2784 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 62, NO.
11, NOVEMBER 2014
Microstrip Transmission Line Method for Broadband
Permittivity Measurement of Dielectric Substrates
Prasanth Moolakuzhy Narayanan
Abstract—This paper presents a novel microstrip transmission
line method for broadband relative permittivity measurement of
planar dielectric substrate materials. The method requires three
sets of -parameter measurements of the microstrip line together
with an obstacle in three equidistant positions over the line. The
measurement and simulation results for the broadband relative
permittivity of high-frequency substrates, TLX-8, RF60A, CER10,
and the widely used FR4 are presented. The errors are calculated
based on the manufacturers’ data sheet value. Both the simulation
and measurement results are found to be within 16% of the data
sheet values for CER10 and 10% for all other substrates. The pro-
posed method can minimize errors due to the nonreproducibility of
connectors and impedance mismatch problems, prevalent in trans-
mission line methods. However, the method is highly sensitive to the
positioning of the obstacle, which can be overcome through the use
of high accuracy obstacle positioning methods.
Index Terms—Broadband measurement, dielectric materials,
material characterization, microwave measurement, permittivity,
planar substrates, scattering parameters.
I. INTRODUCTION
B ROADBAND characterization of dielectric substrates is
essential for its wideband and microwave applications.
Frequency-dependent variation in substrate permittivity causes
dispersion in transmission lines, which causes pulse distor-
tion in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems [1], [2]. In addition,
microwave integrated circuits and RF packaging materials
require a good understanding of the broadband permittivity
characteristics of the substrate materials for accurate design.
Microwave permittivity measurement methods can be broadly
classified into resonant and nonresonant methods. Resonant
methods are more accurate and suitable for characterization
of low-loss dielectrics [3]; however, they can only provide
measurement results at a single frequency or a number of
discrete frequencies. In the nonresonant class, the transmis-
sion/reflection (T/R) methods are relatively easy to implement
and enable broadband measurements; however, they are less
accurate than the resonant methods [3]. The accuracy of T/R
methods are limited by calibration errors, nonreproducibility
of connectors, and impedance mismatch [4]. Various types
Manuscript received March 18, 2014; revised July 18, 2014 and August 19,
2014; accepted August 23, 2014. Date of publication September 12, 2014; date
of current version November 03, 2014.
The author is with the Nimbus Centre, Department of Electronic Engineering,
Cork Institute of Technology, Cork, Ireland (e-mail: mnprasanth@gmail.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2014.2354595
0018-9480 © 2014 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
of T/R techniques have been developed over the years, such
as coaxial [5], planar [6]–[9], and waveguide [10], [11]. The
theory of T/R methods based on coaxial and waveguide trans-
mission lines and various errors in the methods are described
in [12]. In [13], a strip-line transmission line method has been
proposed that enables simultaneous broadband measurement of
complex permittivity and permeability. However, the method
is sensitive to dimensional resonance and impedance mis-
match. Moreover, the method requires a test chamber and test
samples with dimensions suitable to fit in the test chamber. In
[6], a microstrip-based method for complex permittivity and
permeability measurement is presented. The method requires a
microstrip line of known permittivity substrate, and the sample
under test placed over the microstrip line. It needs calibration to
eliminate the systematic errors due to network analyzer, cables,
and test device. In addition, the possibility of an air gap between
the sample substrate and microstrip line may cause errors. A
number of self-calibration methods that eliminate the effect of
impedance mismatch and calibration errors are reported in the
literature [5], [10], [11]. However, they use coaxial or wave-
guide transmission lines and they are not suitable for planar or
printed circuit board (PCB) substrate characterization.
In [7], two methods for measuring substrate permittivity
using microstrip and stripline have been proposed. The first
method requires two microstrip lines of different lengths. The
accuracy of this method is limited by the error in measuring
the physical lengths of the two lines, as well as the nonideality
of connectors. The second method consists of a stripline with
different substrates on either side of the conductor. One of
them is a standard substrate with known permittivity and the
other is a test substrate. Here the method can overcome the
connector mismatch problem reported in other methods [4],
[12]; however, possibility of air gap between the substrates of
the strip-line exists. In [8], a method for determining complex
permittivity and permeability of microstrip substrates based
on -parameter measurements has been proposed. However,
the method is sensitive to impedance mismatch problems. In
[9], a method for determining the causal dielectric model of a
microstrip substrate was proposed. The method uses a multiline
through reflect line (TRL) calibration method for extraction of
the propagation constant. This method requires multiple line
standards for the measurement.
