A Broadband 1-to- $N$ Power Divider/Combiner With Isolation and Reflection Cancellation

A novel 1-to- N broadband “ iπ-wave” power divider/combiner with reflection cancellation is presented and demonstrated. The new iπ-wave structure provides reflection cancellation and output port isolation with 1-to- N (arbitrary N) signal splitting or N-to-1 summing. It has low loss due to its use of low-impedance transmission lines and provides a relative bandwidth of 50%-200%. The concept is studied theoretically and demonstrated experimentally with several 1-to-4 dividers. The divider/combiner pair provides power amplifiers with broadband operation and well-matched input/output impedances. The concept can be implemented in hybrid circuits or monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMICs).