Design of a Compact UWB Wilkinson Power

Divider
Lin Yang, Qing-Xin Chu
School of Electronic and Information Engineering ,South China University of Technology ,
Email: qxchu@scut.edu.cn ,Guangzhou, 510640 China

Abstract—In this paper, a Wilkinson power divider operating

over an ultra wide frequency band (3.1 to 10.6 GHz) is presented.
The proposed power divider consists of two branches of
impedance transformer, each of which consists of two sections of
transmission line with different characteristic impedance and
different length. And a resistor is set between the two sections.
The simulated and experimental results of the developed divider
are presented and show good agreement.

Index Terms—Wilkinson power divider,ultra wideband, even

mode,odd mode.
Fig.1. The proposed UWB Wilkinson Power Divider

I. INTRODUCTION
Since the release of commercial use of UWB technology in
2002, significant research activities and interests have been
recently aroused in academic and industrial circles toward
exploring various UWB components and devices [1]. In a
UWB system, a large number of papers have been published
on the design of UWB antennas and UWB filters. But, as a
key component in a variety of microwave systems, there are a
minority of UWB dividers proposed, which are extensively
used in balanced mixers, phase shifters, and antenna array Fig.2. Circuit of the power divider for the even-moide analysis
feed networks [2]. The simplest type of power divider is a T-
junction also operating over an ultra wide frequency
band ,which is a three-port network with one input port and
two output ports. However, its isolation between the output
ports is not well achieved.
There are many applications to Wilkinson power dividers,
such as dual-band dividers [3-5]. or tri-band dividers [6], or
Multi-band power dividers with multisection transmission line
impedance transformers [7].
In this paper , bansed on the method of dual-band, the
configuration of a compact Wilkinson power divider with two Fig.3. Circuit of the power divider for the Odd-mode analysis
branches of impedance transformer and a resistor, operating
over an ultra wide frequency band is presented. By employing wide frequency band , is shown in Fig. 1. Each quarter-wave
the two-section transformer with different dimension, the branch of a conventional Wilkinson power divider is replaced
simulated and measured results of the proposed divider show by two sections of transmission line with different
equal power division with good return loss at the three ports, characteristic impedance Z1 and Z 2 and the physical lengths
low insertion losses, and fine isolation between the two output l1 and l2 , respectively. The isolation between the output
ports across the band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. ports is achieved by using a resistors, as shown in Fig.1. The
purpose of the present analysis is to determine the divider
II. PROPOSED UWB POWER DIVIDER
parameters: Z1 , Z 2 , l1 , l2 . Since this divider is symmetric,
A schematic diagram of the proposed Wilkinson power the even- and odd-mode analysis will be used to determine the
divider, which realizes an equal power division over an ultra divider parameters for ultra wide frequency operation.

978-1-4244-1880-0/08/$25.00 ©2008 IEEE ICMMT2008 Proceedings

A. Even-mode Analysis With the CAD optimization, we set the resonance frequencies
The equivalent circuit of the divider in the even mode is to be f1 = 8GHz and f 2 = 16GHz . The power divider has a
shown in Fig.2. Since no current flows through the plane of broader bandwidth. Meanwhile, its return loss at its output
symmetry, the circuit elements R can be omitted. And the port and the isolation between them are better across the band
impedance Z 0 at port 1 is doubled. 3.1-10.6 GHz.
By introducing the equations in [5], we have
III. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
nπ
l1 = l2 = (1) The numerical experiments were performed with a high
β1 + β 2
frequency structure simulator (HFSS). To acquire a wide
2 passband in which the return loss at the input port and the
Z0 ªZ º output ports and the isolation between them are less than 10
Z2 = ( RL − Z 0 ) + « 0 ( RL − Z 0 ) » + Z 03 RL (2)
2α ¬ 2α ¼ dB, different dimensions of the power divider have been
simulated and compared. The dimensions of a power divider
Z 0 RL with relative good performance were determined.
Z1 = (3)
Z2 Fig.4. shows the schematic of the designed compact UWB
wilkinson power divider. The divider is fabricated on the
Where R L is set to be 2Z 0 in Fig.2. and substrate with dielectricconstant ε r = 2.55 , loss
α = (tan( β1l1 ))2 (4) tangent δ = 0.0019 , and thickness h = 0.8mm .
Fig.5. shows a photograph of the proposed divider, and the
2π
β= (5) total size is about 16mm × 17mm. The measured frequency
λ response of the proposed UWB power divider is characterized
In order to achieve ultra wide frequency band from 3.1 to in HP N5230A network analyzer.
10.6 GHz, the resonance frequency should occur at around Results of the performed simulations and measurements are
6.85GHz. The broad-bandwith occurs. However, the return shown in Fig.6. and 7. Those results reveal that the power is
loss at its output port and the isolation between them cannot equally divided between the two output ports with an insertion
satisfy the specification across the band 3.1-10.6 GHz. loss less than 0.3 dB across the band 3.1 to 10.6 GHz. The
According to the formulas, the resonance mid-frequency is return loss at the input port is in the range of 12 dB for the
mainly determined by the length of the two-section whole band. At the same time, the return loss at the output
transmission line l1 and l2 . And the bandwith Δf is mainly ports is between 10 and 20 dB for the same band. The
determined by the impedance ratio of Z1 , Z 2 . The resistors isolation between the two output ports is between 10 and 40
are used to achieve good isolation performance. dB across the band. Note that the presented measured results
include losses of coaxial connectors that were used in the
B. Odd-mode Analysis experimental testing.
The equivalent circuit of the divider in the odd mode is
shown in Fig.3.
The input impedance at port 2 can be calculated as follows:
'
Z odd = jZ1 tan( β1l1 ) (6)
'
Z odd + jZ 2 tan( β1l2 )
''
Z odd = Z2
Z 2 + jZ odd
'
tan( β1l2 )
j (Z 2 + Z1 ) tan( β1l1 )
= Z2 (7)
Z 2 − Z1 tan 2 ( β1l1 )
Fig.4. The Schematic of UWB Wilkinson Power Divider

Where l1 = l2 .
''' −1 1 2
Z odd = ''
+ (8)
Z odd R
For the impedance matching to Z 0 , resulting in
Z 2 − Z1 tan 2 ( β1l1 ) = 0 (9)

R = 2Z0 (10)

According to (1)-(5) and (9) and (10), all the electrical

parameters of the proposed Wilkinson circuit are then derived. Fig.5. The Fabricated UWB Wilkinson Power Divider
 IV. CONCLUSION
The application of the two-section transmission-line
transformer to the equal-split UWB Wilkinson power divider is
proposed. The circuit provides good matching and isolation
performance across the ultra wide frequency band. The design
procedures and equations are provided and validated with the
simulated and measured results. The technique can be very
useful for wideband applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work is partially supported by the Science Fund of
China (No.U0635004) and (No. 60571056).

Fig.6. Simulated and measured insertion loss and returnloss REFERENCES

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