A new or future system of mobile telecommunication is built by new digital technologies to provide an improved and more consistent quality of service for the customers. These digital systems can provide greater number of transmission channel allocation for their subscribers and security. On the digital communication system, distortion of transmitted signal should be eliminated as much as possible for high communication quality. However, the need to both minimize distortion of signal amplifiers and continue to provide good filtering protection can become difficult to achieve with conventional high power amplifiers and filters. In this paper, the application of high-Tc superconducting (HTS) power filters on such digital communication systems and recent progress of filter device developments for those are discussed.

A novel structure of a resonator type guided-wave electro-optic intensity modulator is introduced that uses a higher-order harmonic resonant electrode of coupled microstrip lines combined with polarization-reversed structure. The light modulation cancellation caused by the light transit-time effect in the resonant electrode, which is longer than the wavelength of the standing wave, is compensated for to enhance modulation efficiency. The modulator for 26 GHz operation was designed and fabricated with a LiTaO3 substrate. The modulation electrode is 9.03 mm long for seventh order harmonic resonance by RF signal. The workability of the modulator was confirmed by experiments with 1.3 µm wavelength light.

This paper treats a band-broadening design technique of a dual-band branch-line coupler with matching networks composed of an impedance step and a short-circuited stub based on the equivalent admittance approach. By replacing each right-handed transmission line (RH-TL) with a composite right/left-handed transmission line (CRLH-TL), very flat couplings over a relative bandwidth of about 10% can be obtained at two arbitrary operating frequencies in comparison with previous CRLH-TLs branch-line couplers. Furthermore, by adding periodical open-circuited stubs into RH-TLs of the designed CRLH-TLs branch-line coupler with matching networks, the entire size of the coupler can be reduced to about 50%. Verification of these band-broadening and size-reduction design techniques can be also shown by an electromagnetic simulation and experiment.

A new structure of the electro-optic modulator to compensate the third-order intermodulation distortion (IMD3) is introduced. The modulator includes two Mach-Zehnder modulators (MZMs) operating with frequency chirp and the two modulated outputs are combined with an adequate phase difference. We revealed by theoretical analysis and numerical calculations that the IMD3 components in the receiver output could be selectively suppressed when the two MZMs operate with chirp parameters of opposite signs to each other. Spectral power of the IMD3 components in the proposed modulator was more than 15dB lower than that in a normal Mach-Zehnder modulator at modulation index between 0.15π and 0.25π rad. The IMD3 compensation properties of the proposed modulator was experimentally confirmed by using a dual parallel Mach-Zehnder modulator (DPMZM) structure. We designed and fabricated the modulator with the single-chip structure and the single-input operation by integrating with 180° hybrid coupler on the modulator substrate. Modulation signals were applied to each modulation electrode by the 180° hybrid coupler to set the chirp parameters of two MZMs of the DPMZM. The properties of the fabricated modulator were measured by using 10GHz two-tone signals. The performance of the IMD3 compensation agreed with that in the calculation. It was confirmed that the IMD3 compensation could be realized even by the fabricated modulator structure.

An electro-optic (EO) modulator integrated with the microwave planar circuit directly formed on a LiNbO3 (LN) substrate for low frequency-chirp performance and compact configuration is introduced. Frequency chirp of EO intensity modulators was investigated and a dual-electrode Mach-Zehnder (MZ) modulator combined with a microwave rat-race (RR) circuit was considered for the low-chirp modulation. The RR circuit, which operates as a 180-degree hybrid, was designed on a z-cut LN substrate to create two modulation signals of the same amplitude in anti-phase with each other from a single input signal. Output ports of the RR were connected to the modulation electrodes on the substrate. The two signals of the equal amplitude drive two phase modulation parts of the modulator so that the symmetric interference are realized to obtain intensity modulation of low frequency-chirp. The modulator was designed and fabricated on a single LN substrate for around 10 GHz modulation frequencies and 1550 nm light wavelength. The chirp parameters were measured to be less than 0.2 in the frequency range between 8 and 12 GHz. By compensating imbalance of the light power splitting in the waveguide MZ interferometer the chirp could be reduced even more.

A high-Tc superconducting filter of the planar structure is proposed for handling higher power signals and for miniaturizing the filter configuration. The filter is designed with a single disk-resonator shared by two degenerate modes to operate as a two-stage bandpass filter. Thereby the proposed filter is expected to possess high power handling capability as a conventional filter with two resonator disks does while the filter configuration is about a half in area compared to the conventional one. The Tchebyscheff type filter with 5.1 GHz center frequency and 2% relative bandwidth was fabricated using a high-Tc superconducting thin film. The passband insertion loss, Lo, was approximately 0.8 dB at 77 K. The low loss performance due to the superconductivity was observed at incident signal levels up to 41.2 dBm (around 15 W) at 20 K, which is limited by the power devices in the measurement setup. In addition, good linearity in the filter responses was confirmed by observing the intermodulation distortion with the two-tone method, which indirectly shows a stable operation with higher power incident signals.

