Can anyone explain this high-frequency "alien voodoo black magic"?

Question

I was casually watching Mike tear down a spectrum analyser (13:30 is the relevant part, 16:50 is the awesome part), and he came across what he aptly described as "weird messed up alien voodoo black magic stuff":

High Frequency Voodoo

As a layman, I can only nod in agreement with his description. Do we have any sufficiently experienced alien-voodooologists around to explain what this madness is all about?

Are we looking at the wiggly bits to the left, or the triangular bits to the right (or both)? — OrangeDog, Dec 18 '13 at 17:36
Another question about similar weird stuff http://electronics.stackexchange.com/q/33369/3552 — sharptooth, Dec 19 '13 at 08:22

score 21 · Accepted Answer · edited Aug 13 '14 at 13:32

21

I think this blog post answers your question pretty well :)

Demystifying RF Circuit Design – The art of Voodoo

In short, the 3 main components illustrated are:

hair-pin type band-pass filter
distributed element low-pass filter (regularly-spaced rectangles 'dumbells')
series LC resonator (the radial stubs off one side of the trace)

See the referring page for details about how they work, and which-is-which.

edited Aug 13 '14 at 13:32

Ricardo

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answered Dec 18 '13 at 12:15

geometrikal

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Right answer, but [little more than a link](http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/8231/are-answers-that-just-contain-links-elsewhere-really-good-answers). – Phil Frost Dec 18 '13 at 17:33
@NewAlexandria's edits made it better ;) – geometrikal Dec 19 '13 at 00:20

score 10 · Answer 2 · edited Aug 13 '14 at 13:33

10

This is actually something I stumbled apon not that long ago. Here is what it is.

Distributed element filter - WikiPedia

It has examples almost identical to those in the video.

edited Aug 13 '14 at 13:33

Ricardo

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answered Dec 18 '13 at 13:05

binarysmacker

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Can anyone explain this high-frequency "alien voodoo black magic"?

2 Answers2