Exercise # 2 (Day-1)

Objective
Learn the Designing Power Divider at 2.4GHz
Learn to generate the layout for fabrication
Learn to perform simulation in ADS-Momentum (EM-tool)
Understand the relationship between the Microstrip line dimension with the
impedance

I. Background and Theory
Power dividers (also power splitters and, when used in reverse, power combiners) are passive
devices used in the field of radio technology. They couple a defined amount of the electromagnetic
power in a transmission line to a port enabling the signal to be used in another circuit. Power
dividers have many applications, these include; providing a signal sample for measurement or
monitoring, feedback, combining feeds to and from antennae, antenna beam forming, providing taps
for cable distributed systems such as cable TV, and separating transmitted and received signals on
telephone lines.
An ideal half-split power divider would divide incident power at port 1 equally between ports 2 and
3. The S-matrix for the ideal Wilkinson divider is given below:

This ideal Wilkinson power divider would have perfect matching at all ports (S11=0, S22=0)
,S33=0). Also, there would be perfect isolation between ports 2 and 3 (S23 = 0). The insertion loss
between ports 1 and 2 should be , and the insertion loss between ports 1 and 3 should be (|S12| =
|S13| = ). The implementation of the divider uses quarter wavelength lines that cause the phase
shift of /2. Since the device is passive, the S-matrix is reciprocal.

when a signal enters port 1, it splits into equal-amplitude, equal-phase output signals at ports 2 and 3.
Since each end of the isolation resistor between ports 2 and 3 is at the same potential, no current
flows through it and therefore the resistor is decoupled from the input. The two output port
terminations will add in parallel at the input, so they must be transformed to 2xZ0 each at the input
port to combine to Z0. The quarter-wave transformers in each leg accomplish this; without the
quarter-wave transformers, the combined impedance of the two outputs at port 1 would be Z0/2. The
characteristic impedance of the quarter-wave lines must be equal to 1.414xZ0 so that the input is
matched when ports 2 and 3 are terminated in Z0.
Simulation Using Physical Microstrip Transmission Line

Steps
Use of LineCalc (tool of ADS) to find the lines physical dimensions


Each Physical track of Microstip lines has two parameters
Impedance
Electrical Length
Impedance depends on the width of physical track and Electrical Length depends on the
physical length of the track
It means each of our ideal line will be transformed into a different physical microstrip line

Physical Length and Width along with the Impedance and Electrical Length depends on the
parameters of the substrate
Parameters of FR-4 are given in the start













Procedure:
Determine all the important Transmission lines required to design the Power Divider
50 Ohm Line
100 Ohm Line
Quarter wave transformer 70.7 Ohm

1. Open new schematic file
2. Save it on the defaults location with any name (no spaces/dashes, underscore is acceptable)
3. Convert Ideal line to Physical line
Open LinCalc
On the schematic file goto Tools->LineCalc->Start LineCalc
LineCalc will open in new window

50 line





/4, 2*50 line
/4, 2*50 line

100
SMD 1206 package
50 line
50 line
Port-1
Port-2
Port-3
4. LineCalc (see its important blocks)



5. Enter the Parameters of FR_4 in substrate definition block (Leave which are not given, Use
scroll bar to move down)








6. Adding Substrate Parameter to Schematic
In Schematic go to Tools->LineCalc->Place New Synthesized Component (this will add
MSUB block in schematic which is substrate definition, delete any additional block if it
comes till this point)

7. Adding Transmission Line (for the input line)
Enter frequency, Impedance and Electrical Length at the specified locations in LineCalc
In Physical section of LineCalc change units from mil to mm



Press Synthesize button which has upward arrow
Simulator will run and values of L and W will be calculated (Note down the values on
Notebook against the input line of the wilkinson power divider)

Finding Physical Length and Width of different Transmission Lines
Impedance Electrical Length Physical Length Physical Width
50 (Input and Output) 180 33.93 (depends on your
layout requirement)
2.99
70.7 (Quarter Wave
Transformer)
90 17.47 1.55
100 (for the SMD
Resistor of 100 Ohm)
180 35.94 (depends on your
layout requirement)
0.65

Line with this dimension on FR-4 will be equivalent to the one simulated in first part of the lab
In the schematic go to Tline-Microstrip from the component palette drop down menu and add
the MLIN in your design
Change physical dimensions of MLIN (TL1) according to the one found from LineCalc
noted in notebook


8. Adding Transmission Line (for the Transformer)
As was done for the input line
Adjust the parameters so that the dimensions of the two transformer can be found
Place another MLIN from the component Palette and adjust its physical dimensions also
Since the two legs (transformer) are identical in Wilkinson power divider so you can simply
copy paste this last MLIN to get another




9. This is the simulation of power divider which works at a certain frequency therefore
frequency domain solver S-Param needs to be added
Go to Simulation-S_Param from Palette



Add S-Parameter simulator into your schematic Design


10. Set
Start Frequency 1GHz
Stop Frequency 5GHz
Step 1MHz
Hint:
To do this, either double click on S_Param or simply click on the parameter to change value


11. Add termination Ports and ground all the termination
To run schematic design with S_Param we need to add the termination at the three ports
Pick and place Term from the same Palette





12. Run the Simulation and plot the results
Go to Simulate->Simulate or press F7
Plots following
S11
S21
S31
S32
S23

You should be able to observe the following
S11 : Dip at your desired frequency (indicates good matching)
S21: Peak at the desired frequency (indicate power division)
S31: Peak at the desired frequency (indicate power division)
S32: Dip at the desired frequency (indicates isolation of the output ports)
S23: Dip at the desired frequency (indicates isolation of the output ports)
Expected Graphs of S11, S21 and S31 (place marker to read values accurately)



Final Design Schematics

This cannot be used to generate the proper layout








Generating Proper Layout

To generate proper layout we need MTee at all the nodes and Mcorn at all the bends, Bends and
Nodes are identified in figure below












Figure with Mcorn and MTee (both are available in TL-Microstrip palette), two lines of 100 ohm
are also added to generate the proper layout (length of these lines depends on the separation which
you want to achieve between the output ports)

After the above additions Split Quarter wave Transformer into two equal transmission lines so each
will have length of 8.735 mm with the same width of 1.55mm. This is important to generate proper
layout.
Next step is to generate the layout. Go to Layout->Generate/Update Layout

Window will appear asking for the layout setting, you can take the default values and click OK.
Layout will appear in layout window


To improve the results you can Tune the Length of Quarter Wave Transformer and then update
the layout. You can generate the Gerber file and fabricate your design on FR-4 Sheet.