Slow-wave propagation of microstrip consisting of Electric-Magnetic-Electric (EME) composite metal strips

Abstract

A novel integrated microstrip slow-wave line is presented. The new microstrip replaces the conventional metal strip by the composite metals paralleling the electric and magnetic surfaces. The magnetic surface is made of an array of coupled inductors that perturb the modal currents periodically. The theoretical results, validated by experiment, show that more than 60% increase in the slow-wave factor while maintaining the Q-factor values can be achieved using the proposed structure.