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A General Compensation Method for a Marchand Balun With an Arbitrary Connecting Segment Between the balance ports is proposed. The compensation relies on two intentionally shortened coupling sections and a pair of short-circuited transmission lines as the terminations.
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General Compensation Method for a Marchand Balun With an Arbitrary Connecting Segment Between the Balance Ports
A General Compensation Method for a Marchand Balun With an Arbitrary Connecting Segment Between the balance ports is proposed. The compensation relies on two intentionally shortened coupling sections and a pair of short-circuited transmission lines as the terminations.
A General Compensation Method for a Marchand Balun With an Arbitrary Connecting Segment Between the balance ports is proposed. The compensation relies on two intentionally shortened coupling sections and a pair of short-circuited transmission lines as the terminations.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO.
8, AUGUST 2013 2821
General Compensation Method for a Marchand Balun With an Arbitrary Connecting Segment Between the Balance Ports Chia-Hui Lin, Cheng-Hsun Wu, Guan-Ting Zhou, and Tzyh-Ghuang Ma, Senior Member, IEEE AbstractFor a Marchand balun, the output imbalance due to the inevitable physical separation between the balance ports is a problem. In this paper, a general compensation method to cope with this imbalance issue is proposed with rigorous analysis and de- sign formulas. The compensation relies on two intentionally short- ened coupling sections and a pair of short-circuited transmission lines as the terminations. The proposed method is able to deal with a long connecting segment between the balance ports as long as the coupling sections are tight enough at the desired frequencies. The theory and formulation are rst treated using transient analysis with multiple reections/couplings between the networks. Design graphs are summarized and three examples are fabricated, vali- dated, and discussed to demonstrate the design exibility the pro- posed method provides. Index TermsBalance output, coupled lines, Marchand balun, phase compensation, short-circuited transmission line. I. INTRODUCTION T HE balance-to-unbalance transformer, abbreviated as balun, is an indispensable component in circuits and sys- tems involving balanced and unbalanced signals. Depending on the operating frequency and application, the balun can be realized using a number of techniques, such as the ferrite material [1], active devices [2], lumped elements [3], [4], and transmission-line sections [5][28]. The Marchand balun, named after its inventor [5], could be the most popular balun conguration in microwave frequen- cies. It has been widely used in a variety of applications, in- cluding a doubler [6], mixer [7], and balun lter [8]. In gen- eral, a Marchand balun consists of two quarter-wavelength cou- pled-line sections in cascade, with the terminations being open/ short circuited for retrieving balanced signals at the outputs. Impedance transforming Marchand baluns were developed with an isolation network in [9][11], and its broadband operation was feasible by multisection conguration [12], [13], multilayer process [7], [14], [15], metamaterial technique [16], or patterned ground plane [17]. Inductive termination was used in [18] to Manuscript received May 07, 2013; revised May 28, 2013; accepted May 29, 2013. Date of publication June 25, 2013; date of current version August 02, 2013. This work was supported by the National Science Council, Taiwan, under Grant 101-2221-E-011-074 and Grant 101-2628-E-011-007-MY3. The authors are with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Na- tional Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei 10607, Taiwan (e-mail: m9807602@mail.ntust.edu.tw; D9907604@mail.ntust.edu.tw; m10107606@mail.ntust.edu.tw; tgma@mail.ntust.edu.tw). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TMTT.2013.2268057 Fig. 1. Practical Marchand balun with a connecting segment between the bal- ance ports. equalize the even- and odd-mode phase velocities and improve the balun performance. In the meantime, there are also a signi- cant number of approaches to miniaturize the large size of a con- ventional balun [19][27]. In [19], the lter synthesis technique was used for size reduction; a compact balun based on octant- wavelength three-line couplers was discussed in [20]. Marchand baluns using slow-wave synthesized transmission lines [21], [22] and lumped-distributed approaches [23], [24] were recently reported with remarkable miniaturization capability. The spiral transformers, despite their low quality factor, are still a common way to realize very compact Marchand baluns in integrated cir- cuits [25][27]. Theoretically, a Marchand balun has perfect amplitude/phase balance when the electrical separation between the output ports is ideally zero. However, in practical circumstances, the inevitable physical separation between the balance ports always requires an additional line inserted in between for connection, as indicated in Fig. 1. This additional connecting segment, whose electrical length is around several to several tens of degrees, dramatically affects the output balance, as well as