Quasielectrostatic Wave Propagation Beyond the Delay-Bandwidth Limit in Switched Networks

The delay-bandwidth limit implies a stringent trade-off between the time delay, bandwidth, and propagation distance of an electromagnetic signal. Here, we show that temporal modulation can overcome this constraint, enabling extremely broadband wave propagation with close-to-zero group velocity dispersion in switched multipath electronic networks. Contrary to time-invariant waveguides, in which wave propagation implies a delicate balance between electric and magnetic stored energies, in such modulated networks the stored energy is largely electrostatic in nature. We show that in this case the phase and group velocities become independent of the properties of their constituent elements, and they are controlled only by the modulation scheme. Based on these findings, we provide practical designs of deeply subwavelength CMOS-compatible reciprocal and nonreciprocal microwave components, such as delay lines, phase shifters, couplers, and circulators. The obtained results also explicitly show that temporally modulated systems are not bound by constraints of time-invariant systems and can achieve arbitrarily large delay-bandwidth products.