Quadrature Wilkinson power divider using cross-type short-circuited shunt stub for good amplitude and phase balance

Abstract

This paper introduces a new design of a quadrature 3-dB power splitter using a quadrature Wilkinson power divider and a cross-type short-circuited shunt stub for printed circuit board (PCB) circuit design. For 3-dB power splitting and a relative 90° phase difference, several types of quadrature 3-dB power splitters are commonly used in RF and microwave applications, including Lange coupler, directional coupler, branch-line coupler, and quadrature Wilkinson power dividers. Among them, quadrature Wilkinson power dividers often utilize a Schiffman phase shifter and λ/4 short-circuited shunt stubs for compensation circuit.In this paper, the aforementioned schemes have been evaluated by image rejection ratio (IRR) bandwidth (BW) related to amplitude and phase imbalance property. The new design of the quadrature Wilkinson power divider adopting the proposed cross-type short-circuited shunt stub offers superior −25-dB IRR BW compared with other quadrature 3-dB power splitters in PCB fabrication. In measurement, the proposed quadrature Wilkinson power divider provided a −25-dB IRR BW of 3.50 GHz, operating at a center frequency of 9.5 GHz. The designed power splitter offered an operating frequency of 2.64 GHz, satisfying −25-dB IRR BW, 10-dB impedance BWs, and 20-dB isolation BW.