A Tri-band Wilkinson Power Divider using StepImpedance Resonator

Xin-Huai Wang, Yan-Fu Bai, He Xu, Wei Cheng, Zhi-Qing Lv, and Xiao-Wei Shi
National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Antennas and Microwave, Xidian University Xian 710071, Shaanxi, P. R.China

Abstract-A novel planar tri-band power divider using stepimpedance resonator with band-pass response is proposed in this paper. The topology of the circuit, different from conventional Wilkinson power divider, is the couple lines and resonators instead of the transmission lines. It can provide good isolation, good amplitude balance simultaneously at three arbitrary frequencies and direct current (DC) block characteristic. The proposed structure is analyzed and simulated. The validity of the design is demonstrated by experimental results on a 930/2300/3600 MHz power divider.

tri-band filter. The technique is validated by experimental results on a 930/2300/3600MHz power divider. II. STRUCTURE AND ANALYTICAL EQUATIONS The structure of the proposed dual-frequency power divider is shown in Fig. 1. The topology of the circuit is three triple section step-impedance resonators, and a planar isolation resistor. Assuming all the impedances of the input and output ports to be Z0 = 50 , the planar isolation resistors are selected as R = 2Z0 = 100 .

I.

INTRODUCTION

Power dividers are fundamental components applied in various microwave circuits and subsystems. In 1960, the conventional Wilkinson power divider was developed with the equivalent amplitude and in-phase outputs by Ernest. J. Wilkinson [1]. The circuits have been widely utilized in microwave designs. In recent years, some new types of power dividers using couple line are proposed [2, 3]. At the same time, much more dual-frequency power dividers are developed [4-6]. To realize dual-frequency operations, the dividers are often modified using two-section transformers or stub lines. However, due to the rapid development of multi-standard operation in wireless practical applications and so components that work at three or more frequencies are of great interest. Unfortunately, the previous mentioned power divider only can operate at one or two design frequency. Therefore, these are not suitable for some triple band or multi-band operations. In 2005, a three-section transmission-line transformer was introduced by M.Chongcheawchamnan [7], which can operate at any three frequencies f1, f2, and f3. Two kinds of tri-band Wilkinson power divider using this transformer section has been reported in [8, 9]. This paper presents a new technique to design a three-way tri-band power divider using couple lines and triple section step-impedance resonator (TSSIR). The proposed power divider operates at three arbitrary frequencies of interest f1, f2, and f3, which supplies high isolation, good amplitude balance simultaneously. In additional, the couple line procedure can provide the DC block functions, which further reduce the parasitic effects from using extra blocking capacitors. The formulas, which used to determine design parameters of the tri-band power divider, are given out. It can be considered as considered as an integration of a conventional divider and a

Figure 1. The structure of the proposed tri-band power divider.

A. Triple section step-impedance resonator As shown in Fig. 2, the basic geometry of a triple section step-impedance resonator is symmetrical. It consists of five microstrip lines of three different characteristic impedances Z1, Z2, Z3 and of electrical lengths 1 , 2 and 3 .

Figure 2. The basic geometry of tri-section SIR.

Ignoring discontinuity and open-edge capacitance of the microstrip lines, the admittance looking into the TSSIR is derived as: 2 K K 2 K2 tan2 tan3 K2 tan1 tan3 K1K2 tan1 tan2 (1) Yin jY1 1 2 2 2 K2 tan3 K1K2 tan2 K1K2 tan2 K2 tan1 tan2 tan3 where K1 Z 3 / Z 2 , K 2 Z 2 / Z1 are impedance ratios. For practical consideration, 1 , 2 , 3 is chosen to have equal electrical lengths , (1) can be describe as: tan2 (1 K1 K2 ) K1K2 (2) Yin jY1 tan [1 K1 K1K2 K2 tan2 ]

From the resonance condition can be obtained by Yin 0 or Yin , the first three resonant modes of the TSSIR can be derived as:
01 tan1 02 tan1
K1K2 1 K1 K2 1 K1 K1K2 K2

In actual designs of the tri-band power divider, when the f1, f2 and f3 are specified, the desired impedance ratios for the TSSIR are given as follow:
K1 N M N N 1 1 K1 K2 M K1

(3) (4) where (5)

(8) (9)

03

Note (3)-(5) that have been given in [10] are shown here for convenience. In a tri-band design, f1, f2 and f3 presented the first three resonant frequencies which are usually set to the center frequencies of the three passbands. With the discontinuity of the TSSIR neglected, they are expressed as:
f2 02 f1 01
f3 03 f1 01

f M tan2 ( 2 ) 2 f3 f N tan2 ( 1 ) 2 f3

(10) (11)

Note that (8)-(11) have been given in [11].The (10) is simpler than that given in [11].

tan 1 tan
1

1 K1 K1K2 K2 K1K2 1 K1 K2

(6)

2tan
1

(7)

K1 K2 1 K1 K2

From (6) and (7) it is obvious that f1, f2 and f3 are controlled by impedance ratio K1, K2. When the value of K1 and K2 are varied, the first three resonant frequencies are changed. The relationships are shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4.

