Modeling of arbitrarily shaped signal lines and discontinuities

The propagation characteristics of signal lines and discontinuities embedded in a homogeneous medium, having any shape composed of steps along the Cartesian coordinates, are obtained through an extension of the author's previous work (1986) on scattering from periodic apertures. The approach is specifically applied to high-performance computer packages, where previously used capacitance and inductance techniques may not be appropriate. Numerical results are given for representative structures that involve signal lines, mesh planes, vias, and crossing and coupled lines.