In this paper, we consider a parallel ring-line rat-race circuit realized by replacing some parts of the ring-lines with composite right-/left-handed transmission lines (CRLH-TLs). For a conventional rat-race circuit, the minimum coupling factor is limited by the highest impedance of the ring-lines that can be manufactured by general printed circuit board (PCB) technologies. However, the coupling factor of the parallel ring-line type rat-race circuit proposed in this paper is determined by the difference between the admittances of the parallel ring-lines. As a result of designing parallel ring-line rat-race circuits having coupling factors of $-20$ and $-30$,dB for an operation frequency of 4,GHz, the proposed rat-race circuit realizes broadband characteristics of about 35.5% according to the numerical results for the $-20$,dB circuit. Furthermore, broadband characteristics including reflection, isolation, and couplings can be maintained for the fabricated $-20$,dB rat-race circuit up to an input power of 40,dBm.

Optical single sideband (SSB) modulation with the Mach-Zehnder (MZ) interferometer was realized by integrating the modulation electrode with the branch-line coupler (BLC) as a 90-degree hybrid onto the modulator substrate. In this paper, BLCs of the microsrtip-line structure were miniaturized on modulator substrates, LiNbO3 (LN), to realize more compact optical SSB modulators. We introduced two techniques of miniaturizing the BLC, one is using periodically installed open-circuited stabs and the other is installing series capacitors. Compared with a conventional pattern of the BLC, an area of the miniaturized BLC by using periodically installed open-circuited stubs was reduced to about 50%, and that by installing series capacitors was done to about 60%. The operation of these miniaturized BLCs was experimentally confirmed as the 90-degree hybrid at around 10GHz. Output ports of each miniaturized BLC were directly connected with the modulation electrode on the modulator substrate. Thereby, we fabricated two types of compact SSB modulators for 1550nm light wavelength. In the experiments, the optical SSB modulation was successfully confirmed by the output light spectra and the sideband suppression ratio of more than 30dB were observed.

A novel structure of guided-wave electro-optic modulators is proposed and their operation of the optical intensity modulation is successfully confirmed. The modulators use a newly developed modulation electrode consisting of coupled microstrip lines. A high voltage can be induced by the resonance of the odd propagation mode to realize efficient electro-optic modulation in spite of the microstrip-line configuration. The properties of the coupled microstrip lines were analytically evaluated by using the method of conformal transformations and the effectiveness as a modulation electrode was presented. The modulation electrodes of the half-wavelength coupled microstrip line resonator were designed at 10 GHz and 26 GHz, where the electrode lengths were 3 mm and 1.2 mm, respectively. The modulators using these electrodes with the Mach-Zehnder interferometer of LiTaO3 waveguides were fabricated. The measured modulation coefficient of the 26 GHz modulator normalized at 100 mW signal input was 0.13 rad.

In this paper, we propose a design method of compact multi-way Wilkinson power divider with a multiband operation for size reduction and band broadening. The proposed divider consists of multisection LC-ladder circuits in the division arms and isolation circuits between the output ports. To validate design procedures, we fabricated a trial divider at VHF band. The circuit layout of the trial divider was decided by using an electromagnetic simulator (Sonnet EM). Because the proposed divider consists of lumped element circuits, we can realize great miniaturization of a circuit area compared to that of the conventional Wilkinson power divider. The circuit size of the trial divider is 35 mm square. The measurement results for the trial divider by using a vector network analyzer indicates a relative bandwidth of about 60% under -17 dB reflection, flat power division within ±0.1 dB, and very low phase imbalances under 1.0 degree over the wide frequency range.

This paper presents a lumped-element Wilkinson power divider (WPD) using LC-ladder circuits composed of a capacitor and an inductor, and a series LR/CR circuit. The proposed WPD has only seven elements. As a result of designing the divider based on an even/odd mode analysis technique, we theoretically show that broadband WPDs can be realized compared to lumped-element WPDs composed of Π/T-networks and an isolation resistor. By designing the WPD to match at two operating frequencies, the relative bandwidth of about 42% can be obtained. This value is larger than that of the conventional WPD based on the distributed circuit theory. Electromagnetic simulation and experiment are performed to verify the design procedure for the lumped-element WPD designed at a center frequency of 922.5MHz, and good agreement with both is shown.

26 GHz bandpass filter and duplexer using TM11δ rectangular-mode dielectric cavity resonators are proposed. These have a configuration compact and suitable for mounting on circuit boards. The resonators consisting of the Ba(Mg,Ta)O3 ceramic material showed a high quality factor value of 2600, which is roughly comparable to that of conventional E-plane waveguide filters. The dielectric losses of the ceramic material were experimentally evaluated from the viewpoint of the high frequency operation and the dielectric loss tangent of 7.410-5 was observed at 20 GHz. A three-stage Tchebyscheff bandpass filter with 0.4% relative bandwidth was fabricated and the passband insertion loss was 1.7 dB. A duplexer designed with two TM11δ mode filters and a microstrip T-junction is also presented.

An optical mode multiplexer was newly designed and fabricated using LiNbO3 waveguides. The multiplexer consists of an asymmetric directional coupler capable of achieving the phase-matching condition by the voltage adjustment. The mode conversion efficiency between TM0 and TM1 modes was quantitatively measured to be 0.86 at maximum.

A Mach-Zehnder optical modulator with the tunable multimode interference coupler was fabricated using Ti-diffused LiNbO3. The modulation extinction ratio could be voltage controlled to maximize up to 50 dB by tuning the coupler. Optical single-sideband modulation was also achieved with a sideband suppression ratio of more than 30 dB.