Analysis of Hybrid Meander Structures with Additional Shields

Models of hybrid meander structures with additional shields are presented in this paper. The influence of additional shields and their grounding positions on the electromagnetic characteristics of the hybrid meander structures was investigated. Three-dimensional models were created and analyzed using the method of moments (MoM) in the Sonnet® and finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method in CST Microwave Studio® commercial software packages. The computer-based modeling was verified by physical experiment. The analysis showed that it is possible to control the delay time characteristic using different values of lumped inductive elements without the need to change the overall size of the hybrid meander structure. The delay time varied by 1.2 ns in the range of 1.3 ns to 2.5 ns when the inductivity changed from 1 nH to 10 nH in our investigation. On the other hand, the passband decreased from 2.384 GHz to 0.508 GHz. The additional shields and their grounding positions allowed for increasing the passband by up to 1.6%.