Comparison between S-parameter measurements and 2D electromagnetic simulations for microstrip transmission lines on BiCMOS process

As the frequency increases for RF applications in silicon technology, the modeling of transmission lines is necessary. In this work, we propose to check the validity of the conventional measurement technique to extract the propagation parameters for structures in a standard BiCMOS process. To estimate this technique, the results are compared with 2D electromagnetic simulations. On microstrip structures, the comparison shows that the conventional method is sufficient up to 18 GHz. Moreover, we highlight the effects of energy dissipation in the dielectric layers currently used in the silicon process.