Received: 2 July 2019
DOI: 10.1002/mop.32199
RESEARCH ARTICLE
An inline waveguide-to-
microstrip transition for
wideband millimeter-wave
applications
Cun Long Li1 | Cheng Jin2 |
Han Qing Ma3 | Xiao Wei Shi1
1
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Antennas and
Microwaves, Xidian University, Xi’an, China
2
School of Information and Electronics, Beijing Institute of Technology,
Beijing, China
3
Xi’an Electronic Engineering Research Institute, Xi’an, China
Correspondence
Cun Long Li, National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on
Antennas and Microwaves, Xidian University, Xi’an, China.
Email: cunlongli@live.com
Abstract
A low-cost wide Ka-band inline waveguide-to-microstrip
transition is proposed, which facilities the integration of
planar transmission lines with waveguide structures. By
employing a circular patch above a wedge-shaped cavity,
the quasi-TEM mode wave in the microstrip line can be
transformed into the TE10 mode wave in the rectangular
waveguide. A transition prototype in a back-to-back con-
figuration is manufactured and experimentally tested.
Measured results show that the return loss is greater than
13 dB from 28 to 38 GHz and the insertion loss remains
less than 0.4 dB for the proposed single-side transition.
With the features of wideband, compact structure and easy
integration, the proposed transition can be applied in the
low-loss and high-integration millimeter-wave systems.
KEYWORDS
inline transition, millimeter-wave, waveguide-to-microstrip, wideband
1 | INTRODUCTION
Waveguide-to-microstrip transitions are regarded as a vital
component in millimeter-wave systems, which comprise the
Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2019;1–5. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mop
passive devices including filters and antennas in waveguide
structures and the active modules such as front-end receivers
or transmitter modules integrated on microstrip substrates.1
For easy of fabrication and integration, transitions with low
loss, low cost, miniaturized volume, and broadband responses
are required. This leads to a challenging issue, especially in
millimeter-wave frequencies.
Recently, various approaches have been exploited for
waveguide-to-microstrip transitions. Based on the relative
position between the waveguide and the microstrip line, the
previous designs can be classified into 2 distinct types includ-
ing the vertical transitions and the parallel ones. The probe
transitions2-11 and the slot ones12,13 are 2 typical vertical tran-
sitions. It means the microstrip structure penetrates into the
waveguide through its wall, and the transmission directions of
the microstrip and the waveguide are orthogonal. Various
approaches about these transitions have been exploited, such
as the probe transition with back-shorted proximity coupling
transition14 and radial probe with extended ground planes.15
However, the transmission directions of the microstrip and the
waveguide are orthogonal in these structures, which increases
the thickness and complexity of the structure. The inline tran-
sition is a parallel transition in which the microstrip line enters
the waveguide through its terminal, and its field propagation
then travels the same direction with that of the waveguide.
They can meet diverse system requirements to handle differ-
ent polarization directions in the waveguide outport or the
complexed arrangement of RF modules. The finline-like con-
figuration is adopted as the parallel transition in Reference 16
The finline-like configuration must be long enough to achieve
impedance matching, which increases the size of the transi-
tion. Multistage impedance transformations are usually
employed in the transition to obtain wideband impedance
matching.17,18 However, these approaches usually put forward
higher requirements for fabrication accuracy and possess large
dimensions.
In this article, an inline-type waveguide-to-microstrip
transition with the microstrip line arranged perpendicular to
the broad wall of the waveguide operating in Ka-band is
presented. It is realized by a circular patch as the end of the
microstrip line and a wedge-shaped reflecting cavity beneath
the patch. The structure is compact and can be easily assem-
bled by inserting the microstrip substrate into the cavity
without use of welding. Then, the bottom of the microstrip
cavity and the waveguide broad are designed in the same
plane, and all the cavities can be milled from one direction,
which consequently make the proposed structure easy to be
manufactured. Finally, the designed structure is fabricated
© 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. 1
2 LI ET AL.

