Suppression of the skin effect in radio frequency transmission lines via gridded conductor fibers

Microwave propagation in transmission lines is fundamentally limited in bandwidth and reach by the skin and proximity effects. The resultant current crowding imparts a square-root frequency dependence on attenuation, and ultimately limits the spatial resolution of distributed transmission-line sensors and the data rate of communication systems. In this letter, we numerically analyze the microwave attenuation and impedance in μm-scale gridded fiber structures with currents arranged in a checkered pattern. The checkered lattice of currents significantly mitigates both the skin and proximity effects, and exhibits an unprecedented bandwidth (in excess of 1 GHz) of frequency-flat attenuation in a relatively small physical footprint (∼0.01 mm2).