Modeling of electrically tunable transmission line phase shifter

based on liquid crystal

Alexander Gaebler, Felix Goelden, Stefan Mueller, Rolf Jakoby

Technische Universitaet Darmstadt, Merckstr. 25, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany

Abstract—This paper present the numerical modeling of transmission lines taking into account the
special material properties when liquid crystals (LC) are used as steerable anisotropic dielectrics. At
first a short introduction of the properties of LC is given as well as the theoretical models used for the
physical simulation of LCs in terms of molecular dynamics. Then, a full wave method to analyze the
electrical behavior of LC filled waveguide structures is described. The combination of molecular
dynamic and full wave simulation allows finally a systematic investigation of these structures.

I. INTRODUCTION
The shortage in the available frequency spectrum for radio communications and the requirement
for more functionality in ever smaller volume requires the developing of new concepts in RF
technology. A general approach to solve this problem is the concept of dynamically reconfigurable
RF front ends. One possibility for the realization of the necessary tunable RF components is the
use of special substrate media such as passively controllable dielectrics. Especially for the higher
frequency range (> 20 GHz), liquid crystals (LCs) show very good RF performance [1] and could
be successfully applied to continuously steerable phase shifters (up to 110°/dB [2]) e. g. for the
realization of steerable phased arrays or to reconfigurable reflectarrays.
Due to the nature of LCs it is necessary to consider the inhomogeneous and full anisotropic
properties of the material in order to investigate the wave propagation in LC-filled transmission
lines. Because the tuning efficiency and reachable Figure of Merit (FoM) depends very strongly
on the line type and the (geometrical) dimensions, the proposed analysis therefore can be used to
improve these properties and to investigate new steering concepts for LC-tunable RF devices.

II. PROPERTIES OF LIQUID CRYSTAL

LCs are an anisotropic material showing both properties of a crystal and a liquid. They can be
described as constituted of rod like molecules as shown in Fig. 1a. The shown rod represents the
anisotropic dielectric properties of a molecule and the unit vector n pointing in the same direction
as the rod is called director. ε ⊥ usually is around 2.5 while ε ranges between 2.8 and 3.5,
depending on the material. A bulk of LC molecules represented as such a rod contained between
two surfaces which have been specially treated to anchor the molecules parallel to the surface will
look like shown in Fig. 1b. More details about device fabrication can be found e.g. in [2]

a) b) LC Region Substrate c) W

y n
ε⊥

ϑ x H
ε

Fig. 1 a) 1 Representation of a rod like molecule with the anisotropic dielectric axes
b), c) Director distribution by surface alignment without (b) and with a bias voltage on the upper electrode

The two electrodes in Fig. 1a represent a microstrip line and the respective ground plane. On
applying an external electric bias field, the molecules rotate such that the director points towards
the same direction as the exciting electric flux lines (Fig. 1c). This mechanism can be used for a

978-1-4244-2042-1/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE

continuous tuning of the effective permittivity of transmission lines. In order to be able to study
the wave propagation and the dimension and line type depending transmission line parameters in
LC filled guided wave structures, the calculation of the director distribution of such arbitrary
transmission lines is necessary. This is validated and described more detailed in [3] but will be
explained briefly in the following section.

III. CALCULATION OF THE DIRECTOR DYNAMIC

To describe the director distribution in the biased state, it is necessary to consider the influence
of the director dynamics which is described by the LC Continuum Theory [4]. Looking at the rod-
representation as in Fig. 1a, an electric bias-field generates an anisotropic polarization in the LC
material. The cross product of the bias field E and the polarization P leads to an electric torque:
1
Γelekt = P × E = ⋅ Δε ⋅ ε 0 ⋅ E 2 ⋅ sin(2 ⋅ β ) (1)
2
where β is the angle between an applied bias field and
the director. Another torque contribution results from the (a) (b)
elastic forces between the molecules. Essentially, for our
purpose, i.e. only cross-sections of transmission lines are
of interest, we need to consider two basic types of
deformations: the splay deformation and the bend
deformation. Fig. 2 illustrate the nature of these two
deformation types. The stored energy density of a LC
Fig. 2 The splay deformation (a) and
bulk is described by the so called Frank free energy f the bend deformation (b)
(Eqn. 2) with the material dependent elastic constants K1,
K3 and the director distribution n .
Regarding the minimum energy principle, an elastic torque can be derived by minimizing the
free energy using the Lagrange principle [4] which leads to Eqn. 3.
⎛ ⎞ ⎛ ⎞
1 1 ∂f d ⎜ ∂f ⎟ d ⎜ ∂ f
⎟
f = K1 ⋅ (∇ ⋅ n ) 2 + K 3 ⋅ (n × ∇ × n ) 2 (2) Γ elast = − ⎟ − dy ⎜ ⎟ (3)
2
splay
2
bend
∂ϑ dx ⎜⎜ ∂ dϑ
⎝ ( dx ) ⎟
⎠ ⎜
⎝ (
⎜ ∂ dϑ
) ⎟
dy ⎟⎠

