IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 47, NO.

5, MAY 1999

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Theory of Microstrip Lines on Articial Periodic Substrates

Hung-Yu David Yang, Senior Member, IEEE
Abstract This paper presents the theory of a microstrip line on articial periodic substrates. A two-stage moment method in conjunction with an array-scanning scheme is proposed for the microstrip characterization. The analytic and numerical methods dealing with the interaction of microstrip components (continuous plane-wave spectrum) with articial periodic materials (discrete plane-wave spectrum, Floquet modes) are discussed. The method of solution involves two stages of vector integral equations and moment methods. The rst integral-equation formulation is to nd the Greens function for a planar periodic structure. A spectral-domain moment method is applied to the second vector integral equation to determine the elds or currents on the circuit components and the associated parameters of interest. Guided-wave characteristics of a microstrip line on articial periodic substrates, including the propagation constant and the characteristic impedance, are investigated. Propagation bandgap of a microstrip line due to periodic elements is characterized. Experiment on a three-layer microstrip-line structure with a periodic mid-layer is conducted to validate the theory. Index Terms Articial periodic substrate, guided wave, microstrip line, photonic bandgap.

I. INTRODUCTION

N RECENT years, with the advances of material processing technology, there has been growing interest in the development of articial materials. For examples, photonic crystals, articial materials made of two- or three-dimensional (3-D) periodic dielectrics, are in analogy to crystals made of periodic atoms or molecules that exhibit electron bandgaps [1]. In photonic bandgap (PBG) materials, periodic implants comparable in size to a wavelength may be metallic, dielectric, magnetodielectric, ferromagnetic, ferroelectric, or active. The waveforbidden bandgap can be controlled with external current or voltage biases or light sources. Many technologies may benet from those articial materials, where electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation is properly controlled. The alternation of object signature in an identiable way, broad-band absorbers, beam-forming devices, and narrow-band frequency-selective surfaces, are examples of important applications. Articial material properties are scaleable and applicable to a wide range of frequencies. Materials can be constructed for a given geometry with millimeter dimensions for microwave control and with micrometer dimensions for infrared control. Recently, there is increasing interest in microwave and millimeter-wave
Manuscript received March 28, 1997; revised August 21, 1998. This work was support in part by the National Science Foundation under Grant NSF ECE 96-14469. The author is with Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, M/C 154, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607 USA. Publisher Item Identier S 0018-9480(99)03134-8.

applications of PBG materials [2][8], where the periodic elements are micromachined on the surface of wafers stacked into multilayer lms. EM wave theory and computational techniques are necessary for the design of novel devices and components associated with articial periodic materials from microwave to optical frequencies. The existing analytic/numerical methods, including the plane-wave expansion method, integral-equation method, nite-difference method, and nite-element method, are limited to either periodic structures or defects with highly localized modes. Periodic structures with anomalies are important in many areas of engineering and science. Some examples include undesired radar cross section (RCS) in frequency-selective surfaces, radiation degradation in phased array, trapped-wave modes in periodic waveguides, and X-ray diffraction from crystals with defects. The implementation of PBG materials into integrated circuit and antenna structures opens up an area of research that will result in many new technologies. There is currently no appropriate computational scheme for the eld solution of integrated-circuit component (source) interaction with articial periodic materials. In this paper, a double-vector integral-equation (DOVIE) method, in effect, a two-stage moment method, is proposed. This method applies to general periodic structures with anomalies. In the modeling process, there are two vector integral equations to be solved systematically and sequentially. The rst integral-equation formulation is to nd the EM elds in an articial material structure with innite phased arrays of sources. An array-scanning method [9] transforms the elds due to innite phased arrays to those due to a single source. Those elds after transformation are the dyadic Greens function for the second vector integral equation that is solved to determine the parameters of interest. In this paper, the theory that leads to the eld solutions of the characteristics of microstrip transmission lines on articial periodic substrates is discussed. The proposed scheme may also apply to more complicated problems such as microstrip antennas [10], coplanar waveguides, and other passive components. The theory is validated numerically by comparing to an effective uniform-medium approach at low frequencies. Experiment is also carried out to validate the theory for a microstrip line on a three-layer articial periodic substrate. II. A DOVIE METHOD FOR A MICROSTRIP LINE ON ARTIFICIAL PERIODIC SUBSTRATE The geometry of a microstrip line on an articial periodic substrate is shown in Fig. 1. The substrate, assumed innitely

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Fig. 4. An innite array of microstrip segments with progressive phase shift y .

