Wideband out-of-phase power divider using

tightly coupled lines and microstrip to

slotline transitions
U.T. Ahmed and A.M. Abbosh
A broadband out-of-phase power divider in a compact structure
employing a microstrip technology is presented. The proposed power
divider consists of a T-junction of microstrip to slotline transition at
the input ports along with a pair of tightly coupled microstrip lines
at the two output ports. The main features of the proposed device are
the employment of a dumbbell-shaped slot terminated with a chip
resistor under the tightly coupled lines to improve the isolation
between the output ports and shunt open-ended stubs at the output
ports to improve their impedance matching. The overall size of the
structure is 30 60 mm using the substrate Rogers RO4003C with a
dielectric constant of 3.38 and thickness of 0.4 mm. The simulated
and experimental results of the developed device show wide bandwidths (120% fractional bandwidth) with isolation >15 dB across the
investigated band 14 GHz. In addition, the output ports are out-ofphase with <1 phase imbalance across the whole frequency band.

Introduction: Power dividers and combiners are among the crucial

passive components in modern microwave and communication
systems. Power dividers with an out-of-phase response are very
popular in pushpull ampliers, multipliers and balanced mixers,
which depend on balanced signals for enhancing system performance
[1]. Designing an out-of-phase power divider over a wide operational
bandwidth using a modied Wilkinson structure is more challenging
compared with designing a standard Wilkinson structure, which is inherently an in-phase device. To obtain the out-of-phase feature, various
methods such as coupled microstrip lines [2], microstrip-slot lines [3],
double-sided parallel strip lines [4], a wideband phase inverter [5] and
a substrate integrated waveguide have been investigated in recent
years. These efforts have resulted in out-of-phase power dividers that
can attain fractional bandwidths of 40% with 20 dB of isolation [2],
10% with 10 dB of isolation [3], 73100% with 1519 dB of isolation
[4, 6] or 1833% with 1520 dB of return loss [5, 7].

Lstub
W1
L1
Wstub

Zo/2
port 1

qm1

Zm1,

1:1

Z1e, Z1o, q1

Zo, q2

Zstub, qstub
Zo
port 2

R
Zo
port 3
Zo/2

Zm1,

qm1
2

Z1e, Z1o, q1

Zo, q2

Zstub, qstub

a
Zm1,

qm1

1:1

Z1e, q1

Zo, q2

2R

Z0/2

Zstub, qstub

Z0

b
Zm1,
1:1

qm1
2

Z1o, q1

Z0/2

Zo, q2

Zstub, qstub

Z0

Fig. 2 Equivalent circuit of proposed power divider, and even-mode and

odd-mode circuit

s
W

Proposed design: The whole layout of the proposed compact

out-of-phase power divider is illustrated in Fig. 1. It consists of a
single dielectric substrate supported by a common ground. Broadband
mictostrip to slotline transitions facilitate a tight coupling from the top
to the bottom layer. For the enhancement of impedance matching and
isolation, the transitions are connected to the output ports via a pair of
tightly coupled lines and open-ended stubs. Moreover, a dumbbellshaped slot terminated by an isolation resistor is located under the
coupled lines for enhanced isolation.

rm

Lm1

chip resistor is added to the output ports to improve the impedance

matching and isolation between the two output ports across a wide
range of frequencies. To validate the proposed design, a prototype operating across the band from 1 to 4 GHz has been designed, fabricated and
measured.

Wm1

Wm

a Equivalent circuit of proposed power divider

b Even-mode circuit
c Odd-mode circuit

Wm
L
a

Ws2

R
Ws1

rs

Ls1
Ls2
b

Fig. 1 Conguration of proposed power divider

a Top layer
b Bottom layer

In this Letter, a uniplanar wideband out-of-phase power divider with a

120% fractional bandwidth of more than 15 dB of isolation is presented.
In comparison with our recent design [8] the proposed design, which
uses a quarter-wavelength tightly coupled structure compared with the
half-wavelength coupled lines used in [8], provides more bandwidth
(by at least 20%). To improve the input port impedance matching, the
input T-junction of the conventional design is replaced by microstrip
to slotline transitions. Furthermore, a pair of tightly coupled microstrip
lines, open-ended stubs and dumbbell-shaped slots terminated with a

