A user-friendly CAD tool for the Rigorous and Efficient Analysis of Finline Waveguiding Structures for Millimetre Applications

In this paper we present the computation of the finline parameters using the transverse resonance method and spectral domain analysis suitable for the design of microwave and millimeter-wave integrated circuits. However, this powerful method has one drawback when many hybrid modes are required because the above technique is used to yield a homogeneous system of equations to determine the propagation constants. In this work and in order to avoid this difficulty, once the equations are written in terms of the transverse components of the fields in the spectral domain, Galerkin´s method is used to yield a homogeneous system of equations to determine the propagation constants, but due to the new approach formulation the equations can be rewritten as a linear matrix eigenvalue system for the propagation constant when the eigenvectors of an auxiliary problem are used to expand the modes of the original problem. The key issue of the present study is to use an expanding set of modes at cutoff as auxiliary eigenvectors First, we have obtained the hybrid and complex spectrum of various finlines configurations. This analysis includes the characteristic impedance, attenuation due to dielectric and conductor losses, and the effect of finite metallization thickness. Secondly, configurations of the field components were also studied. We also present a software package; all examples are developed for numerical computation using MATLAB. Comparison with previously accurate published data was performed to confirm the accuracy of our procedure.