A 5-pole lumped element bandpass filter (BPF) of center frequency 264.05 MHz and fractional bandwidth (FBW) 0.76% is designed and fabricated using YBa2Cu3O7-d (YBCO) thin films deposited on both sides of a MgO substrate(40 mm 40 mm 0.5 mm). The return loss, minimum insertion loss and ripple were measured to be 20.0 dB, less than 0.1 dB and less than 0.1 dB at 70 K, respectively. These results verify both the compactness and low loss characteristics in the VHF band. The simulated frequency response, where the frequency dependences of inductance (L) and capacitance (C) elements and housing effect are taken into account, is in good agreement with the measured frequency response.

We studied the possibility of making an objective diagnosis of dementia based on radiological findings by evaluating cerebral and hippocampal atrophy and the corpus callosum shape on MRI images in patients with Alzheimer-type dementia, compared with healthy elderly individuals. There was a statistically significant difference in the hippocampus area index, the ventricle area index, and the area ratio for the second, forth, and fifth parts of corpus callosum. Discriminant analysis using these three parameters demonstrated the sensitivity of 88.5% and the specificity of 85.7%, suggesting a highly positive diagnostic rate. These results indicate that quantitative MRI measurements could be used for differentiating Alzheimer-type dementia from similar diseases.

Two type measurement methods of the unloaded Q-factor of a microwave resonator, the insertion loss method and the return loss method, are reexamined theoretically and compared experimentally. An error formula is derived to estimate the errors between the unloaded Q-factors measured by the two different methods. Measured results of a stripline resonator verified well the derived formula, and proved that the return loss method is more accurate and reliable than the traditional insertion loss method.

Novel microstrip lowpass filters are developed with reduced size and significantly improved stopband characteristics. After introducing quarter-wavelength open stubs, we get one or two transmission zeros in the stopband. By folding the high impedance microstrip lines, we reduce the size of the filter. Three-pole and five-pole lowpass filters are designed, and their measured frequency responses agree well with theoretical predictions.

A new structure of a low-loss high temperature superconducting (HTS) filter is proposed by using quarter-wavelength coplanar waveguide (CPW) resonators. A 4-pole Chebyshev band-pass filter with the center frequency 5.0 GHz and the 0.01 dB-ripple fractional bandwidth 3.2% is designed based on the theory of direct-coupled resonator filters using K- and J-inverters. This filter is fabricated by using a high-Tc superconductive YBCO film deposited on a MgO dielectric substrate. The frequency response of the filter measured at 60 K agrees very well with the theoretical one. The insertion loss is 0.22 dB. The insertion loss of this filter is the lowest in HTS-CPW filters presented so far.

A Chebyshev type bandpass filter using four TM01δ-mode dielectric rod resonators oriented axially in a high-Tc superconductor cylinder is designed with 3 dB bandwidth 36 MHz at 11.958 GHz. The single resonator which contains a Ba (MgTa) O3 ceramic rod of εγ=24 and a YBa2Cu3Oy bulk cylinder is designed to realize temperature coefficient of f0, τf=0 ppm/K at 20 K. The unloaded Q, Qu measured at 20 K is 150,000 which is higher than Qu=100,000 for a TM01δ-mode resonator with a copper cylinder. When the constructed filter is cooled from room temperature to below 50 K, the center frequency shifted only 5 MHz which corresponds to τf=1.5 ppm/K and the insertion loss IL0 at the center freqency reduced from 3.0 dB to about 0 dB, the designed value of which is 0.04 dB, which is too small to be measured accurately.

Low temperature dependences of complex permittivity for MgO and SrTiO3 substrates are measured accurately and nondestructively by using the TE011 mode of a cylindrical cavity in the microwave region.

Microwave measurement methods necessary to characterize copper-clad dielectric laminate substrates are reviewed to realize more precise design of planar circuits: that is, the balanced-type circular disk resonator method for the relative complex permittivity in the normal direction εrn and tan δn, the cavity resonator method and the cut-off waveguide method for one in the tangential direction εrt and tan δt, and the dielectric resonator method for the surface and interface conductivity of copper foil σs and σi. The measured results of the frequency and temperature dependences of these parameters are presented for a PTFE substrate and a copper-clad glass cloth PTFE laminate substrate.

The finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method incorporating Berenger's PML absorbing boundary condition is developed to model three-dimensional dielectric resonators. The fast Fourier transform (FFT) coupled with the Pade interpolation technique is employed to obtain frequency domain results with satisfactory resolution and accuracy, and to reduce the computation time significantly compared with that needed when the conventional FFT algorithm is used. Computed resonant frequencies of two types of cylindrical dielectric resonators are compared with theoretical and measured results. A good agreement is observed.

A new measurement method using two resonance modes, the TE021 and TE012 modes, in an image-type dielectric resonator is proposed to measure the surface resistance Rs of only one high-Tc superconductor (HTS) film and the loss tangent tan δ of a sapphire rod separately, precisely and nondestructively. The image-type resonator is constructed by placing a sapphire rod in a bottom of a conductor cavity made of two HTS films and a copper ring. This resonator is designed from the mode charts calculated on the basis of the rigorous analysis by the mode matching method, taking account of an uniaxial-anisotropic characteristic of sapphire. It is verified that the mode charts are also effective to identify many resonance modes observed in measurement. The temperature dependence of Rs of one YBCO film was measured at 19.3 GHz by this method. The measured result agreed very well with one measured by the conventional two-dielectric resonator method. As a result, it was verified that this method is useful to evaluate Rs value of one HTS film with no damage.

A high temperature superconductor (HTS) 5 GHz 10-pole bandpass filter (BPF) is designed by using coplanar waveguide (CPW) quarter-wavelength resonators. The 10-pole Chebyshev BPF has a center frequency 5.0 GHz and a fractional bandwidth 3.2%. Based on an equivalent circuit with J- and K-inverters, the filter is first designed by using an EM simulator. Next an optimization algorithm is employed to diagnose the discrepancy between the filter responses calculated by the EM simulator and the equivalent circuit. Adjustment of the dimensions of the filter is made thereby. The frequency response of the adjusted filter satisfies well the design specifications.

The frequency dependence of surface resistance Rs of high temperature superconductor (HTS) films are measured by a novel measurement method using four TE0mp modes in a sapphire rod resonator. At first, a loss tangent tan δ of the sapphire rod and Rs of the HTS films are evaluated separately from the results measured for the TE021 and TE012 modes with close resonant frequencies. Secondly, Rs values at two different resonant frequencies for the TE011 and TE022 modes are measured using a well-known relation for sapphire tan δ/f = constant, where f is a frequency. Rs values of HoBa2Cu3O7-x thin films were measured in the frequency range of 10 to 43 GHz by using four sapphire rod resonators with different sizes. As a result, it is found that these measured results of Rs have a characteristic of frequency square.

Effects of the sample insertion holes of the TM010 mode cylindrical cavity are analyzed on the basis of rigorous analysis by the Ritz-Galerkin method. The measurement accuracy of complex permittivity is examined by comparing the values by the perturbation method with ones by the rigorous analysis. Charts of relative errors Δ ε/εp and Δ tan δ/tan δp are presented, which are useful to measure the complex permittivity accurately by the perturbation method. The present analysis extends the validity of the conventional perturbation method.

Two compact and low loss dual-mode filters are proposed by using degenerate modes of slotted triangular microstrip patch resonators. The geometrical size and radiation loss of the triangular patch are reduced simultaneously by loading both horizontal and vertical slots. The resonant frequencies of two degenerate modes can be easily controlled by varying the dimensions and positions of the slots. A two-pole dual-mode filter operating at 3.94 GHz with a fractional bandwidth of 4.3% is designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured results verify well the theoretical predictions.

