volume | PIER Journals

Abstract

A highly packaged coupler using vertically placed inductors and capacitors (LC)-elements is proposed for 1 and 1.5 Tesla (T) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) applications. The coupler is made on a 24-layer thickness low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) substrate, and the full integration is reached by heaping up LC-elements in the vertical dimension. The coupler has a smallest reported size of only 0.0035 × 0.0021 × 0.001λg and a wide fractional bandwidth (FBW) of 44%. The measured in-band phase difference between the coupled and through ports and the amplitude imbalance are less than 91°±0.5° and 0.75 dB, respectively. Comparisons and discussions are also implemented.

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11. Microwave Office, Cadence Corporation, , El Segundo, CA.

12. Cadence Analyst, Cadence Corporation, , El Segundo, CA.

Dr. Linzi Liu

Dr. Zheng Pan

Dr. Gang Shi

Professor Bo Zhou