Proceedings of International Microwave and RF Conference 2016

50-60 GHz Waveguide to Microstrip Transition on

L TCC for Enabling Integrated MMIC Packaging
Kinjal Parmar\ Shailendra Singh 2,

1: M.Tech student from L.J.I.E.T College, Ahmedabad.2: Scientist, MSRD/MSTGIMRSA, Space Applications Center, ISRO.

Abstract- This paper reports the design 0/ 50-60 GHz probe type
waveguide to microstrip transition on LTCC substrate, wh ich acts as
an initial development towards integrated MMIC hermetic
packaging in millimeter-wave systems. The transition shows a
simulated return loss better than 15 dß and insertion loss less than
0.4 dß in back to back configuration. The measured insertion loss is
1.2 to 1.8 dß with return loss bettering 12 dß in the range 0/50-60
GHz.
11. DESIGN APPROACH
Design of Microstrip-to-waveguide transitions requires
investigation of important factors like, selection of transition
type, selection of substrate material and selection of LTCC
layers or thickness of the substrate [6-8]. These have been
discussed in the upcoming text.

I. INTRODUCTION (a) Selection of transition type:

In microwave and millimeter-wave applications,
microstrip and waveguide are the most commonly used
transmission Iines. Most of the millimeter wave systems are
realized such that one end of a waveguide is connected to the
antenna for guiding the millimeter wave signals to and from the
antenna and other end of the waveguide is connected to
microstrip based modules. Microstrip technology is used for
connecting multiple planar active circuit modules involving
transistors, monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs),
and various surface mounted components. To integrate
waveguide with microstrip circuits, microstrip-to-waveguide
transition is essential [1-2].
In this paper a waveguide to microstrip transition designed
on LTCC substrate for usage in 50-60 GHz front-end receiver
of a temperature sounding radiometer unit has been reported.
The proposed active parts of this front-end are the low noise
amplifier and mixer, realized in MMIC technology. MMICs
require hermetic sealed packaging for safeguarding the
microstructures from environmental corrosion. The capabilities
of LTCC as a millimeter wave passive integration technology
have been weIl documented in various papers; LTCC forms an
excellent candidate for packaging the Millimeter wave circuitry
[3]-[5].
The target specifications of the transition have been
tabulated in table 1.
Waveguide to microstrip transitions are of three types (i) End
launch probes (ii) Aperture coupled (iii) Orthogonal launch
prob es [1-2]. We have selected transition of the third type,
which is, orthogonal launch probe type for the design, as, this
type oftransition is the most commonly used one for millimeter
and sub-millimeter wave applications owing to its ease in
machining and absence oftight tolerance mechanicaljoints [9].
Such a transition is illustrated in Fig. 1. It consists of a printed
probe on one side of the dielectric substrate inserted into
rectangular waveguide with back-short. The probe is used to
couple maximum energy from waveguide to microstrip. The
probe dimensions are dependent upon the dielectric constant of
the microstrip [9].
1.,....;>1<----->
LI LT

TABLE I Figurei: Configuration oforthogonallaunch probe type waveguide to

Targeted SpecI'fiIcatlOn 0 f the wavegulde to mlcrostnp transItIOn microstrip transition .
Transition Technol02Y LTCC
Center Freq uency 55 GHz
Frequency Band 50-60 GHz
(b) Selection ofLTCC Substrate Material:
Return loss (Back to Back) Better than IOd B
Insertion loss (Back to Back) Less than 0.7 dB Nowadays several options ofL TCC substrate materials are
available for designers to choose from. Space Application
Center, ISRO has developed an in-house LTCC fabrication
facility based on two substrate materials; Ferro-A6-M and

978-1-5090-4685-0/16 ©2016 IEEE

Dupont-951. Since the loss tangent of Ferro (0.001) is better
than Dupont (0.006), Ferro was selected for the realization of
the transition.
(e) Seleetion of number ofLTCC Layers:
The substrate chosen for microstrip should support the
design frequency for the transition. The maximum frequency
for microstrip propagation depends on substrate height and the
conductor width. The following two frequency limiting modes
at some frequency lower than the other exist and define the
frequency limitation for microstrip propagation [10]:
i. The Transverse Magnetie Mode Limitation
A frequency for strong coupling between the quasi-TEM
mode and the TM mode is identified when the associated two
phase velocities are close. The result is given by [10]
III. DESIGN AND SIMULA nON
The transition is modeled and simulated in HFSS, which is
a 3D EM solver. The typical parts ofthis type oftransition are
shown in Fig. 1. The dimensions of these parts determine
smooth transit in terms ofimpedances and field in-between both
types ofpropagation.
Whereas, the probe length and back-short distance of
quarter-wavelength define the design frequency, the probe
width and the inductive line parameters are used for impedance
matching. After a cursory model was built, various parameters
were fme tuned for obtaining least insertion loss and best
matching.
The optimized dimensions are given in Table 3. To enable
practical testing when the transition gets developed, back to
back waveguide-microstrip-microstrip-waveguide transition as
shown in Fig. 2 and 3 was simulated.

ctan- 1(Er) TABLE: 3

. . dd'ImenSlOn l'or the probe transItIon
JTEM.l = .J"2rrh.,J Er - 1
üptImlze
Parameter Dimension
Substrate width (HC) 1.3 mm
ii. The Lowest-Order Transverse Mierostrip Substrate thickness (HO) 0.381 mm l 15 mil
Resonanee Probe length (0) 0.85 mm
Probe width (WP) 0.5919 mm
For a sufficiently wide microstrip line a transverse- Probe thickness 20/-lm
Inductive I ine length (LI) 0.130 mm
resonant mode can exist which can also couple strongly to the
Inductive line width (WI) 0.305 mm
quasi-TEM microstrip mode. This is defined by [10] A14 Transformer length (L T) 0.55 mm
A14 Transformer width (WT) 0.709 mm
C
50 Q line length 3.197 mm
JCT = .,JEr(2w + 0.8h) 50 Q line width (WO) 0.65 mm
Ag/4 (L) 1.4643 mm
Using these equations, we ca1culated minimum numbers of
layers for the transition design at V band. These ca1culations
have been tabulated in table 2. A single layer of the chosen
LTCC substrate is 5 mil thick; but shrinks by almost 25% after
firing and results in 3.75 mil thick substrate. LTCC fabrication
constraint limits the minimum number ofL TCC layers to 4. As
seen in table 2, usage of 4 layers suffices the cut-off frequency
limitation for design of transition in 50-60 GHz band. Hence
four layer of 5 mil thick LTCC tape was finalized for the design ;
which would result in 15 mil thick substrate after frring. Figure 2: 30 view ofback to back probe transition shown in HFSS

TABLE:2
IV. SIMULATED PERFORMANCE
· 0 f . num ber 0 fL TCC Iayers fIm the transItIOn deSlgn
Ca Icu IatlOn .
Substrate Ihickness Width for jfEM,1 JCI Fig. 3, 4 and 5 respectively show back-to-back return loss
Layers SOOhm (GHz) (GHz) on smith chart, insertion loss in dB and return loss in dB ofthe
microstrip transition design for centered design parameters. The return loss
li ne (11m)
I 3.75 mil 130.54 449.2 366.188
is better than 20 dB and insertion loss is better than 0.28 dB
2 7.50 mil 286.70 224.6 170.168 over the desired frequency band. These simulation results show
3 11 .25 mil 469.34 149.76 105.808 a good margin over the targeted specifications.
4 15 mil 683.15 112.32 73.908 To estimate the sensitivity of the designed transition with
5 18.75 mil 923.94 89.856 55.412 the variation of major process parameters, a sensitivity based
6 22.50 mil 1183.85 74.88 43 .721
simulation was carried out on the design. The parameters
7 26.25 mil 1455.49 64.183 35.864
8 30 mil 1733.44 56.16 30.297 included in this simulation are substrate shrinkage (20-25%),
metallization patterning tolerance (± 10%) and variation in
dielectric constant ofthe Ferro-A6M substrate (5 .9 ± 0.2). The
results of these simulations have been plotted in Fig. 7
(insertion loss) and Fig. 8 (return loss). This sensitivity analysis
reveals that the insertion loss and return loss of the designed
transition is weIl within the target specifications with the
.....Simulat ed ---[1'=5 .9-0.2 ....... [ ..=5 .9 +0.2
variations of process parameters as weIl. "'*":\Ieatliz ati oll + 10% -4i- ::\leatlizatioll - lO % ....... Substrate 25 % Shrinkag e
-+- Subs trate 22 % Shrillkag e
o
Sm ith Chart 1
90 -10

160
-50
170 10
-60

~
0.20 0 .50 2.00
180 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
Frequenc)" (GHz)
\ \
-170
\ \ Figure 5:Sensitivity analysis of return loss for the back to back d esign
\ \

\
~-

-60
fil OI, ,
-90 -80

Figure 3: Smith chart view of return loss for the back to back design

.,.
.....Simula ted --- E..=5 .9-0.2 ....... [r=5.9+0.2
~ ::\ Ieta lizati on+ 10%""*-meta liza tiO Il-l OO/O ...... Substrate 25 % Shrinkag e
-+-Substrate 22% Shrinka ge
o
-0.2
.. " .
-0.4
-0.6 F igure 6: Picture of Gold plated Aluminum package split block with attached
transition substrate
~ -0.8

::: -1
,.;
;;:: -1.2

-1.4

-1.6

-1.8

-2
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
Fr e qu e n [ ~' (GHz)

Figure 4: Sensitivity analysis of insertion loss for the back to back design

V. TEST RESULTS

We have used Gold plated Aluminum package realized in

split block configuration for the transition. The fabricated
LTee substrate was attached to the package by Au-Sn solder
alloy at 280°. A picture of the split block with the attached Figure 7: Picture ofthe test set-up ofthe transition
substrate is shown in Fig. 6. The assembled transition was tested
on a VNA. A picture ofthe test set-up with the transition being are shown in Fig. 8and 9. The measured insertion loss is 1.2 dB
tested is shown in Fig. 7. The measured results ofthe transition towards 50 GHz and 1.8 dB towards 60 GHz with overall return
losses bettering 12 dB ; wh ich is higher than the simulated
results. Nevertheless, considering the fact, that, this is the first
in-house LTCC development in V-Band, and does not show any
drastic deviation in the measured response, the result is quite
encouraging. Variation in simulated versus measured results
may be attributed to package, substrate, gold-plating related
tolerance or uneven grounding by solder. We are investigating
the cause of this degradation by carrying out thorough
dimensional inspection. These results are obtained from
assembly ofa single package only. In addition, we are assembly
more nwnber of packages to ascertain variation in results from
one package to another.
o vertical transition using a trough line, a slab line and shielded
-0.4
specifications. The test results of the realized transition have
deviation from the simulation results; although it is very
encouraging considering it to be an ice-breaker for realization
at millimeter wave V-Band frequency using in-house developed
L TCC facility at ISRO.
References
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New York: Wiley, 2005.
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multilayer coplanar waveguides for 50 GHz L TCC hermetic
SMT MMIC package." In Microwave Conference, 2007.
European, pp. 1361-1364. IEEE, 2007.

[3] I. Wolff, "Design and Technology of Microwave and

-0.8
Millimeter wave LTCC Circuits and Systems," Proc.
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-1. 2
/" -.....~ (ISSSE '07), pp. 505-512, August 2007.

"- ./ ~ /"- I'\.

[4] Jong-Hoon Lee et al. , "Highly integrated millimeter-wave
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\
-1.6
(SOP) technology," Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE
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-2
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
[5] T. Klein et al. : "L TCC: Aspace qualified integration and
Frequency (CHz)
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Figure 8: Measured Insertion loss ofback to back realized transition for the International Microwave Symposium (IMS), Montreal,
June 22, 2012.
o
[6] Huang, Xiaobo, and Ke-Li Wu. "A Broadband U-Slot

"-
-10
.,.. Coupled Microstrip-to-Waveguide Transition." Microwave
.... ..-
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~ ./'
\
-20
1210-1217.
V" )
~ -30 [7] Wu, Peng, Yong Zhang, Zhi Gang Wang, Shi Chun Sun,
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Z -4 0
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-60
[8] Ocket, Ilja, Walter De Raedt, and Bart Nauwelaers.
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-70
50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60
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Figure 9: M
easured R eturn loss ofback to back realized transition [9] Leong, Yoke-Choy, and Sander Weinreb. "Full band
waveguide-to-microstrip probe transitions." In Microwave
VI. CONCLUSION Symposiwn Digest, 1999 IEEE MTT-S International, vol. 4, pp.
1435-1438. IEEE, 1999.
In this work, LTCC based waveguide to microstrip transition
for V band (50-60 GHz) is reported. The design is based on [10] T. C. Edwards, "Foundations for Microstrip Circuit
orthogonal probe type transition. L TCC technology has been Design", 2 nd edition Wiley, 1992.
employed, to enable in future, seamless integration with
hermetic sealing ofMMICs on single substrate. The simulation
results and sensitivity analysis results are within the target