Compact wide-band branch-line hybrids

Wide-band branch-line couplers are designed and tested. The proposed couplers feature compact size on a single circuit layer structure without via-holes. For the broad-band property and cost effectiveness, we have designed a four-branch hybrid with mixed distributed and lumped distributed elements. Analysis on the equivalent circuits was performed carefully in order to obtain a sufficient bandwidth with reduced design area. The fabricated hybrids have the fractional bandwidth larger than 56% at the center frequency of 2 GHz. They also show size reduction up to 55.2% compared with the conventional design method. © 2006 IEEE.