IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO.
3, MARCH 2017
Six-Port Reflectometer Using Edge-Coupled
Microstrip Couplers
Debapratim Ghosh, Student Member IEEE, and Girish Kumar, Member, IEEE
Abstract— This letter presents the design of a six-port reflec-
tometer (SPR), which makes use of edge-coupled, coupled-line
microstrip couplers. By designing the couplers to have coupling
slightly larger than the isolation, good Q-point placement on the
complex −plane is obtained. The SPR Q-points are obtained by
a proposed two-step process using two standard terminations—a
matched load and an open circuit load. The designed SPR has
been tested using various loads and the computed load reflection
coefficients have been compared against those of a standard
commercial Vector Network Analyzer. The raw dynamic range
is 21–39 dB in the frequency range from 1.6 to 2.2 GHz and
the uncalibrated load reflection coefficients follow the expected
values closely, with average phase error spread of only about
2.7%–7.7%. The designed SPR is fabricated on FR4 substrate.
It achieves a reduction in size due to lesser number of components
and is ideal for narrowband and low cost use.
Index Terms— Coupled-line couplers, edge-coupled lines,
network analyzer, power divider, six-port reflectometer (SPR).
I. I NTRODUCTION
S IX-PORT reflectometers (SPRs) offer an alternative tech-
nique over conventional heterodyne schemes to measure
the complex reflection coefficient of a load ( L ) by measur-
ing only the power magnitudes at defined points in a six-
port network [1]. The solution for the reflection coefficient
 = a/b at a particular frequency is obtained by the common
intersection point(s) of three circles centered at Q-points on
the complex −plane, and radii determined by the load.
The early SPRs used five hybrid waveguide couplers [2] and
this configuration has formed a basis for many subsequently
reported designs. The SPR in [3] showed that minimal error
distribution of Q-points is obtained using 3-dB waveguide
couplers. An SPR using four 180° hybrids was reported in [4],
which obtained 27% bandwidth; however, the performance
of the SPR over the desired band is not reported. An SPR
using a 6-dB coupler and four 3-dB 90° couplers was reported
in [5], which shows a strong effect of coupler directivity on
measurement of  L . SPR configurations using four modified
180° and 90° 3-dB couplers have been reported in [6] and [7],
respectively, showing improved bandwidth, but drawbacks are
the use of adjustable terminations and increased size. Four 90°
3-dB coupler-based SPR with additional delay lines has been
proposed in [8] with 20% bandwidth, but the in-band perfor-
mance of the SPR is not reported. The use of 3- and 4.8-dB
Manuscript received September 13, 2016; revised November 22, 2016;
accepted December 15, 2016. Date of publication February 13, 2017; date
of current version March 9, 2017.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Bombay,
Mumbai 400076, India (e-mail: dghosh@ee.iitb.ac.in; gkumar@ee.iitb.ac.in).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2017.2661708
1531-1309 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
245
broadside-coupled stripline couplers for SPR design have been
reported in [9] and [10] to obtain about 33% bandwidth.
An alternate approach makes use of multiple probes along
a transmission line where the probes are relatively weakly
coupled to the main line. Two to seven probe systems have
been reported in [11]–[13]. The use 10-, 6-, and 3-dB couplers
with tunable phase shifter is reported in [11]. Use of five and
seven microstrip and stripline probes have been reported in
[12] and [13], respectively, making the designs overdetermined
and an adaptive approach is used to select three Q-points
best separated. A two-detector system is reported in [14],
which uses 3-dB dividers and delay lines, with the proposed
calibration to reduce error. To summarize, most reported
techniques have emphasized the use of directional couplers
with tight 3-dB coupling. These designs have made use of
at least four to five such components. Alternatively, the use
of multiple probes has also been reported, with the systems
relying on calibration and adaptive approaches to obtain low-
error  L solution.
In this letter, a hybrid approach is proposed, which makes
use of edge-coupled microstrip couplers and 3-dB Wilkinson
divider. The detectors are arranged with coupled probes along
a main line, and the probe couplers are designed for loose
coupling and low isolation on a lossy substrate to get desired
magnitudes and good phase separation of Q-points. It is
shown that without any calibration on the proposed SPR, good
dynamic range of 21–39 dB is obtained and the measured
magnitude and phase of the complex load reflection coefficient
 L follows the expected values closely. The proposed design is
shown to offer a good compromise between size, cost, dynamic
range, bandwidth, and error.
