Multilayer board switch matrix

A witch matrix comprising:

• a housing having a channel floor;
• a plurality of microstrips on said channel floor, a portion of which are input microstrips and the remaining portion are output microstrips;
• a switch on each input microstrip;
• a cavity on said channel floor for receiving said multi-layer cross connect;
• a ground gap interface on each microstrip adjacent said cavity for interfacing with a microstrip launch of a multi-layer cross connect;
• a multi-layer cross connect disposed in said a cavity and comprising at least:
• a multi-layer circuit board having a top and bottom orientation and comprising at least a bottom layer and one or more upper layers;
• a plurality of first microstrip launches along the perimeter of said bottom layer, each microstrip launch interfacing with said interface of each microstrip;
• a plurality of striplines on said bottom layer, each stripline being connected to one and only one first microstrip launch and comprising a transformer for lowering its impedance and thereby increasing its width relative to the width of said microstrip launch, said striplines comprising first striplines and second striplines;
• a plurality of transition vias, each transition via conductively coupling each of said second striplines to a stripline on an upper layer;
• and
• a combiner on each layer for combining for combining signals from multiple striplines to a common stripline.

A switch matrix comprising:

• a housing having a channel floor;
• a plurality of microstrips on the channel floor;
• and
• a multi-layer cross connect electrically coupled to the microstrips and disposed in said housing such that it resides on just one side of the channel floor.