Professional Documents
Culture Documents
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
I. INTRODUCTION
Manuscript received July 10, 2005; revised September 12, 2005. This work
was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Science Research
Council under Grant GR/S68910/01. The work of Y.-H Chun was supported by
the Korea Research Foundation under a Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer
Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K. (e-mail:
younghoon@ieee.org; j.hong@hw.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2005.862657
our recent development of high-power RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches for which 90 -hybrids with high
power-handling capability are needed for designing high power
single-poledouble-throw (SPDT) switches.
The loaded line is a popular method to reduce the size of
transmission-line circuits such as branch-line and ring hybrids,
which is important for planar integrated circuits [5][7]. The
results using a loaded line show good efficiency with regard to
size reduction. Nevertheless, more consideration of analysis and
design for wide-band applications is required. In [8], we have
shown a highly miniaturized branch-line hybrid, as well as its
simple analysis.
In this paper, we further propose a novel design of a cascaded
branch-line coupler, which has four branch lines using lumped
distributed elements. The desired 90 hybrid should have a good
performance such as return loss and isolation better than 20 dB
over 55% or wider bandwidth, and a small size on a single-layer
circuit without using any air-bridges. The investigation has led
to the design of the proposed hybrids. For our design, we use an
approach based on circuit models. Since an equivalent circuit
may make the bandwidth shrink in general, and it can be critical
when it is used for broad-band designs, we take into account the
frequency responses of the equivalent circuit used and decide a
proper configuration for broad-band circuits. Furthermore, the
simulated and measured results of the proposed hybrids are also
presented.
II. ANALYSIS
Fig. 1 shows a conventional transmission line and its equivalent circuit using lumped distributed elements. By applying
-parameters of the equivaa matrix formulation, the
lent circuit shown in Fig. 1(b) can be deduced. Equating the
705
and the cutoff frequency varying with the value of the electrical
length of a series transmission line . This is shown in Fig. 2(a).
and the cutoff frequency when
Fig. 2(b) shows the ranges for
the electrical length of the unit line section is 45 .
For a broad-band circuit, we should choose a unit section with
transmisthe higher cutoff frequency. As shown in Fig. 2, a
sion line of Fig. 1(a) can hardly be converted into a single unit
section of Fig. 1(b) for wide-band operation. In order to have
more than 50% higher cutoff frequency, the maximum size reduction is approximately 10% when we look at Fig. 2(a). Comequivalent transmission line, which
pared with this result, a
consists of two 45 unit sections, as shown in Fig. 2(b), has a
higher cutoff frequency than the case of using a single unit section in Fig. 2(a). If the desirable size reduction is 50%, the ratio
of and should be approximately 0.5. For this condition, the
can be improved from 0.8 to 1.5 when
cutoff frequency
the unit length is shortened from 90 to 45 , which is found in
Fig. 2(a) and (b). The cutoff frequency is, however, defined as
a 3-dB degrade frequency for a unit section such as (5). Therefore, cascading unit sections shrink the bandwidth. For example,
while a unit section has the cutoff frequency of 7.7 GHz, the cascade circuit with four unit sections has the cutoff frequency of
7.2 GHz. Moreover, the line impedance varies as the frequency
goes near the cutoff frequency.
Furthermore, the dimension of an open stub, as well as the
unit length of a series line, influences the cutoff frequency. It
arises from the frequency-dependent characteristic of a distributed element that has not only capacitive, but also inductive
characteristics while the analysis is performed for a capacitive
loaded line. The amplitude and phase responses of the reduced
lines with the same series line and different open stubs are
plotted in Fig. 3. As the impedance of an open stub decreases,
the cutoff frequency increased. This is because the length of
the open stub shrinks for a lower line impedance in order to
given by (3) and, thus, a shorter
have a desired admittance
open-circuited stub with lower characteristic impedance leads
to a better approximation to a lumped-element capacitor over a
wide frequency range. For the case of using a 50- open stub,
the cutoff frequency can go down up to 80% of the calculated
, and it can be enhanced by the use of a
cutoff frequency
short open stub (low-impedance line stub). The higher limit for
this value is close to the calculated value in (6), which is also
shown in Fig. 4.
