The effect of finite-size recessed ground on characteristic features of a microstrip transmission line is investigated and verified experimentally on alumina substrate of height 0.127 mm with ε r = 9.8 at 60 GHz. A measured characteristic impedance of 238 Ω, effective dielectric constant of 3.09, and attenuation constant of 3.4 Np/m is achieved by using a recessed ground of dimensions (width × depth) 4.5 mm × 0.95 mm, below a 50-Ω (on conventional ground plane) microstrip line.The effect of recessed ground on lumped equivalent circuit elements of microstrip line discontinuities including series-gap, open-end, and step discontinuities is also studied. To show the usefulness of recessed ground microstrip line, a prototype of fifth-order Chebyshev-type recessed ground end-coupled band-pass filter is designed and fabricated at 60 GHz. The filter exhibits measured insertion loss lower than 2.2 dB and return loss better than 13 dB over 3-dB passband of 6% centered at 60 GHz. The measured results show good consistency with simulated results and confirm the usefulness of recessed ground plane microstrip line.
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