Experimental Demonstration and Characterization of a Tunable CRLH Delay Line System for Impulse/Continuous Wave

A new tunable delay system is presented and demonstrated experimentally in this letter. This system, which incorporates a composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission line, two mixers, and a low-pass filter, achieves a tunable group delay for impulse and continuous-wave signals, controlled by a local oscillator. This group delay tunability follows from the dispersion property of the CRLH transmission line and is achieved without suffering from the drawbacks of conventional delay lines in terms of matching, frequency of operation, and planar circuit implementation. The realized prototype exhibits measured group delays tunable between 5.1 and 8.54 ns over a frequency range of 2-4.5 GHz.