In this work, a microstrip transmission line method for mea-
suring the relative permittivity of planar dielectric substrates is
presented. The proposed method uses the sample under test as
the substrate of microstrip line, and an obstacle that has to be
placed at different positions over the microstrip line for mea-
surements. The method uses the line network network (LNN)
NARAYANAN: MICROSTRIP TRANSMISSION LINE METHOD FOR BROADBAND PERMITTIVITY MEASUREMENT OF DIELECTRIC SUBSTRATES 2785

[15]. The propagation constant of the transmission line can be

calculated from the measured transmission matrices using (5)
[11],

(5)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the microstrip line with three different positions
( 1, 2, and 3) of the obstacle, the step length is represented as .
, ).
There are four solutions for (5). The first two solutions are
given as follows in (6) and (7), the remaining two solutions are
the same as the first two solutions and do not need to be consid-
ered:

[14] calibration procedure of vector network analyzers (VNAs) (6)

for the extraction of the propagation constant of the transmis-
sion line. It does not require reconnecting of connectors for each
measurement: hence, avoids errors due to nonreproducibility of
connections.
Section II describes the method to extract the propagation
constant of the transmission line and the calculation of relative
permittivity.
(7)
where is the step length (the step length is the distance between
the centers of two consecutive obstacle positions), is the prop-
agation constant of the microstrip line, and can be found using
(8),

(8)
II. MICROSTRIP-BASED TRANSMISSION LINE METHOD
trace (9)
Fig. 1 shows the schematic diagram of the microstrip line with
trace (10)
three consecutive and equidistant positions of the obstacle. The
positions of the obstacle are labeled as 1, 2, and 3. The ob- The first solution of propagation constant will work up
stacle is placed consecutively at the three positions, and the three to the frequency given in (11). The equation provides the
sets of two-port -parameters of the microstrip line are mea- frequency corresponding to the line length that equals half of
sured together with the obstacle. Determination of the propaga- guided wavelength. The line length is given as twice the step-
tion constant of the microstrip line, from two-port -parameters length
based on the LNN calibration procedure [14], [15], is described
next. The transmission matrix ( ) of the microstrip line can be (11)
calculated from the two-port -parameters using (1)
is the speed of light in free space and is the effective per-
(1) mittivity of the microstrip line. The complex effective permit-
tivity can be calculated using the propagation constant
given as follows in (12) [8]:
The transmission matrix of the microstrip line with the ob-
stacle in position 1, 2, and 3 can be written as
(12)
(2)
where is the frequency. The propagation constant consists of
(3)
various losses such as conductor resistance and phase-shift
(4) constant . The relative permittivity of the substrate material
is derived from the effective permittivity and dimensions of the
, , and are the transmission matrices microstrip line using (13) [16],
of the microstrip line with the obstacle in position 1, 2, and
3, respectively. Here, is the transmission matrix of the ob- (13)
stacle and is the transmission matrix of the microstrip line.
Also, , and are the two-port transmission matrices (14)
representing the systematic errors of the VNA and measure-
ment setup. The systematic errors include the microstrip sec- (15)
tions outside the calibration reference planes ( 1 and 3) and
impedance mismatch of the ports. The error matrices are the where is the width of copper track, is the thickness of
same for all measurements and they will be eliminated during copper track, is the thickness of substrate, and is the
the calculation. Therefore, the method enables the permittivity effective microstrip width. Equation (13) was used in [16] for
measurement without the influence of various systematic errors. permittivity calculation at frequencies up to 35 GHz and good
Detailed information about the error networks can be found in accuracy was shown.
2786 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 62, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 2. Simulated relative permittivity of TLX8 substrate with obstacles of var-
ious reflectivity.
Fig. 3. Simulated reflection coefficient of various obstacles.
III. PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS THROUGH SIMULATIONS
In this section, the effect of various design parameters on the
performance of the proposed method is analyzed. The perfor-
mance of the method is evaluated in terms of accuracy and band-
width. According to sensitivity simulations reported in [17], for
optimum performance, the obstacle should exhibit a reflection
and transmission loss within the range of 4–12 and 2–30 dB,
respectively. A section of CER-10 copper-clad PCB was used
as the obstacle for both experimental measurements and simu-
lations. The obstacle was placed in such a way that the metal
side of the obstacle is in touch with the trace of the microstrip
line. Several simulations have been conducted to study the effect
of the obstacle reflectivity and dimensions on the simulation re-
sults. Simulated relative permittivity of the TLX8 substrate with
the obstacles of various reflectivity is shown in Fig. 2. In addi-
tion, the simulated reflection and transmission coefficients of the
various obstacles are shown in Figs. 3 and 4, respectively. It can
be observed from Fig. 2 that the simulated permittivity results
with the lower reflective obstacles of permittivity 2 and 5 are
erroneous and unstable. Highly reflective obstacles of permit-
tivity 20 and metal are demonstrating accurate results. The cur-
rent simulation results show that the reflection and transmission
loss required for the obstacle, reported in [17], can be modified
as 4–20 and 0.5–30 dB, respectively. Fig. 5 compares the sim-
ulated permittivity of the TLX8 substrate over the 4–12-GHz
frequency range with three different obstacle dimensions. The
lower frequency limit is selected as 4 GHz because the lowest
operating frequency of the TLX8 substrate for 5-mm step length
is about 4 GHz. The upper frequency limit used for all simula-
tion and measurement experiments is 12 GHz or less. Results
show that the maximum variation in permittivity is less than
Fig. 4. Simulated transmission coefficient of various obstacles.
Fig. 5. Simulated relative permittivity of TLX8 substrate with different ob-
stacle width ( ) and length ( ).
1.5% over the frequency range of 4–10 GHz when compared
with the reference obstacle ( , mm). The reference
obstacle was selected based on best measurement result, after
comparing the results of different obstacle sizes. However, an
error of 7% is found for the obstacle with 12-mm length at fre-
quency of about 11.5 GHz. This is most likely due to resonance
in the obstacle because the obstacle length is about one-half of
the wavelength of the frequency. The results show that the ob-
stacle dimensions do not significantly affect the measurement
accuracy if the obstacle reflectivity is within the above speci-
fied range. However, long metallic obstacle will cause errors be-
cause of the resonances. In addition, the accuracy of the method
is independent of the obstacle’s position on the microstrip line
as long as the positions are equidistant. Therefore, the three dif-
ferent equidistant positions can be selected anywhere on the mi-
crostrip line.
The bandwidth of the proposed method depends on the elec-
trical length of the line. The maximum frequency of operation
for the first solution of propagation constant is given in
(11). From (11), it can be observed that the upper frequency limit
of is inversely related to the line length and square root of
effective permittivity. For frequencies above , the second so-
lution of the propagation constant can be used. The upper
frequency limit of varies between different substrate mate-
rials. The breaking of is most likely due to the higher order
resonances in the microstrip line. Considering the lowest oper-
ating frequency, the electrical length of the line should be long
enough for accurate measurements at low frequencies. The sim-
ulation study reveals that the lowest operating frequency can be
lowered by increasing the step length. Simulations were carried
out with four different substrate materials using four different
step lengths (equal electrical lengths for all substrates) in each
material. Simulation results show that while the average lowest
NARAYANAN: MICROSTRIP TRANSMISSION LINE METHOD FOR BROADBAND PERMITTIVITY MEASUREMENT OF DIELECTRIC SUBSTRATES
Fig. 6. Simulated relative permittivity of the TLX8 substrate with different step
lengths.
TABLE I
DIMENSIONS OF THE MICROSTRIP LINES USED FOR EXPERIMENTS
operating frequency of the four substrates is 2.5 GHz, the corre-
sponding guided wavelength is eight times the line length in all
substrates. However, the relation between lowest operating fre-
quency and line length found varies for different line lengths.
The simulated permittivity of the TLX8 substrate as function
of frequency for four different step lengths is shown in Fig. 6.
For the step lengths of 5, 10, 15, and 20 mm, the corresponding
lowest operating frequency was found as about 2.9, 1.9, 1.5, and
0.8 GHz, respectively. The maximum error at lowest frequency
is found less than 6.9%.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL VERIFICATION
Simulations and measurement experiments have been con-
ducted to verify the proposed method. Four different substrate
materials, the widely used FR4 and the high-frequency Taconic
substrates TLX8, RF60A, and CER10, have been characterized.
Table I shows the parameters of the microstrip lines used for the
experiments. All the microstrip lines are designed for a charac-
teristic impedance of 50 . In the case of unknown substrates, an
approximate knowledge of the substrate permittivity is required
for designing the microstrip lines. Simulation experiments were
carried out with 3-D electromagnetic simulation software, CST
Microwave Studio. The simulation software requires the permit-
tivity and loss tangent values at single frequency. The software
uses a standard dispersion model such as the Debye model for
calculating the frequency-dependent loss and permittivity. Mea-
surements were conducted with a HP8720C VNA. The compu-
tations were performed using a program written in MATLAB.
