Photonics and Optical techniques have advanced recently by a great extend to play an important role in Microwave and Radar applications. Antenna array of modern active phased array radars consist of multiple low power transmit and receive mod- ules. This demands distribution of the various Local Oscillator(LO) signals for up conversion of transmit signals and down conversion of receive signals during various modes of operation of a radar system. Additionally, these receivers require control and clock signals which are digital and low frequency analog, for the synchronization between receive modules. This is normally achieved through RF cables with complex distribution networks which add significantly higher additional weight to the arrays. During radar operations, radio frequency (RF) transmit signal needs to be distributed through the same modules which will in turn get distributed to all antenna elements of the array using RF cables. This makes the system bulky and these large number of cables are prone to Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) and need additional shielding. Therefore it is very desirable to distribute a combination of these RF, analog and digital signals using a distribution network that is less complex, light in weight and immune to EMI. Advancements in Optical and Microwave photonics area have enabled carrying of higher datarate signals on a single fiber due to its higher bandwidth capability including RF signals. This is achieved by employing Wavelength Division Multi- plexing (WDM) that combine high speed channels at different wavelengths. This work proposes, characterizes and evaluates an optical Wavelength Division Multiplexed(WDM) distribution network that will overcome the above mentioned problems in a phased array radar application. The work carries out a feasibility analysis supported with experimental measurements of various physical parameters like am- plitude, delay, frequency and phase variation for various radar waveforms over WDM links. Different configurations of optical distribution network are analyzed for multipoint distribution of both digital and RF signals. These network configurations are modeled and evaluated against various parameters that include power level, loss, cost and component count. A configuration which optimizes these parameters based on the application requirements is investigated. Considerable attention is paid to choose a configuration which does not provide excess loss, which is economically viable, compact and can be realized with minimum component count. After analysing the link configuration, multiplexing density of the WDM link is considered. In this work, since the number of signals to be distributed in radar systems are small, a coarse WDM(CWDM) scheme is considered for evaluation. A comparative study is also performed between coarse and dense WDM (DWDM) links for selection of a suitable multiplexing scheme. These configurations are modeled and evaluated with power budgeting. Even though CWDM scheme does not permit the utilisation of the available bandwidth to the fullest extent, these links have the advantage of having less hardware complexity and easiness of implementation. As the application requires signal distribution to thousands of transmit-receive modules, amplifiers are necessary to compensate for the reduction of signal level due to the high splitting ratio. Introduction of commonly available optical amplifiers like Erbium Doped Fiber Amplifier (EDFA), affect the CWDM channel output powers adversely due to their non-flat gain spectrum. Unlike DWDM systems, the channel separation of CWDM systems are much larger causing significantly high channel gain differences at the EDFA output. So an analysis is carried out for the selection of a suitable wavelength for CWDM channels to minimize the EDFA output power variation. If the gain difference is still significant, separate techniques needs to be implemented to flatten the output power at the antenna end. A CWDM configuration using C-band and L-band EDFAs is proposed and is supported with a feasibility analysis. As a part of evaluation of these links for radar applications, a mathematical model of the WDM link is developed by considering both the RF and digital sig- nals. A generic CWDM system consisting of transmitters, receivers, amplifiers, multiplexers/ demultiplexers and detectors are considered for the modeling. For RF signal transmission, the transmitters with external modulators are considered. Mod- eling is done based on a bottom-top approach where individual component models are initially modeled as a function of input current/power and later cascaded to obtain the link model. These models are then extended to obtain the wavelength dependent model ( spectral response) of the hybrid signal distribution link Further mathematical analysis of the developed link model revealed its variable separable nature in terms of the input power and wavelength. This led to significant reduction in the link equation complexity and development of some approximation techniques to easily represent the link behavior. The reduced form of the link spectral model was very essential as the initially developed wavelength model had a lot of parametric dependency on the component models. This mathematical reduction process led to simplification of the spectral model into a product of two independent functions, the input current and wavelength. It is also noticed that the total link power within specific wavelength range can be obtained by the integrating these functions over a specific link input power. After the mathematical modelling, an experimental prototype physical link is set up and characterized using various radar signals like continuous wave (CW) RF, pulsed RF, non linear frequency modulated signal (NLFM) etc. Additionally a proof of concept Radio-Over-Fiber (RoF) link is established to prove the superior transmission of microwave signal through an optical link. The analysis is supported with measurements on amplitude, delay, frequency and phase variations. The NLFM waveforms transmissions are further analysed using a matched _ltering process to confirm the side lobe requirement. Further a prototype WDM link is built to study the performance when digitally modulated channels are also multiplexed into the link. The link is again validated for signal levels, delay, frequency and phase parameters. Since amplitude and delay are deterministic, it is proposed that these parameter variations can be compensated by using suitable components either in the electrical or the optical domain. Radar systems use low frequency