IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2009

683

A Novel Triple-Band Microstrip Branch-Line Coupler With Arbitrary Operating Frequencies

Chong-Yi Liou, Min-Sou Wu, Student Member, IEEE, Jen-Chun Yeh, Student Member, IEEE, Yu-Zhi Chueh, Student Member, IEEE, and Shau-Gang Mao, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis letter presents a novel microstrip branch-line coupler operating in three frequency bands. The design methodology of the triple-band branch-line coupler is established by using a compensation technique to improve the matching property within each passband region. The proposed coupler with compact size is realized by folded microstrip open-circuited and short-circuited stubs. The measured, full-wave simulated and equivalent-circuit modeled results illustrate good agreement among them, which validates the design method and shows the advantages of deep rejection between each operating frequency, and the dc grounded input and output ports. Index TermsBranch-line coupler, folded microstrip stub, microstrip line.

I. INTRODUCTION RANCH-LINE couplers are one of the most rapidly developing passive components in modern microwave communication systems. Compact size and multi-band operation are crucial in the development of advanced branch-line couplers. In the past years, many researches have been aimed at the design of dual-band branch-line couplers [1][6]. The transmission line with one or two shunt stubs [1][3] and the cross coupling branch [4] were presented to realize a dual-band branch-line coupler. Furthermore, the composite right/left-handed transmission line was adopted to design a dual-band branch-line coupler by using surface mounted devices (SMDs) [5], [6]. However, the composite right/left-handed coupler operating in the high frequency range will suffer signicant loss caused by the SMDs. Recently, a multi-band branch-line coupler with open stubs has been proposed [7], but the passband frequencies cannot be allocated arbitrarily. In this letter, a new triple-band branch-line coupler with arbitrary operating frequencies is proposed, and its design method is presented. Based on the compensation technology [8], two additional capacitances are attached into the triple-band resonator to improve the matching properties of the triple-band branch-line coupler. The series connection of three shunt LC resonators can be transferred to the parallel connection of one shunt LC resonator and two series LC resonators [9]; the folded microstrip
Manuscript received July 07, 2009; revised August 03, 2009. First published October 20, 2009; current version published November 06, 2009. This work was supported in part by the National Science Council of Taiwan, R.O.C., under Grant NSC 96-2221-E-027-022, and Grant NSC 96-2628-E-027-001-MY3. The authors are with the Graduate Institute of Computer and Communication Engineering, National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei 106, Taiwan (e-mail: sgmao@ieee.org). Digital Object Identier 10.1109/LMWC.2009.2031998 1531-1309/$26.00 2009 IEEE

Fig. 1. (a) Equivalent-circuit model of the triple-band branch-line coupler. (b) Equivalent single-band resonator and initial triple-band resonator. (c) Impedance inverter with two shunt capacitances for phase and impedance compensation.

stubs are equivalent to it, which can be treated as a triple-band resonator for the branch-line coupler design. Finally, the proposed coupler is implemented to validate the proposed design method. Additionally, this coupler has the advantages of compact size and deep rejection between each operating frequency, and the dc grounded input and output ports. II. DESIGN METHODOLOGY The equivalent circuit of the proposed triple-band branch-line coupler is depicted in Fig. 1(a). First, the single-band resonator and can be determined by is shown in Fig. 1(b), and using the 1st-order low-pass lter prototype [10]. Thus the initial triple-band resonator is obtained by cascading three resonators with difference operating bands [Fig. 1(b)]. Second, to simultaneously improve the phase and impedance matching conditions of the impedance inverter within the operating bands, are shunted at each end of the quartertwo capacitances wavelength transmission line as shown in Fig. 1(c) [8]. The characteristic impedance and capacitance are determined by

(1)

(2)

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 19, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2009

TABLE I COMPARISON BETWEEN SPECIFICATION AND CALCULATION FOR FOUR COUPLERS

Fig. 2. Geometry of the folded microstrip stubs. (w : mm, ` : : mm, w : mm, w : mm, w : mm, mm, w : mm, ` : mm, ` : mm, ` : mm, ` : w : mm, ` : mm, ` : mm, ` : mm, and mm, ` : mm.) `

= 03 =11 = 42 = 29

= 17 = 14 = 07 = 05 = 08 = 45 =77 =27 = 43 = 43 = 25 = 72

where the is the impedance of the inverter in the conis the phase ventional branch-line coupler, angle decided by the average frequency , are the center frequencies of the rst and where the third bands, respectively. Then the characteristic impedance in the branch line of the coupler can be obtained by (1) and the capacitances and inductances of the triple-band resonator are (3) (4) Moreover, to further improve the accuracy of the operating of the single-band bandwidth, the input susceptance resonator constructed by and in (3) and (4) is equal of the nal triple-band resonator consisting of the to , and as series connection of shunt depicted in Fig. 1(a), see (5) and (6), shown at the bottom of the page, where are the lower and upper 3-dB band-edge in each passband. By equating frequencies of (5) and (6) on each , an iterative process is used to determine and . Finally, the inductance and capacitance of the nal triple-band resonator in the branch-line coupler shown in Fig. 1(a) are determined. Table I shows the frequency responses of four triple-band couplers. Cases A to D are the couplers with various center passband frequencies and fractional bandwidths (FBWs). A good agreement between the specications and calculated results from the equivalent circuit is observed and thus the exibility of the proposed design methodology is veried.

