Analysis of MMIC Components Including the Effect of Finite Metalisation Thickness

The vast majority of published analyses of microstrip circuits have made the approximation that the strip is infinitely thin. Modern Microwave Monolithic Integrated Circuits (MMIC´s) may, however, contain components whose strip thickness are of the order of 30% of the strip width. In this paper the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) technique, combined with a knowledge of the assymptotic field behaviour near the strip, is used to characterise some MMIC components with realistic strip thicknesses.