A Comparative Study of Millimeter-Wave Transmission Lines

The state of the art in areas such as material science, solid state devices, and photo-lithography has progressed rapidly and has created a need for innovative and efficient guiding methods of electromagnetic energy. With recent advances in millimeter-wave technology, various transmission lines have been introduced that can be quite useful in the upper frequency bands. By combining classical theory and numerical methods, it is possible to predict the characteristics of these structures and develop a reliable network design that utilizes them. The most common transmission lines may be grouped into four categories: Dielectric waveguides, Semi-open structures, Non-TEM lines, and Quasi-TEM lines. Extensive work has been performed on all of these so reference data is not difficult to obtain.