Fig. 1. A microstrip line on an articial substrate.

Fig. 2. Piecewise sinusoidal basis functions along the microstrip line in a unit cell.

Fig. 3. A microstrip segment on a unit cell with current specied in Fig. 2. Fig. 5. A unit cell of an innite planar array of microstrip segments and material blocks.

large, is a dielectric material with planar periodic blocks. It has been demonstrated that surface-wave propagation can be partially eliminated for such a structure [11]. It has also been shown that printed antennas on the periodic substrate may result in ultrahigh antenna gain [7]. The metal strip is assumed aligned with the arrays of material blocks. For simplicity, it is also assumed that the microstrip is narrow and only the longitudinal current exists. Conventional numerical methods including the method of moments, nite-element method, and nite-difference method can not deal directly with the interactions of circuit elements (continuous planewave spectrum) and periodic structures (discrete plane-wave spectrum). For the convenience of discussion, it is assumed that the current is uniform across the strip, which is a reasonable assumption for a narrow microstrip line. Extension to more sophisticate basis functions can be incorporated with a straightforward modication. In the moment-method analysis, the microstrip longitudinal current in Fig. 1 is expanded in terms of basis functions within a unit cell , , shown in Fig. 2. The and is a periodic microstrip current has a phase constant function of . In the integral-equation method, we need to evaluate the reaction of the current basis functions. The solution of the EM boundary-value problem, shown in Fig. 3, is required. Therefore, it is necessary to compute the eld at the air/material interface due to each current component basis function. These current basis functions are assumed

uniform transversely. Once this eld component is found, the remaining procedures follow identically to those for a microstrip line on a uniform substrate [12]. The inner products and testing functions will be the (Galerkins method) of matrix elements of the characteristic matrix. The deterministic equation is found by setting the matrix determinant to zero. is the root of the deterministic The propagation constant equation. Instead of solving the problem directly, we rst consider the geometry shown in Fig. 4, where there are innite phased arrays of current segments with a progressive phase shifts . This ctitious phased-array problem can be solved using a standard integral-equation approach. With the use of Floquet theorem and periodic boundary conditions, the problem is simplied to the modeling of EM waves within a unit cell, shown in Fig. 5. This problem is solved with a 3-D integralequation formulation and the method of moments for periodic structures. The details of this approach are shown in [11] and only a brief outline will be described here. A material block is at the center of the cell with length (along the axis), width (along the axis), and thickness (along the axis). The substrate thickness is and is the distance measured from the bottom of the block to the layer interface. The boundary-value problem, shown in Fig. 5, is formulated

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through an electric volume-integral equation as (1) The volume integral is over the region of implanted material blocks centered at the origin of the Cartesian coordinates, is the electric eld due to a particular current basis and function, shown in Fig. 5, for a homogeneous substrate (no periodic blocks). Equivalent displacement currents replace the electric elds within the material blocks. In the momentmethod procedure, these displacement currents are discretized into many small cells within which the elds are assumed constants with unknown coefcients

the elds in the entire structure due to a segment of microstrip current. As a result, the electric eld in the -direction for the phased-array problem (Fig. 5), which is necessary for the second-stage integral equation, can be written in the following form:

(5) where is the index for the sequence of microstrip-current , shown in Fig. 2. Electric eld due to basis functions a microstrip-current segment, shown in Fig. 3, can be found from (5) through (6)

(2) , , where within the cell elsewhere. and are the dielectric constants and of the substrate and periodic elements, respectively. There , , and partitions in each side of the material are blocks (the -, -, and -directions, respectively). For planar periodic structures, we may express the components of the dyadic Greens function for a homogeneous substrate (material blocks are replaced by sources) in terms of Floquet modes (plane-wave expansion) as (3) (7) and . The where or is either , , or . It is noted that is variable denoted as the propagation constant of the transmission line. is a function The spectral Greens-function component and , , , and the material of spectral variables parameters. Analytic forms of the dyadic Greens functions are known [13]. If the equivalent displacement currents in (2) are used in the vector integral equation and the resulting , , and , elds are evaluated at the cell at indexes respectively for the -, -, and -directions, we convert the integral equations into a set of linear equations (a matrix equation) (4) represents a particular eld component where each or is the integration of the electric eld over the at a cell. th cell due to a microstrip-current segment on a uniform is a 3 3 matrix resulting from two-volume substrate. integrals over the cells associated with and in the momentmethod procedure. One volume integral is shown in (1) and the second volume integral is from the inner product in the and in moment method. The relationship between (1) can be found in [11]. If both indexes and run from 1 to , (4) represents a matrix equation with order . The solution of the matrix inversion is the electric eld on the periodic elements, which can be used to determine (9) is at the center of the th piecewise sinusoidal basis function, is the microstrip width, and is half of the size of is a parameter that can be chosen quite the basis function. arbitrarily and usually in the order of . The eigenvalues are obtained from the roots of the (propagation constants) characteristic equation (10) For a lossless structure, the propagation constant of the guided wave is a real number, and a bisection method for and are indexes for the basis functions. Equation (7) is further expressed in the following form for numerical computation: The integration in (6) is in effect the superposition of the phased-array solutions. The key is the superposition principle and phase cancellation. When we perform the integration in (6), we are in effect canceling out all other line current sources in the innite arrays, except the one with zero phase angle. In [9], this approach was called an array-scanning method. With the result in (6), we may proceed with the Galerkins procedure to nd the characteristics of the microstrip line. The matrix elements of the characteristic matrix (for an eigenvalue problem) are found from the inner products of the electric eld and current and are in the following form:

(8) where function is the Fourier transform of the testing and is expressed as

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nding the root of nonlinear functions is used. After the propagation constant is found, we may set the total current as 1 A and use (10) to determine the current at on the remaining part of the transmission line. Once the current on the transmission line is determined, the electric eld (a similar procedure for the magnetic eld) in the entire structure is determined through (6). It is known that the characteristic impedance of a microstrip line is best dened using a powercurrent formula. In the conventional spectraldomain approach (SDA) for microstrip lines, the power is usually evaluated through a surface integration of the complex Poynting vector. However, for the pertinent problem, electric eld within the substrate may not be continuous, which causes analytic and numerical difculty in directly calculating the propagating power. A more applicable approach to evaluate transmitted power is through the magnetic eld stored within . A general formula to relate the a unit cell average transmitted power and stored magnetic eld in a lossless periodic structure is given in [14] as (11) is the group velocity of the guided-wave mode, where is and the stored magnetic eld within a unit cell