input matching; it could severely degrade the performance of a Marchand balun. The deterioration becomes worse when an integration fabrication process is involved such that the port transitions are large when compared to the balun itself. Some designs in the literature implicitly dealt with this issue. In [21] and [28], without any formulation, the coupling sections were shortened to compensate for this additional connecting line. In [22], an approximate compensation was proposed with the restriction that the connecting segment must be limited to several degrees. To date, none of the compensation methods discussed above can be applied universally. A rigorous anal- ysis and general formulas for the compensation of an arbitrary connecting segment between the balance ports are required to improve the circuit performance and design exibility. In this paper, we propose and analyze a general method to compensate for the imbalance introduced by the connecting line 0018-9480/$31.00 2013 IEEE 2822 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013 Fig. 2. (a) General structure of a Marchand balun. (b) Transient analysis with multiple reections and couplings between the coupling sections and termina- tion networks. between the outputs of a Marchand balun. Here, the impedance transforming ratio between the balance output and single-ended input is xed at 2:1, a typical Marchand balun without imple- menting an isolation network. The key innovation is to use two intentionally shortened coupling sections along with two ter- mination networks to cope with the mismatch and imbalance due to the additional segment. In Section II, rigorous formulas are derived based on the analysis of multi-reections and cou- plings between the coupled-line sections and terminations. De- sign graphs are plotted and discussed. As a proof of concept, three examples are developed, fabricated, and experimentally veried in Section III. The results are compared and discussed to validate the proposed method. The last example, with a folded layout arrangement, further demonstrates the additional design exibility the proposed compensation method can provide. II. THEORY AND FORMULATION A. General Structure and Formulation Fig. 2(a) shows a general Marchand balun using coupled transmission lines operated at . The line segment repre- sents the additional connection between the output ports due to practical layout consideration; the two termination networks (load a, b) are accounted for by the input reection coefcients and . Throughout this paper, the -parameters of the coupling sections and will be expressed as and , respectively. As indicated in Fig. 2(b), the Marchand balun can be ana- lyzed using signal transients at the center frequency with an input signal . Each time the signal passing through a coupling section and arriving at the direct port is multiplied by of those coupled lines, while the signal appearing at the coupled port is multiplied by . The connecting line provides an additional phase delay at . In Fig. 2(b), the red solid arrow (in the online version) represents the signal ow without any reection, while the green dashed one (in the online version) indicates the signal experiencing one reection due to the open circuit or termination, and so on. For better understanding, the text attached to each signal ow indicates the additional multi- plicator due to the latest reection, coupling, or delay transmis- sion. Using the summation of all terms due to multiple reec- tions and couplings, the -parameters of the Marchand balun, with port 1 excited, are (1) (2) (3) Except for the rst term, the remaining terms in (1)(3) form a geometric progression with a common ratio of . For an ideal Marchand balun, the connecting line is zero and the termination networks are shorted to ground . In addition, the -parameters of the coupled lines at are (4) (5) is the coupling coefcient. By substituting (4) and (5) and the above conditions ( and ) into (1)(3) and after manipulation, it is routine to verify that the Marchand balun will achieve perfect input matching and ideal amplitude/ phase balance when dB, a well-known criterion for the designs in the literature [9]. B. Proposed Compensation Method However, with the presence of an extra connecting segment , there is an additional phase delay each time the signal passes LIN et al.: GENERAL COMPENSATION METHOD FOR MARCHAND BALUN 2823 Fig. 3. (a) Proposed compensation method for a Marchand balun with an ar- bitrary connecting segment . (b) Response of a typical backward-wave cou- pled-line coupler for deriving design equations. TABLE I DESIRED RESPONSES OF THE SHORTENED COUPLING SECTIONS through the line; from (1)(3), the phase delay dramatically de- teriorates the input matching and output balance. To work out a general method to compensate for the additional segment , we propose a new conguration in Fig. 3(a). In this compensa- tion method, the coupling sections and are shortened such that their outputs have an overall phase advance equal to the amount of delay due to the connecting segment . In addi- tion, two short-circuited lines are attached to both sides of the balun as terminations to complete the compensation. For better understanding, the desired responses of the shortened coupling sections and are summarized in Table I. Here, and are the center