Meander Line-based Wilkinson Power Divider for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Application

This paper proposes the development of a meander line-based two-way Wilkinson power divider for 433 MHz Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) telemetry systems. A meander line structure is utilized to acquire a power divider in compact size suitable to be installed in a UAV. The proposed power divider is deployed on a 1.6 mm thick FR-4 epoxy dielectric substrate with the length of 40.13 mm and the width of 33.55 mm. The design is characterized using simulation and measurement. The simulation results show that the proposed design achieves the return loss of 23.54 dB, the insertion loss of 3.37 dB, and the port isolation of 36.52 dB at the frequency of 433 MHz. Whereas the measured results demonstrate a good consistency to the simulated ones with the return loss of 19.05 dB, the insertion loss of 3.25 dB, and the port isolation of 26.53 dB. Both in the simulation and measurement, the proposed power divider shows a linear phase which means that the power divider has no distortions to the phase nonlinearity.