Differential Transmission Lines Loaded With Magnetic LC Resonators and Application in Common Mode Suppression

Abstract

This paper presents the analysis of magnetic LC (MLC) resonators loaded with differential microstrip transmission lines. The analysis is based on an equivalent circuit model describing the electromagnetic behavior of the MLC resonators. It is shown that a pair of microstrip lines loaded with MLC resonators exhibit a dual-mode bandstop response in the common mode of operation, while being transparent to the differential signals. This characteristic can be used in the design of differential transmission lines with wideband common mode suppression. Circuit models together with Bloch theorem are applied for the systematic design, where the dispersion analysis helps to estimate the maximum achievable common-mode rejection bandwidth. A systematic design procedure is developed for designing differential transmission lines using this method. The theoretical analysis is validated by designing and measuring a balanced transmission line using three cascaded MLC-based cells. The measurements exhibit more than 40-dB common-mode signal suppression for a fractional bandwidth of 32% around 1.3 GHz, whereas the fraction bandwidth for 20-dB suppression level is 57.5%. The fabricated prototype has a compact size of $0.09\lambda _{g}\times 0.37\lambda _{g}$ , where $\lambda _{g}$ is the guided wavelength at 1.3 GHz. A detailed comparison between the designed MLC-based differential transmission line and the state-of-the-art designs shows a superior performance of the MLC-based transmission lines in terms of size, fabrication simplicity, and the common-mode rejection level.