IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2017 1059

A Miniaturized Wideband Three-Section

Branch-Line Hybrid With Harmonic Suppression
Using Coupled Line and Open-Ended Stubs
Rusan Kumar Barik, Student Member, IEEE, Rathod Rajender,
and Sholampettai Subramanian Karthikeyan, Member, IEEE

Abstract— In this letter, a wideband three-section branch-line

hybrid with harmonic suppression is designed using a novel trans-
mission line model. The proposed topology is constructed using
a coupled line, two series transmission lines, and open-ended
stubs. The required design equations are obtained by applying
even- and odd-mode analysis. To support these equations, a three-
section branch-line hybrid working at 0.9 GHz is fabricated and
tested. The physical area of the prototype is reduced by 87.7%
of the conventional hybrid and the fractional bandwidth is
greater than 52%. In addition, the proposed technique can
eliminate second harmonic by a level better than 15 dB. Fig. 1. Schematic of (a) proposed topology, (b) even-mode excitation, and
(c) odd-mode excitation.
Index Terms— Branch-line hybrid, coupled line, harmonic
suppression (HS), miniaturize, wideband.
the design equations, a prototype of three-section BLC oper-
I. I NTRODUCTION ating at 0.9 GHz is fabricated and demonstrated. It occupies
only 12.3% area of the traditional BLC with second HS and

B RANCH-LINE coupler (BLC) is one of the essential

passive components in modern communication systems,
which is used in many application such as phase shifters, data
the fractional bandwidth (FBW) is greater than 52%.
II. A NALYSIS OF THE P ROPOSED C IRCUIT
modulator, balanced mixers, and balanced amplifiers. There- Fig. 1 shows the circuit schematic of the proposed topol-
fore, the important features, such as size reduction, bandwidth ogy and its decomposed even- and odd-mode excitations.
enhancement, and harmonic suppression (HS), are of major The proposed structure consists of one parallel coupled
concern for the design of BLCs. The single-section BLC is line (Z 0e , Z 0o ), two series transmission lines (Z A ), and open
quite fundamental structure, which causes a narrow bandwidth. stubs (Z B ) with electrical lengths of θC , θ A , and θ B , respec-
To enhance the bandwidth, multiple sections are generally tively. This topology is equivalent to a quarter-wavelength
cascaded [1]–[9]. Various techniques have been reported to transmission line θT = 90° with impedance of Z T at the
increase the bandwidth and reduce the implementation area operating frequency. The even–odd mode analysis is employed
of the coupler [2]–[8]. Photonic bandgap and defected ground to derive the necessary design equations. The input admittance
structure [2], a series transmission line and two open stubs [3], of the conventional transmission line (YTe ) and the proposed
fractal-shaped geometry [4], multiple symmetric PI-sections topology (Yeven ) for even-mode excitation are given as
[5], complementary split ring resonator structures [6], and
θT
unequal length open stubs [7] have been used to develop YTe = j YT tan (1)
broadband miniaturized three-section BLCs. In [8], a compact 2
Y B L + Y0e M + Y A K
BLC with second HS using interdigitated shunt capacitors and Yeven = j YA . (2)
high impedance transmission line has been demonstrated. Y A − (Y B L + Y0e M)K
In this letter, a compact broadband BLC with second HS is By equating (1) and (2), the even-mode admittance of the
developed by employing coupled line, two series transmission coupled line is given as
line, and open stubs. The detailed analysis of the proposed Y A YT − Y B YT K L − Y A Y B L − Y A2 K
structure is carried out by even–odd mode method. Based on Y0e = . (3)
(Y A + YT K )M
Manuscript received March 3, 2017; revised June 7, 2017; accepted The input admittance of the conventional transmission
September 6, 2017. Date of publication September 27, 2017; date of current
version December 4, 2017. (Corresponding author: Rusan Kumar Barik.) line (YTo ) and the proposed topology (Yodd ) for odd-mode
The authors are with the School of Computer and Electrical Engineer- excitation are given as
ing, Indian Institute of Information Technology Design & Manufacturing
Kancheepuram, Chennai 600127, India (e-mail: [email protected]; θT
[email protected]; [email protected]).
YTo = − j YT cot (4)
2
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available Y B L − Y0o cot θC + Y A K
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Yodd = j YA . (5)
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2017.2751590 Y A − (Y B L − Y0o cot θC )K
1531-1309 © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1060 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 27, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2017

Fig. 4. Computed magnitude response of the quarter-wavelength transmission

line (50 ) and the proposed equivalent model.

Fig. 2. Design plot of Z 0e and Z 0o versus θ A for various values of θ B and

fixed values of Z A = 100 , Z B = 80 , and θC = 40°.

Fig. 5. Geometry of the conventional three-section BLC.

Fig. 3. Design plot of Z 0e and Z 0o versus θ A for various values of θC and

fixed values of Z A = 70 , Z B = 130 , and θ B = 35°.

