Implementation and measurement of a microstrip square planar 36-way metamaterial power divider

Abstract

Power divider has found many applications in antenna array, amplifiers, and microwave systems. In recent years, metamaterials that display left-handed (LH) propagation behavior have been extensively investigated and applied to microwave devices. These devices are mostly based on one-dimensional (1D) left-handed and right-handed (RH) transmission lines. One phenomenon that can be obtained from metamaterials is propagation with infinite wavelength, where the waves travel along a finite length structure with zero phase shift [1]. Infinite wavelength in 1D structure has been demonstrated in [1–3], and exploited in compact zero phase shifters [2] and power dividers [1], [3]. Recently, the 2D metamaterial structure with infinite wavelength is studied by properly arranging LH and RH unit cells in a checker-board tessellation to design a 20-way squared-shaped power divider [4, 5]. In this paper, a 36-way square-shaped 2D power divider using a novel structure with distinct RH and LH regions is implemented. Its RH and LH unit cells with zero phase shift are analyzed and designed. The experimental results of a 36-way square-shaped power divider are given.