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A CPW Excitation Using a Contactless Dielectric Waveguide Probe for the V-

Band

Conference Paper · January 2021

DOI: 10.23919/EuMC48046.2021.9338115

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 A CPW Excitation Using a Contactless Dielectric
Waveguide Probe for the V-Band
Amr Samir, Mohamed Basha, Ahmed M. Hegazy, Safieddin Safavi-Naeini
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada
{A2samir, Mbasha, Amhegazy, Safavi}@uwaterloo.ca
Abstract — In this paper, a design of V-band 50-75GHz
millimeter-wave transition from coplanar waveguide (CPW) to
dielectric rectangular waveguide (DWG) is presented for
contactless measurement probe device. The aim of the probe is
measuring CPW-based technology integrated systems without
direct contact. The proposed design is based on high resistivity
silicon wafer to implement the DWG and a laser machined CPW
on a Rogers3003 substrate where the strip and ground are
patterned on top. The simulated results show successful coupling
between the DWG mode and the CPW with 1.6dB insertion loss
across the back-to-back setup of the transition at 65 GHz. The
design is fabricated, tested and the experimental measurements
show an acceptable agreement with the simulated design.
Keywords — CPW transition, millimeter wave, dielectric
waveguide probe, coplanar waveguide, V-band, 60 GHz band.
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, many applications in the millimeter-wave
(MMW) and sub-millimeter wave are developing and rapidly
flourishing in the fields of communications and imaging up
to the terahertz-wave frequency gap [1]. Although these
frequency bands offer many benefits in terms of the offered
high bandwidth and compactness, there are still major
challenges such as packaging, integration and prototyping at
the system level or at the level of passive and active
components e.g. MMICs [2].
RF probes are widely used in the design and the
verification of RF components as one of the important tools
enabling direct measurements to characterize chips and RF
systems performance [3]. The use of the RF probes are
helpful starting from the development of small on-wafer
chips up to debugging the final production boards; however,
the widely used commercial probes are expensive and require
direct contact with the measured samples, especially in the
millimeter wave and THz frequency ranges. Moreover, more
issues beside the high cost appear when working at the THz
frequencies, for example the hard setup due to the fragileness
of the structures. Therefore, dielectric waveguide probes are
very desirable to obtain a low cost, robust, and easy setup RF
probing technology that covers the frequencies up to the THz
[4].
One of the extensively used transmission lines at MMW
frequencies is the Coplanar Waveguide (CPW) as a common
termination for the MMICs and interconnects within and
between chips on board. However, conductor losses due to its
metallic strip and on-substrate grounds are extremely high at
this range of frequencies [5]. Therefore, Dielectric
Waveguide (DWG) probes offers reasonable efficiency at
MMW due to the absence of the metallic conductors which
contributes to the high loss in the CPW and Microstrip
transmission lines. Hence, introducing a contactless
transition to excite the CPW terminated boards using
dielectric probes solves many of the proposed issues.
The methodology of excitation is using a gradual tapering
in the CPW grounds to achieve better coupling between the
CPW mode on top of the substrate and the dielectric probe
mode without any contact between the probe and the board in
the V-band. In this paper, the structure and the fundamental
modes of the probe and the CPW are explained in the next
section. Next, the simulated results of the proposed transition
is presented in section III followed by the experimental setup
and measurements in section IV.
II. DWG PROBE AND CPW STRUCTURES
The dielectric probe structure shown in Fig.1 is used as the
exciting probe for the CPW [4]. The structure is a DWG
tapered from one side to be connected to the VNA through
WR15 connector and tapered from the other side that excites
the CPW. The CPW termination used is the conventional
coplanar waveguide with 50um signal line and 50um ground
gaps on top of a 10mil RO3003 substrate with ¼ Oz copper
cladding.
In order to optimize the coupling of modes between the two
structures, e.g. coupling distance, a 2D FEM modal simulation
on COMSOL software is performed. This will essentially help
in enhancing the design for better matching between the two
fundamental modes to minimize the return loss. Fig.2. shows
the 2D modal simulation for both the Quasi-TEM mode of the
CPW and the DWG fundamental mode propagating at the 60
GHz frequency with effective mode index of 1.656. The
dielectric probe has a dimensions of 1400µm  500µm that
will support the fundamental mode.

