Analysis and Design of Lens Antenna Systems for Applications at Millimeter and Sub-millimeter Wavelengths

In recent decades, dielectric lens antennas have been more and more adopted and developed for sensing and imaging applications at sub-millimeter (sub-mm) wavelengths because they can achieve high gain while keeping their physical size and weight acceptable at these wavelengths. More recently, as low-loss and low-cost lens materials have become...

Distributed Excitations of Pulsed Photo-Conductive Sources: The Time Domain Analysis

Distributed feeding in photo-conducting antennas (PCAs) leads to simple optical designs, less prone to overheating, as well to terahertz (THz) antennas that can operate non-dispersively over wide bandwidths. However, the efficient analysis of pulsed PCAs was so far limited to architectures characterized by feeds small with respect to the THz...

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...

Towards the design of an imaging setup using photoconductive antennas

Photoconductive antennas (PCAs) are an interesting candidate for imaging systems due to their relatively low cost and ability to provide a bandwidth of hundreds of GHz. The large bandwidth of PCAs allows for sub-millimeter depth resolution. However, the often-used single-element PCAs are intrinsically limited in the amount of power they can...

On the Modelling and Characterisation of Photoconducting Antennas

In recent years, the interest in terahertz technology witnessed a constant increasing interest and attention from the scientific community, as it allows to unlock the THz bandwidth, that can be used for a wide range of applications: it helps the study of biological samples and help medical diagnostics; it serves as a harmless non-destructive...

GUI for System Dimensioning and QO Channel Analysis of Pulsed Pico-second Radar

THz time-domain systems driven by photoconductive antennas (PCAs) promise a bandwidth of the order of hundreds of GHz. This characteristic can be utilized to build see-through radars with sub-mm resolution and a field of view comparable to the current mm-wave radars at a relatively low cost. These radars can solve the issues in the field of...

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 THz Lens Antenna fed by a Photoconductive Connected Dipole Array

Photoconductive antennas have been used extensively for THz radiation the last few years. In this thesis, we propose a photoconductive connected dipole array consisting of 36x36 elements that is used as a feed in a THz silicon lens and radiates in a band ranging from 100 GHz to 5 THz. Specifically, we compute theoretically the radiated field...

Time Domain Modeling of Photoconductive Antennas

Photoconductive antennas (PCAs) have been extensively utilized for the generation of broadband pulses over very large bandwidths. PCAs rely on a semiconductor (e.g. LT- GaAs) gap pumped by a laser and coupled to a passive structure biased at a certain voltage level. When the laser impinges on the semiconductor gap with an appropriate carrier...

A Connected Array of Coherent Photoconductive Pulsed Sources to Generate mW Average Power in the Submillimeter Wavelength Band

A pulsed photoconductive terahertz (THz) source is presented that is able to radiate milliwatt (mW) level average power over a large bandwidth, by exploiting both the optical and electrical properties of photoconductive sources and the ultrawideband properties of connected antenna arrays. An optical system composed of a microlenses array...

Norton Equivalent Circuit for Pulsed Photoconductive Antennas - Part II: Experimental Validation

This second part of two papers' sequence presents the experimental validation of the Norton equivalent circuit model for pulsed photoconductive antennas (PCAs) provided in the first paper of the sequence. To this goal, different prototypes of photoconductive antenna sources have been manufactured and assembled. The average powers radiated and...

Norton Equivalent Circuit for Pulsed Photoconductive Antennas-Part I: Theoretical Model

A novel equivalent circuit for pulsed photoconductive sources is introduced for describing the coupling between the photoconductive gap and the antenna. The proposed circuit effectively describes the mechanism of feeding the antenna by the semiconductor when this latter is illuminated by a laser operating in a pulsed mode. Starting from the...

Towards the Engineering of Pulsed Photoconductive Antennas

In recent years, Terahertz technology has attracted the interest of researchers for its potential applications in a variety of domains. In particular, THz sensing has found application in security screening, medical imaging, spectroscopy, and non-destructive testing. The emergence of all these applications has been driven by the availability of...

Analysis and Design of Pulsed Photoconductive Antennas

Photoconductive antennas (PCA) are widely used in contemporary THz systems, especially in terahertz time-domain spectroscopy. They are used to radiate and receive THz power. The study of the generation and reception of THz radiation involves both semiconductor theory, electromagnetics, and antenna theory. In this work, after a review of some...