operating frequencies of the sections and , at which the electrical lengths become and the associated couplings reach the maximum values as and , respectively. The two sections need not to be the same, and both and should be greater than 4.8 dB. Without loss of the generality, here we use the coupling sec- tion as an example to explain the design procedure. Fig. 3(b) illustrates the response of a typical backward-wave coupled-line section. Its -parameters are known as [29] (6) (7) is the coupling length. At the center frequency , the coupling section reaches its maximum coupling with . The output phases and are 90and0, respectively, at thisfrequency. To achieve a phase advance for line compensation, it is intu- itive from Fig. 3(b) that the Marchand balun should be operated at a frequency lower than the center frequency of the coupling section (i.e., ). Now assuming that the thru and coupled ports are always kept in phase quadrature (which is true for a practical design over a wide bandwidth), the additional phase advance achieved at the thru and coupled ports can be de- rived from (6) and (7) and Fig. 3(b) at as (8) Meanwhile, the same as an ideal Marchand balun (Section II-A), the coupling strength of the shortened sec- tion should be kept at 4.8 dB at (Table I), (9) The set of (8) and (9) can be solved to determine the required coupling strength , length , and center frequency of the coupled-line section for achieving the desired phase advance and amount of coupling (4.8 dB) at the operating frequency of the balun . The details, including the formulas and design graphs, will be introduced in Section II-C. Now, for a set of solutions , making the section satisfy (8) and (9), its -parameters at can be expressed as (10) (11) (12) 2824 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013 Likewise, for the coupling section , there is another set of solutions making its -parameters at equal to (13) (14) (15) In (10)(15), the two coupling sections show otherwise ideal responses at , except for the additional phase advance. By substituting (10)(15) back into (1)(3) with an additional constraint that (16) the -parameters of the Marchand balun can be rearranged as (17) (18) (19) Clearly, (17)(19) are still nonideal as most of the terms are over compensated by an additional phase advance or , a result of the multiple reections and couplings at the ends of the coupling sections. To deal with this and complete the compensation, two short-circuited transmission lines, each having an electrical length of or , serve as the termina- tion networks, as shown in Fig. 3(a). The input reection coef- cients looking into the two networks are (20) (21) By substituting (20) and (21) into (17)(19), it is routine to verify that all nonideal phase terms are cancelled out and the nal -parameters of the compensated Marchand balun are ide- ally (22) (23) As long as the coupling sections can be properly designed with their responses identical to (10)(15) under the constraint of (16), the proposed method can be applied universally to a Marchand balun with an arbitrary connecting segment between the outputs. It provides more layout exibility in either printed circuit board (PCB) or integrated circuit fabrication. The design examples for validation will be illustrated in Section III. C. Design Graphs for the Coupling Sections This section provides the formulas and design graphs of the coupling sections for achieving the desired phase advance ( or ) at . First of all, (8) and (9) can be rearranged as (24) (25) Clearly, is not a linear function of , as the two terms are related to each other through the trigonometric functions; the negative sign in (25) could be removed directly since the coupling length is always a positive value. By substituting (25) into (24), we have (26) For a given value of , (26) becomes a transcendental equa- tion and can be solved numerically or graphically for . With , has one and only one solution. By substituting back into (25), the required coupling length at could be determined. As indicated in Fig. 3(b), since the frequency is a linear function of the coupling length, the center frequency of the coupling section or can be de- rived by (27) With the knowledge of the center operating frequency and maximum coupling strength, the coupled-line sections can be designed routinely using the conventional technique for a quarter-wavelength coupler [29]. For easy reference, Fig. 4(a) and (b) plots the design graphs calculated using (25)(27); here, the system impedance at the unbalance port is set to 50 . Fig. 4(a) shows the required max- imum coupling and normalized center frequency versus the desired phase advance ; Fig. 4(b) depicts the maximum coupling versus the coupling length at . is also known as the length of the short-circuited termi- nated line. Taking dB as a gure of merit, the proposed method can be used to compensate for a connecting segment up to 70 with and (or ). With even tighter coupling [shadow region in Fig. 4(a)], the ap- plicable compensation range can be further augmented. III. DESIGN EXAMPLES AND DISCUSSION Using the formulas and design graphs, three examples are de- veloped, fabricated, and measured in this section for validation. The rst example, which is referred to as the single-sided com- pensation, uses the coupling section only for phase