II. P ROPOSED S IX -P ORT D ESIGN U SING E DGE -C OUPLED
M ICROSTRIP C OUPLERS
In the proposed SPR, Ports 5 and 6 are for the load Device
Under Test (DUT) and the RF input, respectively. The other
ports are for power detection with Port 2 as a reference
detector. Though not an exact approximation, in terms of the
S-parameters of the SPR, the i th Q-point (i = 1, 3, 4) using
the expressions in [1] can be modified as Q i ≈ −Si6 /Si5 S56 .
A probe coupler is shown in Fig. 1(a). It is designed √ for
the wave from Port 6 to couple to the detector 2 times
stronger than the wave√from Port 5, i.e., |Q i | ≈ 2 is obtained
(assuming |S56 | = 1/ 2). Thus, low isolation of the coupler
is obtained using a lossy FR4 substrate. Si6 and Si5 of a
single 16-dB edge-coupled microstrip coupler probe designed
for 1.6 GHz shown in Fig. 1(b) indicate that 1.8 ≤ |Q i | ≤ 2.82
246 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 3, MARCH 2017
Fig. 1. (a) Waves at the ith port of an SPR through a coupler and (b) Si6 ,
Si5 , and Sii of a 16-dB edge-coupled microstrip probe coupler with λ/4 at
1.6 GHz.
Fig. 2. Configuration of the proposed SPR using coupled microstrip couplers.
Fig. 3. Photograph of the SPR (without detectors) fabricated on FR4
substrate.
√ (O = aO /bO ) as a function of frequency have been used
(for |S56 | = 1/ 2) from 1.6 to 2.2 GHz (conventional 3-dB
couplers have coupling six to seven times the isolation, which
gives very large |Q i |). The probe at the i th port has return loss
better than 20 dB, which ensures minimal power flow back to
the main line. The angular separation between the three Q-
points is obtained by placing three identical 16-dB couplers
along the main line. The complete SPR geometry is shown
in Fig. 2. The reference detector at Port 2 has to be isolated
from Port 5 for the reference power to be largely independent
of the load. This is achieved using a 3-dB Wilkinson power
divider designed at 1.9 GHz with isolation above 20 dB from
1.6 to 2.2 √GHz. In addition, the 3-dB power divider ensures
|S56 | ≈ 1/ 2, which justifies the initial assumption.
III. S OLUTION FOR THE SPR Q-P OINTS
The SPR has been fabricated on glass-epoxy FR4 substrate
(r = 4.4, h = 0.8 mm, and tan δ = 0.02), and Fig. 3 shows
the photograph. Since it is not possible to physically measure
Si5 for an arbitrary load at Port 5, the Q-points of the SPR Q i
(i = 1 . . . 4) are obtained through a proposed two-step process,
by making use of two standard terminations: a 50  and an
open load. If ai and bi denote the waves entering and leaving
Fig. 4. (a) Linear magnitudes and angular (phase) separation of the three
Q i of the SPR and (b) uncalibrated  L (dB and phase) of microstrip 0-,
10-k, and 51- terminations measured by the SPR.
the SPR at its i th port, respectively [1]
b i = A i a + Bi b (1)
where Ai and Bi are the complex coefficients of the SPR
(Q i = −Bi /Ai ), and a and b, respectively, are the reflected
and incident waves at the load on Port 5 (ultimately,  L = a/b
is to be measured). Since Port 2 is used as a reference port, b2
must be independent of the load to obtain A2 → 0 ⇒ Q 2 → ∞.
In the first step to obtaining the Q i , a 50- matched termina-
tion of the Agilent 85033E kit [15] is connected on Port 5.
A good assumption for the matched load, as verified by
measurement, is that it has a  b. Equation (1) then simplifies
to bi = Bi b. For a 50- load, Si6 and S56 of the above
SPR indicate bi and b, respectively. Thus, the Bi values are
obtained as
Si6
Bi = . (2)
S56
The Ai values are obtained by connecting an open termination
of the 85033E to Port 5 (alternatively, a short termination
may be used, but it has greater parasitics than an open load
beyond 1.5 GHz). The actual open load reflection coefficients
to obtain Ai . When the open load is connected, it follows
from (1) that bO = S26 O /B (S O indicates the S-parameter
2 i6
when Port 5 has an open load). Once bO is known, the other
O are measured. The A values are then obtained in
three Si6 i
terms of all known, measured quantities, including Bi from (2)
by rearranging (1), as
 
O
1 Si6
Ai = − Bi . (3)
O b O
From (2) and (3), the Q i values are obtained as Q i = −Bi /Ai .
