Design and validation of a miniaturized reconfigurable power divider with arbitrary power split ratio and flexible output phase difference

Abstract

This study introduces a microstrip line (ML) based reconfigurable 5-port power divider (PD) capable of manipulating power ratios at four output ports. The proposed PD offers two operational modes: unidirectional and bidirectional. In unidirectional transmission mode, the entire source power is directed to a particular output port, while in bidirectional transmission mode, the source power is equally distributed between two output ports. The selection of different transmission modes is accomplished by configuring six adaptive loads that are coupled to the PD structure, and the corresponding S-parameters of the proposed PD are derived by even–odd mode modeling. The resulting data is subsequently optimized by a numerical approach to identify the required design parameters that would ensure optimal performance. The proposed PD resonates at 1.06GHz and covers a frequency range spanning 0.9GHz to 1.2GHz, making it an excellent option for supplying regulated power to multi-port antennas or multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antennas proposed for aircraft navigation applications. The prototype has been developed to validate the notion of reconfigurable reactive loads utilizing varactor diodes and the recorded result is evaluated with the simulated results. The findings confirm excellent performance with regards to insertion loss (with a difference of <-2dB from the optimal values), reflection coefficient (≥-20dB), and isolation (≥-40dB) between the transmitting (input port) and non-transmitting or the remaining ports.