adjust- ment. The double-sided compensation is discussed and com- pared in the second balun. In the nal example, the Marchand balun is folded to demonstrate the additional exibility of the LIN et al.: GENERAL COMPENSATION METHOD FOR MARCHAND BALUN 2825 Fig. 4. Design graphs for the coupling sections in the compensated Marchand balun. (a) Maximum coupling and normalized center frequency versus the de- sired phase advance. (b) Maximum coupling versus the coupling length at . Fig. 5. Cross-sectional view of the CPW broadside coupler with dielectric overlays. proposed method facilitates. For brevity, all designs were de- veloped using broadside coupled coplanar waveguides (CPWs) on a double-layer 0.508-mm RO4003C substrate ( and ) at GHz; nevertheless, the pro- posed balun can be also realized in planar form if multi-con- ductor couplers such as the interdigital or Lange couplers could be incorporated [30]. To improve the directivity of the CPW coupling sections, the dielectric overlay technique [31] was im- plemented. A cross-sectional view of the coupler is depicted in Fig. 5. For easy reference, Fig. 6 shows the design graphs for the CPW broadside coupler, including the even-/odd-mode charac- teristic impedances and coupling coefcient versus and . Fig. 6. Design graphs for the CPW broadside coupler with dielectric overlays. A. Single-Sided Compensation The schematic of the rst design example is shown in Fig. 7(a); the connecting line between the coupling sections is . In this example, only the coupling section (left) is used for phase compensation; i.e., the coupling section (right) should be designed with and dB. For phase compensation, the electrical length of the short- circuited line and the phase advance of the coupling section are both . From (25) and (26), with , the coupling length is 61.5 at and the maximum coupling is calculated as 4.05 dB; the center frequency of the coupling section , from (27), is 2.64 GHz . The design parameters are summarized in Fig. 7(a). Fig. 7(b) depicts the layout of the single-sided compensated Marchand balun. The overall size is 49.4 20.7 mm . With the double-layer process, the connecting segment is realized by a grounded coplanar waveguide (CPWG) with the length mm. For a 50- line, the trace and slot widths of the CPWG are mm and mm. The CPW broadside coupling sections are designed using Fig. 6 for the desired electrical properties. The parameters are mm, mm, and mm for the section and mm, mm, and mm for the section . The short-circuited line is also realized by the CPWG. To reduce the parasitic coupling between the termination network and the input feed line, the short-circuited CPWG is bent intentionally with mm, mm, and mm for . The line impedance is also xed at 50 . All short circuits are achieved by connecting the signal trace directly to the ground; the open circuit is realized by a tapered aperture with mm and mm. The dielectric overlay has a width mm, and the rows of vias suppress the potential surface waves. 2826 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013 Fig. 7. (a) Schematic and (b) circuit layout of the single-sided compensated Marchand balun. TABLE II SIMULATED PARAMETERS OF THE COUPLING SECTIONS IN THE SINGLE-SIDED COMPENSATED MARCHAND BALUN The compensated Marchand balun was simulated and opti- mized for parasitic effects using the EM simulator HFSS. The nonideal short-/open-circuited termination can be accounted for by an additional equivalent segment or , whose length can be predicted in advance using the approximate formulas in [32]. However, a ne-tuning process on the compensated short-circuited termination is still necessary to take into consid- eration the parasitic coupling between the terminated segment on the bottom layer and the I/O lines on the top layer. Table II summarizes the simulated parameters of the two coupling sec- tions at the center frequency of the Marchand balun and that of the coupling section . Both sections show good matching and high directivity at with the coupling coef- cients close to the ideal value (4.8 dB). At 2.64 GHz, the section reaches its maximum coupling, also close to the theoretical value of 4.05 dB. The simulated and measured -parameters, phase differ- ences, and amplitude imbalances are shown in Fig. 8(a) and Fig. 8. Simulated and measured: (a) -parameters and (b) phase differences and amplitude imbalances of the single-sided compensated balun. (c) Compar- ison of the output balances between the single-sided compensated and uncom- pensated baluns. (b); a photograph of the fabricated sample is shown as an inset. The of the uncompensated balun (with two 90 coupling sections and a 23 connecting line) is also shown in Fig. 8(a) for comparison. The measured results, taken by an Agilent N5242A network analyzer, agree well with the simulated ones. The slight discrepancy can be attributed to the in-house LIN et al.: GENERAL COMPENSATION METHOD FOR MARCHAND BALUN 2827 fabrication, specically the dielectric overlay. At the center frequency GHz , the measured and of the balun are 3.5 and 3.1 dB, while the phase difference between the outputs is 180.7 . Fig. 8(c) further compares the phase differences and ampli- tude imbalances of the compensated and uncompensated baluns. Clearly from the gures, the proposed scheme dramatically im- proves the balun performance