Modeling and Design Empirical Formulas of Microstrip Ridge Gap Waveguide

Recently, interest in the microstrip ridge gap waveguide (MRGW) has increased due to the need for a self-packaged and low-loss structures for millimeter-wave applications. The MRGW consists of a grounded textured surface, which is artificially representing a perfect magnetic conductor surface loaded with a thin low dielectric constant substrate with a printed strip. This is topped with another dielectric substrate covered with a conducting plate at the top as a ground plane. Currently, the full-wave and optimization tools are used to design the MRGW structure. Consequently, an efficient modeling and design tool for the MRGW is proposed in this paper via curve fitting. Closed form empirical expressions for the effective dielectric constant, characteristic impedance, and the dispersion effect are provided. The developed expressions are generalized for arbitrarily chosen MRGW parameters. The expressions are verified with the full-wave solution. The results show the potential of the proposed approach in modeling the MRGW structure