A divide‐by‐3 planar power divider with >30 dB isolation

Abstract

A new three‐way planar power divider, based on recombinant structure and multisection impedance transformers achieving equal division ratio and high isolation is presented. The new design structure comprises of unequal impedance multisections, and achieves higher isolation than planarized Wilkinson dividers and smaller structure than recombinant designs. The divider is completely modeled analytically using transmission line theory, followed by verification through simulation and measurements. With an overall size of 23.5 mm × 29 mm, the divider demonstrates a bandwidth from 1.8 GHz to 2.8 GHz with measured 20 dB isolation bandwidth of 43%, peak isolation of 31 dB, insertion loss of 4.99 ± 0.5 dB and return loss better than 13 dB at 2.4 GHz. The planar structure, small size and highest reported isolation at 2.4 GHz, makes the design suitable for MMICs, antenna feed networks and power amplifier applications.

Compact three-way planar power divider with a simple structure

“…Miniaturized planar structures have also been proposed, but they are also complicated because they either employ cascaded Lange couplers [11] or multi-section lines [12]. Recently, highisolation planar dividers based on a recombinant structure and multi-section impedance transformers have been presented [13,14]. In [15], a very simple wideband planar structure with good return loss and isolation characteristics was proposed.…”