FIGURE 1 Geometry of proposed microstrip-to-waveguide transition. A, Perspective view; B, Top view; and C, Side view

TABLE 1 Parameters of the transition

Symbol Value (mm) Symbol Value (mm)

Ml 2.10 Sw 5.50
Mw 0.45 Sw1 1.20
Tr 1.00 Sh 2.25
Dl 4.50 Ww 1.50
Cl 3.45 Wh 1.00
Sl 3.50 Wb 1.00

and tested, and the measurement results together with simu-

lation ones prove that the insertion loss of the discussed tran-
sition is less than 0.4 dB within a wide operating frequency F I G U R E 2 Simulated S-parameters of waveguide-to-microstrip
transitions with different cavities
band of 28 to 38 GHz.

2 | DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
The proposed waveguide-to-microstrip transition is schemat-
ically presented in Figure 1. A 50-Ω microstrip line is
printed on the Rogers RO5880 dielectric slab with a thick-
ness of 0.254 mm, which is flush with the bottom surface of
the cavity by using a WR28 rectangular hollow waveguide.
The microstrip line penetrates into the hollow waveguide
though a hole drilled on its narrow wall. A circular patch is
loaded at the top of the microstrip line via a high impedance
line, beneath which a wedge-shaped reflecting cavity is
arranged. The metal on the ground between the circular
patch and the cavity is corroded in the same size as the cav-
ity. Then, the quasi-TEM mode waves propagating along
microstrip line propagate into the waveguide cavity, and the
circular patch serving as a probe inserted into the waveguide
LI ET AL.
F I G U R E 3 Simulated S-parameters of waveguide-to-microstrip
transition with varying parameters Dl and Sh
F I G U R E 4 Structure of the back-to-back transition with the same
dimensions as the single one in Figure 1. A, Top view and B,
Side view
is excited leading to guarantees the generation of TE10
mode. Because the waveguide along one end of the propaga-
tion direction is shorted, the millimeter-wave energy
reflected from the shorted-circuit will be transferred into the
port on the other end.
With the utilization of the resonant patch above the
reflecting cavity, the transition between the microstrip line
and waveguide can be realized without complex structures.
The detailed geometry is further optimized using the full-
wave commercial ANSYS HFSS software. The optimal
parameters are summarized as shown in Table 1.
A comparison between the transitions with the proposed
wedge-shaped reflecting cavity and the conventional rectan-
gular reflecting cavity is made in Figure 2 to examine the
performance. It is observed that the transition with the con-
ventional rectangular cavity realize the return loss (|S11|) bet-
ter than 10 dB across the frequency range of 31 to 35 GHz
with only one transmission pole. With the use of the wedge-
shaped cavity in the proposed deign, a wider band of 28 to
38 GHz is realized. Besides, 2 transmission poles are yield
3
F I G U R E 5 Photographs of the fabricated back-to-back transition
[Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]
F I G U R E 6 Simulated and measured S-parameters of the back-to-
back transition
over the band, which is determined by the minimum and
maximum lengths of wedge-shaped cavity.
It is useful to study the impact of key parameters on the
frequency responses of the proposed structure since the oper-
ating frequency band should be easily tuned through param-
eters adjustment. The variation of the frequency responses of
the proposed transition when the parameters of the structure
change is investigated based on the full-wave analysis by
using commercial ANSYS HFSS software. Figure 3 plots
the S-parameters against frequency for different distances
between the shorting wall and the patch (Dl), and depths of
the wedge-shaped cavity (Sh). It can be found that the opera-
tion bandwidth shifts toward the lower frequencies with
increasing the lengths of both Dl and Sh, while good imped-
ance matching is maintained. Therefore, the operation fre-
quency range of the transition can be adjusted easily and
accurately by altering the values of Dl and Sh. Finally, Dl is
selected as about 1/2λ0 and Sh as about 1/4λ0, where λ0 refers
to free space wavelength at center frequency.
Since it is difficult in directly measuring the single tran-
sition in Figure 1, a back-to-back microstrip-waveguide tran-
sition formed by combination of 2 single ones is designed
and measured as displayed in Figure 4. Their microstrip
4 LI ET AL.

ports are connected together while the 2 waveguide ports

can be used in practical measurement.