TABLE I VALIDITY CHECK OF PHASE CONSTANTS =k0 WITH THE CASE OF A TWO-LAYER UNIFORM SUBSTRATE

TABLE II VALIDITY CHECK OF CHARACTERISTIC IMPEDANCE WITH THE CASE OF A TWO-LAYER UNIFORM SUBSTRATE

(12) is the magnetic eld for a particular Floquet and mode [see (5)]. III. NUMERICAL IMPLEMENTATION In conventional articial dielectrics, the size of the periodic elements and array periods are much smaller than a wavelength such that the EM properties of materials can be characterized accurately by an effective dielectric constant. For the present investigation of the articial periodic materials, their dimensions are comparable to a wavelength, and propagation bandgap exists in such structures. The proposed method is rigorous and takes into account the mutual coupling between the periodic elements and the microstrip line. In numerical implementation, most of the computational effort in nding the propagation constant is the evaluation of (8) iteratively. and , the problem corresponds to a twoWith given dimensional phased-array problem with 3-D periodic material objects. If four sections of a 16-point Gaussian integration are used in the integral in (8), the phased-array problem is solved 64 times in each iteration (xed ). Major effort in the characteristic impedance calculation is the evaluation of stored magnetic eld in (12). The integration along the vertical direction in (12) can be done analytically. The computational effort in evaluating (8) and (12) is about the same. It is found that the group velocity is sensitive to the phase constant and are needed to obtain accurate usually up to six digits of characteristic-impedance values. The validity of the analysis is rst checked against the case where the implanted blocks are as large as the unit cell. The substrate parameters are mm and . The implanted material blocks have the following parameters: mm; 1) mm; 2) mm; 3) ; 4) . 5) The periods of the arrays are the same as the implant dimm) so that the implanted material mensions ( blocks completely ll the lower half of the substrate. The geometry is essentially a two-layer structure with top layer and bottom layer and each layer has a thickness of 0.5 mm. The results for such a structure from an SDA are known [15]. The test results are shown in Tables I and II for the phase constant and characteristic impedance, respectively. In the DOVIE method, the periodic blocks are divided into 27 rectangular boxes where the electric elds are treated as displacement currents found from a moment-method procedure. It is seen that the present method agrees very well with the SDA and the difference is well within the accuracy of the result itself. IV. RESULT DISCUSSIONS AND EXPERIMENTAL VALIDATION An example of the propagation constant and the characteristic impedance of a microstrip on a articial periodic substrate

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Fig. 6. Propagation constant of a microstrip line on an articial periodic mm, "r , L W : mm, T : mm, substrate. h : mm, "e ,a b mm, and w mm.

1 =03

=1

= 10 = =2 = =3

= 05 =1

= 04

Fig. 7. Characteristic impedance of a microstrip line on an articial periodic substrate. All the parameters are shown in Fig. 6.

are shown in Figs. 6 and 7, respectively. For comparison, the SDA results for an effective uniform substrate are also shown. According to [16], an effective layer approximates the layer found with planar gratings with the dielectric constant from the following formula:

(13)

and are the dielectric constants for the layer and is the volume fraction of periodic blocks, respectively. the periodic blocks. The effective uniform-layer assumption is small. The is usually good when the volume fraction mm and . The substrate parameters are implanted material blocks have the following parameters: mm; 1) mm; 2)

3) mm; ; 4) . 5) The periods of the arrays ( and ) are both 3 mm and the width of the microstrip line is 1 mm. In numerical computation, 1681 Floquet modes with 27 divisions within each block are used. Four sections of 16-point Gaussian integration are used for the integral in (8). Generally, the spacing between the periodic elements signicantly affects the guided-wave characteristics. There are two interesting features of the microstrip-line mode that are very different from a conventional microstrip line. (the Bragg condition), there exists a mode When gap within which the propagation mode vanishes. Also, when , the guided-wave modes become leaky waves, which are fast waves with complex propagation constants. For the example given in Fig. 6, the bandgap occurs about . It is noted that surface-wave 17.5 GHz where bandgap usually occurs at much higher frequencies than the microstrip-line mode bandgap. This is due to the fact that, in the same structure, the phase constant of a microstrip line is larger. Since the phase constant increases with frequency, the Bragg condition satises at lower frequencies for a microstrip line. At low frequencies, due to the fact that the period and periodic elements are much smaller than a wavelength, according to eld theory [14], the articial substrate is like an effective uniform medium. As frequency increases to near the bandgap zone, the line impedance increases drastically and the microstrip line becomes open circuited at the bandgap edge. When the frequency moves just out of the bandgap zone, the microstrip line is like a short circuit. This phenomenon is similar to the rectangular-waveguide modes near the cutoff frequencies. Another interesting observation from Figs. 6 and 7 is that the effective uniform-medium approximation is fairly good, except near or within the bandgap zone. The discrepancy is due to the fact that energy is mostly conned underneath the strip and, in the process of computing the volume fraction , using effective microstrip width rather than the periodicity in the transverse direction is more accurate. An example given in Fig. 8 further illustrates this point where the microstrip-line characteristics versus the transverse distance of a microstrip line to the periodic blocks are shown. It is seen that bandgap width is largest when the periodic block is right underneath the strip. The bandgap width decreases when the microstrip line is away from the block center. When the strip is further away from the blocks (the volume underneath the strip has no overlap with the blocks) bandgap vanishes. In this case, the periodic elements have little effect to the strip. The cases we have discussed thus far are for a single articial periodic substrate. The analysis can be easily extended, as mentioned in [11], to multilayer structures with only one layer with periodic elements. In order to further validate the analysis, a three-layer microstrip structure, shown in Fig. 9, is fabricated, and the two-port -parameters were measured with an HP-8510C Network Analyzer. The top and bottom layers, both 25-mil thick, are ceramic thermoset polymer composites (Roger TMMi) with a dielectric constant of 9.8. The 30-milthick middle layer is GML-1000 with a dielectric constant of 3.2. The layers are all 98-mm long and 73-mm wide. Two