in terms of either the output bal- ance or input matching. With the criteria of dB, dB, and , the fractional bandwidths of the compensated and uncompensated baluns are 29% 1.65 2.17 GHz and 0%, respectively. The somewhat narrower bandwidth, when compared to a typical de- sign 55 70 is likely a result of the unequal responses of the coupling sections and , specically the unequal slopes of with respect to frequency [see Fig. 3(b)]. A double-sided compensated balun with identical responses of the two sections could tackle the problem easily; the details will be discussed in Section III-B. B. Double-Sided Compensation The schematic of the double-sided compensated balun is shown in Fig. 9(a); for demonstration, the connecting segment is selected as mm . In this example, the two coupling sections are designed with equal responses using . The design graphs in Fig. 4 can be applied again to determine the electrical parameters. Using (26), the maximum coupling of both sections is 4.15 dB, while the coupling length from (25) is 63.5 at . With (27), the center frequency for maximizing the coupling is 2.55 GHz. Using Fig. 6, the dimensions of the coupling sections are mm, mm, and mm. The complete circuit layout is shown in Fig. 9(b). The overall size is 51.8 20.7 mm . For the termination networks, both short-circuited lines are 50 with an electrical length of 21.5 . The short-circuited line on the left side is realized by the CPWG with mm, mm, and mm, while that on the right side, due to the open aperture, is de- signed using the CPW with mm, mm, and mm. The linearly tapered aperture is charac- terized by mm and mm; the width of the dielectric overlay is 4.7 mm. Table III summarizes the simulated electrical parameters of the coupling sections at the center frequency of the Marchand balun and that of the coupling sections . All values are very close to the predicted ones using the formulas in Section II. Fig. 10(a) and (b) illustrates the simulated and measured -parameters, phase differences, and amplitude imbalances of the double-sided compensated balun, while Fig. 10(c) compares the output balances of the compensated and uncompensated baluns. The agreement between the simu- lated and measured results is pretty good. From the gures, the balun performance is signicantly ameliorated. Without the compensation, the impedance band- width does not coincide with the bandwidth having balanced outputs; in addition, the shifts to the lower frequency side, a common phenomenon observed in many designs [9], Fig. 9. (a) Schematic and (b) circuit layout of the double-sided compensated Marchand balun. TABLE III SIMULATED PARAMETERS OF THE COUPLING SECTIONS IN THE DOUBLE-SIDED COMPENSATED MARCHAND BALUN [21]. Using the proposed method, the Marchand balun remains well behaved with dB, dB, and from 1.32 2.48 GHz, or equivalently, a fractional bandwidth up to 64%. At the center frequency, the measured and are both 3.2 dB, while the phase difference deviates from the ideal value by only 1 . The proposed scheme, without much effort by using two shortened coupling sections and termination networks, pro- vides excellent output balance with an operating bandwidth comparable to an ideal design. C. Compensation With Folded Conguration The nal example is shown in Fig. 11. In this design, the com- pensated balun is folded on purpose such that the input/output ports are opposite to one another to facilitate connection in cas- cade. The connecting line has an electrical length of with mm, mm, and mm. The 2828 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 8, AUGUST 2013 Fig. 10. Simulated and measured: (a) -parameters and (b) phase differences and amplitude imbalances of the double-sided compensated balun. (c) Compar- ison of the output balances between the double-sided compensated and uncom- pensated baluns. two coupling sections are designed to have slightly different re- sponses with and . The coupling sec- tion , with , is exactly the same as that in the previous example and the design details are omitted for sim- plicity. The required parameters of the coupling section , on the other hand, can be calculated using (25)(27) as dB, Fig. 11. Circuit layout of the folded compensated Marchand balun. TABLE IV SIMULATED PARAMETERS OF THE COUPLING SECTIONS IN THE FOLDED COMPENSATED MARCHAND BALUN at , and GHz. The dimensions are mm, mm, and mm. Table IV summarizes the simulated parameters of the two coupling sections. The coupling strengths of both sections are nearly 4.8 dB at the center frequency of the balun ; for the section , the coupling strength increases to the nominal max- imum value of 4.15 dB at 2.55 GHz, while the maximum cou- pling occurs at 2.79 GHz with dB for section . The short-circuited line connected to section is the same as that in the previous example, while the short-circuited CPWline for terminating the section has an electrical length of 25.5 with mm, mm, and mm. The linearly tapered aperture is dened by mm, mm and mm. To reduce the parasitic coupling between the connecting segment and output traces, the output lines are bent intentionally with mm and mm. The overall circuit dimension is 26.6 20 mm . The simulated and measured -parameters, phase differ- ences, and amplitude imbalances of the folded compensated balun are shown in Fig. 12(a) and (b); a photograph is