OVERVIEW

Much of the modern communication equipment has at least one form of microwave printed circuit. Besides, almost every electrical device has a printed circuit board (PCB), which can be classified as a low-frequency counterpart of a microwave printed circuit, although with ever-increasing demand for signal speed, the boundary between those two has been steadily blurring in some applications. Once devised as a simple signal transportation medium between circuit components, microwave printed circuits are continuously renewing themselves to keep up with the technology.

Microwave printed circuits, and printed circuits in general, are playing the important role of being a harness for modern electrical devices where the complex connections between the circuit components wouldn't be possible without them. Apart from transferring electrical signals from one point to another, one can also build passive components, like couplers, power dividers, filters, and so forth, using microwave printed circuit technology. Note that by saying printed circuit, we mean that circuit patterns are either etched or printed on a dielectric slab using an appropriate technology in the form of metal traces. In fact, that is the main place that all of the advantages of the technology are coming from: by transferring circuit images on dielectric slabs, multilayer and complex circuits can be built in a very cost-effective and high-volume way. The main difference between a regular printed circuit and a microwave printed circuit is the electrical and physical properties of the dielectric slab. For microwave applications, low-loss and tight control on the material specifications and...