In this study, a short-wavelength voltage-controlled artificial transmission line employing periodically arrayed diodes (PAD) was studied for application to miniaturized on-chip passive component on monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC). According to the results, the voltage-controlled artificial transmission line employing PAD showed shorter wavelength and lower characteristic impedance than conventional one. The wavelength voltage-controlled artificial transmission line employing PAD structure was 35.2% of the conventional one on GaAs substrate. Using the theoretical analysis, basic characteristic of the transmission line employing PAD (e.g., loss, effective dielectric constant, effective propagation constant, bandwidth) were also investigated in order to evaluate its suitability for application to a development of miniaturized passive on-chip components on MMIC. In addition, for application to the design of RF passive components, the equivalent circuit of the PAD structure should be extracted. And for the theoretical analysis, parasitic components of PAD’s equivalent circuit were used closed-form equations. Above results indicate that the microstrip line employing PAD is a promising candidate for a development of miniaturized passive components on MMIC.
In this study, we fabricated the impedance transformer employing PAD structure for application to highly miniaturized passive on-chip components on MMIC. According to results, the impedance transformer employing PAD structure showed good RF characteristics. And it showed size reduction 3.12% than conventional impedance transformer.