A novel broadband compact 3dB 180° power divider/combiner derived from the Wilkinson power divider/combiner

In this paper, a novel 3 dB 180° power divider/combiner is proposed. This device is derived from the classical Wilkinson divider/combiner whose output ports were combined with inverting and non-inverting suspended microstrip lines (SMLs). The proposed structure has a reduced size compared with the conventional and enhanced variants of the 3 dB 180° divider/combiner topologies. Moreover, the new architecture has a greatly improved bandwidth. The measured 0.5 dB insertion loss bandwidth is over the 2-5 GHz band for power combining/dividing. Because of its symmetrical architecture, the presented device shows frequency independent power dividing/combining balance performance. The maximum of 0.5 dB amplitude imbalance and 3° phase imbalance measured over frequency band of 2-5 GHz. Measured port isolation is also about 50 dB at the center frequency.