Synthesized Transmission Lines

5On‐Chip Realization of Synthesized Transmission Lines Using IPD Processes

Y. C. Tseng and T. G. Ma

5.1 Introduction

Mobile communications have experienced a blooming growth since the year of the new millennium. Portable devices such as smartphones, tablet PCs, and wearable devices are ubiquitously used by all ages of people around the world. Modern trends in mobile devices include compact size, multifunctional operation, low power consumption, robust to ambient environment, and so on. Due to limited circuit areas in mobile devices, there is an urgent demand for highly integrated digital/analog/RF modules and systems. Therefore, system‐on‐chip (SoC) and system‐in‐package (SiP) technologies have become the core business in communication industries over the past decade. While the SoC still faces a number of challenges today, the SiP technology is much more mature and has found practical applications recently. The passive microwave components, in the meantime, have become a major bottleneck in current system‐in‐package integration. The passive components always occupy a large chip area whose size is a function of frequency and difficult to scale down.

In previous chapters, a variety of synthesized transmission lines have been developed using the printed circuit board (PCB) technology with remarkable size reduction capability. Nevertheless, when the operating frequency goes high, one may experience difficulties in realizing synthesized transmission lines using PCB processes due to ...