• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
• /
• v.45 no.9
• /
• pp.55-59
• /
• 2008

In this paper, the linearity of Doherty amplifier has been improved by applying a compact slow-wave microstrip branch-line coupler on the output of Doherty amplifier. The proposed branch coupler has four microstrip high-low impedance resonant cells periodically placed inside the branch-line coupler to result in high slow-wave effect. The new coupler not only effectively reduces the occupied area to 30% of the conventional branch-line coupler at 1.8GHz, but also has high second harmonic suppression performance. We obtained the 3rd-order intermodulation distortion ($IMD_3$) of -31.16 dBc for CDMA applications with that of maintaining the constant power added efficiency (PAE). The IMD3 performance is improved as much as -7 dBc compared with a Doherty amplifier.

• Journal of Advanced Navigation Technology
• /
• v.17 no.6
• /
• pp.658-663
• /
• 2013

In this paper, a microstrip line implementation using via transition and its application of multilayer compact ring hybrid coupler are presented. This transition is the sandwich structure with via hole to connect two microstrip lines in different layer. For designing a compact RF/Microwave passive circuit, the microstrip line using via-hole transition is proposed to reduce a size of microwave circuit with long transmission line. For the validation of the microstrip line with via-hole transition, the multilayer ring hybrid coupler is implemented at center frequency of 2 GHz. The measured performances are in good agreement with simulation results and about 50% size reduction compare to conventional ring hybrid coupler.

• Journal of the Korea Institute of Information and Communication Engineering
• /
• v.15 no.2
• /
• pp.286-291
• /
• 2011

Directional couplers are widely used in RF and microwave applications to distribute or monitor signals. This paper presented a new structure of microstrip branch line directional coupler with coupled lines. The loose couplings of microstrip branch line directional couplers are impractical for the high characteristic impedance values required for the shunt branches. To overcome this limitation, the parallel coupled lines with the shorts were used for the high characteristic impedance. The results of the simulations and measurements were presented for the proposed branch line directional coupler. Measurement of the 10 dB branch line directional coupler shows that the return loss is higher than 30 dB over 10 % bandwidth and the isolation is 35 dB or better over 8 % bandwidth.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers C
• /
• v.50 no.5
• /
• pp.238-242
• /
• 2001

In this paper, we extracted design parameters for re-entrant mode microstrip directional coupler using FE(finite element) calculations. The microstrip directional coupler suffers from a poor directivity due to effect of the inhomogeneous dielectric including both dielectric substrate and air in microstrip transmission lines. Thus, the phase velocity of even mode is not equal to that of odd mode. In order to improve the directivity of microstrip directional coupler, a novel re-entrant mode microstrip directional coupler was employed. In microstrip configuration, the high directivity can be reached by matching the even- and odd-mode effective phase velocities. Through the values of capacitance obtained from 2-dimensional FE calculations, the phase velocities for each mode and the design parameter were extracted for the proposed parallel coupled-line configuration. Based on the extracted design parameter with phase matching condition, we designed and fabricated a 30dB directional coupler at 0.85GHz. Experimental results show good performance with excellent, isolation and directivity.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TC
• /
• v.37 no.5
• /
• pp.10-16
• /
• 2000

This paper presents new double-sided 3-dB branch-line coupler using CPW-to-Microstrip via-hole transitions for the multi-layer applications. The characteristic impedance is obtained using the even-odd mode method, and the circuit performance Is accurately estimated by the Finite Difference Time Domain(FDTD) method. The fabricated double-sided 3-dB branch-line coupler has less than 0.3 dB power dividing imbalance and 1。 phase imbalance, greater than 30 dB isolation, and 25 dB return loss over a 20% bandwidth centered at 2 GHz. Calculated and fabricated results show that this coupler provides better performance as compared to the conventional microstrip branch-line couplers.

• Proceedings of the IEEK Conference
• /
• 2003.07a
• /
• pp.350-353
• /
• 2003

In this paper, we designed and implemented a 10dB directional coupler with high directivity using branch line structure. The characteristic impedance of parallel branch line for 10 dB directional coupler is about 150 $\Omega$. To realize high characteristic impedance in microstrip line, we used the coupled line structure. The directional coupler were implemental and measured. The measured results show that the directivity is high than 24 dB.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.12 no.5
• /
• pp.795-801
• /
• 2001

A method of miniaturizing branch line coupler is presented. The method utilizes the microstrip line with overlay(or superstrate). The frequency dependent characteristics, dispersion and characteristic impedance, of this line are obtained by Immitance method in spectral domain and Method of Line. The relevant spectral domain Green's function is given and used to obtain numerical results. The branch line couplers with overlays are designed and fabricated at 2 GHz. The experimental results show that the size of coupler with overlay(${epsilon}_r$=10.2) is 31.4 precent smaller than conventional coupler. This minimized coupler is suitable for Butler Matrix as feeder for mobile communication beam forming antenna.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Telematics and Electronics D
• /
• v.36D no.9
• /
• pp.1-5
• /
• 1999

In this paper, we proposed a novel branch-line coupler using filp-chip technology. The proposed coupler consists of CPW and inverted microstrip. The CPW is on the GaAs flip-chip substrate, and the inverted microstrip is on the alumina main substrate. The ground plane of the CPW is used as a ground plane of the inverted microstrip. And both the transmission lines are connected by solder bump with each other. The characteristics of thisstructure was calculated by FDTD method. The S21, S31 are -3dB and the phase difference is $90^{\circ}$. The calculated characteristics are the same as those of the regular branch-line coupler. This structure can be applied for various kinds of devices using flipchip technology.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.10 no.5
• /
• pp.688-693
• /
• 1999

This paper presents a very simple coupled line structure for MMIC which uses stacked microstrip line and does not employ any dielectric process step. For the analysis and optimization of these coupled line structure, HP-Momentum was used. The measured performance of 3 dB coupler shows 23 to 45 GHz broadband characteristics. Additionally, a balanced 2-stage Ka-Band power amplifier which uses the proposed 3 dB coupler, was also fabricated.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science
• /
• v.22 no.6
• /
• pp.598-604
• /
• 2011

A method of miniaturizing branch line coupler with connected coupled lines is presented. The quarter-wavelength transmission lines in the typical microstrip branch line coupler are replaced with the connected coupled lines with same characteristics of ones for compact size. The connected coupled line is analyzed by T-equivalent circuit and Z parameters based on the even-odd mode analysis. The proposed branch line couplers with connected coupled line are designed and fabricated on FR4 substrate at 2.4 GHz. The measured results show good agreement with theoretical prediction. And the experimental results show that the size of coupler is 37 precent smaller than conventional coupler. This minimized coupler is suitable for Butler Matrix as feeder for mobile communication beam forming antenna.