All simulation and measurement experiments are performed
using a 5-mm step length because it enables the measurements
over the UWB frequency range in all substrate materials. The
microstrip line was fixed on a test fixture (Anritsu 3680-20),
which was then connected to the VNA. Fig. 7 shows the mea-
surement setup used for the experiments, where ports 1 and 2 are
2787
Fig. 7. Measurement setup with sample substrate and obstacle.
Fig. 8. Microstrip lines manufactured for the measurements with the sample
materials TLX8, FR4, RF60, and CER10.
connected to the two ports of the VNA using a coaxial cable. A
photograph of the microstrip lines with the four different sub-
strate materials is shown in Fig. 8.
A. Simulation and Measurement Results
In Fig. 9, comparison of the simulated and measured permit-
tivity for the FR4 and TLX8 substrates over the frequency range
of 4–11 GHz is shown. Furthermore, Fig. 9 shows the mea-
surement results of the FR4 substrate over the frequency range
of 4–7.5 GHz using an improved two-microstrip line method
[18]. Simulation experiments are free from most of the measure-
ment errors such as obstacle positioning, geometry of the mi-
crostirp line, and surface roughness of the conductor. However,
the frequency-dependent dispersion model used for the simula-
tion may have small variation form the actual dispersion char-
acteristics of the microstrip line due to the possible errors in the
model. The overall error in the simulations will be smaller than
the measurements. Therefore, comparison between the simula-
tion and measurement results helps to identify most of the errors
in the measurement results. The simulated and measured results
match well for both substrates. The largest difference between
simulation and measurement results for FR4 is about 8% of the
actual permittivity at 9 GHz and for TLX8 it is about 6.6% of
the actual permittivity at 10.2 GHz. The largest difference be-
tween the measurement results of FR4 with the two-microstrip
2788 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 62, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
Fig. 9. Measurement and simulation results for the relative permittivity of FR4
and TLX8 substrates.
Fig. 10. Measurement and simulation results for the relative permittivity of
RF60 and CER10 substrates.
line method and the current method is about 6.6% of the actual
permittivity at 7 GHz.
Fig. 10 shows the simulation and measurement results for
the RF60 and CER10 substrates over the frequency range of
3–8 GHz. Furthermore, Fig. 10 shows the measurement results
of the CER10 substrate reported in [19] based on a resonator
method over the frequency range of 3–8 GHz. The largest dif-
ference between simulation and measurement results is 9% for
RF60 at 3 GHz and 14% for CER10 at 8 GHz. The largest differ-
ence between the measurement results of CER10 with the res-
onator method and the current method is about 12% of the actual
permittivity at 6.5 GHz. The differences between the simula-
tion and measurement are mainly due to the following reasons.
Firstly, the small errors in the dispersion model of the simula-
tion software cause error in the simulated permittivity. In ad-
dition, various errors in the measurements such as obstacle po-
sitioning error can cause error in the measurement results. The
errors in the simulation and measurement results cause the dif-
ferences between the simulation and measurement results. The
effect of obstacle positioning error will be higher in high-per-
mittivity substrates due to the large electrical length. Therefore,
the difference between the simulation and measurement results
is larger in the high-permittivity substrates such as CER10. Var-
ious measurement errors are discussed in Section V.
B. Simulation and Measurement Errors
Table II shows the permittivity values of the four different
substrates obtained from simulation, measurement, and man-
TABLE II
MEASURED, SIMULATED, AND ACTUAL PERMITTIVITY VALUES
ufacturers’ data sheet at frequencies at which the error is
calculated. The errors are calculated based on the manufac-
turers’ data sheet as reference values. The manufacturer is using
the IPC-TM-650 standard for the permittivity measurements,
which uses a resonator method. Simulations show an error
of 4% and 7% at 10 GHz for the substrates TLX8 and FR4,
respectively. The measurement error is found as 4.7% for the
TLX8 at 10 GHz. The permittivity value of FR4 provided by
the manufacturer was only at low frequency and not suitable for
comparison. Therefore, the measured permittivity error of the
FR4 is calculated in comparison with the measurement results,
using the resonator method, provided in [19]. The measured
relative permittivity of the FR4 at 10 GHz is about 4.5 in [19].
Therefore, FR4 shows an error of 1.5% compared to the results
in [19].
The simulation and measurement errors of substrates RF60
and CER10 are calculated at frequency point that shows max-
imum errors, therefore the frequency points used for the error
estimation are different between simulation and measurement.