ϑ represents the angle of the director with the x- axis (see also Fig. 1a). If both the elastic and
the electric torques are not balanced, the director will rotate towards the direction of the minimum
energy level. This movement leads to internal friction which results in a retarding torque,
depending on the also material dependent rotational viscosity factor γ. The sum of the different
torques leads consequently to a torque balance equation [4]. The solution of the torque balance
equation leads to an update rule for discrete time steps Δt and results in an iterative solving of the
energy minimizing problem (Eqn. 4).

Δϑ =
Δt
(
γ ⋅ Γelektr +Γelast
) (4)

The implementation of the derivatives from Eqn. 3 based on difference quotients, which are
defined for a non uniform grid, gives then the new molecule orientation for every new time step Δt
and for every field controlled tuning state. Consequently, the actual field distribution must be
known for every time step Δt. To solve this problem, the calculation of the electric field has to be
performed considering the inhomogeneous and anisotropic material properties. Therefore, the
potential solution ϕ of the Laplace equation ∇ ( ε ⋅ ∇ϕ ) = 0 with a full permittivity tensor ε is
used here to analyze the bias field distribution in such a media and to complete the iterative solver
for Eqn. 4

IV. FULL WAVE MODELING OF LC FILLED TRANSMISSION LINES

To get further information’s about the losses and the frequency dependent behavior of LC filled
transmission structures, a full wave analysis is necessary which must incorporate the
inhomogeneous and anisotropic director distribution calculated in the previous section. In this
study, the Finite Differences Frequency Domain technique is applied with inclusion of the full
complex valued permittivity tensor, i.e. anisotropic dielectric losses are also accounted for. Here,
the propagation constant β can be determined for a given frequency by solving the resulting
eigenvalue problem after the discretization of the Maxwell equations. The field distribution can be
obtained after the calculation of the related eigenvectors. Therefore, the differential Maxwell
equation in frequency domain results to

∇ × E = − j ⋅ ω ⋅ µ0 ⋅ H , ∇ × H = (σ + j ⋅ ω ⋅ ε 0 ⋅ ε ) ⋅ E , ∇⋅ D = 0 (5)

with the conductivity tensor σ and the complex permittivity tensor ε . E , H and D are the
electromagnetic field quantities according to the standard definitions. Eqn. 5 is discretized here by
using the compact 2-D mesh (Fig. 3) in Cartesian
ε (i + 1, j ) ε (i + 1, j + 1) coordinates with a second order approach again while
Ez ( i + 1, j ) Ex ( i + 1, j ) Ez (i + 1, j + 1) assuming that the transmission line structure is
uniform along the z-axis. After eliminating the
ε (i , j ) Hy (i + 1, j ) ε (i , j + 1) magnetic field in Eqn. 5, the wave propagation can be
Ey ( i , j )
Hz (i , j ) Ey ( i , j + 1) described by using only the transverse field
Hx (i , j ) Hx (i , j + 1) components. This leads similary to the e.g. in [5]
Ez (i , j ) Ex ( i , j ) Ez (i , j + 1) proposed way to the expressions of the x- and the y-
component in the form of Eqn. 6 with material and
ε (i − 1, j ) H y ( i , j )
ε (i − 1, j + 1)
mesh spacing dependent coefficients c for every grid
point. Because of th Wireless Communication Lab, e
Fig. 3 The compact 2-D mesh anisotropic dielectric properties of the LC filled
region the FDFD method given in literature has to be
enhanced to be able to handle these special material
properties. Because of that, the number of different neighboring field components which has to be
taken into account for every considered mesh point increases to 16.

