Structures and characteristics ofwideband small-size phase shiftersmade with the use of single parallel stubs are presented in this paper. The stubs can be short-circuited or open-circuited on termination. Such devices arewell known, but are primarily used as components of filters ormatching circuits. The novelty, then, comes from the establishment of simple, but helpful formulae, which enable to describe the insertion phase shift and differential phase shift of a line with short and open stubs connected in parallel. These equations can be very useful for designing complex microwave multi-ports. The results of simulations and measurements of the devices, which were designed and made, are shown herein. It was also proved that the presented devices have several usable operating frequency sub-bands, and that the differential phase shift values in the higher sub-bands are greater than those in the lower operating frequency ranges. Thanks to this, the described phase shifters can be used in more than one frequency sub-band. It was stated that in the conditions under analysis, larger phase shifts can be achieved using open-circuited stubs rather than short-circuited stubs. However, the phase shifters with shorted parallel stubs can operate in a wider frequency band.
In order to solve the problem of traditional carrier phase-shift modulation with multiple ratios or PI controllers and cumbersome tuning parameters, this paper uses improved carrier phase-shift modulation. The total turn-on number of sub-modules each bridge arm is determined by comparing the sinusoidal modulated wave with the triangular carrier, and then the control signal is generated according to the capacitance voltage sorting result and the bridge armcurrent polarity. However, this modulation method uses a sorting method that causes the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) have an excessively high switching frequency. Therefore, a sorting trigger condition that can effectively reduce the switching frequency is used. The method determines whether to reorder based on the error between the voltage average and the actual value. For the circulation problem, the double-frequency negative sequence component is extracted by rotating coordinate transformation, and it is suppressed by PI control. A 21-level MMC model was built in MATLAB/simulink to analyze the sub-module capacitor voltage fluctuation, output current, voltage distortion rate and bridge arm circulation. It is verified that the modulation method can combine the sorting algorithm and circulation suppression method at the same time, and has better voltage equalization and circulation suppression effects.
A new time interval/frequency generator with a jitter below 5 ps is described. The time interval generation mechanism is based on a phase shifting method with the use of a precise DDS synthesizer. The output pulses are produced in a Spartan-6 FPGA device, manufactured by Xilinx in 45 nm CMOS technology. Thorough tests of the phase shifting in a selected synthesizer are performed. The time interval resolution as low as 0.3 ps is achieved. However, the final resolution is limited to 500 ps to maximize precision. The designed device can be used as a source of high precision reference time intervals or a highly stable square wave signal of frequency up to 50 MHz.
Due to the skin effect of eddy currents, the depth of cracks which can be detected by the traditional eddy current probe is very limited. In order to improve the ability of eddy current probes to inspect deep cracks in metal thick-walled structures, a new eddy current probe using an excitation system with phase shifted fields was proposed. Its feasibility for detecting deep cracks was verified by simulation and experiments. The results showed that the penetration depth of eddy currents in austenitic stainless steel is effectively enhanced by using the new probe.