A New Design Approach for Asymmetric Coupled-Section Marchand Balun

Abstract

A systematic design for asymmetric coupled-section Marchand baluns is presented. Asymmetrically coupled transmission lines in multilayer configuration are exploited for constructing Marchand baluns. Design equations for characteristic impedance and electrical length of asymmetrical coupled transmission lines are derived for establishing a systematic design procedure. Novel Marchand balun based on these design equations is composed of two identical asymmetrical coupled transmission lines. However, contrary to the general conventional design approach where ranges for characteristic impedances of coupled lines are ambiguously capitalized, values for characteristic impedance and length are explicitly expressed. Our approach is fundamentally different from the design method using coupling coefficients where solution for coupling coefficient is inherently restricted. To verify the proposed method, one design example is performed for wideband Marchand balun in multilayer configuration, and is fabricated for verifying the design procedure proposed. Maintaining the return loss more than 10 dB, the bandwidth is measured from 0.43 to 1.0 GHz, where S21 and S31 show better than 4 dB. The measured phase and amplitude imbalances illustrate 0.5 dB and ±5o, respectively.