Lecture – 28

Dr. Avinash Chandra

School of Electronics Engineering

Microwave and Photonics Division
VIT University, Vellore, India
 Planar Transmission Lines
 What are Planar Transmission Lines ?
– Transmission lines consisting of metal strips that lie entirely in
parallel planes are referred as planar transmission lines. The most
common arrangement is one or more parallel metal strips and a
conducting ground plane, separated by dielectric material

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 Planar Transmission Lines
 What are their advantages over conventional microwave
networks ?
– Conventional microwave networks consist of coaxial lines or
waveguides as a medium of transmission. Hence, they are
inherently, bulky, expensive, and impractical for low power
applications.
– Whereas, in comparison, planar transmission lines have larger
bandwidth, compact, light weight, reproducibility and ease of
integration of many components within small physical dimensions.
 How are they manufactured ?
– Planar transmission lines are similar to integrated circuits at lower
frequencies. Hence, they are also referred as Microwave Integrated
Circuits (MICs). They can be manufactured using photolithography by
etching metal strips on dielectric materials. Passive components such as
capacitors and inductors can be etched in large numbers on such
dielectrics. Active devices (Eg. FETs) can also be easily integrated at
2 low microwave frequencies.
 Planar Transmission Lines

3
 Microstrip Line
 A microstrip line is most popular choice of the planar
transmission line due to its simple design. As both metal
structures are open, they can be etched easily using
photolithographic method.

 It consists of a thin metal conductor of width ‘w’ and thickness ‘t’

on the upper layer of a dielectric substrate of thickness ‘d’ and
relative permittivity ‘r’. The bottom layer of this dielectric
substrate consists of a metal plate acting as ‘ground’.

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 Microstrip Line
 If there was no dielectric substrate, then both the ground and
microstrip would have been surrounded by homogenous material
and therefore act like a two-wire transmission line supporting
TEM mode.

 But with a dielectric

substrate, the field lines
between microstrip and
ground plane see a
dielectric – air interface on
the upper layer. This
produces a bending effect
on the electric field lines.

 As velocity of TEM wave in air is ‘c’ and inside dielectric is ‘c/r’,

phase-matching condition cannot be fulfilled at dielectric – air
5 interface. Hence microstrip lines cannot support pure TEM mode.
 Microstrip Line
 In the actual microstrip operation, the operating mode is a hybrid
of both TE and TM modes.

 As the thickness of the substrate is much smaller than the

wavelength (d<< ), the fields can be considered as quasi – TEM

 The fields are quasi – TEM means, they are same as static fields.

Electric field

Magnetic field
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 Microstrip Line
 From the quasi – static approximation, we can write the phase
velocity and propagation constant as,

c
vp    k0  eff
 eff

Where  eff is the effective dielectric constant due to dielectric – air

interface and 1   eff   r

 The effective dielectric constant can be found out as

r 1 r 1 1
 eff  
2 2 1  12d w
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 Microstrip Line

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 Microstrip Line
 If the dimensions of the microstrip line are given then the
characteristic impedance can be computed as
 60  8d W 
  ln     w 1
 W 4 d  d
 eff
Z0  
120
 w 1
  d d 
  eff W  1.393  0.667ln W  1.444 

d

 If the characteristic impedance and dielectric constant of
the microstrip line are given then w/d ratio is
 8e A
 e2 A  2 W  2
W  d

d 2   r -1  0.61  
 B - 1- ln(2 B - 1)   ln( B  1)  0.39    W  2
8   2 r   r  d
 Microstrip Line
 A & B can be evaluated using the formulae

Z0  r  1  r 1  0.11 
A   0.23  
60 2  r 1  r 
377
B
2Z 0  r

 The procedure for microstrip line design is first we give Z0

and r after which we calculate A & B values. Substitute A
& B in W/d equation and get the dimensions of the
microstrip line.

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 Microstrip Line
Considering a microstrip line as a quasi-TEM line, we can determine the
attenuation due to dielectric loss as

where tan δ is the loss tangent of the dielectric.

The attenuation due to conductor loss is given approximately by

where Rs  o 2