Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW)

Guided-wave structures are no doubt the most fundamental building elements of high-frequency antennas, circuits and systems. They are usually composed of metallic and dielectric topologies or mixed forms of both, which are made in the form of planar and non-planar geometries, depending on design approaches, processing technologies and application requirements. Earlier than year 2000, the development of high-performance RF wireless, microwave, and millimeter-wave (mmW) techniques over MHz-through-THz frequencies had often experienced difficult and expensive integration issues between planar integrated circuits and non-planar waveguide components. Usually, the non-planar structures are bulky and costly and they are not mechanically, thermally and electrically compatible with low-cost planar counterparts. This unfortunate mismatch or incompatibility created at that time a huge challenge for transceiver front-end integration and packaging.