III. IMPLEMENTATION The triple-band branch-line coupler is fabricated on RT/Duroid 5880 substrate with a relative dielectric constant of 2.2 and thickness of 0.254 mm. The center frequencies GHz, and fractional bandwidths are specied as GHz, GHz, % % and %. The 1st-order maximally at low-pass lter prototype is chosen and the element values in the equivalent-cirnH, cuit model of the triple-band coupler are nH, nH, pF, pF, pF, , , and at . To implement the triple-band resonator, the folded microstrip stubs consisting of the open-circuit and short-circuit stubs are equivalent to two series LC resonators and one shunt LC resonator. The physical conguration of the resonator and the proposed coupler are shown in Figs. 2 and 3, and the total dimension at . of the proposed coupler is approximately The results presented in Fig. 4 demonstrate good agreement between the equivalent-circuit model, full-wave simulation, and measurement. The measured return loss and isolation of more than 15 dB are achieved at the center frequency of each band, i.e., 2.17, 3.68, and 5.92 GHz. and the phase difThe amplitude imbalance for the triple-band coupler are shown in ference Fig. 5. The measured amplitude imbalance is below 1 dB within 2.142.34 GHz, 3.333.655 GHz, and 5.856.25 GHz. Notably, phase difference for the bandwidths of the measured

(5) (6)

LIOU et al.: NOVEL TRIPLE-BAND MICROSTRIP BRANCH-LINE COUPLER

685

Fig. 3. Geometry of the triple-band branch-line coupler. (w w : mm, w : mm, ` : mm, ` : mm, and ` mm.)

=05

=06

=91

= 13 08

= 0:75 mm, = 13:68

Fig. 5. Amplitude imbalance and phase difference of the triple-band branchline coupler. (a) rst band, (b) second band, and (c) third band.

REFERENCES
Fig. 4. Equivalent-circuited modeled, full-wave simulated, and measured S-parameters of the triple-band branch-line coupler. [1] K.-K. M. Cheng and F.-L. Wong, A novel approach to the design and implementation of dual-band compact planar 90 branch-line coupler, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 11, pp. 24582463, Nov. 2004. [2] H. Zhang and K. J. Chen, A stub tapped branch-line coupler for dualband operations, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 17, no. 2, pp. 106108, Feb. 2007. [3] C.-L. Hsu, J.-T. Kuo, and C.-W. Chang, Miniaturized dual-band hybrid couplers with arbitrary power division ratios, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 149156, Jan. 2009. [4] M.-J. Park and B. Lee, Dual-band, cross coupled branch-Line coupler, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett., vol. 15, no. 10, pp. 655657, Oct. 2005. [5] C. Collado, A. Grau, and F. D. Flaviis, Dual-band planar quadrature hybrid with enhanced bandwidth response, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 54, no. 1, pp. 180188, Jan. 2006. [6] I.-H. Lin, M. DeVincentis, C. Caloz, and T. Itoth, Arbitrary dual-band components using composite right/left-handed transmission lines, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 11421149, Apr. 2004. [7] C.-W. Tang and M.-G. Chen, Design of multipassband microstrip branch-line couplers with open stubs, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 196204, Jan. 2009. [8] S.-G. Mao and M.-S. Wu, Design of articial lumped-element coplanar waveguide lters with controllable dual-passband responses, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 56, no. 7, pp. 16841692, Jul. 2008. [9] J. S. Hong and M. J. Lancaster, Microstrip Filters for RF/Microwave Applications. New York: Wiley, 2001. [10] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering, 3rd ed. New York: Wiley, 2005.

the triple-band branch-line coupler are 170 MHz, 110 MHz, and 270 MHz. IV. CONCLUSION A novel triple-band branch-line coupler with arbitrary operating frequencies has been presented and its design methodology based on a compensation technique is proposed. This coupler is realized by using folded microstrip open-circuited and at short-circuited stubs to obtain a compact size 4 GHz. The measured, full-wave simulated and equivalent-circuit modeled results agree closely with each other. The coupler provides the advantage of deep rejection between each operating frequency, and the dc grounded input and output ports. These results demonstrate the advantages and practical feasibility of the triple-band coupler. Finally, the proposed design procedure and resonator construction can be further applied to design various multi-band microwave passive circuits, such as power dividers, couplers and baluns.