Investigations of meanderline polarizers

An approach to predicting the characteristics of a meander line structure is presented. Since the structure is periodic, it is considered to be electrically equivalent to a waveguide with a unit cell placed inside. Using the mode matching procedure, the transmitted and the reflected fields are determined in terms of the incident field and the induced current on the unit cell. The unknown induced current is determined setting the boundary condition that the tangential electric field vanished on the conducting unit cell. From the transmitted and the reflected fields, the transmission and reflection coefficients are obtained, from which the equivalent susceptances are determined. This formulation is utilized to predict the inductance and capacitance of a meander line. The formulation for the equivalent susceptances was also used to compute the transmission coefficient and the axial ratio of a four-layered meander line polarizer.<>