( )
cx1 ⋅ Ey[i, j − 1] + cx 2 ⋅ Ex[1 + i, j ] ... + cx17 − β 2 ⋅ Ex[i, j ] = 0 (6a)

( )
c y1 ⋅ Ex[i − 1, j ] + c y 2 Ey[i, j + 1] + ... + c y17 − β 2 ⋅ Ey[i, j ] = 0 (6b)
with
ε xy [i, j ] + ε xy [i, j + 1] (7)
cx1 = − , i i i
2 ⋅ Δx ⋅ Δy ⋅ ε zz [i -1, j -1] + ε zz [i -1, j ] + ε zz [i, j -1] + ε zz [i, j ]
In the case of a material permittivity without non diagonal entries, the additional coefficients in
Eqn. 6 like cx1 vanish and the other coefficients leads exactly to the same results compared with
the proposed method in [5]. Finally, the combination of Eqn. 6a and 6b for all indices i and
j yields the eigenvalue problem (C − β 2 ⋅ I ) E = 0 with the sparse matrix C (containing 16 non
diagonal entries) which includes the coefficients c of Eqn. 6 and the identity matrix I . The in
general complex propagation constant β and the RF field distribution can now be obtained, after
solving the eigenvalues and the related eigenvectors, which allows the calculation of the desired
line parameters, e.g. the line impedance or the effective permittivity.

V. NUMERICAL RESULTS
With the developed simulation tool it is now possible to analyze e.g. the impedance or the
effective permittivity of a given transmission line topology for all bias states. To give an example
of the developed procedure, Fig. 4 shows the cross-sectional view of a LC rectangular waveguide
(20mm x 5mm) with additional tuning electrodes. Furthermore it is assumed, that there is no
galvanic coupling between the four side walls and the tuning electrodes are infinitely thin. The
first bias state can be reached if voltages are applied as given in Fig. 4a. The other bias state
(Fig. 4b) is reached by applying the bias voltages in a different way as given in the figure. Both
bias states have been calculated using the previously described torque balance update procedure.

a)
50 V 50 V 50 V c)
800
700
εr = 3
600
0V 0V 500 εr = 2
400

ß
-50 V -50 V -50 V 300
b) 25 V 0 V -25 V εr = 1
200
100
0
50V -50 V 2 7 12 17 22
25 V 0 V -25 V f [GHz]

Fig. 4 a,b) Director distribution after supplying a different bias voltage on the conductive electrodes.
c) Propagation constant ß vs. frequency of analytical calculated and simulated data

The diagram in Fig. 4c shows numerical results for the propagation constant β for the
fundamental transmission mode. The blue dots represent the simulation output for an isotropic
filled waveguide with the relative permittivity of one, two and three. The underlined red curves
show the corresponding analytic results. The green dots gives the simulation result for the
inhomogeneous anisotropic LC filled waveguide as shown in Fig. 4b with chosen permittivities of
( ε =3 and ε ⊥ =2) and validates the simulation procedure. The obtained tuning efficiency for this
example is 63 %.

VI. CONCLUSION
In this paper we introduced the basic theory of LC director dynamics. Afterwards, we showed
the validation of the additionally developed full wave simulation which allows to analyze the
frequency dependent line parameters of waveguide structures considering the full anisotropic
permittivity tensor and the director dynamics of liquid crystal. Therefore the proposed method can
be used to study the dimension and material dependent electrical behavior systematically and
helps to improve the electrical properties e.g. the tuning efficiency or the Figure-of-Merit of such
structures.

VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The work presented in this paper has been done in the framework of the Liquida project funded
and supported by the DLR (German Aerospace Center) and the BMWi (Federal Ministry of
Economics and Technology) .

REFERENCES
[1] Mössinger, R. Marin, S. Mueller, J. Freese and R. Jakoby: Electronically reconfigurable reflectarrays with
nematic liquid crystals. IEE ELECTRONICS LETTERS, vol. 42, pp. 899-900, Aug. 2006
[2] S. Mueller, “Grundlegende Untersuchungen steuerbarer passiver Flüssigkristall-Komponenten für die
Mikrowellen-technik,“ Ph.D. dissertation, FG Funkkommunikation, TU- Darmstadt, Darmstadt, 2007
[3] A. Gäbler, Gölden, Müller, Jakoby “Efficiency Considerations of Tuneable Liquid Crystal
Microwave Devices“ accepted for GEMIC 2008, Hamburg
[4] J. Anderson, “LC3D: Liquid Crystal Display 3-D Director Simulator Software and Technology
Guide” ,Artech House, 2001
[5] L. Y. Li “An improved compact 2-D finite-difference frequency-domain method for guided wave
structures,” IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, vol. 13, no. 12, pp. 520-522, Dec. 2003.