Compact RF/microwave passive components and modules on multilayer organic substrates

In this Ph.D. research, we demonstrate the developments of microwave integrated passive components and modules on multilayer Liquid Crystal Polymer (LCP) substrates. The main focus is to achieve compact-size and wide-bandwidth passive components and modules by taking advantages of thin-film, multilayer LCP organic substrates. Slow-wave structures such as defected ground structures (DGS) and composite right/left-handed (CRLH) transmission lines are incorporated into the designs to further reduce the size and improve the bandwidth of the components and modules.;The design and development of a hybrid coupler and a balun on multilayer LCP substrates are presented. The hybrid coupler is folded on a thin-film multilayer LCP substrate to reduce the size up to 42% compared to the conventional design. This coupler achieves a wide bandwidth from 2–18 GHz and has a compact size of 6.3 mm × 14.4 mm. The balun is based on broadside-coupled Marchand topology. The bandwidth of the balun is extended by using DGS. Experimental results show that the balun achieves the bandwidth from 2–20 GHz and has a compact size of 4.4 mm × 5.6 mm.;The concept of CRLH transmission lines are applied to design and develop super compact Wilkinson power dividers (WPD). The two WPDs that are based on novel CRLH transmission line structures are presented. Both of them are implemented on thin-film multilayer LCP substrates. These two power dividers achieve size reduction of 90% and 97% compared to conventional microstrip designs.;Bandpass filters that have compact sizes and wide stopbands are also presented. Two bandpass fitlers are designed based on direct-coupled topology with series resonators and impedance inverters. The resonators are quasi-lumped LC structures that are implemented on multilayer LCP substrates. One filter has a center frequency at 960 MHz, an out-of-band rejection of better than 30 dB up to 5 times the center frequency and a compact size of 5.4 mm × 27 mm. Another filter has dual bands at 1.7 GHz and 4 GHz. This filter has an out-of-band rejection of better than 50 dB up to 10 times the first center frequency and has a compact size of 9.8 mm 70 mm.;A push-pull LNA module and a 4-port power combiner/ filter/ power divider module are presented to demonstrate the benefits of LCP in module development. Both these modules are implemented on multilayer LCP substrates. The push-pull LNA module has a bandwidth from 4–18 GHz and provides better than 20 dB in the second harmonic suppression. The 4-port power combiner/filter/divider module has a pass band of 2–4 GHz and a very compact size of 0.22 λ g × 0.08 λg, where λg is the guided wavelength at a center frequency of 3 GHz. Experimental results show that this 4-port module has good in-band and out-of-band performance.