From this condition, even if a 45 unit section could enhance
the performance rather than a 90 unit section, we need higher
cutoff frequency for wide-band applications, which require
more than 50% fractional bandwidth. As you can find in
Fig. 2(c), when we adopt a 30 line section for the unit section,
(1)
706
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
Fig. 3. Block diagram of: (a) a miniaturized transmission line and its
characteristics with different open stubs. (b) Amplitude responses. (c) Phase
responses.
707
TABLE I
CHOICE OF OPEN STUB
Fig. 5. Conventional branch-line hybrid with four branch lines. (a) Schematic
diagram. (b) Designed prototype hybrid.
S
We can choose one of the parameters of open stubs in Table I
S. In this case, we decide
with the susceptance of
At the same time, we can design the 58- line as well by the
identical method. Its design parameters are as follows:
708
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006
Fig. 9. Measured phase difference between two quadrature outputs for hybrids
of types A and B.
TABLE II
SUMMARY OF PERFORMANCES FOR HYBRIDS
Fig. 8. Simulated and measured S -parameters of the hybrids: (a) type A and
(b) type B. (Solid linessimulated results, symbolsmeasured results.)
constant of 3.05 and a thickness of 1.54 mm. The two quadrature hybrids operated at the center frequency of 2 GHz were
designed using the design parameters that were determined
in Section III. We have performed both circuit modeled simulation and electromagnetic (EM) simulation using Agilent
ADS. The lumped distributed elements make the frequency
responses different from the prototype hybrid, which consists
of conventional transmission lines. In order to achieve a good
V. CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed a compact broad-band branch-line
hybrid and has analyzed it. Following a design process through
this analysis, we have designed and tested two types of wideband hybrids. It is promising for high-power and wide-band applications with a single-layered structure. The measurement of
experimental demonstrators has demonstrated that the proposed
quadrature hybrid does have a broad bandwidth and small size.
This hybrid can be easily constructed by applying conventional
monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) techniques. It
could be an especially good choice for the application in which
the operating bandwidth increases and the handling power goes
higher. Furthermore, we hope that it helps to decrease the fabrication costs and increase the yields because it consists of no element that needs a multilayered or air-bridged structure. The application of this type of hybrid to the development of high-power
RF MEMS SPDT switches is under consideration.
REFERENCES
[1] J. Lange, Interdigitated strip-line quadrature coupler, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. MTT-17, no. 12, pp. 11501151, Dec. 1969.
[2] G. Carchon, W. De Raedt, and B. Nauwelaers, Integration of CPW
quadrature couplers in multilayer thin-film MCM-D, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 177017 776, Oct. 2001.
[3] D. P. Andrews and C. S. Aitchison, Wide-band lumped-element quadrature 3-dB coupler in microstrip, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol.
48, no. 12, pp. 24242431, Dec. 2000.
[4] Y.-C. Chiang and C.-Y. Chen, Design of a wide-band lumped-element
3-dB quadrature coupler, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 49,
no. 3, pp. 476479, Mar. 2001.
[5] R. W. Vogel, Analysis and design of lumped- and lumped-distributedelement directional couplers for MIC and MMIC applications, IEEE
Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 253262, Feb. 1992.
[6] K. W. Eccleston and S. H. Ong, Compact planar microstripline branchline and rat-race couplers, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 51,
no. 10, pp. 21192125, Oct. 2003.
[7] H. Ghali and T. A. Moselhy, Miniaturized fractal rat-race, branch-line,
and coupled-line hybrids, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52,
no. 11, pp. 25132520, Nov. 2004.
709
[8] Y.-H. Chun and J.-S. Hong, Design of a compact broad-band branchline hybrid, presented at the IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig.,
Long Beach, CA, Jun. 2005.
[9] J.-S. Hong and M. J. Lancaster, Microstrip Filters for RF/Microwave
Applications. New York: Wiley, 2001, ch. 4, pp. 93102.
[10] M. Muracuchi, T. Yukitake, and Y. Naito, Optimum design of 3-dB
branch-line couplers using microstrip lines, IEEE Trans. Microw.
Theory Tech., vol. MTT-31, no. 8, pp. 674678, Aug. 1983.