Near-field imaging has been intensively investigated to observe the shape and the physical properties of objects, aiming at wide applications in the areas of science and engineering. In this research, by using 60 GHz band waveguide-type microscopic aperture probe, the characteristics of the near-field imaging in transmission mode have been studied by simulation and experiment. The probe is made of a WR-15 rectangular waveguide with end-shielded metal plate and a 0.5 mm-diameter aperture. In the simulation, at first, the electric field distribution at the aperture, at the rear (waveguide) and the front positions (free space) are presented. Second, the transmitted electric fields are presented for three cases: (a) scanning of a dielectric slit, (b) by varying the distance between the aperture and a dielectric sample, and (c) scanning of a dielectric groove. In the experiment, the lateral resolution with a two-slit and the depth resolution with grooves having various depths in rectangular format are described and the results show both resolutions to be much shorter than the wavelength. Finally, the scanned images of the letter N punched through a dielectric material and a leaf are demonstrated.

The design of microstrip bandpass filters using stepped-impedance resonators (SIRs) is examined. The passband center frequency for the WCDMA-FDD (uplink band) Japanese cellular system is 1950 MHz with a 60-MHz bandwidth. The SIR physical characteristic can be designed using a SIR characteristic chart based on second harmonic suppression. In our filter design, passband design charts were obtained through the design procedure. Tchebycheff and maximally flat bandpass filters of any bandwidth and any number of steps can be designed using these passband design charts. In addition, sharp skirt characteristics in the passband can be realized by having two transmission zeros at both adjacent frequency bands by using open-ended quarter-wavelength stubs at input and output ports. A new even-mode harmonics suppression technique is proposed to enable a wide rejection band having a high suppression level. The unloaded quality factor of the resonator used in the proposed filters is greater than 240.