IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2013 575

Ka-Band Rectangular Waveguide to

Suspended Stripline Transition
Rafał Głogowski, Jean-François Zürcher, Custódio Peixeiro, Member, IEEE, and Juan R. Mosig, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—A Ka-band transition between a rectangular wave-

guide and a suspended stripline (SSL) is proposed. It uses a config-
uration in which the SSL substrate is perpendicular to the wave-
guide main axis. A patch printed on the SSL substrate is used to
match the characteristic impedance of the waveguide. A set of for-
mulas to facilitate the design of the element is presented. A proto-
type of the transition was fabricated and the experimental results
agree well with the simulations. The proposed element can have the
input matching below dB in a 13% bandwidth while main-
taining the insertion loss below 0.22 dB.
Index Terms—Millimeter wave components, suspended stripline
(SSL), waveguide transition.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Geometry of the proposed waveguide to SSL transition.

T HE losses of traditional planar transmission lines, such

as microstrip or stripline, are usually a problem at high
frequency bands. One of the possible solutions is to use a
suspended stripline (SSL), which is a version of the classical
stripline (triplate) [1]. It has lower losses due to lower current
densities and reduced dielectric losses. In applications that
require high performance, such as space systems, it might be
necessary to combine a waveguide feed with a planar trans-
mission line network. This reduces the losses in the first, high
power, part of the signal distribution network and allows the
use of high-performance waveguide components. However,
Fig. 2. Parameters used to describe the transition.
this approach requires the use of a transition between the
waveguide and the planar transmission line.
In this letter we propose to use a modified configuration
The two possible geometrical configurations of the transition
which is an adaptation of a technique used in some wave-
between a waveguide and a SSL are in-line or right-angle [2],
guide to microstrip transitions, e.g., [4]. In this solution, a
[3]. The only transition between a waveguide and a SSL, with
patch printed on the SSL dielectric substrate is used to obtain
the substrate perpendicular to the main axis of the waveguide,
impedance matching. An overview of such geometry is shown
available in the literature is the one proposed by Roy et al. in
in Fig. 1 with the details provided in Fig. 2. Despite, having
[3]. However, in [3], there is no experimental validation of the
the same principle of operation as in the case of a microstrip
design because there is a notable disagreement between simu-
line, the transition to the SSL requires modifications due to the
lation and experimental results. Moreover, no design guidelines
lack of a well defined ground plane. Moreover, the proposed
are provided.
transition can use a waveguide short with a length well below
Manuscript received May 03, 2013; revised July 10, 2013; accepted Au- a quarter wavelength and has additional parameters that can be
gust 20, 2013. Date of publication September 25, 2013; date of current version used for fine tuning. This letter provide simple and ready to
November 04, 2013. This work was supported by ESA/ESTEC in the frame of
Technical Research Program. Rafał Głogowski acknowledges the financial sup-
use design formulas for such a transition, which are currently
port of Portuguese Research Council (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia). lacking in the literature.
R. Głogowski is with the Laboratoire d’Electromagnétisme et d’Acoustique II. GEOMETRY OF THE PROPOSED ELEMENT
(LEMA), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Lausanne
CH-1015, Switzerland and also with Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto The proposed transition connects a standard rectangular
Superior Técnico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal (e-mail: rafal.glo- waveguide (RWG) and a SSL, as shown in Fig. 1. The substrate
gowski@epfl.ch). of the SSL completely fills the opening of the waveguide. It
J.-F. Zürcher and J. R. Mosig are with the Laboratoire d’Electromagnétisme
et d’Acoustique (LEMA), École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), is positioned and held firmly by grooves in the waveguide
Lausanne CH-1015, Switzerland. enclosure. A metallic patch is printed on the bottom side of the
C. Peixeiro is with the Instituto de Telecomunicações, Instituto Superior Téc- substrate. It converts the principal mode of the waveguide
nico, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
into a microstrip patch resonant mode as described in [5].
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. The patch is proximity coupled to the SSL central conductor on
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2013.2281408 the other side of the dielectric substrate. The central conductor

