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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007

Wilkinson Power Divider Using Microstrip EBG Cells for the Suppression of Harmonics
Chih-Ming Lin, Hsuan-Hung Su, Jui-Chieh Chiu, and Yeong-Her Wang, Member, IEEE
AbstractThis letter presents a planar power divider with an effective technique for nth harmonics suppression. The proposed technique served by a microstrip electromagnetic bandgap cell is used to suppress the nth harmonics and reduce the length of a quarter-wave line over 30% as compared to the conventional divider. The planar structure enables an easy circuit design in printed circuit boards. From the measured results, a 32.5 dB suppression for the third harmonic and a 12 dB suppression for the fth harmonic is obtained while maintaining the characteristics of a conventional Wilkinson power divider. It is able to achieve 0.1 dB of the two equivalent insertion losses, less less than 3.4 than 23 dB of the return loss, and better than 25 dB of isolation at 2.4 GHz. Index TermsElectromagnetic bandgap (EBG), harmonic suppression, planar, power combiner, power divider.

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the proposed power divider for harmonic suppression.

I. INTRODUCTION HE power divider for an even number of two or more output signals was rst presented by J. Wilkinson in 1960 [1]. Wilkinson power dividers are widely used in various microwave applications such as power ampliers, mixers, and frequency multipliers [2]. It is cost-effective if the unwanted harmonics are suppressed in the power divider or the combiner structure. As a result, we can then eliminate additional harmonic rejection lters from the microwave circuit and design a compact circuit. Previously, a power divider for th harmonic suppression consisted of two quarter-wave open stubs which are located at the center of the quarter-wave branches that can be found in [3]. However, the physical dimension of a power divider is proportional to the wavelength of the center frequency. A Wilkinson power divider with an asymmetric spiral defected ground structure (DGS) in a quarter-wave line for harmonics suppression has been demonstrated [4]. As the ground plane is perforated, the substrate must be suspended so that the circuits cannot be xed on a metal base for mechanical robustness. In order to overcome the difculty of realizing a nonplanar DGS, a 1-D microstrip photonic bandgap (PBG) cell structure in the form of perforations on the transmission line itself has been proposed

[5]. Microstrip transmission lines incorporating the electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure exhibit band-stop and slow-wave characteristics, which can be utilized to suppress unwanted harmonics and reduce the dimensions of the microstrip structure. Furthermore, the compact 180 -ring hybrid and power divider with a 1-D PBG perforated on the curved microstrip transmission line can be found in [6][8]. Overall, these papers emphasized the circuit dimension reduction due to the slow-wave effect. However, the microstrip EBG cell cannot only increase the effective inductance of the transmission line but can also provide a function of the band-stop to reject unwanted harmonics. This is the signicant difference between this work and prior works that used EBG cells. In this letter, a planar power divider with two microstrip EBG cells for harmonics suppression is presented. This has signicant advantages in terms of planar circuit design, compact size, and superior harmonic suppression. II. DESIGN OF THE POWER DIVIDER FOR HARMONICS SUPPRESSION The conguration of the proposed power divider for harmonics suppression is shown in Fig. 1, which consists of two microstrip EBG cells and four microstrip lines. The characteristic impedance of the microstrip lines connected to the input , and the line length is L. Furthermore, and output port is the output ports are shunted with a parallel connection of resistor . In the transmission line theory [9], the propagation constant of a lossless transmission line is a function of a distributed shunt capacitance and series inductance per unit length. It indicates that a slow-wave effect can be achieved by increasing the shunt capacitance and series inductance in a transmission line. In this letter, we propose a microstrip EBG cell, which is shown in Fig. 2(a). This EBG cell can provide two resonances to suppress the unwanted harmonics and reduce the length of a quarter-wave line simultaneously. Correspondingly, this letter demonstrates

Manuscript received March 2, 2007; revised June 2, 2007. This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C. under Contract NSC95-2221-E-006-428-MY3, and by the Foundation of Chen, Jieh-Chen Scholarship, Tainan, Taiwan. The authors are with the Institute of Microelectronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, R.O.C. (e-mail: yhw@eemail.ncku.edu.tw; yhw@eembox.ncku.edu.tw; wangyher@mail.ncku.edu.tw). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this letter are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LMWC.2007.905595

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Fig. 3. Photograph of the fabricated power divider for harmonic suppression. The dimension of the circuit is about 3 cm 2.5 cm.

Fig. 2. (a) Proposed microstrip EBG cell. (b) Lossless LC equivalent circuit.

the suppression of the third and fth harmonic. By adjusting the narrow connecting lines and the size of the etched pattern, we can easily obtain different slow-wave effects at different frequencies to suppress the unwanted nth harmonics. This manner is exible for harmonic suppression. A thorough discussion of this topology can also be found in [5], [10]. The corresponding lossless equivalent circuit of the EBG cell is presented in correspond Fig. 2(b), where the inductors , , , and to the transverse and longitudinal narrow connecting strips. The capacitance is the gap capacitance between the triangular and patch and the narrow connecting line. The capacitors are the shunt capacitance of the triangular patch and rectangular patch, respectively. We can calculate the resonant frequency by tuning the parameters of the lossless equivalent circuit then connecting the EBG cell with microstrip lines to form a new conguration of the power divider for harmonics suppression, as shown in Fig. 1. The component values of the equivalent circuit are ob0.5 nH, 0.41 nH, 0.24 nH, tained, where 0.24 nH, 0.21 pF, 0.15 pF, and 0.1 pF. The equivalent circuit simulation is performed by employing Agilent curve of the EBG equivalent circuit, the ADS. By tting the designed dimensions of the structure, as shown in Fig. 2(a), are 1.9 mm, 3.5 mm, 4.2 mm, 4.9 mm, 0.1 mm, 3.1 mm, 3.9 mm, 0.1 mm, 3 mm, 3.2 mm, and 0.5 mm. In this design, IE3D is used in the electromagnetic (EM) simulation to calculate the -parameters. By optimizing the EM simulation, of the microstrip we can attain the characteristic impedance

