Generic Design Methodology for Symmetrically Coupled Line Structures

High performance miniaturised and cost effective passive components are needed to enable commercially viable novel system level architectures for third generation wireless communication systems. In recent years there has been increasing interest in utilising passive multi-layer IC technologies to integrate Digital and RF functionality in a 3D manner. Examples of such enabling technologies that can potentially deliver such passive components are, multi-layer organic, multi-layer ceramic and/or multi-layer thin film deposition technology [1][2][3]. Coupled line structures are basic building blocks of such functions as digitalinterconnect, RF hybrids, and filters. The main hindrance in the use of such components has been the difficulty in translating the physical layout of multi-layer embedded, coupled line structures into a usable circuit design equivalent model. In this paper, a generic and numerically efficient method of estimating the basic circuit model parameters of arbitrary embedded symmetrically coupled lines is presented.