Balanced Wideband Phase Shifters With Wide Phase Shift Range and Good Common-Mode Suppression

This paper proposes a class of balanced wideband phase shifters with wide phase shift range and good common-mode (CM) suppression. Both the balanced filtering units in the reference and main branches consist of horizontal half-wavelength branches and vertical quarter-wavelength loaded stubs but with dissimilar sizes. The differential-mode (DM) section of these two units can achieve (2N + 1)th-order Chebyshev amplitude response while with discrepant phase characteristics, which can be utilized in the design of balanced phase shifters with large phase shift. As another interesting feature, the proposed balanced filtering unit functions as the conventional branch-line bandstop response in CM, and its frequency selectivity can be further enhanced by using the so-called signal-interference method. The proposed balanced wideband phase shifters have the advantages of wide phase shift range, low phase deviation, high level and wide range for CM rejection in both two branches. The 30°, 60°, 90°, 120°, 150°, and 180° balanced phase shifters are then studied and designed. As the typical examples, 30°, 90°, and 180° phase shifters are designed, fabricated, and measured. The 30° and 90° phase shifters have a fifth-order Chebyshev response, while the 180° phase shifter is of fifth-order and third-order Chebyshev responses in the reference and main branches, respectively. The measured results show that the phase shift values are 30.14° ± 2.2°, 90.75° ± 4.05°, and 180.1° ± 5.5°, the phase shift bandwidths are 73%, 68.5%, and 66.8%, and the CM rejections are -23.3, -22, and -14.6 dB, respectively.