digital signals of different duty-cycles for synchronization and control across various transmit-receive modules. In the proposed link, these digital signals also modulate a WDM channel and hence the link is called a hybrid system. As the proposed link has EDFA to compensate for the splitting losses, there are chances of transient effects at the EDFA output for these low bitrate channels. Owing to the long carrier lifetime, low bitrate digital channels are prone to EDFA transient effects under specific signal and pump power conditions. Additionally, the synchronization signals used in radar application vary the duty-cycle over time, which is found to introduce variations in transient output. This practical challenge is further studied and the thesis for the first time, includes an analysis of EDFA transient e_ects for variable duty-cycle pulsed signals. The analysis is carried out for various parameters like bitrate, input power, pump power and duty-cycle. Investigations on EDFA transients on variable duty-cycle signals help in proposing a viable method to predict the lower duty-cycle transients from higher duty-cycle transients. The predicted transients were again validated against simulated transients and experimental results. As these transient effects are not desirable for radar signals, we propose a novel transient suppression techniques in optical and electrical domain which are validated with simulation and experimental measures. One suppression technique tries to avoid transient effect by keeping the optical input to EDFA always constant by feeding an inverted version of the original pulse into the EDFA along with the actual pulse. It is observed that as the wavelength of the inverted pulse is closer to the original input pulse, the transient effect settles faster. These EDFA transients are evaluated with WDM link configurations, where both high and low bitrate signals are co-propagated. Another challenging aspect of the link operation is the non-at gain spectrum of EDFA. i.e., EDFA provides unequal power level for various signals at WDM link output. This is especially true in the case of local oscillator signals, where it is preferable to have the same amplitude signals before feeding it to the mixer stages. But in the radar applications, this will require additional hardware circuits to equalize the signal level within a phased array antenna. This work also proposes some of the power equalization methods that can be used along with the WDM links. This part of the work is also supported with simulation model and experimental results. The analytical and experimental study of this thesis aids the evaluation process of a suitable optical Wavelength Division Multiplexed(WDM) distribution network that can be used for the distribution of both RF and digital signals. The optical WDM links being superior with its light weight, less loss and EMI/ EMC immunity provides a better solution to future class of radars.

Les travaux de cette thèse portent sur la conception d'antennes multi-faisceaux. Ces dernières permettent à plusieurs faisceaux de partager la même partie rayonnante et offrent la possibilité d'avoir simultanément un fort gain et une grande couverture angulaire. Pour leur fonctionnement, ces antennes se basent sur des réseaux à formation de faisceaux, qui peuvent être groupés en deux catégories : les réseaux formateurs de faisceaux de type quasi-optique et les réseaux formateurs de faisceaux de type circuit. Plusieurs structures antennaires reposant sur ces types de réseaux à formation de faisceaux sont proposés dans cette thèse : structures pillbox simples intégrant les deux variantes de la technique mono-pulse pour augmenter la résolution angulaire de l'antenne, lentilles de Rotman bicouche et multicouche, pour le cas quasi-optique ; réseaux phasés pour applications SATCOM (projet ANR) et matrice de Butler avec circuit de contrôle des niveaux de lobes secondaires pour le cas circuit. Les différents concepts ont été étudiés dans différentes bandes de fréquences : Ku, K et V. Pour des raisons de coût essentiellement, deux technologies ont été retenues : La technologie SIW (Substrate Integrated Waveguide), qui associe les avantages de la technologie des circuits imprimés et celles de la technologie guide d'ondes. Des efforts particuliers ont été faits pour l'implémentation de structures multicouches car nous arrivons à ce stade à la limite du savoir faire industriel national dans ce domaine. La technique de « Diffusion Bounding » développée au « Ando and Hirokawa lab » du TIT (Tokyo Institute of Technology) et qui consiste à assembler de fines couches métalliques sous haute température et haute pression. Cette technique permet le développement d'antennes en guides creux avec des efficacités supérieures à 80% en bande millimétrique. / This PhD thesis deals with the design of multi-beam antennas. A single radiating aperture is used to generate several beams with high gain and a large field of view. The multi beam operation is achieved by using two topologies of Beam Forming Networks (BFN): quasi optical BFN, and circuit-based BFN. For each category, several solutions have been proposed and validated experimentally. In particular, for the quasi-optical configurations, pillbox structures, mono-pulse antennas in pillbox technology, and multi-layer Rotman lenses have been considered. On the other hand, for circuit-based multi-beam antennas, two solutions have been analyzed: a phased array for SATCOM applications in the framework of a national ANR project and a Butler matrix with controlled side-lobe levels for the radiated beams within a collaboration with the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. The proposed concepts and antenna solutions have been considered in different frequency bands: Ku, K and V. Two technologies have been mainly adopted for the fabrication of the various prototypes: Substrate Integrated Waveguide technology (SIW) which combines the advantages in terms of cost of the printed circuit board (PCB) fabrication process with the efficiency of classical waveguide technology. Considerable efforts have been devoted to the implementation of multilayer SIW structures to overcome and go beyond the current state of the art at national level on PCB fabrication process. Diffusion Bounding Technique, developed at “Ando and Hirokawa lab” at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, which consists of bonding laminated thin metal plates under high temperature and high pressure. This technique allows the fabrication of planar hollow waveguide structures with efficiencies up to 80% in the millimeter wave-band.

