Improved wide-band Schiffman phase shifter

In this paper, one improved wide-band Schiffman phase shifter is presented by modifying the ground plane underneath the coupled lines. In this new design, with the ground plane under the coupled lines removed, the even-mode impedance will be increased substantially. Meanwhile, we propose that one additional isolated rectangular conductor is placed under the coupled lines to act as one capacitor so that the odd-mode impedance is decreased. The proposed new design was simulated by the full-wave electromagnetic software IE3D and validated by the measurement. Compared with the cascading microstrip multisection coupled-line configuration, our newly proposed planar one with a patterned ground plane is small in size and, meanwhile, has a good performance. As an example, one Schiffman phase shifter on a double-sided printed circuit board is designed, simulated, fabricated, and measured. The measured amplitude and phase imbalance between the two paths are within 0.5 dB and 5°, respectively, over the frequency band from 1.5 to 3.1 GHz, or around 70% bandwidth. The measured return loss is found to be better than -12 dB over the operating frequency band.