Development of a very low-cost suspended-substrate strip-line configuration using nonconventional material

A very low-cost suspended-substrate strip-line configuration is developed u sing packaging foam and a very, thin Cu-clad glass-epoxy laminate. The mate rial characteristics, such as effective dielectric constant, attenuation, a nd loss tangent, have been determined accurately using two different transm ission measurement techniques. A lambda / 4-long 50 Ohm transmission line i s fabricated on the developed configuration, and tested successfully. The m easured insertion loss is less than 0.15 dB, and the return loss is greater than 35 dB over the entire L-band, (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Microw ave Opt Technol Lett 30: 413-416, 2001.