1531-1309 © 2013 IEEE

576 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2013
TABLE I
INPUT FREQUENCY MODIFICATIONS FOR DIFFERENT SUBSTRATES
is capacitively loaded in order to enhance the coupling to the
resonating patch. Above the printed structure, a shorted section
of the waveguide is used to properly match the waveguide
input. The transition parameters to be used in the subsequent
designs are presented in Fig. 2.
In order to facilitate the design of the proposed element,
the authors have developed a set of equations that can be used
to design a transition working at a given central frequency.
The formulas have been obtained by empirically linking the
dimensions of the transition tuned to work at different fre-
quencies with the parameters of the waveguide (dimensions,
cut-off frequency, guided wavelength) and the wavelength of
interest. They have been developed for use with SSL having
50 characteristic impedance and the standard Ka-band rect-
angular waveguide (WR-28). However, they work well also for
other standard waveguides having the same 2 to 1 side aspect
ratio. The parameters of the transition are set according to the
following equations:
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
where and are the free-space and the guided wavelengths
at the frequency of interest, while is the cut-off wavelength
of the waveguide. The above equations were developed for the
standard SSL substrate having a thickness in Ka-band
and the relative permittivity of 3. This combination of a thin
dielectric substrate with a low permittivity greatly reduces the
losses at these frequencies. If one wants to use a different sub-
strate height or permittivity, the input central frequency of oper-
ation , which is used to calculate and the other parameters,
has to be modified according to Table I. The correction values
for intermediate substrate parameters modifications can be in-
terpolated.
In order to verify the proposed formulas, a set of transitions
for standard K-, Ka-, and Q-band waveguides (WR-51, WR-28,
and WR-22) and working at different frequencies has been
designed using only the formulas and without any additional
tuning. The input matching of those transitions obtained with
full-wave simulations is presented in Fig. 3. In all the cases the
full-wave results confirm the validity of the design obtained
using formulas [(1)–(5)] with a resonance frequency deviation
below 4.7% and return loss better than 15 dB at the desired
frequency.
Fig. 3. Simulated input matching of transitions synthesized using only (1)–(5).
Frequencies indicated on X axis are the desired operating points. Dashed
lines—designs for WR-51, solid lines—for WR-28, dotted lines—for WR-22.
Fig. 4. Photography of the transition prototype.
After obtaining the first design using the formulas (1)–(5) the
transition can be fine-tuned using a simulation software tool. In
order to move the resonant frequency toward higher frequen-
cies, and dimensions should be reduced. The
level of coupling between the SSL and the matching patch is
controlled using and .
III. EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION
In order to validate the concept, a specific transition proto-
type has been fabricated and measured. It consists of two wave-
guide to single SSL transitions which are connected back-to-
back using a straight section of a SSL line. The central op-
erating frequency was set to 26.25 GHz due to the require-
ments of the application in which the transition was needed
[6]. The 50 SSL used in the design has the following di-
mensions (see Fig. 2): mm,
mm, mm, m. The central conductor
strip is printed on a 0.127 mm thick Rogers RT6002 substrate
( and @Ka-band). A standard WR-28
waveguide (7.112 3.556 mm) is used to feed the component.
The optimized dimensions of the transition elements are:
mm, mm, mm,
mm, mm. A photograph of the
ready-to-measure prototype is presented in Fig. 4.
The fabricated back-to-back transition has been measured
using a Vector Network Analyzer and the corresponding
S-parameters are presented in Fig. 5. The obtained input
match is better than dB in the 5.7% operating band
(25.5–27.0 GHz). The overall transmission loss is better than
0.65 dB in the whole frequency band. Numerical simulations
have shown that the SSL used in the prototype has losses
0.115 dB/cm at the operating frequencies. Therefore, the 2 cm
of the SSL introduce about 0.23 dB loss, and taking into ac-
count the fact that two cascaded transitions are measured, the
insertion losses of a single transition can be estimated as better
than 0.21 dB in the whole frequency band.
GŁOGOWSKI et al.: KA-BAND RECTANGULAR WAVEGUIDE TO SUSPENDED STRIPLINE TRANSITION 577

The final optimal dimensions (with the initial ones—obtained

only with formulas (1)–(5)—in the brackets) are:
mm, mm,
mm, mm, mm. The
parameters of the SSL are the same as in Section III. The sim-
ulated input matching and transmission coefficient of the final
optimized transition are plotted in Fig. 6 with solid and dashed
lines. The validity of the design formulas is readily apparent
when comparing the S11 values. The obtained input matching
Fig. 5. Measured and simulated S-parameters of the back-to-back waveguide is below dB over a 4.3 GHz bandwidth (13%) with an inser-
to SSL transition. tion loss better than 0.22 dB in the whole band. The bandwidth
could be extended further by using tuning pins placed inside the
waveguide.
V. CONCLUSION
This letter proposes a Ka-band low loss right-angle wave-
guide to SSL transition. In Table II, its performance is compared
with other waveguide to strip line (SSL) and microstrip line
(MS) transitions at Ka-band proposed in the literature [2], [8],
[9]. The in-line configuration as well as right-angle transition
with the planar line substrate parallel to the RWG main axis re-
sult in the widest bandwidth but require to place the planar trans-
Fig. 6. Simulated input matching and transmission coefficient of the sample mission line and the waveguide in the same plane. The right-
transition. The dot-dashed curve corresponds to the simulation of the design angle configuration with the planar line substrate perpendicular
obtained using only (1)–(5) without any additional optimization.
to the RWG main axis is more compact and allows simpler me-
chanical decoupling between waveguide and planar parts of the
TABLE II
STATE OF THE ART KA-BAND TRANSITIONS system and, therefore, is favorable in many applications. The
transition proposed in this work has slightly narrower band-
width than one proposed in [8] but exhibits much lower losses.
A set of design equations has been established in order pro-
vide initial dimensions for the proposed component that are very
close to the optimal ones. A prototype transition has been fab-
ricated and measured. The results agree well with the numer-
ical predictions. The proposed component can reach 13% of
fractional impedance bandwidth with insertion loss better than
0.22 dB. It can be used for medium bandwidth applications that
require low losses.
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