This approach is valid only if the Port 6 RF source is
well matched. Fig. 4(a) shows the magnitudes and angular
separations, respectively, of Q 1 , Q 3 , and Q 4 in the frequency
range from 1.6 to 2.2 GHz; |Q i | ≥ 2 for nearly the entire
frequency range. In addition, Fig. 4(a) also shows that the
|Q i | values are all nearly equally spaced from each other
by nearly 120° from 1.75 to 1.9 GHz. The minimum phase
separation between any two |Q i | is better than 50° from
1.6 to 2.2 GHz, which ensures less measurement error, since
any lower separation would increase measurement inaccuracy
and error [1].
GHOSH AND KUMAR: SPR USING EDGE-COUPLED MICROSTRIP COUPLERS
Fig. 5. Uncalibrated  L measured by the SPR, compared with
Agilent E5071C VNA measurements for (a) 36 , (b) 100 , (c) 1 pF,
and (d) printed monopole antenna.
IV. M EASURED R ESULTS
After obtaining Q i , the designed SPR was tested for its
ability to distinguish matched and mismatched loads and
phases. A small 50- microstrip line terminated with: 1) a
0- load; 2) a 10-k load, and 3) a 51- load was connected
to Port 5 of the SPR. The power at ports 1−4 was measured
using MAX2015 logarithmic detectors and the uncalibrated
 L were computed. The measured  L are shown in Fig.
4(b). The | L | values of 0- and 10-k loads are very
close to the expected value(s) of 0 dB, while the difference
open
between the measured phase angles ( L ) − ( short L ) is
in the range of 172°–185°, close to the ideal value of 180°.
The load dynamic range between 0 /10 k and 51- load
varies from 21 to 39 dB in the range 1.6–2.2 GHz, which
indicates good ability to distinguish matched and mismatched
loads. The threshold Minimum Detectable Signal (MDS) of the
MAX2015 is around −55 dBm, which makes the system SNR
better than 15 dB (with measured noise floor of −70 dBm)
for the band from 1.6 to 2.2 GHz.
The performance of the SPR has also been tested using four
other loads: a 36- load, a 100- load, a 20 mm long, 50-
microstrip line loaded with a 1-pF capacitor, and a printed
monopole antenna. For each load, the magnitude and phase
of  L were measured by recording the MAX2015 detector
outputs at ports 1−4. The uncalibrated  L measured by the
detector outputs for the different loads are shown in Fig.
5. Each measurement has been compared with a standard
 L reading taken from a calibrated E5071C Vector Network
Analyzer (VNA), as shown in Fig. 5. As seen from Fig. 5,
the measured | L | follows the expected characteristic, with
average magnitude error of about 0.9–2.8 dB. The measured
phase ( L ) follows a similar trend as the expected phase,
with an in-band average measurement error (spread over the
360° complex −plane) of 2.7%–7.7%. Thus, the designed
SPR, without any calibration, follows the expected trends and
gives  L close to the expected values.
247
V. C ONCLUSION
In this letter, an SPR using edge-coupled microstrip couplers
is proposed. The design comprises of a hybrid approach using
loose coupling and low isolation of microstrip couplers on
a lossy substrate and a 3-dB Wilkinson divider, to obtain
good Q-point placement and to isolate the reference power.
The procedure to obtain Q-points of the SPR is proposed
as a two-step process using two standard terminations. The
uncalibrated, measured  L for various loads using this SPR
is compared against those of a commercial VNA, and the
magnitude and phase results are found to be in close agree-
ment from 1.6 to 2.2 GHz, with raw load dynamic range of
21–39 dB. The SPR makes use of fewer components and is
smaller in size over those reported in [4] and [10]. Compared
with the multiprobe techniques in [12] and [13], this SPR is
not overdetermined, and does not require adaptive selection
of Q-points for a given frequency. The SPR achieves 32%
bandwidth, better than those reported in [4], [5], and [8].
This design is scalable to any frequency and is suitable for
narrowband applications, such as antenna, dielectric, and soil
moisture testing [16].
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