Similarly, solving (4) and (5), the odd-mode admittance of

the coupled line is given as
Fig. 6. (a) Final layout with dimensions: L 1 = 62.7 mm, L 2 = 22.1 mm,
Y A YT + Y A Y B L − Y B YT K L + Y A2 K L 3 = 2.03 mm, W3 = 1.03 mm, L 4 = 25.34 mm, W4 = 1.68 mm, L 5 =
Y0o = (6) 30.65 mm, W5 = 0.26 mm, L 6 = 2.04 mm, W6 = 0.81 mm, L 7 = 26.7 mm,
(Y A − YT K ) cot θC
W7 = 1.64 mm, L 8 = 22.4 mm, W8 = 0.26 mm, L 9 = 62.7 mm, W9 =
where K = tan θ A , L = tan θ B , and M = tan θC . 0.23 mm, L P = 10 mm, W P = 2.31 mm, S1 = 0.34 mm, and S2 = 0.36 mm.
The transcendental equations (3) and (6) are used to com- (b) Photograph of the fabricated prototype.
pute even- and odd-mode characteristic impedances of the TABLE I
coupled line. It is observed that the five degrees of freedom D ESIGN PARAMETERS FOR D IFFERENT B RANCH -L INE I MPEDANCE
exist due to the seven unknowns (Z A , θ A , Z B , θ B , Z 0e , Z 0o ,
and θC ) but only two equations (3) and (6) are available.
Thus parameters Z A , θ A , Z B , θ B , and θC are selected as free
variables to compute (3) and (6). The solutions of transcen-
dental equations are not unique, but it provides flexibility to
choose parameters in order to achieve high size reduction. line). At the operating frequency f0 , the proposed structure
For Z T = 50 , Fig. 2 shows the variation of Z 0e and Z 0o provides similar characteristics as that of conventional line.
versus θ A for smaller values of θ B . The huge variation in A stopband response at 2 f 0 is observed due to the open stubs
Z 0e and Z 0o with respect to θ A can be made smaller beyond 6° with electrical length of 44°.
by varying the free variables Z A , Z B , θ B , and θC . For example,
the variation in Z 0e and Z 0o with respect to θ A decreases III. D ESIGN , FABRICATION , AND M EASUREMENT
with decreasing the values of θC as shown in Fig. 3. From Initially, we designed a three-section BLC using [1] to
the plots, it is seen that multiple solutions are available for obtain a FBW of more than 60%, as shown in Fig. 5. The
Z 0e and Z 0o . Hence, the shortest θ A can be chosen for impedance values of the quarter-wavelength (θh1 = θh2 =
compact size if the corresponding Z 0e and Z 0o are physically θv1 = θv2 = 90°) branch-lines are Z h1 = 54 , Z h2 = 58.3 ,
realizable. Similarly, the variation of Z 0e and Z 0o versus θ A and Z v1 = Z v2 = 143 . Based on the theoretical analysis,
with respect to Z A and Z B can be studied. For Z T = 50 , the design parameters for the horizontal transmission lines are
by choosing Z A = 80 , Z B = 100 , θ B = 44°, and calculated and listed in Table I. For Z T = 50 , considering
θC = 32°, the values of Z 0e and Z 0o for the electrical 45  as the minimum shunt-stub impedance suitable to fit
length θ A = 3° are 76.3  and 49.7 , respectively. With within the unused space of the BLC geometry, the total series
these design parameters, Fig. 4 shows the S-parameters of electrical length of the proposed unit is calculated to be 6°.
the 50  line (solid line) and its equivalent model (dashed This is very less as compared with π-shaped (19°) [3], multiple
BARIK et al.: MINIATURIZED WIDEBAND THREE-SECTION BRANCH-LINE HYBRID WITH HS 1061

TABLE II
C OMPARISON B ETWEEN P ROPOSED AND C URRENT S TATE OF M INIATURIZATION T ECHNIQUES

amplitude (dB) and phase difference (deg) responses

are shown in Fig. 7. The measured bandwidths for
return loss (S11 > 15 dB), isolation (S41 > 15
dB), amplitude (S21 − S31 = 0 ± 1 dB), and phase
imbalance ( S21 −  S31 = 90° ± 3°) are 70%, 64.4%, 52.3%,
and 63.3%, respectively. The measured S21 , S31 , and  S21 –
 S31 at 0.9 GHz are 2.9 dB, 3.8 dB, and 90.2°, respectively.
From the amplitude plot, it is observed that the second
harmonic is suppressed by a level better than 15 dB. Due
to the fabrication tolerance and connector loss, a very small
deviation between simulated and measured performances has
been observed. Comparison between proposed and current
state of miniaturization techniques is depicted in Table II.
IV. C ONCLUSION
A compact broadband BLC with second HS has been
designed. The proposed network is analyzed through even–
odd mode method and a prototype of the coupler working at
0.9 GHz is fabricated and tested. It achieves a size reduction
of 87.7% of the conventional coupler and the bandwidth is
greater than 52%.
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