Microwave Components Based on Magnetic Wires

Abstract: With  the  continuous  advances  in  microwave  technology,  microwave  components  and  related magnetic materials become more important in industrial environment. In order to further develop the microwave components, it is of interest to find new kinds of technologies and materials. Here, we  introduce  a  new  kind  of  material  --  amorphous  metallic  wires  which  could  be  used  in microwave  components,  and  use  these  wires  to  design  new  kinds  of  attenuators.  Based  on  the fundamental  magnetic  properties  of  amorphous  wires  and  transmission  line  theory,  we  design  a series of experiments focusing on these wires, and analyze all the experimental results.    Experimental  results  show  that  incident  and  reflected  signals  produce  interference  and  generate standing  waves  along  the  wire.  At  given  frequency,  the  insertion  attenuation  S21 [dB]  of  an amorphous wire increases monotonically with dc bias current. The glass cover will influence the  magnetic  domain  structure  in  amorphous  metallic  wires.  Therefore,  it  will  affect  the circumference  permeability  and  change  the  signal  attenuation.  It  is  necessary  to  achieve  the impedance  matching  by  coupling  to  an  inductor  and  a  capacitor  in  the  circuit.  The  impedance matching  makes  the  load  impedance  close  to  the  characteristic  impedance  of  transmission  line. The magnetic wire-based attenuator designed in this thesis work are characterized and compared to conventional pin-diode attenuator.