A Fabrication-Motivated Model for Improving Simulations of On-Wafer Transmission Lines

Electromagnetic simulations are a ubiquitous tool for microwave engineers. We benchmark simulations by their agreement with experimental results. Transmission lines are an excellent test case because they have well-established measurement methodologies and are straightforward to simulate. However, when disagreements between simulation and experiment arise, finding the root cause can be quite difficult due to the number of design parameters. Here, we investigated a fabrication-motivated model that reduces this complexity by leveraging correlations between transmission line design parameters. We validated our model by comparing its prediction of cross-sectional geometry to scanning electron microscopy (SEM) measurements. Our procedure provides a simple path for microwave engineers to improve simulations on a broad range of on-wafer devices.