Tunable millimeter-wave power divider for future 5G
cellular networks
Emad Al Abbas, A.M. Abbosh
School of ITEE
The University of Queensland, St Lucia, QLD4072, Australia
e.alabbas@uq.edu.au
Abstract—A modified Wilkinson power divider operating at the
millimeter wave band (28 GHz) for future 5G mobile systems is
presented. This power divider has the ability to change
continuously the output power division ratio by using two
varactors. Instead of connecting the two branch lines of the
conventional Wilkinson power divider directly to the isolation
resistor and the output ports, two varactors are inserted in the
output terminals of the input T-junction to tune the equivalent
impedance of these two branch lines. Quarter-wavelength
transformers are deployed at the input and output ports to
enhance the matching in all ports across the tuning range. The
simulation results indicate that the ratio of output power can be
adjusted from 1:1 to 1:2.4 across the band from 27 to 29 GHz. The
return loss is more than 11 dB, while the isolation is more than 13
dB. In addition, the phase and amplitude imbalances are less than
6° and 0.8 dB, respectively.
Keywords—Adjustable power divider; tunable power
divider; millimeter wave power divider; 5G.
I. INTRODUCTION
Current cellular wireless technology will not have the ability
to satisfy subscribers’ demand in the next few years. This is
because of the exponential growth of data service driven by
increasing mobile subscribers and average user traffic demand.
The solution will be known as the fifth generation of cellular
network, or simply 5G. Past generations of cellular technology
have used the prime spectrum, below 2 GHz, but this spectrum
is facing a shortage, and hence millimetre wave frequency (mm-
Wave) is suggested to supplement the current saturated band[1,
2]. The required high data rate and using high frequency (mm
-Wave) require beamforming techniques to be applied in both
the handset and base station of cellular systems. In the last few
years, significant research efforts have focused on enhancing
antenna array systems, which require a beamforming circuit that
can steer the signal to different directions.
Beamforming can be done using multiple RF frontends, or
by manipulating the RF signal. Due to the suggested large
bandwidths of 5G, multiple RF frontends can be very expensive,
and hence for mm-wave the second option is importnat to
consider. The RF signal can be manipulated by adjusting the
phase and/or amplitude. One approach to adjust the amplitude it
to use a tunable power divider that needs to be small enough to
be fit into a handset device. By adjusting the
978-1-5090-2886-3/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE 1715
amplitude of the power divider’s outputs fed to the antenna
array, the direction of the main beam can be changed, while the
side-lobe of the array pattern and thus the interference can be
highly suppressed with improvement in the signal to noise ratio.
To the knowledge of the author, most of designed power divider
for beamforming circuit of 5G have fixed power division [3-5].
In this paper, an adjustable power divider is designed in mm-
Wave band (27-29 GHz) based on the Wilkinson traditional
design. The device can adjust the power division from 1:1 to
1:2.4. It is to be noted that if the required band is more the
aforementioned value, the multilayer configuration [6, 7] can be
utilized for the proposed design.
II. DESIGN
The proposed adjustable power divider design uses planar
structure as depicted in Fig. 1. The device uses a single
dielectric substrate; the three ports of the divider are at the top
layer of the substrate, while the ground plane is located at the
bottom layer. The proposed design consists of standard
Wilkinson power divider but there are two varactors
(capacitances C1 and C2) connected to the branch lines of the T-
junction from one side and to the outports in the other side. By
adjusted the value of these varactors separately, the equivalent
impedances of the branch lines will be adjusted and then the
required output power division can be satisfied. An isolation
resistor (R) is used to improve the isolation of the output ports.
In addition, quarter- wavelength transformers are used in the
input and two outports to enhance the return loss of these ports
across the tuning power range.
The substrate Rogers RT/Duroid 5880 (dielectric
constant=2.2 and thickness=0.127 mm) is selected for the design
aiming to operate across the band 27-29 GHz. Based on the
well-known design parameters of the Wilkinson power divider,
the initial design’s parameters are obtained by using Advance
Design System software (ADS), where the electrical length of
the branch lines (Lc) is 90° at the center frequency (28 GHz).
Quarter-wavelength transformers are used at the input and
output ports to keep the impedance matching reasonable across
the tuning range. Then, the High Frequency Structure simulator
(HFSS) is used to obtain the optimized values of the design
including the values of varactors. The final dimensions of the
design are given in Table I.
AP-S 2016
 impedance transformers for improved impedance matching
across the tuning range. The simulated results show power
division ratio from 1:1 to 1:2.4 through the band 27 to 29 GHz.
Moreover, the return losses for all the ports is more than 11 dB
and isolation is more than 13 dB with amplitude and phase
imbalance of less than 0.8 dB and 6°, respectively.

Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed power divider.

Fig. 2. Simulated results of the device for equal power division.

TABLE I. OPTIMIZED DESIGN PARAMETERS (mm).

Design Value (mm) Design Value
parameters parameters (mm)
Wo 0.34 Wi 0.34
Wt_t 0.4 Lc 2.63
Wt 0.43 Wc 0.39
S 0.26 P_t 1.94
Lt 10 Wt 10
The optimized isolation resistor (R) and characteristic
impedance of the branch lines impedance are all equal to Z 0
(where Z0 is the characteristic impedance of each of the three
ports). In addition, the optimized varactors values have the
tuning range from 0.1 pF to 0.5 pF. For the equal power division
(1:1), the varactor capacitances’ values are C1 = C2= 0.2 pF, Fig. 3. Simulated results of the device for unequal power division.
whereas the values of the unequal power division ratio 1:2.4 are
C1 = 0.1 pF and C2 = 0.5 pF.
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