(a)
(b)
Fig.1. V-band DWG excitation probe (a) Schematic drawing of the dielectric
probe, (b) Photo of the manufactured actual dielectric probe after assembly.
Fig.2.a. the electric field distribution for the fundamental modes in the CPW b.
The electric field distribution for the fundamental mode in the DWG at
60GHz.
III. SIMULATION OF THE DWG TO CPW TRANSITION
One of the main advantages of having a contactless
excitation for the CPW boards using the DWG probes is the
ability of measuring the sample multiple times without any
damage that can be caused by the contact as in the other
methods. In order to study the performance of the design in
terms of losses, FEM simulation is performed for the back-
to-back DWG probes to CPW transition presented in
Fig.3.a. Each transition includes gradual tapered cut in
line’s on-substrate grounds to match the modes of the
probes and the lines. The probes aren’t in contact to the
CPW board with a spacing of 20ums as in Fig.3.b. The
field distribution in Fig.3.c shows excellent agreement with
the CPW mode in the modal analysis previously discussed.
In addition, Fig.3.b shows the confined coupling between
the two modes.
Fig.3. (a) a top view of the CPW transition. (b) a side view for the board
excitation and field coupling. (c) CPW mode after transition.
Fig.4. schematic of the excitation for the CPW back-to-back transition using
contactless dielectric probes. (a) Top view (b) Side view.
The DWG shown in the schematic of Fig.4 is excited
through a metallic rectangular waveguide (WR15) at 60GHz.
A taper section is used to match the fundamental TE10 mode
to the DWG mode with the minimum coupling loss.
Consequently, the simulated insertion loss are reported in
Fig.5 to be -1.6dBs and return loss -20dBs at 65GHz. It is
worth noting that there are several contributors to this loss, e.g.
matching loss between the WR15 to the DWG and matching
loss in the transition between the probes, the CPW board and
ohmic losses which are significant at this high frequency. On
the other hands, it is not easy to guarantee a stable fixed 20um
spacing between the probe and the board during the
measurements, therefore a sensitivity analysis is performed on
the gap distance at 65GHz and as shown in Fig.6 it has
acceptable margin of divergence from the optimum value.
 irregularities might be contributing in the small results
mismatch, especially that its effect is significant as frequency
increases.

Fig.5. the simulated S-Parameters of the back-to-back WR excited DWG-

CPW transition.
(a)

(b)
Fig.7. the experimental setup of the back-to-back CPW excitation using
DWG probes in the E-band.
Fig.6. Sensitivity of spacing between probe and board and S21 at 65GHz.

IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND MEASUREMENTS

The CPW transition board is fabricated using laser machine
with the dimensions of 5mm*8mm. The Silicon probes are
micro machined in QNC cleanroom nanofabrication facility at
University of Waterloo. They are connected, as shown in Fig.7,
to the measurement system which is consisted of VNA,
calibrated for the V-band, through WR15 metallic waveguides,
high resolution motor stages to maintain the alignment of the
probes with the transition and a microscope. The board is
fixed and excited by the two probes with a fixed spacing of
20um between the probe and the board. The S-Parameters are
measured between the two ports are shown in Fig.8 for the
CPW under test. The results show -3.4dBs insertion loss and -
15dBs return loss at 65GHz. Fig.8. the measured S-Parameters of the back-to-back WR excited DWG-
The measured data shows acceptable agreement with the CPW transition by the VNA.
simulated results. However, there is an approximate -1dB
difference in the S21 that might be caused due to the
misalignment of the probes with the board and non-uniform
spacing between the probes and the board. Moreover, the
fabricated board is shown in Fig.9 under the microscope, some
irregularities in the depth of the substrate appears due to the
fabrication process of the laser machine, therefore these
 Characterization in the V-Band”. In 2019 IEEE MTT-S International
Microwave Symposium (IMS) (pp. 1272-1275). IEEE.
[5] B. Biglarbegian., M. Basha, A. Taeb., S. Gigoyan, and S. Safavi‐Naeini,
2014. “Silicon‐based integrated millimeter‐wave CPW‐to‐dielectric
image‐guide transition”. International Journal of RF and Microwave
Computer‐Aided Engineering, 24(4), pp.490-497.

Fig.9. the fabricated CPW transition under the microscope.

The measured data shows acceptable agreement with the

simulated results. However, there is an approximate -1dB
difference in the S21 that might be caused due to the
misalignment of the probes with the board and non-uniform
spacing between the probes and the board. Moreover, the
fabricated board is shown in Fig.9 under the microscope, some
irregularities in the depth of the substrate appears due to the
fabrication process of the laser machine, therefore these
irregularities might be contributing in the small results
mismatch, especially that its effect is significant as frequency
increases.

V. CONCLUSIONS
A low cost and easy setup CPW excitation using a micro
machined dielectric waveguide probe is presented for the V
frequency band. The proposed design of the transition is
fabricated using a laser machine. In addition, the fabricated
board was tested using a VNA connected to the dielectric
probes through metallic waveguides (WR15). Therefore, the
dielectric probes are used to excite the CPW board and the
measured data are shown to give a satisfactory agreement with
the FEM simulated design. Moreover, the causes of error for
the setup are listed, e.g. the horizontal and vertical
misalignments between the probe and the boards, the
irregularities in the laser-machined substrate. Therefore, this
presents a promising solution to be used in debugging and
prototyping MMIC chips and active components and can
encourage further explorations in this kind of research.

REFERENCES
[1] M. Tonouchi., 2007. “Cutting-edge terahertz technology”. Nature
photonics, 1(2), p.97.
[2] A. Zandieh., N. Ranjkesh., S. Safavi-Naeini, and M. Basha., 2012, July.
“A low-loss CPW to dielectric waveguide transition for millimeter-wave
hybrid integration”. In Antennas and Propagation Society International
Symposium (APSURSI), 2012 IEEE (pp. 1-2). IEEE.
[3] A. Rumiantsev, and R. Doerner., 2013. “RF probe technology: History
and selected topics”. IEEE Microwave Magazine, 14(7), pp.46-58.
[4] M. Basha., A. Zekrallah., M. Abdelkhalek, and S. Safavi-Naeini., “A
Novel Contactless Dielectric Probe for On-Wafer Testing and

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