3 | EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS AND

DISCUSSIONS

To verify the design method of the wideband transition, the

back-to-back waveguide-to-microstrip transition prototype is
fabricated and experimentally tested. The fabricated proto-
type is shown in Figure 5, in which the metal waveguide is
manufactured by high-speed CNC-machining, while the
printed circuit board is bonded with conductive adhesive to
ensure the common ground. The S-parameters of the fabri-
cated transition are measured by using a Keysight N5244
vector network analyzer. The measured results together with
simulated results for comparison are shown in Figure 6, and
the 2 results are in reasonable agreement.
It is shown that the operational bandwidth of the back-to-
back transition reaches 10 from 28 to 38 GHz, and a wide-
band of more than 30% is achieved with low loss and good
impedance matching. It is a little wider than the simulated
results of the single one. The measured insertion loss (|S21|) is
less than 0.8 dB in the operational band, and meanwhile, the
return loss (|S11|) is greater than 13 dB. It is calculated that the
insertion loss introduced by each single transition in the back-
to-back configuration is smaller than 0.4 dB.
The slight difference between the 2 results are attributed to
the fabrication tolerance and inaccuracy of assembly, and the
length (Sw), width (Sl), and height (Sh) of the cavity are the
3 parameters that have the greatest influence on the results of
the back-to-back transitions. Because the cavity is machined by
high-precision CNC-machining, these dimensional errors can
be guaranteed to be 0.05 mm. The effects of the errors of
these parameters on the results are simulated. From the simula-
tion results in Figure 7, it can be seen that the processing errors
have little effect on the S-parameter results of the back-to-back
transitions. The machining accuracy can meet the design
requirements, which is verified by the simulation result.
Table 2 shows the performance comparison of our pro-
posed waveguide-to-microstrip transition and some previ-
F I G U R E 7 Simulated S-parameters of the back-to-back transition
ously reported works. It is obvious that the proposed
with varying parameters of the cavity. A, With varying parameter
structure can achieve a relative wide operational band with
Sw; B, With varying parameter Sl; and C, With varying parameter Sh
an easily fabricated transition structure and allows the field

TABLE 2 Comparison of waveguide-to-microstrip transitions

Ref. Technology BW (%) S11 (dB) S21 (dB) Transition type

14
Probe transition with back-short 15 ≤−15 ≥ − 0.5 Perpendicular
14
Proximity coupling transition 6.9 ≤−15 ≥ − 0.5 Perpendicular
15
Radial probe with extended ground planes 35.9 ≤−15 ≥ − 1.4 Perpendicular
18
Linear taper transition and multisection transformer 37.8 ≤−8 ≥ − 0.63 Parallel
Proposed work Patch probe above a wedge-shaped cavity 30.3 ≤−13 ≥ − 0.4 Parallel
LI ET AL.
propagation direction in the microstrip line the same as that
in the waveguide.
4 | CONCLUSION
This article presents a new design of an inline microstrip to
waveguide transition for wide Ka-band millimeter-wave
applications. The transition is composed of a circular patch
attached to a microstrip line and a reflecting cavity embedded
in the waveguide. Experimental results show that the insertion
loss is less than 0.4 dB and the return loss is better than
13 dB over the wideband from 28 to 38 GHz for our proposed
single-side transition. It is demonstrated that the proposed
structure is an excellent candidate of high performance transi-
tion with low profile, miniaturized size, and easy fabrication.
O R C ID
Cun Long Li https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7272-1451
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How to cite this article: Li CL, Jin C, Ma HQ,
Shi XW. An inline waveguide-to-microstrip transition
for wideband millimeter-wave applications. Microw
Opt Technol Lett. 2019;1–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/
mop.32199