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The multimode equivalent network (MEN) formulation has been originally developed for the efficient and accurate analysis of waveguide devices. In this article, we extend the use of the MEN to the analysis of zero-thickness, planar printed circuits in a metallic enclosure. The formulation is developed for metallic areas of arbitrary shape and includes both internal and external ports in the transverse plane to model connections to external components, and coaxial input/output ports. The boundary integral resonant mode expansion (BI-RME) method is used for the analysis of the arbitrary shape metallizations. On this basis, shielded multilayered microstrip circuits of complex geometry are analyzed in the common frame of the MEN technique. To validate the theoretical formulation, several boxed microstrip structures are analyzed, including multilayered configurations with several metallization interfaces, showing good agreement with respect to both other commercial tools, and measurements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical methods are widely used to analyze and design microwave components for communication applications. In the implementation of any numerical technique, however, there are always a set of parameters that must be properly adjusted in order to obtain, at the same time, computational efficiency and numerical accuracy of the results. In this context, therefore, we focus in this paper on the multimode equivalent network formulation for waveguide devices, and we propose a more intuitive and efficient strategy for choosing these parameters. Following our approach, setting only one global numerical variable is sufficient to adjust automatically the specific convergence parameters of each discontinuity to give a specific level of numerical accuracy of the results. As a consequence, the computational efficiency is significantly increased. In addition, the user experience is significantly improved since our approach eliminates all lengthy convergence tests previously needed to assure good numerical accuracy. In addition to theory, we discuss in this paper a number of numerical results that clearly demonstrate how the new strategy is very effective, thereby fully validating the theoretical formulation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]