The microstrip to slotline transitions include microstrip lines terminated with capacitive circular stubs with radii rm as virtual short circuits. On the other hand, the slotline at the ground is terminated with
inductive slots, which are circular in shape with radii rs as virtual
open circuits. As a result, signals are properly coupled from the top to
the bottom layer through the transition. Moreover, there is a narrow rectangular slot with Ws1 as width and Ls1 as length at the ground for proper
coupling of the signal. The design of the transitions follows the design
methods of [6]. The length and width of two output terminals of the transitions are Lm1 (which denes m1 as the electrical length) and Wm1
(which denes Zm1 as the impedance). These terminals are connected
afterwards to a pair of tightly coupled lines with W1 as width and L1
as length to have Z1e and Z1o as the even- and odd-mode impedances
and electrical length of 1. Moreover, two open-ended stubs are
connected in parallel with the output ports to improve the output
matching [8].
The normal operation of the proposed out-of-phase device is the odd
mode. Therefore, it is necessary to place the isolation resistor in the
proper position within the design to improve isolation. The resistor
cannot provide any improved isolation if it is connected directly
across the output ports in a similar way to the Wilkinson divider. To
the contrary, it will cause a high insertion loss as it will absorb the
out-of-phase signals, which are the result of the normal operating
mode of the out-of-phase power divider. To overcome this, a narrow
slot with Ws2 as width and Ls2 (less than a quarter of the wavelength
at the centre frequency) as length ended with two rectangular slots is
placed under the tightly coupled lines at the top layer to couple the

reected signals from the output ports in an in-phase manner. As a

result, the utilised structure makes a resistor at the two close terminals
of the slot an effective absorber of those reected signals. In the
bottom layer, Ls1 is the length of the rectangular slotline, which is
around g/8, where g is the effective wavelength at the centre frequency
(2.5 GHz). Furthermore, Ws1 is considered to be the width of the slotline
at the coupled region which is 2Zo, where Zo is the characteristic impedance of the input and output ports and is considered to be 50 here.
The radii of the circular patches, i.e. rm (microstrip patch) and rs (slot
patch) is less than a quarter of the wavelength at the highest frequency
of operation.

Fig. 3 Top (left) and bottom (right) views of fabricated power divider

Table 1: Values in millimetres of dimensional parameters

Dimensional parameter Value Dimensional parameter Value
W
30
s
0.2
L
60
L1
14.8
Wm
0.9
W1
1.5
Ws1
0.2
Ws2
11.4
Ls1
rs
Wm1
Wstub

8.6
5
2.5
0.2

Ls2
rm
Lm1
Lstub

10.8
6
16.5
4.9

U.T. Ahmed and A.M. Abbosh (School of ITEE, The University of

Queensland, Brisbane 4072, QLD, Australia)

S-parameter, dB

15
20
25

simulated S23

measured S23

30

simulated S11

measured S11

35

simulated S21

measured S21

simulated S22
phase

measured S22

200
190

differential phase, deg

E-mail: u.ahmed1@uq.edu.au

10

180

45
50
1.0

Conclusion: A wideband two way out-of-phase power divider based on

microstrip to slotline transition, tightly coupled microstrip lines and
dumbbell-shaped slotline terminated with an isolation resistor has
been presented. The simulated and measured results have good return
loss at all ports (more than 10 dB), high isolation (more than 15 dB)
and excellent phase balance (1 phase imbalance) between the two
output ports across the band 14 GHz, which is equivalent to a 120%
fractional bandwidth.
The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2015
Submitted: 15 September 2015
doi: 10.1049/el.2015.3255
One or more of the Figures in this Letter are available in colour online.