shown as an inset. A comparison of the output balances between the compensated and uncompensated baluns is depicted in LIN et al.: GENERAL COMPENSATION METHOD FOR MARCHAND BALUN 2829 Fig. 12. Simulated and measured: (a) -parameters and (b) phase differences and amplitude imbalances of the folded compensated balun. (c) Comparison of the output balances between the folded compensated and uncompensated baluns. Fig. 12(c). The agreement is once again very good. At 1.8 GHz, the measured and are 3.1 and 3.2 dB, while the phase difference is 181 . With the criteria of dB, dB, and , the bandwidth of the folded compensated Marchand balun is from 1.32 2.58 GHz, or a fractional bandwidth of 70%. The last example clearly demonstrates the additional exi- bility the proposed method provides in practical designs: with opposite input/output arrangement using shortened coupling sections and a long connecting segment in between. As a summary, the exibility that the balance ports could be placed apart without performance degradation is denitely an attraction. Its adaptability is especially suitable for multilayer fabrication process such as the monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) or low-temperature co-red ceramic (LTCC) in viewof circuit integration with a number of components in close proximity. IV. CONCLUSION In this paper, a new compensation method for a Marchand balun with an arbitrary connecting segment between the outputs has been developed and rigorously analyzed. The design exam- ples, with comparable performance to the ideal case, clearly val- idate the proposed approach. The phase compensation is com- pleted with two shortened coupling sections together with ter- mination networks. According to the formulation, without much effort the proposed method can be used to compensate for a long segment up to 70 with a pair of typical 3-dB coupled-line cou- plers; it can also increase the design exibility as the balun could be integrated with other circuits easily. To the best of the au- thors knowledge, this is the rst general compensation method in the open literature to cope with the output imbalance due to the physically separated balance ports. 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Theory Techn., vol. 47, no. 1, pp. 9698, Jan. 1999. [29] R. K. Mongia, I. J. Bahl, P. Bhartia, and J. S. Hong, RF and Microwave Coupled-Line Circuits, 2nd ed. Norwood, MA, USA: Artech House, 2007. [30] M. C. Tsai, A new compact wideband balun, in IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig., 1993, pp. 141143. [31] B. Sheleg and B. E. Spielman, Broadband directional couplers using microstrip with dielectric overlays, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. MTT-22, no. 12, pp. 12161220, Dec. 1974. [32] R. N. Simons, Coplanar Waveguide Circuits, Components, and Sys- tems, 1st ed. New York, NY, USA: Wiley, 2001. Chia-Hui Lin was born in Nantou, Taiwan, in 1986. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2009 and 2011, respectively. In 2011, he joined the Advantech Corporation, Taipei, Taiwan, where he is currently an SI Engineer. His research interests include passive and active microwave circuit design and antenna designs. Cheng-Hsun Wu (S11) was born in Yunlin, Taiwan, in 1986. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2009, and is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interests include active integrated an- tennas and microwave passive circuit designs. Mr. Wu was the Honorable Mentioned winner of the Student Paper Competition of the 2011 IEEE In- ternational Symposium on Antennas and Propagation, Spokane, WA. Guan-Ting Zhou was born in Tainan, Taiwan, in 1990. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, in 2012, and is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology. His research interests include microwave passive circuit design and its applications. Tzyh-Ghuang Ma (S00M06SM11) was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1973. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering Ph.D. degree in communication engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1995, 1997, and 2005, respectively. In 2005, he joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, where he is currently a Full Professor. His research interests in- clude miniaturized microwave circuit designs, inno- vative phased arrays, ultra-wideband antennas, and RF identication (RFID). Dr. Ma was the recipient of the Poster Presentation Award of the 2008 Interna- tional Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), Chiba, Japan, the Best Paper Award of 2011 International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), Hong Kong, the 2010 Dr. Wu Da-Yu Award of the National Science Council, the most outstanding research award for young researchers in Taiwan. In 2010, he was also the recipient of a certicate from the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION for his exceptional performance as an article reviewer during 20092010. He was the advisor of the Honorable Mention winner of the IEEE AP-S 2011 Student Paper Competition. In 2012, he was the recipient of the Ex- cellent Young Engineer Award of the Chinese Institute of Electrical Engineering and was bestowed the title of Distinguished Professor of the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology.