Full-Wave Analysis of Proximity Effects on Microstrip Lines Near the Edge of a Packaged MMIC

A newly developed and tested full-wave mode-matching method is employed to accurately analyze the proximity effects that occur in monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) computer-aided design (CAD) applications. The dispersion characteristics of the proximity effects, which account for microstrip lines near the edge of the substrate and the metallic packaging boundaries, are presented. The new full-wave approach is validated by checking its results in the low frequency limit against the published quasi-TEM data. Excellent agreements among both methods are obtained and the dispersive data for some particular proximity case studies are reported.