Fig. 4. Measured and the simulated insertion loss of the power divider.

lines of 100 , the line length of 4 mm, and the parallel resistor of 100 , which are similar to the ones for the conventional Wilkinson power divider. The sum of the microstrip line length in the proposed power divider can be calculated by 2 . Due to the slow-wave effect of the EBG cell, 12.9 mm is much smaller than that of a the dimension of conventional quarter-wave length ( 19.7 mm) by 34.5%. Their compact size occupies the area on the PCB in a more efcient manner. Indeed, it is very amenable to a further integration of the radio frequency (RF) front end. III. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS To verify and demonstrate the proposed circuit, a power divider with a center frequency xed at 2.4 GHz for harmonics suppression was designed and implemented, as shown in Fig. 3. A Rogers RO4003 PCB with a relative permittivity of 3.38 and a 0.508 mm-thick substrate was used. The overall dimension of the circuit was about 3 cm 2.5 cm. In order to obtain the exact design, the SMA connecters were deembeded, and the -parameters of the chip resistors were also measured and taken into consideration in the design process. Finally, the -parameters were measured using an Agilent PNA E8364A network analyzer. as a funcFig. 4 illustrates the measured and simulated tion of frequency. From the measured curve, it is shown that the

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 17, NO. 10, OCTOBER 2007

TABLE I PERFORMANCE SUMMARY OF POWER DIVIDER FOR HARMONICS SUPPRESSION

Fig. 5. Measured and the simulated return loss of the power divider.

of 2.4 GHz while suppressing the 7.2 GHz third-order harmonic and the 12 GHz fth-order harmonic simultaneously. A comparison of the power dividers for the nth harmonics suppression is summarized in Table I. As the results show, this work presents a signicant dimension decrease with fairly good third and fth harmonic suppressions as compared to the reported works. IV. CONCLUSION A new power divider/combiner for harmonics suppression has been proposed and implemented. By employing microstrip EBG cells, the novel circuit conguration can provide planar structures with smaller circuit dimensions and suppress two har, monics at the same time. As the measured results show, the , , and at 2.4 GHz are 23 dB, 3.4 dB, 31 dB, and 25 dB, respectively. These results show that the power divider has impedance matching at all ports, an equal power split to the output ports, and inherent isolation between the output ,a ports, simultaneously. Furthermore, from the measured 32.5 dB suppression for the third harmonic and a 12 dB suppression for the fth harmonic can be obtained. The proposed technique can be widely used to miniaturize circuit dimensions and reject harmonics in various microwave circuits. REFERENCES

Fig. 6. Measured and the simulated isolation of the power divider.

power divider passes the 2.4 GHz fundamental signal, but reects the 7.2 GHz third-order harmonic and the 12 GHz fthat 2.4 GHz order harmonic simultaneously. The measured shows a power split of 3.4 dB; furthermore, the suppression for the third-order harmonic is 32.5 dB, and for the fth-order harmonic, it is 12 dB. However, the measured -parameter is shifted from the design goal of the fth-order harmonic suppression 12 GHz to 11.5 GHz. The representation error for simulation and fabrication is due to the high-frequency parasitic effect. From the measured and the simulated results, as shown in Fig. 5, the circuit provides good return losses in the input port as well as in the two output ports. The measured return loss of is about 23 dB, and the other output terminals are better than 30 dB at the operation frequency of 2.4 GHz. Therefore, the designed circuit is well matched to the input port and to the two output ports. In Fig. 6, the measured and simulated isolation of the two output ports are shown. Fairly good agreements between the measured and the simulated results can be achieved. The measured isolation between ports 2 and 3 is better than 25 dB. These results indicate that the proposed power divider operates well as a conventional Wilkinson power divider at the center frequency

[1] E. J. Wilkinson, An N-way power divider, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. MTT-8, no. 1, pp. 116118, Jan. 1960. [2] J. C. Chiu, C. P. Chang, M. P. Houng, and Y. H. Wang, A 1236 GHz PHEMT MMIC balanced frequency tripler, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 1921, Jan. 2006. [3] K.-H. Yi and B. Kang, Modied Wilkinson power divider for nth harmonic suppression, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 13, no. 5, pp. 178180, May 2003. [4] D.-J. Woo and T.-K. Lee, Suppression of harmonics in Wilkinson power divider using dual-band rejection by asymmetric DGS, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. MTT-53, no. 6, pp. 21392144, Jun. 2005. [5] Q. Xue, K. M. Shum, and C. H. Chan, Novel 1-D microstrip PBG cell, IEEE Microw. Guided Wave Lett., vol. 10, no. 10, pp. 403405, Oct. 2000. [6] K. M. Shum, Q. Xue, and C. H. Chan, A novel microstrip ring hybrid. Incorporating a PBG cell, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 258260, Jun. 2001. [7] K. M. Shum, Q. Xue, and C. H. Chan, Curved PBG cell and its applications, in Proc. IEEE Microw. Conf., 2001, vol. 2, pp. 767770. [8] K. M. Shum, Q. Xue, W. N. Chau, and C. H. Chan, A compact Wilkinson power divider with curved PBG cells, Microw. Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 31, no. 2, pp. 8183, Oct. 2001. [9] R. E. Collin, Foundations for Microwave Engineering. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966. [10] B.-L. Ooi, Compact EBG in-phase hybrid-ring equal power divider, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 53, no. 7, pp. 23292334, Jul. 2005.