The largest error in simulation and measurement for RF60 is
found as 8.4% at 3 GHz and 9.4% at 3.1 GHz, respectively.
Similarly, the largest error in simulation and measurement for
CER10 is found as 10% at 3.2 GHz and 16% at 6.5 GHz, re-
spectively. The measurement results of the permittivity of the
substrates TLX8, RF60, and CER10 using broadband transmis-
sion line methods have not been reported in the literature. The
accuracy of the broadband microstrip transmission line method
reported in [6] is 5% over the frequency range of 0.5–10 GHz.
The two-microstrip-line method reported in [7] shows an error
of 0.4% in the permittivity for 0.1-mm error in the line length.
A broadband permittivity measurement method based on the
time-domain measurements reported in [20] shows repeatability
within 0.1 for the permittivity range of 2–3 and 0.5 for the
permittivity range of 12–15. The error calculated for the current
method is the largest possible error; therefore the error is higher
for the substrates with large tolerance range. The tolerance of
the CER10 substrate is 0.5, which is about 10.5% of the nom-
inal substrate permittivity. Therefore, the actual error in the cur-
rent results may be less than the values calculated. For example,
the measurement error of the CER10 at 6.5 GHz is calculated
as 16% based on the permittivity value of 10, but the error is
6.6% based on the permittivity value of 9. The error of CER10
is 11.6% based on the nominal substrate permittivity of 9.5. The
current simulation and measurement results of substrates TLX8,
FR4, and RF60 show an error of 5% based on the nominal sub-
strate permittivity, which is similar to the error reported in other
broadband methods [6], [20]. However, the nominal error of
the high-permittivity substrate, CER10, is found as higher than
NARAYANAN: MICROSTRIP TRANSMISSION LINE METHOD FOR BROADBAND PERMITTIVITY MEASUREMENT OF DIELECTRIC SUBSTRATES
TABLE III
STEP LENGTHS CORRESPONDING TO VARIOUS SIMULATED ERROR CASES
Fig. 11. Simulated errors in relative permittivity, in percentage, of TLX8 sub-
strate corresponding to the various step-length errors.
the other broadband measurement methods. The higher error in
CER10 is due to the following reasons. Firstly, because of the
high permittivity, the small error in the obstacle positioning will
cause large error in the electrical length of the line. Secondly,
the calculated largest error will be higher due to the large toler-
ance of the material. The main source of measurement error is
the error in obstacle positioning during the manual placement,
which is discussed in Section V.
V. SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS
The obstacle positioning error causes error in the step lengths.
The error in step length will introduce error in the line length,
as the line length is twice the step length. The incorrect step
lengths or line length will cause error in the propagation co-
efficient , which leads to error in measurement results. The
human hand exhibits various errors in the placement of obsta-
cles. Various papers quantified the attainable accuracy in hand
manipulation [21], [22]. In [21], the root mean square (rms) am-
plitude of hand-positioning errors in a stationary task was re-
ported as 526 m. Simulations have been conducted to study
the effect of different possible errors in step lengths on the mea-
surement results. Various simulated step-length errors using the
TLX8 substrate are shown in Table III. When first and second
step lengths are represented as and , the error in each case
can be described as shown in Table III.
The correct step-length value for the simulations is 5 mm and
therefore the correct line length is 10 mm. For error estimations,
a 2% error in the step length was implemented by moving the
obstacle positions by 0.1 mm. Fig. 11 shows the simulated errors
in relative permittivity (in percentage) corresponding to various
errors in step lengths. In Case 1, both obstacles 1 and 3 moved
0.1 mm towards the center, which introduced an error of 2%
2789
reduction in line length. In Case 2, obstacles 1 and 3 moved
0.1 mm away from the center, which introduced an error of 2%
increment in line length. Cases 1 and 2 caused an average of
4.2% and 4.6% errors in permittivity, respectively. The results
of Cases 1 and 2 show that equal error in step lengths cause uni-
form error in permittivity over frequency. For Cases 3–6, the
error in step lengths was implemented using obstacle positions
1 and 3, whereas the center position (position 2) was kept fixed.
In Cases 3 and 4, the step lengths are unequal, but the line length
is correct because in Case 3 decreased by 0.1 mm when in-
creased by 0.1 mm. Cases 3 and 4 show that unequal step lengths
will cause large permittivity error at low frequency (an error of
2% in step lengths caused an error of more than 10% in per-
mittivity, for frequencies below 4 GHz), but there is no error at
high frequency, above 9 GHz. The high error at low frequency
is most likely due to the fact that the electrical length of the line
is smaller as compared to the wavelength of the signal, which
makes the small error in the step lengths become significant.
At higher frequencies, the line length is larger as compared to
the wavelength of the signal, which makes the small mismatch
in the step lengths become insignificant. Cases 5 and 6 have un-
equal step lengths and an error in line length, which caused large
error at low frequencies (an error of 1% in line length caused
an error of above 10% in permittivity, for frequencies below
3 GHz) and a uniform error at higher frequencies (1% error in
line length caused a uniform error of about 2% at frequencies
above 9 GHz). The results of Cases 3–6 show that the lowest
operating frequency is reduces in accordance with an increase in
mismatch between the step lengths. In addition, the results show
that an error in the line length causes a permittivity error at all
frequencies. In real measurements, the error reported in Cases 5
and 6 is most likely to occur due to possible error in all three po-
sitions. The error in step lengths for Cases 7 and 8 is the same as
in Cases 3 and 4; however, for Cases 7 and 8, the error occurred
in the position of the central obstacle. The error in permittivity
for Cases 3, 4, 7, and 8 can be found as about the same because
their errors in the step lengths are the same. However, the errors
in step lengths are introduced by the obstacle at different posi-
tions for different cases. The results show that the position of the
obstacle that makes the error is not important as long as the error
in the step lengths is the same. Therefore, it is not required to
simulate all combinations of positioning errors that make sim-
ilar error in the step lengths. The sensitivity of positioning error
will reduce with the increase in line length. Therefore, the effect
of positioning error can be minimized by increasing the total
line length. Furthermore, accurate positioning methods such as
motor positioning or a fixture with slots [11] for placement of
the obstacle can be used to minimize positioning errors. In ad-
dition to the obstacle positioning error, poor reflectivity of the
obstacle because of the improper contact between the obstacle
and microstrip conductor, the impact of transmission line loss,
and the error in geometry of the microstrip line are the other
sources of measurement errors. The influence of overall trans-
mission line loss on the real part of the measured permittivity of
FR4 is found as 0.00085 and 0.0039 at 5 and 11 GHz, which is
about 0.018% and 0.086% of the substrate permittivity, respec-
tively. Therefore, the influence of the transmission line loss, par-
ticularly the conductor loss at high frequency, on the real part
2790 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 62, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2014
of the measured permittivity is negligible. The overall loss of
the remaining high-frequency substrate materials is smaller than
the loss of FR4. Therefore, the impact of loss on the measured
permittivity can be considered as negligible for the remaining
substrates. However, the loss tangent of the materials has large
error. The method is not preferable for the measurement of the
loss tangent. The error in geometry of the microstrip line due
to under etching can cause error in the measured permittivity
as the formula used to calculate relative permittivity from ef-
fective permittivity uses the dimensions of the microstrip line.
The errors due to under etching can be overcome by using ac-
curate manufacturing methods such as a PCB milling machine.
The effect of the error in the dimensions of the microstrip line
and the effect of conductor loss on the relative permittivity will
increase for the microstrip lines with smaller trace width and
higher frequencies.
VI. CONCLUSION
A novel method for broadband permittivity measurement of
planar dielectric substrates has been presented. A microstrip line
has been used as the measurement cell, which eliminates the
error due to the air gap between the trace of the microstrip and
the sample. Additionally, the method can minimize the effect
of connector nonreproducibility and impedance mismatch prob-
lems, which are prominent in transmission line methods. How-
ever, the method is highly sensitive to the error in positioning
of the obstacle. For example, simulations show an error of more
than 10% of the permittivity value for frequencies below 4 GHz
corresponding to an error of 2% in step lengths. Therefore, the
method is not preferable for measurements at lower frequencies,
below 4 GHz. The effect of positioning error can be minimized
by increasing the line length. In addition, accurate obstacle po-
sitioning methods such as motor positioning can minimize the
positioning error. Simulation and measurement results of rel-
ative permittivity for four different substrate materials, TLX8,
FR4, RF60A, and CER10, have been presented. The worst case
simulation and measurement errors have been found to be less
than 16% for CER 10 and 10% for all other substrates, within
the measured frequency range. The effects of design param-
eters, such as the line length and obstacle size, on the band-
width and accuracy of the method have been discussed. The pro-
posed method finds applications in permittivity measurements
of planar substrate materials with a wide range of thicknesses
and permittivity.
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Prasanth Moolakuzhy Narayanan, photograph and biography not available at
time of publication.