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Fig. 10. Guided-wave characteristics for the structure shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 8. Propagation constant of a microstrip line on an articial periodic substrate for several line locations. All the parameters are shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 11. S -parameter measurement of a through microstrip line on a three-layer articial periodic structure shown in Fig. 9.

Fig. 9. An experimental test case of a microstrip line on a three-layer structure with a periodic mid-layer. h1 0:635 mm, h = 0:762 mm, h3 = 0:635 mm, "r = 3; 2, L = W = 6:5 mm, "1 = "3 = 9:8, T = 0:762 mm, a = b = 14 mm, and w = 3 mm.

arrays of rectangular holes (6.5 mm 6.5 mm), ve elements in each, were machined through the middle layer. The element spacing is 14 mm. The three layers and a thick metal xture are bonded together with three arrays (four in each) of screws. A with a width microstrip line is centered to the air holes of 3 mm. The line characteristic impedance is designed to be without the periodic elements. Microwave connectors 50 are mounted at both ends of the microstrip line to form a two-port structure. The connector to the nearest array element is about half of a guided wavelength. The spacing between the adjacent arrays is not critical since the microstrip-line elds are highly localized and strip width is smaller than that of a periodic element (a reason that we did make two arrays). The full-wave analysis is, however, for the planar innite-array structure. The initial design is that the normalized would be around two at 56 GHz. phased constant With the chosen array element spacing (14 mm here), we can determine the approximated mid-bandgap frequency from as 5.36 GHz. The results of the Bragg condition both the propagation constant and the line impedance of the

three-layer structure from the full-wave method is shown in Fig. 10. The analysis shows that the bandgap would occur at the frequency range of 4.95.9 GHz. The results of the -parameter measurement, shown in Fig. 11, conrm this analytic prediction. Within the bandgap zone, since propagation is prohibited, there is signicant or ); while out of the reection from the line (large bandgap zone, there is little reection. The structure acts like a band-stop lter. It is also interesting to note that our analysis (in Fig. 10) shows that above 7 GHz the guided-wave mode becomes a leaky-wave mode. There is signicant radiation due to the excitation of the leaky-wave mode. This prediction is also conrmed in our -parameter measurement shown in Fig. 11. V. CONCLUSIONS This paper described the theory of a microstrip line on articial periodic substrates. A DOVIE method involving a two-stage moment method was developed for the analysis of a microstrip line on articial periodic substrates. The proposed method effectively takes into account the EM coupling between the microstrip lines and the periodic material elements. The method also applies to general EM radiators within otherwise periodic structures. The propagation bandgap for a microstrip line was characterized. The results of the analysis were validated with both measurements and an effective medium approximation. This paper initiates rigorous

