A new shunt-stub-based meander artificial transmission line in miniaturized microwave passive components

A miniaturized Wilkinson power divider and a branch-line coupler using a newly proposed shunt-stub-based meander artificial transmission line (ATL) are presented in this paper for ISM band applications. Open-circuited stubs are evenly placed in the blank area of the meander line to form the proposed ATL, which can be accurately designed by synthesizing microstrip lines with various characteristic impedances and electrical lengths. At the center frequency (2.4GHz) of ISM band, the sizes of the proposed Wilkinson power divider and branch-line coupler are only 30.2% and 23.7% of those conventional ones. The miniaturized Wilkinson power divider and branch-line coupler have similar frequency responses with the conventional counterparts, almost the same bandwidths especially. The measured results of the proposed microwave passive components are in a good agreement with the simulated results.