Characterisation of Discontinuities in Microstrip with Rectangular and Trapezoidal Cross-Section

The vast majority of published analyses of microstrip discontinuities make the often unrealistic approximation of infinitesimally thin strips. In this contribution results obtained using the Finite Difference Time Domain method are presented for the open end and step discontinuities in microstrip with various cross-sections. These demonstrate that the cross-section can significantly influence the parasitic effects.