Purpose The purpose of this paper is to establish an accurate model to quantify the effect of conductor roughness on insertion loss (IL) and provide improved measurements and suggestions for manufacturing good conductive copper lines of printed circuit board. Design/methodology/approach To practically investigates the modified model of conductor roughness, three different kinds of alternate oxidation treatments were used to provide transmission lines with different roughness. The IL results were measured by a vector net analyzer for comparisons with the modified model results. Findings An accurate model, with only a 1.8% deviation on average from the measured values, is established. Compared with other models, the modified model is more reliable in industrial manufacturing. Originality/value This paper introduces the influence of tiny roughness structures on IL. Besides, this paper discusses the effect of current distribution on IL.

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