Time-Domain Equivalent Circuits for the Link Modeling Between Pulsed Photoconductive Sources and Receivers

Photoconductive antennas (PCAs) are promising candidates for sensing and imaging applications. In recent years, our group has investigated their properties under pulsed laser illumination in transmission using a time-domain (TD) Norton equivalent circuit. Here, we extend this analysis to the link between a photoconductive source and a...

Fabrication and Characterization of a Leaky Lens Photo-Conductive Antenna on Low Temperature Grown GaAs Membranes

State-of-the-art THz pulsed commercial systems operating over large bandwidth suffer from high dispersion or low radiation efficiency due to the poor coupling between the transmitter and receiver photoconductive antennas (PCAs). In this work, we present the fabrication and characterization of a leaky-lens PCA that has the potential to solve...

Time-Domain Modelling of Pulsed Photoconducting Sources - Part II: Characterization of an LT GaAs Bow-Tie Antenna

Drude's description of the response of low-temperature gallium arsenide to optical pulse excitation is used to evaluate the components of a time-domain Norton equivalent circuit of a photoconductive antenna (PCA) source. The saturation of the terahertz (THz) radiated power occurring at large optical excitation levels was previously associated...

Focal Plane Array of Shaped Quartz Lenses for Wide Field-of-view Sub-millimeter Imaging Systems

Large format focal plane arrays (FPAs) of dielectric lenses are promising candidates for wide field-of-view submillimeter imagers. In this work, we optimize the scanning gain of such imagers via shaping lens surfaces. We develop an optimization procedure using a field correlation technique between the fields generated by a reflector on the...

On the Experimental Characterization of Generated and Received Pulses of Photoconductive Antennas

Photoconductive antennas (PCAs) are promising candidates for sensing and imaging systems. We have investigated their properties under pulsed laser illumination both in transmission and reception. First, a transmitting PCA has been characterized including a power measurement. Then, a Quasi-Optical (QO) link between a transmitter and a receiver...

A Shaped Quartz Lens Antenna for Wide Scanning Sub-millimeter Imaging Systems

Lens based focal plane arrays (FPAs) with thousand elements are promising candidates for wide scanning sub-millimeter security imaging systems. To analyze such arrays, a field correlation approach is employed to design an FPA of quartz lenses coupled to a reflector. We consider quartz as the lens material due to its lower cost compared to...

A Leaky Enhanced Photo-Conductive Connected Array for Broadband Generation of THz Power

Photoconductive antennas are devices that provide power up to THz frequencies at a relatively low cost. However, the power radiated by each antenna is typically quite low and arrays have been proposed to increase it. In this paper we present the design of a leaky enhanced array architecture that surpasses the state of the art as it operates...

Antenna-coupled MKIDs for an Integral Field Unit at 7.8 THz

A focal plane array of extended-hemispherical silicon lenses coupled to aluminum coplanar-waveguide (CPW) Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) has been designed to operate at 7.8 THz. Low-dispersive leaky-wave radiation has been used to efficiently illuminate the antireflection-coated lenses. To minimize the radiation loss from the...

A Fourier Optics Tool to Derive the Plane Wave Spectrum of Quasi-Optical Systems [EM Programmer's Notebook]

We present a freely accessible graphical user interface (GUI) for analyzing antenna-fed quasi-optical (QO) systems in reception (Rx). This analysis is presented here for four widely used canonical QO components: parabolic reflectors and elliptical, extended hemispherical, and hyperbolic lenses. The employed methods are geometrical optics (GO)...

On the Power Radiated by Photo Conductive Sources

The time evolution of voltages and currents in a pulsed photo conductive antenna (PCA) source is evaluated resorting to a rigorous procedure that stems from semiconductor physics first, to define the phenomena involved in the generation of the photocurrent, and then relies on an equivalent circuit in time domain, providing a direct estimation...

A Dual-Polarized 27-dBi Scanning Lens Phased Array Antenna for 5G Point-to-Point Communications

A dual-polarized 4 x 4 scanning phased array antenna with leaky-wave enhanced lenses operating at 28 GHz is presented. Such an antenna can be used for point-to-point fifth-generation (5G) communications that require high gain, wide bandwidth (BW), and limited steering ranges. The proposed array has a periodicity of two wavelengths, and the...

A GO/FO Tool for Analyzing Quasi-Optical Systems in Reception

In this work, a free accessible MATLAB interface is presented to analyze antenna-coupled Quasi-Optical (QO) systems in reception. This goal is achieved by using Fourier Optics (FO) and Geometrical Optics (GO) based methods. Specifically, the FO method represents the field focalized by a QO component on its focal plane as a plane wave spectrum...