna using RF


BJT with floating base terminal has been demonstrated for the first
time. Other than simplifying bias connections, which is important
for large arrays and power combining, this has potential for future optical sensing and control circuitry, since the floating base is
light-sensitive.
Index TermsActive antenna, floating base, injection locking.

I. INTRODUCTION

feedback oscillator integrating a passive antenna which


completes a frequency-selective loop as well as a radiating element, is an oscillator-type active antenna [1][5]. All
such circuits which use a BJT as the active device require a dc
bias for the transistor base [6], which necessitates an r.f. choke
or an equivalent element. Since active antennas may be used as
elements of a large planar array for power combining, a significant reduction of complexity is possible if the base bias can be
eliminated. For the first time, an active antenna is demonstrated
which does not require any d.c connection to the base, which is
kept floating at dc Other than an active antenna, this is probably
the first microwave oscillator demonstrated with a floating base.
It will also be shown that it is possible to injection-lock this
active antenna. At this stage, the performance of this component is not very good it requires an unusually high collector
bias, leading to poor efficiency and reliability. However, it
demonstrates that such a circuit is possible, which is promising
for circuits using optical control of the light-sensitive floating
base. Floating-gate FET-based active antennas have been
demonstrated [7], but they do not have the light-sensitivity
possible using a BJT.
II. DESIGN AND MEASUREMENT OF ACTIVE ANTENNA
This proposed design consists of a silicon BJT NE662M04
with grounded emitter, a single inductor for collector bias, 50
transmission lines and a 2-port passive microstrip patch antenna,
as shown in Fig. 1. Substrate used was 0.762 mm thick with
. The two-port T-coupled antenna (Fig. 2) was optimized using CST Microwave Studio [8], to perform at 5.5 GHz
[9]. This antenna also works as a dc block in the loop. The
Manuscript received October 26, 2012; accepted February 05, 2013. Date of
publication March 12, 2013; date of current version April 04, 2013.
The authors are with the Centre for Applied Research in Electronic,
Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, New Delhi110016, India (e-mail:
madhur_deo@yahoo.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2013.2247748

Fig. 1. Schematic of floating base active antenna.

Fig. 2. Passive 2-port microstrip patch.

line-lengths (50 , 1.8 mm wide lines) from the patch to the


base and collector were adjusted to get stable oscillations, using
ADS software [10]. It was observed that transient simulation
was unreliable and often failed to converge.
Fig. 3 shows a photograph of the active antenna incorporating
a coupler for injection locking. The coupler was omitted in the
initial measurements. The active antenna without coupler radiated around 5.571 GHz. The power at 1 m distance using a
. Assuming a typical
10 dB gain horn was around
value of 6 dB for the gain of this patch, the radiated power
is around 2 mW. The frequency of RF signal is close to the
frequency of resonator, i.e., passive antenna in our case. The
voltage waveform at the collector of the RF BJT was measured
using a Digital Storage Oscilloscope (DSO Agilent Infiniium
DSO-X 92504A with differential probe upto 25 GHz). A sample
waveform is shown in Fig. 4, and it is seen that harmonic content is small.
The variation of free-running frequency and power with collector bias voltage ( in Fig. 1) is shown in Fig. 5, and the radiation pattern in Fig. 6. The bias voltage ( in Fig. 1) had to

1531-1309/$31.00 2013 IEEE

UPADHAYAY et al.: ACTIVE INTEGRATED ANTENNA USING BJT WITH FLOATING BASE

Fig. 3. Active antenna with a 10 dB coupler for injection locking (63


substrate).

203

45 mm

Fig. 6. Radiation pattern (

, 58 mA).

Fig. 4. Measured collector voltage.

Fig. 7. Radiation pattern of passive 2-port patch with 1 port matched.

ferent from the pattern for the active antenna, which implies that
the current distribution is different (at least along the antenna
length, which has a greater impact on the -plane pattern).
III. INJECTION LOCKING

Fig. 5. Frequency and power variation with bias voltage (received with 10 dB
gain horn from 1 m away).

be raised to at least 7 V (
) for oscillations to start,
and after that it could be reduced down to 5.2 V (
)
while maintaining oscillations. Very little change in these values
was seen even when injection locking was used. These voltages
and currents are far beyond the recommended maximum values
for this transistor, and many devices burnt out during experimentation. At this stage this circuit is not practical this is just
a demonstration that such an active antenna is possible. While
the operation of the circuit is not very clear, it is probable that
the device is biased in the avalanche breakdown region [11],
which is known to show negative resistance. Oscillators using
avalanche breakdown have been demonstrated [12], but at low
frequencies, and not in the form of active antenna.
The radiation pattern of just the 2-port patch, with a match on
one port is shown in Fig. 7, and it is seen to be substantially dif-

The active antenna including a10 dB coupler, as in Fig. 3, was


biased at
and
(see Fig. 1) and a
10 dB gain horn antenna used as receiver at distance of 1 m.
The received signal had power level of
and frequency
of 5.61 GHz. CW signals from a synthesizer, of different power
levels, were injected into the active antenna through the coupler
to study the locking of active antenna and determining locking
bandwidth, as given in Table I. The frequencies are shifted from
what is shown in Fig. 5, due to inclusion of the coupler. This
was repeated using 15 and 20 dB couplers, and the results were
on expected lines (higher input powers giving the same bandwidth).
Time domain study of injection locking was also performed.
To generate the locking signal, a train of rectangular pulses of
0.6 MHz frequency and 0 V, 1 V levels was used as modulating signal and a CW microwave signal from a synthesized RF
source was used as carrier signal. This pulse modulated signal
was injected into the active antenna through the coupler.
The radiated signal was received through the horn antenna
and was displayed on one channel of the DSO, while the 1 MHz
modulating signal is displayed on another channel. The product

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO. 4, APRIL 2013

TABLE I
INJECTION POWER AND LOCKING BANDWIDTH

the first oscillator to use a floating base, which may be useful


for optical control and sensing. Injection locking of this active
antenna is also demonstrated, with a very small locking time.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors are grateful to the staff of Agilent Technologies
for a donation of ADS software.

REFERENCES

Fig. 8. Signal received from horn (lowest trace : scale


to 0.28), locking
), and low-pass filtered product (upper trace).
signal (middle trace: scale

(computed by DSO) of the signals fed to the two channels, lowpass filtered, is also shown. This trace makes it easy to identify
locking and unlocking.
This particular case (using a 20 dB coupler) shown in Fig. 8
gave an enhanced amplitude when injection is locked close to
the free-running frequency, and more importantly clearly shows
the time to lock, which is very small (
). Other cases
with longer locking times, and even cases of slow unlocking
after staying locked for some time, have also been observed.
IV. CONCLUSION
An active antenna using a BJT with floating base has been
demonstrated successfully for the first time. This is also possibly

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