Trw Limited

Kei-Fung Lau

Kuo-Hsiung Yen

Robert Bruce Stokes

Reynold S Kagiwada

Alvin M Kong

Michael J Delaney

James C Lau

Ronald D Kasparek

Steven E Housholder

An adjustable surface acoustic wave (SAW) transducer is fabricated on a piezoelectric substrate. The adjustable SAW transducer includes a plurality of SAW interdigital transducer (IDT) fingers disposed on the substrate. Miniature switches are used to provide a plurality of interconnection patterns between the SAW IDT fingers such that a plurality of SAW characteristics can be generated from a single set of SAW IDT fingers.

Adjustable saw device

This invention discloses a semiconductor bulk acoustic resonator including at least one thin film piezoelectric layer positioned on a semiconductor substrate. The acoustic resonator includes a heating ring positioned around the outer perimeter of the piezoelectric layer in order to heat the piezoelectric layer to a desirable elevated temperature. A heat sensing film fabricated on the piezoelectric layer monitors the temperature of the piezoelectric layer such that the heating ring maintains the piezoelectric layer at a constant temperature. By this, an oscillator circuit using this semiconductor bulk acoustic resonator as the frequency controlling element can maintain a constant frequency over a wide range of temperatures which may affect frequency stability.

Temperature stable semiconductor bulk acoustic resonator

A surface acoustic wave (SAW) device and a related method, for providing improved frequency response characteristics from a SAW spectrum analyzer or channelizer. The device includes a spectrum analyzer with a preprocessing SAW device configured to provide output signals with narrower passbands, lower sidelobe components, or both. The preprocessing SAW device is a tapped delay line in one embodiment, to simulate positional offsets in the placement of input transducers of the analyzer. The tapped delay line can also be used to provide amplitude weighting or can be configured in a chirp spacing, to transform the spectrum analyzer into a chirp analyzer. Another embodiment employs a thinned-electrode prefilter as the preprocessing device, to yield a frequency response with multiple narrow passbands, which are used to narrow the individual channel passbands of the spectrum analyzer or to suppress sidelobes in the frequency response.

Saw channelized filters

A surface acoustic wave (SAW) diffraction-effect or interference-effect device with a highly isotropic substrate having a high coupling coefficient and low attenuation losses. The use of X-propagating rotated-Y-cut lithium niobate as the SAW substrate, with the Y rotation angle selected at 121 degrees, provides a practically isotropic material, with a high coupling coefficient and relatively low attenuation losses.

Isotropic acoustic wave substrate

An acoustic wave filter device with low loss and low passband ripple characteristics. The filter comprises three bidirectional electroacoustical transducers disposed along a common axis on the surface of a substrate of piezoelectric material. The two outer transducers of the three function as input transducers and the center transducer functions as an output transducer. One of the input transducers is of the antisymmetric type and has a transfer characteristic that differs in phase angle by ninety degrees with respect to the other input transducer, which is of the symmetric type. This ninety-degree difference applies at all frequencies, so that any energy reflected from the output transducer and again reflected by an input transducer will be subject to a phase shift of 180 degrees in the case of energy reflected from the antisymmetric input transducer, and no phase shift in the case of the symmetric input transducer. Accordingly, these triple-transit echoes will cancel at the output transducer, for all frequencies. For the primary energy propagation from the input transducers to the output transducer, a ninety-degree phase shifter in one input circuit ensures that the signals from the two input transducers are in phase when they reach the output transducer.

Low-loss acoustic wave filter device

A surface acoustic wave (SAW) device configured to operate as a spectrum analyzer, and having an array of input transducers disposed on a substrate in such positions as to produce a focused beam of acoustic energy at a focal arc, each position on the arc being representative of an input signal frequency. Output transducers produce electrical signals corresponding to the energy received at successive segments of the focal arc. The disclosed device includes various combinations of input transducer array improvements, some of which are to provide amplitude weighting of the input array, including aperture width weighting, capacitive weighting, resistive weighting, series-parallel weighting, and source withdrawal weighting. Another improvement in input array configuration eliminates close or overlapping electrodes of opposite polarities and thereby reduces parasitic capacitance and acoustic radiation between electrode elements. The use of curved input transducer fingers improves operation of the transducers as point sources. Other important improvements include the use of acoustic transducers before to transmit the focused output energy from the focal line to conventional output transducers, thereby improving frequency resolution, and the use of electromagnetic waveguides to transmit energy from output transducers located on the focal line.

Surface acoustic wave spectrum analyzer

Energy trapping elements for use with shallow bulk acoustic wave devices of various kinds, to minimize the insertion loses in such devices due to spreading of electroacoustic energy into the crystal substrate upon which the devices are constructed. Electroacoustic energy propagated in a substrate is trapped close to the surface of the substrate by means of trapping elements comprising a plurality of strips or grooves disposed on the surface of the substrate in the path of the propagated energy, and oriented approximately perpendicularly to the direction of propagation. The spacing of the elements is such that their stop-band frequency, at which energy will be reflected, is substantially different from the characteristic center frequency of the entire device, in order that the elements will serve a purely trapping function and not a reflecting function.

Shallow bulk acoustic wave devices employing energy trapping

A surface acoustic resonator including an interdigital transducer configured to generate acoustic waves at at least one harmonic frequency, and a pair of reflection gratings capable of essentially total reflection of the acoustic waves in both fundamental and harmonic modes of operation. One-port and two-port resonators are disclosed, capable of operation at fundamental and harmonic frequencies, to provide a higher frequency of operation without correspondingly higher resolution requirements for manufacturing processes. For single-mode operation at higher frequencies, the interdigital transducer and reflection gratings have different fundamental frequencies, and utilize harmonics of different order but the same actual frequency, such that the resonator functions at a single frequency, which may be, for example, the third harmonic with respect to the transducer fundamental frequency, and the second harmonic with respect to the reflection grating-fundamental frequency.

Growing community of inventors

Harbor City, CA, United States of America

Kei-Fung Lau