This research looks into the design of an integrated in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) VCO operating at 5 GHz. The goal is to design a phase shifter that is implemented at the LO used for RF up conversion. The target application for the phase shifter is towards phased array antennas operating at 5 GHz. Instead of designing multiple VCOs that each deliver a variety of phases, two identical LC-VCOs are coupled together to oscillate at the same frequency and deliver four outputs that are 90 ° out of phase. By varying the amplitudes of the in-phase and quadrature signals independently using VGAs before adding them together, a resultant out-of-phase signal is obtained. A number of independently variable out-of-phase signals can be obtained from these 90 ° out-of-phase signals and this technique is better known as the vector sum method of phase shifting. Control signals to the inputs of the VGAs required to obtain 22.5 ° phase shifts were designed from simulations and are generated using 16-bit DACs. The design is implemented and manufactured using a 0.35 µm SiGe BiCMOS process and the complete prototype IC occupies an area of 2.65 × 2.65 mm2. The I/Q VCO with 360 ° variable phase outputs occupies 1.10 × 0.85 mm2 of chip area and the 16-bit DAC along with its decoding circuitry occupies 0.41 × 0.13 mm2 of chip area. The manufactured quadrature VCO was found to oscillate between 4.12 ~ 4.74 GHz and consumes 23.1 mW from a 3.3 V supply without its buffer circuitry. A maximum phase noise of -78.5 dBc / Hz at a 100 kHz offset and -108.17 dBc / Hz at a 1 MHz offset was measured and the minimum VCO figure of merit is 157.8 dBc / Hz. The output voltages of the 16 bit DAC are within 3.5 % of the design specifications. When the phase shifter is controlled by the 16 DAC signals, the maximum measured phase error of the phase shifter is lower than 10 %. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Massive multiple input multiple output - MIMO systems are a reality and modern communication systems rely upon this technology to cope with the increasing need for capacity and network usage. Antenna arrays are at the heart of the of the massive-MIMO system and are the enabling technology. The defining cost of such a system is the number of transmit receive ports TRx as they dictate the number of control points and the associated digital control computational capacity. Typically users are spread along the azimuth and there is limited angular user spread along elevation. This enables us to group the elements in elevation which of course limits the elevation scanning performance. The element grouping result in grating lobes when we do elevation scanning. In the newly introduced frequency range 3 - FR3 in the envisioned 6G communication systems that is from 6-20 GHz it will not be allowed to transmit power above the horizon and the resulting grating lobes from the standard grouping should be mitigated. This project is structured into two parts. In the first part a grating lobe mitigation technique based on irregular subarray grouping utilizing the wellknown Penrose irregular tessellation is developed. This tessellation is based into two geometrical shapes where when put together they can fully tile the space aperiodically. Introducing this apperiodicity the grating or quantization lobes of the array are mitigated. In addition, in the first part a beam forming algorithm is developed based on particle swarm optimization that is able to produce the optimal weights for the array steering as well as optimize some of the embedded patterns of the irregular grouping. The last optimization step of the irregular subarray patterns is utilized only when the grouping results in a narrow pattern in azimuth and as a result we have static single port beamforming networks. This of course is a trade off between the broadside gain and the azimuth steerability of the array. In the second part of this thesis two low loss band pass filters have been developed with a PCB integrated suspended stripline techology. The filters were optimised for the frequencies within FR3. The resulted filtering structures can further be integrated at the input port of the proposed feeding network with the same technology. The two parts of this thesis target to introduce on one hand a antenna array architecture with subarray groupings that produce no grating lobes and on the other hand the proposed filtering structures have small enough dimensions to fit within the subarray footprint. / Dagens moderna kommunikationssystem använder sig av Massive multiple input multiple output (m-MIMO) för att kunna möta det allt större kraven på kapacitet och nätverksanvändning. Gruppantenner är den mest fundamentala delen av massive-MIMO system och möjliggör dess funktion. För ett sådant system (m-MIMO-system), så kommer den största kostnaden från antalet sändare/mottagare (TRx) -portar som används. Antalet portar i ett massiveMIMO system bestämmer vilken kapacitet systemet har till hands när det gäller lobformning. Vanligtvis är användare utspridda i det horisontella planet, samtidigt som de är begränsade i sin spridning i höjdled. Detta