Design of a Size-reduced Ring Hybrid Coupler Using an Artificial Dielectric Substrate

Abstract

This paper describes the design of a size-reduced ring hybrid coupler for microwave band using an artificial dielectric substrate(ADS). ADS structure adopts the second substrate on which has lots of the metalized via-holes. The effective capacitance and effective dielectric constant per unit length of ADS increases compared to the normal substrate due to the via-holes. This enables the physical length of microstrip transmission line to be reduced by adopting ADS instead of the normal substrate. In order to present an example of size-reduction of microwave wireless circuit by ADS, a size-reduced 3GHz ring hybrid coupler is designed, fabricated and measured in this work. The designed coupler has the smaller size from the normal one by 65% due to the ADS, while no critical degradation from ideal performances is observed. The measured power division ratio at two output ports are-3.05dB and-3.135dB, respectively. In addition, the phase differences are 3o for in-phase division and 176o for out of phase split. The measured performances are so similar to ideal ones, and prove the design of size-reduced ring hybrid coupler using ADS is successful.