New Design and Manufacture Technologies for High-Performance Millimetre-Wave and Terahertz Waveguide Devices for Space and Terrestrial Communications

This project aims to explore novel design methodologies and implementation techniques for high-performance mm-wave and terahertz waveguide devices for space and terrestrial applications in the next generation 5G/6G communications. Microwave filter design has become an establish art. However, as frequency goes higher into millimetre-wave and terahertz regime, filter design faces a whole new set of challenges from improving the insertion loss, to reducing the dimensional sensitivity and therefore increasing the manufacture yield. This not only challenges microwave designer but also the manufacture techniques. To meet the demands of future space and satellite communications for 5G, 6G and beyond, which will feature millimeter-wave and terahertz regions, there is a need for a general and novel design methodology to synthesize and manufacture the waveguide filters and filtering components by exploring new and advanced machining techniques. The goal is to achieve filters with high unloaded quality factor, low insertion loss, high selectivity, low sensitivity, low geometrical complexity, high power handling capacity, and high fabrication tolerance. First, a new
and general methodology for synthesizing inline elliptic-function filters using a modular approach based on novel resonator sections will be presented. Then, Novel solutions with new topologies and resonator structures will be proposed and experimentally verified to demonstrate low-loss and desensitization to manufacture tolerance in the modeling and implementation step. Finally, based on the methodology and strategy, fabrication and demonstration of the waveguide components using advanced 3-D printing and micromachining techniques will be completed, by a Design-for-Manufacture (DFM) approach.