B. Analysis of coupling network The coupling network1 and coupling network2 can be predigested as two parallel-couple microstrip lines. EM procedure as given in [12, 13] could be used to obtain the coupling length L0 and gap S. As shown in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, the bandwidth and the power level of each band also can be tuned by adjusting the gap S1 and S2 between the two microstrip couple lines. When the gap becomes wider, the coupling strength becomes weaker, the bandwidth becomes narrower.

Figure 3. f2 / f1 with K1, K2. relationships.

Figure 5. S21-magnitude with varied coupling gap S1.

Figure 4. f3 / f1 with K1, K2. relationships.

Figure 6. S21-magnitude with varied coupling gap S2.

III. IMPLEMENT AND RESULTS In this section, in order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed design concept for a tri-band power divider, a proposed tri-band power divider is designed on PTFE substrate with relative dielectric constant of 2.65 and thickness h = 1 mm. The center frequencies of the three bands are f1 = 0.93 GHz, f2 = 2.30 GHz, and f3 = 3.6 GHz. As shown in Fig. 1, based on the real transmission line, substrate, and resistor, the model is built up with the dimension marked and simulation has been carried out by the full-wave EM simulator (Ansoft HFSS 11.0). The measured data are collected from the Agilent N5230A network analyzer. On the basis of the earlier-mentioned discussion, the parameters of the power divider are calculated by using (8)(11), in which M = 2.46, N = 0.18, K1 = 0.54, K2 = 0.80. After the initial dimensions are chosen, the dimensions are optimized in the actual implementation. The minimum the gap and width of the coupling line is limited to 0.2 mm due to tolerances of PCB fabrication. The final optimum dimensions shown in Fig. 1 are listed as follows: L0 = 15.7 mm, L1 = 14.54 mm, L2 = 14.32 mm, L3 = 14.1 mm, W0 = 2.73 mm, W1 = 0.88 mm, W2 = 1.56 mm, W3 = 2.73 mm, S1 = 0.2 mm, S2 = 0.2 mm. Fig. 7 shows the photograph of the fabricated power divider. The area of the proposed power divider is 184 cm2. The simulated S-parameters are presented in Figure 8 and the measured S-parameters are presented in Fig. 9.

Figure 9. Measured results of the tri-band power divider.

The measured results of the return loss are about -13.0 dB at 0.93 GHz, -14.5dB dB at 2.3 GHz and -23.4 dB at 3.6 GHz, respectively. The |S21| and | S31| are about - 4.560.01 dB at 0.93 GHz, - 4.350.02 dB and -4.250.02 dB at 3.6 GHz. The measured isolation between port3 and port2 (|S32|) are better than -16.0 dB at 0.93 GHz, -17.0 dB at 2.3 GH and 18.6 dB at 3.6 GHz. Except for triple passband, it has the fourth passband at 4.9GHz, which is resulted by the third spurious frequency. It is to say that this design also can be considered as a quad-band power divider. Some slight differences between measured and simulated result, which is due to dielectric loss and the limited precision of fabrication and measurement. IV. CONCLUSION A novel tri-band power divider is presented in this paper. The structure of the proposed power divider has been given and analyzed. By using triple section step-impedance resonator, coupling between microstrip lines and a resistor, the new circuit can provide tri-band application and DC isolation characteristic. Moreover, this design methodology allows controlling each frequency, output power level, and band width. Good agreement between the measurement and simulation has been attained. The measured results exhibit that the proposed power divider can supply the required RF performance on return loss, amplitude balance and isolation. It can be considered as an integration of a conventional divider and a tri-band filter. Thus the proposed power divider is suitable for the application of more efficient intergraded RF front ends and multi-band narrow-band systems, which are more demanding at near future. Acknowledgments This work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation of China under Grant 60801039, the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities K50511020021, and the Guangdong Province Major science and technology project 2009A080207006.

Figure 7. Photograph of the fabricated tri-band power divider.

Figure 8. Simulated performance of the tri-band power divider.

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