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  3. Clarity 3D showing significantly higher losses in a coplanar...

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Clarity 3D showing significantly higher losses in a coplanar waveguide than ADS for the same structure

OlafA
OlafA over 2 years ago

When following a Clarity 3D tutorial, which makes a coplanar waveguide, the simulated S-parameters show that it is a very lossy system. I obtain the same results as the tutorial shows, but these results do not make sense to me. It shows an impedance matched waveguide (S11 < -15 dB) with an S21 of -3 dB at 20 GHz for a PCB waveguide of 2.5 mm. The dielectric used is Rogers 4350b with a loss tangent of roughly 0.0037. A loss of over 1 dB per mm seems quite large to me, especially when compared to results from the datasheet of Ro4350b (This shows an insertion loss of < 0.5 dB/inch at 20 GHz) and when performing a simulation in ADS with the same dimensions and materials for the waveguide it also shows a loss of <0.1 dB for a 2.5 mm waveguide.

I tried changing the loss tangent to 0, but this didn't change the loss significantly.

I tried increasing the conductivity to reduce ohmic losses, but this also didn't lead to a significant change.

Also increasing the dielectric constant while keeping the waveguide impedance matched to reduce the radiative losses didn't yield a improvement.

Is someone able to explain if there is a loss which is taken into account in Clarity 3D and not in ADS or whether the loss indeed should be lower.

Thank you in advance

Below are images of the waveguide in Clarity 3D

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  • JavierAlvarado
    JavierAlvarado over 2 years ago

    The disparity in results is because of the simulation space. In the tutorial, a small boundary box is used to get faster result.

    The Method of Moments algorithm is based on the Boundary Integral method which does not need a physical bounding box for calculating the current and charges.

    At the other hand clarity is based on FEM, that means the simulation space need to be defined both surface and volume.

    If you use a more reasonable boundary box, about (8-10) time the thickness of your PCB, you will see that the insertion loss (IL) is close to expected results.

    Other observation is the port impedance need to be match with the TL impedance, the default values in the examples have 50 ohms of port impedance and 40Ω of characteristic impedance. 

    Blue= port reference impedance in 40 ohms matching TL

    Red= port reference impedance in 50 ohms

    Cheers,
    Javier

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  • OlafA
    OlafA over 2 years ago in reply to JavierAlvarado

    This indeed gives me more logical results, thank you for the help!

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  • OlafA
    OlafA over 2 years ago in reply to JavierAlvarado

    This indeed gives me more logical results, thank you for the help!

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