möjliggör användandet av en gruppantenn som grupperar sina antennelement i höjdled, vilket såklart begränsar gruppantennens lobformning i höjdled. Grupperandet av antennelement skapar sidlober när gruppantennen lobformar i höjdled. I det nya frekvensbandet, 3 - FR3 i det föreställda 6G kommunikationssystemet som opererar mellan 6-20 GHz, så kommer det inte att vara tillåtet att sända ut effekt över horisonten, samtidigt som de sidlober som kommer från standardgruppering måste begränsas. Detta projekt är strukturerat i två delar. I första delen så presenteras ett sätt att lindra sidlober, som baseras på irreguljära gruppantenner via Penrose tessellation. Denna tessellation är indelad i två geometriska former sådan att när vi sätter ihop dem så kan de framgångsrikt täcka vår geometri icke-periodvist. Genom att introducera denna icke-periodicitet så kan sidloberna från gruppanetnnen lindras. Utöver detta så är också så är en lobformningsalgoritm skapad som baseras på particle swarm optimization (PSO), som kan skapa de optimala vikterna för lobformning och lobstyrning. Det sista optimiseringssteget av de irreguljära gruppantennmönstret används bara när gruppering av antennelement resulterar i ett snävt mönster i azimut-riktning. Därför använder vi ett statiskt enportsmatningsnätverk. Detta är såklart en vägning mellan bredsideförstärkning och förmågan att kunna lobforma i det horisontella planet. I den andra delen så har två låg förlust bandpassfilter utvecklats med en PCB-integrerad suspended sripline teknik. Filtrerna optimerades för frekvenser inom FR3. De resulterande filterstrukturerna kan integreras längs input-porten av det föreslagna matningsnätverket som använder sig av den samma teknik. De två delarna i denna uppsats presenterar dels en gruppantenn med irreguljär antennelementsindelning som lindrar sidlober, samt dels filterstrukturer som kan användas tillsammans med gruppantennen.

L'objectif de cette thèse est de proposer l'approche la plus appropriée afin de minimiser le coût d'intégration de petite éolienne dans un micro-réseau DC urbain. Une petit éolienne basé sur un machine synchrone à aimant permanent (MSAP) est considéré à étudier. Un état de l'art concernant les énergies renouvelables, micro-réseau DC, et la production d'énergie éolienne, est fait. Comme le capteur mécanique de cette structure est relativement d'un coût élevé, les différents types de contrôle pour un système de conversion éolienne sont présentés afin de choisir une structure active de conversion d'énergie et un MSAP sans capteur. Par conséquent, un estimateur de vitesse/position est nécessaire pour contrôler le système. Ainsi, les méthodes différentes proposées dans la littérature sont considérées et classifiées à étudier dans les détails, puis les plus efficaces et largement utilisés sont à vérifier dans la simulation et expérimentalement pour le système étudié. Les méthodes choisies sont: estimation de la flux de rotor avec boucle à verrouillage de phase (PLL), observateur à mode glissement (SMO), observateur de Luenberger d'ordre réduit, et filtre de Kalman étendu (EKF). Face à d'autres méthodes, l'estimateur basé sur un modèle EKF permet une commande sans capteur dans une large plage de vitesse et estime la vitesse de rotation avec une réponse rapide. Le réglage des paramètres EKF est le problème principal à sa mise en œuvre. Par conséquent, pour résoudre ce problème, la thèse présente une méthode adaptative, à savoir réglage-adaptatif d’EKF. En conséquence, et grâce à cette approche, le coût total du système de conversion est réduite et la performance est garantie et optimisée. / The aim of this thesis is to propose the most appropriate approach in order to minimize the cost of integration of a wind generator into a DC urban microgrid. A small-scale wind generator based on a permanent magnet synchronous machine (PMSM) is considered to be studied. A state of the art concerning the renewable energies, DC microgrid, and wind power generation is done. As the mechanical sensor for this structure is relatively of high cost, various types of wind conversion system control are presented in order to choose an energy conversion active structure and a sensorless PMSM. Therefore, a speed/position estimator is required to control the system. Thus, different methods proposed in literatures are considered and classified to be studied in details, and then the most effective and widely used ones are to be verified in simulation and experimentally for the studied system. The methods which are chosen are: rotor flux estimation with phase locked loop (PLL), sliding mode observer (SMO), Luenberger observer of reduced order, and extended Kalman filter (EKF). Facing to other methods, the EKF model-based estimator allows sensorless drive control in a wide speed range and estimates the rotation speed with a rapid response. The EKF parameters tuning is the main problem to its implementation. Hence, to solve this problem, the thesis introduces an adaptive method, i.e. adaptive-tuning EKF. As a result and grace to this approach, the total cost of conversion system is reduced and the performance is guaranteed and optimized.