Design rules and realisation of coplanar circuits for communication applications

Advances in the design and realisation of microwave coplanar integrated circuits are reported on. During the last years coplanar integrated circuits have become more and more interesting and they have originally been thought to be especially suited for millimeter-wave applications. But the design of microwave and millimeter-wave coplanar circuits was always a difficult task because design rules for the component- and circuit-design had not been not available. In this paper it will be shown that the situation has changed in the mean time, i.e. that design tools have been developed and that additionally coplanar circuits now also are interesting for low frequency applications, e.g. in the mobile communication technique. The basis and the properties of the new available design tools for coplanar circuits will be discussed demonstrating interesting applications and several circuits for communication applications in the 1 to 40 GHz range.