Broadband Two Stage Fixed-Impedance Power Divider/Combiner: Design Guidelines and Implementation

This brief introduces a two-stage power divider/combiner (PDC) with fixed characteristic impedance. The guidelines for the designing parameters are portrayed graphically after performing an even-odd modes circuit analysis. Two versions of the circuit are proposed and prototyped using the presented guidelines, one with equally-armed isolation branches and the other with unequally-armed isolation branches. The measured results show a good matching with an isolation of 20 dB over the fractional bandwidth of 37% and 69% for the first and second versions, respectively. The new designs feature have a compact footprint that is comparable in size to conventional PDCs. The resulting circuits are simple, low-profile, and broadband PDC that is especially well-suited for use in the millimeter-wave range.