A Compact Ultra-Wideband Power Divider with

High Isolation
Liang Liu, Ronghong Jin, Hangchen Yu, Xianling Liang, Junping Geng, Xudong Bai*
Department of Electronics Engineering
Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU)
Shanghai, 200240, China
liangliu247@sjtu.edu.cn, baixudong@sjtu.edu.cn

II. T HE D ESIGN OF T HE P OWER D IVIDER

AbstractPower divider is widely used in the phased antenna

array. In this paper, a novel ultra-wideband divider with high
isolation is proposed, which bases on the multi-section transmission line theory to extend the bandwidth of the power divider and
the multilayer technique to reduce the size of the power divider.
The simulated isolation of power divider is almost 25 dB from
3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz, and the insertion loss is about 3.5 dB.

I. I NTRODUCTION
Power divider is frequently used in the phased antenna
arrays and other communication systems. In order to reduce
the coupling between the array elements, high isolation of the
power divider is always needed. On the other hand, with the
need and the development of the high rate data transmission,
bandwidth of the component becomes more and more wide.
Although the Wilkinson power divider was proposed in the
early 1960s [1], due to the narrow fractional bandwidth, it
cant fulfill the need of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) application in
modern communication. Thus, considerable efforts were focus
on the improvement of the bandwidth of the power divider
with high isolation. Multi-section Wilkinson power divider
was researched extensively but leads to the large size [2]
[6]. Coupled strip line was used to better the performance of
high frequencies in power divider in [6], which was the subtle
distinction from other multi-section power divider. Recently,
multilayer techniques were researched to realize the compact
size. In [7], broadband coupling via multilayer microstrip
and slot transition of elliptical shape was utilized to achieve
a compact UWB power divider. A novel UWB multilayer
slotline power divider for two ports was also presented in [8].
In [9], reduced size can be realized by the use of the OMMIC
techniques, which based on the theory of dual-band transmission line transformer and lump-distribute techniques. UWB
power divider based on micro-coaxial impedance transformer
was also proposed in [10].
In this paper, a novel wideband power divider is proposed
based on the multi-section impedance transformer and three
layers structure. With this structure, compact size and high
isolation is achieved across wide bandwidth. Compared with
the conventional multi-section divider, the proposed power
divider adopts the multilayer structure to make the component
more compact. On the other hand, wideband power divider
realized by multistage transmission line is well understood
comparing with other ultrawideband power divider.

978-1-4799-3540-6/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

Fig. 1. Circuit of proposed wideband power divider.

Fig. 2. 3D structure of proposed wideband power divider.

The schematic figure of the proposed power divider is

shown in Fig. 1, which has three ports with standard
impedance Z0 = 50. In the figure, the solid line denotes
that the transmission lines and components are on the top
layer, while the dashed lines represent that they are on the
bottom layer, the internal layer is the ground. And at the
intersection between the dashed line and the solid line, vias
are utilized to connect the top layer and the bottom layer.
The three-dimensional structure is shown in Fig. 2, where, the
red part is on the top layer, the green part is on the bottom
layer. All characteristic
impedances of the transmission line
shown in Fig. 1 are 2 2Z0 , and the electrical lengths of the
transmission lines satisfy the following relation to keep the

641

AP-S 2014

Fig. 3. Simulated insertion loss and isolation.

Fig. 4. Simulated return loss of port 1 and port 2.

insertion loss minimum:

1 + 2 + 3 = 4 + 5 + 6 .

(1)

where, 1 , 2 , , 6 are the electrical lengths of the transmission lines. R1 , R2 , R3 , and R4 are resistors used for the
isolation between the port 2 and the port 3.
By using the classical analysis method of even and odd
modes, we can easily get that the isolation between the two
output ports is mainly subjected to the electrical length of
each section transmission line and the value of the resistors.
Thus, dividing every port into two parts and constructing the
power divider with different electric lengths respectively, better
isolation can be got because of the two different classes of
electrical length and resistors.
III. S IMULATION AND D ISCUSSION

of multistage power divider and multilayer power divider.

From the simulation result we can see that, the isolation
of power divider is almost 25 dB from 3.1 GHz to 10.6
GHz, the return loss is about 10 dB, which can be further
improved by replacing the uniform transmission line with the
step impedance transmission line in the future work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the National Science and
Technology of Major Project (2011ZX03001-007-03), the National Natural Science Foundation (61201058), the Research
and Innovation Project of Shanghai Education Commission
(12Z112030001), and the Scientific Research Foundation for
Returned Overseas Chinese Scholars, State Education Ministry, the Project of SMC Excellent Young Faculty.

By choosing proper electrical length of the transmission

lines and the value of resistors listed in the table I, good
isolation can be achieved. It is noted that all of the electrical
lengths in the table I are normalized at the frequency 3.1 GHz.
The simulation results in Advanced Design System (ADS) are
shown in Fig. 3 and Fig. 4. From the simulated results, we
can see that, in the UWB frequency range from 3.1 GHz to
10.6 GHz, the insertion loss is about 3.5 dB and isolation is
almost 25 dB. The return loss of both input port and outputs
are near 10 dB. The total electrical length at 3.1 GHz is about
153.5o . Compare Fig. 3 with Fig. 4, the frequency of best
isolation differs with the frequency of good return loss, which
is attributed to the difference of electrical lengths in the top
layer and in the bottom layer.
TABLE I
PARAMETERS OF SIMULATION .
Length
degree
Resistor
ohm

1
56.4
R1
30

2
59.5
R2
549

3
37.6
R3
47.9

4
94.8
R4
407.3

5
48.8

6
9.9

IV. C ONCLUSION
A novel ultra-wideband power divider with high isolation
is proposed and simulated, which incorporates the advantages

642

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