Design of Micromachined Ridge Gap Waveguides for Millimeter-Wave Applications

Paper in proceedings, 2011

The ridge gap waveguide is a new transmission line for millimeter-wave applications. Traditionally, rectangular waveguides are used for those applications due to their low loss. However their fabrication requires precision machining and very good electrical contact and alignment between two joining mechanical parts. Ridge gap waveguides can obtain similar performance without requiring conductive sidewalls and this provides more freedom during the fabrication and assembly process as the structure is no longer sensitive to small gaps between the side walls and the upper lid. The ridge gap waveguide has already been proven been validated for 10-20 GHz using conventional fabrication methods. The ridge gap waveguide prototypes presented in this paper are designed to work in the frequency region between 210 and 340 GHz, and fabricated using MEMS technology. MEMS provides fabrication precision of the structures and thus opens the path for high-frequency components.