Hello!

Yesterday I was redoing some transmission line calculations in Keysight ADS 
Linecalc that I had previously done in the KiCad "Transmission Lines" 
calculator tool. I noticed a difference in the results during physical 
parameter synthesis.

All other results seemed fine (apart from minor deviation in decimal 
places), however the length seemed to be twice as long in KiCad (6.87 mm in 
Linecalc, 12.92 mm in KiCad). Screenshots of both tools are in the two 
attachments.

First possibility that came to my mind was a user error. I assume Ang_l in 
the KiCad Transmission Line tool meant the phase difference between the 
beginning of the line and the end of it. If this is not the case, the rest 
of this post may be disregarded.

I was going through the source code, but could not immediately spot an 
error in the source code 
<https://docs.kicad.org/doxygen/microstrip_8cpp_source.html>, the formula 
inside void MICROSTRIP::calcSynthesize 
<https://docs.kicad.org/doxygen/classMICROSTRIP.html#a4ada46e9c8a9ddebadd06273f14929bf>
() seemed fine at first glance.

Something I found interesting is that the effective epsilon_r_eff  is 
almost the same in both tools: 3.53.

I used this to calculate the quarter wave-length of the transmission line:

lambda/4 = (c_0/f_r/eps_r_eff^0.5)/4

(3e8/5.8e9/3.53^0.5*1e3)/4
= 6.88

(3e8/5.8e9/1^0.5*1e3)/4
= 12.93

The upper value matches ADS Linecalc, the lower one matches KiCad 
Transmission Lines.

This may indicate that eps_r_eff is accidentally left to 1.

Is this a known issue, if it is one at all? If this is an issue, what are 
the required steps to get it fixed?


Best Regards,

Matti



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