Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Islamic University of Technology

EEE 4842: Microwave Engineering Lab.

Experiment 5: Planar EM Solution of Quarter Wave Transformer

Objective:
Getting familiarized with the planar EM solution simulating a Quarter Wave Transformer
using microstrip lines.

Procedure:
1. A microstrip line with characteristic impedance, 50Ω will be matched with a microstrip
line with characteristic impedance, 100Ω using Quarter Wave Transformer in this
experiment. Thus, characteristic impedance of the Quarter Wave Transformer should
be 70.7 Ω with 900 electrical length. In order to determine the dimension of the
transmission lines and the Quarter Wave Transformer, first use ‘Insert Circuit Design’
under Project and select the default Microstrip Technology, FR4 (εr = 4.4) substrate
height, 0.06 inch mm, 0.5 oz Copper.

2. Drag a piece of microstrip line from Components -> Microstrip -> Transmission Line
-> Trans. Line, Physical Length. Use its TRL window to calculate the width of
microstrip line with characteristic impedance, 50Ω and characteristic impedance,150Ω
for frequency, 2 GHz. The width will be 2.89 mm and 0.647 mm respectively. Then
calculate the width and length of Quarter Wave Transformer. It should be 1.5135 mm
and 21.04 mm respectively as shown below.
3. Create a new design using ‘Insert Planar EM design’ under Project and select the
default Microstrip Technology, FR4 (εr = 4.4) substrate height, 0.06 inch mm, 0.5 oz
Copper.

4. Create 3 pieces of microstrip lines which can represent the microstrip line with
characteristic impedance, 50Ω, the microstrip line with characteristic impedance, 150Ω
and the Quarter Wave Transformer and assign proper dimension to them. Use ‘Draw
Rectangle’ from menu.

You may use just 5 mm length for the pieces of lines on the two sides. You may use
delta x, delta y fields when you create the lines to assign proper dimension.
Alternatively, you may use the properties window for the lines as shown below.
5. Place the pieces of lines as follows.

6. Select all the pieces together using ‘ctrl’ and then apply Layout -> Merge Polygons -
> Union.

7. To assign ports, select the two edges using Edit -> Select Edges. Then Right click on
Excitation on Project Tree and select Add port

8. Right click on Analysis and select Add solution setup. Accept default mesh frequency.
Right click on Setup 1and add frequency sweep with frequency range from 0 to 4 GHz
with step size 50 MHz. Select ‘Interpolating’ (not Discrete) for frequency sweep. Run
analysis and plot S11.