40

Results: The proposed power divider was fabricated (Fig. 3) for verication to obtain equal power division over the whole investigated band
of frequency from 1 to 4 GHz. The substrate Rogers RO4003C with a
dielectric constant of 3.38, thickness of 0.4 mm and loss tangent of
0.0027 was used. The initial dimensions of the proposed device were
found using the aforementioned initial values of the design parameters
in the microstrip coupled lines design equations of [9]. The design is
then optimised using the high-frequency structure simulator. The nal
dimensions of the power divider are listed in Table 1. The nal structure
has compact overall dimensions of 30 60 mm. The simulated and
measured scattering parameters along with the differential phase of
the power divider are shown in Fig. 4.
Both the simulated and measured return losses at the input port as well
as the two output ports (S22 = S33) are better than 10 dB over the whole
designed band 14 GHz. The measured isolation between the output
ports of the fabricated device is better than 15 dB across the same
band, which is equivalent to a 120% fractional bandwidth. The power
is equally divided between the two output ports with <0.5 dB additional
insertion loss over the whole band. The difference in phase between the
output ports of the design is 180 1 over the band 14 GHz, which
proves that the proposed device performs well as an out-of-phase
power divider.

170
1.5

2.0
2.5
3.0
frequency, GHz

3.5

4.0

Fig. 4 Performance of power divider

To nd the initial values of the design parameters, the even

odd-mode analysis is used. To that end, the equivalent circuit of the proposed structure is shown in Fig. 2. In this circuit, the performance of the
microstrip/slotline transition is assumed ideal and thus represented by an
ideal 1:1 transformer with a centre tapped secondary coil. Moreover, the
input port impedance (Zo) is distributed into two serially connected parts
at both sides of the transformer (transition) to make the circuit fully symmetrical and thus it can be analysed using the evenodd-mode theory.
The equivalent evenodd-mode circuits of the device are depicted in
Figs. 2b and c. In these circuits, it is clear that the isolation resistor R
is effective only in the even mode. Analysing the modes equivalent circuits gives the following initial estimation of the main design parameters
at the guided wavelength (g) of the centre frequency (2.5 GHz): Zm1 =
Zo/2, Zstub = 2Zo, Z1o = 30 , Z1e = 40 , m1 = g/4, 1 = g/4, 2 = g/
10, stub = g/15 and R = 2Zo = 100 .

References
1 Chiu, L., Yum, T.Y., Xue, Q., and Chan, C.H.: A wideband compact
parallel-strip 180 Wilkinson power divider for pushpull circuitries,
IEEE Microw. Wirel. Compon. Lett., 2006, 16, (1), pp. 4951
2 Shi, J., and Xu, K.: Compact differential power divider with enhanced
bandwidth and in-phase or out-of phase output ports, Electron. Lett.,
2014, 50, (17), pp. 12091211
3 Kim, J.-S., Park, M.-J., and Kim, M.-G.: Out-of-phase Wilkinson power
divider, Electron. Lett., 2009, 45, (1), pp. 5960
4 Chang, Y., Che, W., and Wang, X.: Wideband balanced out-of-phase
network based on double-sided parallel-strip line, IET Microw.
Antennas Propag., 2014, 8, (15), pp. 13221326
5 Zhang, X., Wang, T., Xiang, Y., and Liang, C.: Wideband three-way
out-of-phase microstrip power divider, Electron. Lett., 2015, 51, (5),
pp. 404406
6 Ahmed, U.T., and Abbosh, A.: Wideband out of phase power divider
using microstrip to slotline transitions, coupled lines and shunt openended stubs, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., 2015, 57, (8), pp. 17991802
7 Chen, Q., and Xu, J.: Out-of-phase power divider based on two-layer
SIW, Electron. Lett., 2014, 50, (5), pp. 10051007
8 Henin, B., and Abbosh, A.: Wideband hybrid using three-line coupled
structure and microstrip-slot transitions, IEEE Microw. Wirel.
Compon. Lett., 2013, 23, (7), pp. 335337
9 Abbosh, A.: Analytical closed-form solutions for different congurations of parallel-coupled microstrip lines, IET Microw. Antennas
Propag., 2009, 3, (1), pp. 137147