A corrected method to extract dielectric parameters from transmission lines with conductor surface roughness at terahertz frequencies

Curve-fitting method is an important method to extract dielectric parameters of substrate materials from planar transmission lines. At gigahertz frequencies, effective conductivity concept is adopted to model the conductor’s surface roughness effects in planar transmission lines, and differential extrapolation method is used to remove surface roughness effects. However, such a concept and method lose their accuracy at extremely high frequency such as terahertz waves. This paper details some new limitations in the terahertz regime and proposes corrections in calculating effective conductivity with rough conductor and curve-fitting method for transmission performance characterization in eliminating the effects of surface roughness. The proposed method is validated by simulation data for conductivity with parallel plate waveguide model, and the corrected method presented here can effectively extract dielectric parameters with an error less than 7%. © 2017, Electromagnetics Academy. All rights reserved.