Substrate Integrated Waveguide Components on Alumina for E-band Applications

This manuscript presents a set of Substrate Integrated Waveguide components realized through thin-film technology and suitable for E-band applications. The non-standard choice of alumina as dielectric material leads to superior performance and increases the operational frequency of such devices, usually limited by fabrication tolerances. The intrinsic fragility of the ceramic substrate is mitigated through ad-hoc design rules which limit the via-hole density while the higher dielectric constant allows a small die size, with clear advantages in stiffness and handling robustness. Three components have been designed, manufactured and tested: a straight interconnection, a matched load, and a three-pole in-line band pass filter. All the devices show interesting performance across the 70–80 GHz spectrum portion.