An image type resonator method is proposed as a method to evaluate precisely the temperature dependence of dielectric material. At first, the temperature coefficients of the resonant frequencies, TCf are measured separately using the shielded dielectric resonators of three types; that is a parallel plate type, and an image type, and a MIC type resonator. Secondly, an intrinsic temperature coefficient of the resonant frequency TCf0, which is defined as the temperature coefficient of a resonant frequency when all the stored energy is confined inside a dielectric, is estimated from these measured TCf. Actually, the TCf0 values of a sapphire and (ZrSn) TiO4 rod are estimated from the TCf values measured for the resonators of three types. As a result, for the parallel plate type, the precision of TCf0 is about 0.1 ppm/. For the image and MIC types, the errors of about 0.5 ppm/ in the TCf0 values arise from the errors in the linear expansion coefficients of the resonators, rather than from the experimental errors in TCf. Then, another image type resonator is designed to estimate TCf0 within error of 0.1 ppm/. In this design, dimensions of the shielding cavity is determined to reduce the influence of the errors in the linear expansion coefficients on precision of the TCf0 estimation. Finally, for a (ZrSn) TiO4 ceramic rod, a TCf0 value estimated from TCf measured for the image type resonator is obtained with accuracy of about0.1 ppm/.

The recently proposed modified PML (MPML) absorbing boundary condition is extended to three dimensions. The performance of the MPML is investigated by FDTD simulation of a typical microstrip line and a rectangular waveguide. The dominant and higher order modes of the microstrip line and the waveguide are excited separately in the computation. In all of the cases of excitation, the reflection properties of the MPML boundaries are examined for the side walls and the end walls, respectively. Various values of the permittivity and permeability of the MPML medium are tested in the computation, and the variation behavior of reflection from the MPML boundaries is examined. The numerical results reveal that by choosing appropriate values of the permittivity and permeability of the MPML, we can realize efficient absorption of both evanescent waves and propagating waves over a wide frequency band.

A grooved circular cavity is designed for the millimeter wave measurements of dielectric substrates. The grooves are introduced to separate the degenerate TE01p and TM11p modes in circular cavities. A rigorous mode-matching method is used to investigate the influence of grooves on both the TE01p and TM11p modes. The dimensions of the grooves are determined from the numerical results. Comparative experiments of circular cavities with and without grooves validate the design method.

It is shown that a three-fluid model, which was successfully introduced to explain microwave characteristics of high-Tc superconductors phenomenologically, is suit also to explain those of low-Tc superconductors. In this model, the two contributions of a residual normal electron, in addition to a super and a normal electron in the two-fluid model, and of the temperature (T) dependence of momentum relaxation time τ for the two normal electrons are taken into account. Measured results of the T dependence of surface resistance Rs for a Nb film with critical temperature Tc9.2K agree very well with an Rs curve calculated using the present model, where a residual surface resistance at T0K, Rso, and the T dependence of τ were determined using the surface reactance at 0K Xso37.6mΩ calculated using the BCS theory to fit a calculated Rs curve with the measured values as a function of T. Furthermore, microwave characteristics predicted from the BCS theory cannot be explained phenomenologically using the conventional two-fluid model. This difficulty can be solved by using an improved two-fluid model, called the two-fluid (τ) model, where the T dependence of τ is taken into account. Finally the frequency dependence of Rs calculated for the Nb film is f1.9 for the BCS theory and f2.0 for the three-fluid (τ) model on the assumption of the frequency independence of τ.

A novel resonator structure for the cut-off circular waveguide method is proposed to suppress the unwanted TE modes in the axial direction and TM modes in the radial direction. In this method, a dielectric plate sample is placed between two copper circular cylinders and clamped by two clips. The cylinder regions constitute the TE0m mode cut-off waveguides. The measurement principle is based on a rigorous analysis by the Ritz-Galerkin method. Many resonance modes observed in the measurement can be identified effectively by mode charts. In order to verify the validity of the novel structure for this method, the temperature dependences for three low-loss organic material plates were measured in the frequency range 40 to 50 GHz. It is found that modified polyolefin plates have comparable electric characteristics and low price, compared with PTFE plates. Moreover, it is verified that the novel resonator structure is effective in improvement of accuracy and stability in measurement. The measurement precisions are estimated within 1 percent for εr and within 15 percent for tan δ.

A novel method is proposed to synthesize dual-band bandpass filters (BPFs) from a prototype lowpass filter. By implementing successive frequency transformations and circuit conversions, a new filter topology is obtained which consists of only admittance inverters and series or shunt resonators, and is thereby easy to be realized by using conventional distributed elements. A microstrip dual-band BPF with central frequencies of 1.8 GHz and 2.4 GHz is designed and fabricated using microstrip lines and stubs. The simulated and measured results show a good agreement and validate thereby the proposed theory.