Efficient and accurate design of substrate-integrated waveguide circuits synthesised with metallic via-slot arrays

Abstract

A new class of substrate-integrated waveguides (SIWs) is proposed, which highlights a novel synthesis of waveguide circuits using metallic via-slot arrays instead of via-hole arrays. When the gaps between the slots are small enough, the broadside dimension of equivalent rectangular waveguide is approximately equal to the spacing between the inner walls of slots. Therefore the size of the SIW can directly be used to calculate propagation constants almost without phase bias. This new design is of critical importance in the design of substrate-integrated circuits (SICs) with fine and sensitive geometrical details with respect to circuit response such as filters and resonators. In this way, the design of SICs based on the new SIW structures can greatly be simplified. A finite difference frequency-domain method accelerated by an implicitly restarted Arnoldi method is developed to model the substrate-integrated resonant cavities with leakage. Simulated and measured results have confirmed the fact that conventional waveguide components are very similar to the SIW counterparts of the same structure.