Characteristics of interconnect lines with patterned ground shields and its implication for microwave ICs

The integrated circuit interconnects are experimented with patterned ground shields (PGS) at microwave frequencies. Measurement results demonstrate that the PGS can considerably reduce the power loss at high frequencies as the PGS shields the lossy silicon substrate. Furthermore. The PGS reduces the wave length of the interconnect line as a transmission line. The reduction of the wave length has significant implications in microwave IC design as the technique can be used to shorten the transmission line length for a given electrical length.