A comparative study on four different transmission lines in LTCC for 60 GHz applications

The wireless telecommunication systems have an undeniable role in today's society. The rapid progress of wireless services and applications accelerates demands for high data-rate reliable systems. The 60 GHz band with its 5 GHz globally unlicensed available spectrum, provides a great opportunity for the next generation of high data-rate wireless communication. Despite this attractive bandwidth surrounding 60 GHz, there are still many challenges to be addressed such as the loss performance and the integration with other systems. Low Temperature Cofired Ceramic (LTCC) technology, with its unique and mature multilayer fabrication process, has excellent capability of realizing miniaturized 3D low loss structures to overcome these challenges. Since, one of the key components in any communication system for both interconnecting and designing components is Low loss transmission lines, in this article we overview the performances and challenges for four different most practical transmission lines at 60 GHz in LTCC: Microstrip, Stripline, Coplanar Waveguide (CPW), and LTCC Integrated Waveguide (LIW).