Fusion design of six-port waveguide coupler integrating tight and loose coupling

Abstract

This paper introduces a fusion design method of a six-port waveguide (WG) coupler integrating tight and loose coupling together. The couplers exhibit a compact size due to the stacked configuration of three WGs. A methodology for designing the integrating tight and loose coupler is presented. The tight and loose coupling is achieved by setting a rectangular slot in the common narrow wall along with one or two cross slots in the common broad wall. Inspired by the superposition of TE10 and TE20 modes used to design the short-slot −3-dB coupler. The loose-coupling part of the fusion design is analyzed theoretically utilizing modes superposition. Based on the theoretical analysis, the loose coupling can be precisely designed, meanwhile, low coupling-level fluctuation can be obtained in the operating band. For demonstration, two design examples are designed and a prototype centered at about 3.73 GHz is fabricated. The fractional bandwidth (FBW) (|S11| < −15 dB) is about 28.4 %. Within it, the tight coupling (−3 dB) coupler achieves ± 0.5 dB amplitude imbalance. Meanwhile, the loose coupling (−20 dB) coupler achieves little fluctuation of < 0.56 dB and its isolation is better than 25 dB.