MODELING OF ARBITRARILY-SHAPED MMIC AND HYBRID PLANAR CIRCUITS WITH AMIXED WAVE-GUIDE MODEL BOUNDARY INTEGRAL METHOD

A novel numerical procedure for analysing discontinuities in MMIC and hybrid planar circuits is proposed. It is based on a combination of bo undary elements and a planar waveguide model. Shunt posts are taken in to account in the model by explicit modal field expansion. This approa ch employs fewer nodal points than either the finite-element or bounda ry-element method and allows the direct determination of the S paramet ers of circuits. It can effectively be applied to the analysis of gene ralised discontinuity and multiport configurations involving rectangul ar, circular or arbitrarily shaped boundaries with metallic or dielect ric posts. A number of microstrip discontinuity problems are calculate d by this method to demonstate its efficiency. The proposed technique is validated through comparisons between theoretical and experimental results.