Passive intermodulation in printed lines: effects of trace dimensions and substrate

Author

Shitvov, Alexey P. ; Zelenchuk, Dmitry E. ; Schuchinsky, Alexander G. ; Fusco, Vincent F.

Author_Institution

Inst. of Electron., Commun. & Inf. Technol. (ECIT), Queen´s Univ. of Belfast, Belfast

Volume

3

Issue

2

fYear

2009

fDate

3/1/2009 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

260

Lastpage

268

Abstract

A comprehensive experimental study was performed to identify and discriminate mechanisms contributing to passive intermodulation (PIM) in microstrip transmission lines. The effects of strip length and width, and substrate materials on PIM performance of printed lines were investigated in the GSM900, DCS1800 and UMTS frequency bands. The major features of the experiment design, sample preparation and test setup are discussed in detail. The measurement results have demonstrated that the PIM level cumulatively grows on the longer microstrip lines and decreases on wider strips and, thus, indicated that the distributed resistive nonlinearity of the printed traces represents the dominant mechanism of intermodulation generation in the printed lines on PTFE-based substrates.

Keywords

microstrip circuits; modulation; passive networks; printed circuits; UMTS frequency bands; microstrip transmission lines; passive intermodulation; printed lines; strip length effects;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation, IET

Publisher

iet

ISSN

1751-8725

Type

jour

DOI

10.1049/iet-map:20070314

Filename

4797769