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Defense | Navy
Naval Information Warfare Center – PacificA U.S. Navy engineer has invented a high-performance capacitor using a printed circuit board as the dielectric substrate.
The capacitor has a T-shaped Yagi antenna profile defined by a spine and at least one crossbar; and wherein the number of said at least one crossbar, and the top plan thickness, width, and spacing between each at least one crossbar can be chosen according to the design operating capacitance of the capacitor.
Simulations indicate the T-Shaped PCB capacitor could be an excellent coupling or series capacitor. This is due to its low insertion loss and only 70 MHz separation from minimum insertion loss and resonant frequencies.
The circular-shaped PCB capacitor simulations indicate that it would be better suited as a shunt capacitor with improved return loss.
However, other profiles of broadside-coupled capacitors that can be integrated into PCB's as part of the manufacturing process could also be important, theoretically enabling the manufacture of shunt capacitors, series capacitors, or other capacitors.
In the current landscape, the number of communication systems is increasing so fast that the Federal Communications Commission is constantly changing the frequency spectrum designations and allocations in order to satisfy communication demands.
Because of the constant shift in frequency band allocations, RF system designers have become aware that flexibility in filtering their RF system so that it operates satisfactorily over a wide frequency is not only required by the FCC but can also be very important for the efficiency of the communication system itself.
When a higher-powered communication system is required, RF filtering components become very important to the system. In an RF system, a good RF filter will protect the system RF amplifier and receiver, and a good RF filter can ensure signals that are out of band are not transmitted or received. It is the RF filter that can keep communication systems within FCC specifications.
In most cases, RF filters can include an arrangement of capacitors and inductors. Low power RF capacitors can be readily available in the commercial market, but RF capacitors for higher power applications are not typically as readily available.
However, high-power RF capacitors are not readily available in the commercial market, at least not at the higher frequency range that is of interest to many military applications. Most high-power capacitors on the market today are designed for low-frequency systems.
In addition to the above considerations, it can be important to manufacture a capacitor with consistent performance, so that it can provide the same performance over a wide frequency band, at high power, each time, every time. One way to do this can be to actually design the capacitor as part of the circuit board layout and to actually manufacture the capacitor as the circuit board is manufactured, as a single, integrated unit.