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characterizations of printed-circuit elements or antennas on articial periodic materials (or PBG materials). Printed slots on articial structures can also be analyzed with the proposed approach. The antenna aspect of the research is ongoing.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT The author would like to thank S. Ajmal for the experimental help. REFERENCES
[1] J. Modern Opt. (Special Issue on Photonic Band Structures), vol. 41, Feb. 1994. [2] E. R. Brown, C. D. Parker, and O. B. McMahon, Effect of surface composition on the radiation pattern from a photonic planar-dipole antenna, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 64, pp. 33453347, June 1994. [3] E. Ozbay, G. Tuttle, R. Biswas, M. Sigalas, and K. M. Ho, Micromachined millimeter wave photonic band-gap crystals, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 64, pp. 20592062, Apr. 1994. [4] M. P. Kesler, J. G. Maloney, and B. L. Shirley, Antenna design with the use of photonic band-gap materials as all-dielectric planar reectors, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 11, no. 4, pp. 169174, Mar. 1996. [5] T. Suzuki and P. L. Yu, Experimental and theoretical study of dipole emission in the two-dimensional photonic band structures of the square lattice with dielectric cylinders, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 79, no. 2, pp. 582594, Jan. 1996. [6] G. P. Gauthier, A. Courtay, and G. M. Rebeiz, Microstrip antennas on synthesized low dielectric-constant substrates, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 13101314, Aug. 1997. [7] H.-Y. D. Yang, N. G. Alexopoulos, and E. Yablonovitch, Photonic bandgap materials for high-gain printed circuit antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. 45, pp. 185187, Jan. 1997. [8] E. R. Brown, K. Agi, C. Dill III, C. D. Parker, and K. J. Malloy, A new face-centered-cubic photonic crystal for microwave and millimeterwave applications, Microwave Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 7, no. 17, pp. 777779, Dec. 1994. [9] B. A. Munk and G. A. Burrell, Plane-wave expansion for arrays of arbitrarily oriented piecewise linear elements and its application in determining the impedance of a single linear antenna in a lossy halfspace, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-27, pp. 331343, May 1979.

[10] H.-Y. D. Yang, Double vector-integral equation method for microstrip antennas on PBG substrates, in IEEE AP-S Symp. Dig., Montreal, P.Q., Canada, July 1997, pp. 792795. [11] , Characteristics of guided and leaky waves on a thin-lm structure with planar material gratings, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 45, pp. 428435, Mar. 1997. [12] R. Mittra and T. Itoh, A new technique for the analysis of the dispersion characteristics of microstrip lines, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. MTT-19, pp. 4756, Jan. 1971. [13] L. P. B. Katehi and N. G. Alexopoulos, On the effects of substrate thickness and permittivity on printed circuit antennas, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propagat., vol. AP-31, pp. 3439, Jan. 1983. [14] R. E. Collin, Field Theory of Guided Waves. New York: IEEE Press, 1991, p. 627. [15] H.-Y. Yang, N. G. Alexopoulos, and D. R. Jackson, Microstrip openend and gap discontinuities in a substratesuperstrate structure, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 37, pp. 15421546, Oct. 1989. [16] C. J. F. Bottcher and P. Bordewijk, Theory of Electric Polarization. New York: Elsevier, 1978, vol. 2, pp. 476491.

Hung-Yu David Yang (S87M88SM93) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1982, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles, in 1985, and 1988, respectively. From 1988 to 1992, he was with Phraxos R&D Inc., Los Angeles, CA, as a Research Engineer, where he was responsible for the analysis and modeling of frequency-selective surfaces, scattering from antennas, designs of microstrip arrays, and antennas on nonreciprocal materials. Since 1992, he has been with the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department, University of Illinois at Chicago, where he is currently an Associate Professor. He has published over 70 journal and conference papers. His current research interests include computational methods for radiation and scattering from aperiodic structures, millimeterwave and quasi-optical applications of PBG materials, wave interaction with complex media, printed circuits, and antennas on gyrotropic media. He is currently editor-in-chief of Electromagnetics. Dr. Yang is a member of Sigma Xi and URSI Commission B. He serves as a technical program committee member of the IEEE International Microwave Symposium since 1994. He had served as an associate editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION (19951998).