A Broadband Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) Planar Balun

A broadband planar balun is presented in this work that makes use of a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW) technique using a printed circuit board process. The proposed balun structure is able to operate at millimeter wave frequencies and it does not require any tight line coupling sections as frequently used in monolithic microwave integrated circuit balun design. In addition, this balun can be integrated with other planar topologies including nonplanar circuits made of the same substrate for achieving high efficiency. This balun structure consists of a 3 dB SIW power divider and microstrip lines that are placed on both sides of the substrate at balanced ports to obtain an 180deg phase shift. The concept is validated by simulations and measurements. Our measured results suggest that a 10 dB return loss at unbalanced port can easily be achieved across a 42% bandwidth from 19 to 29 GHz. Measured amplitude and phase imbalance between two balanced ports are within 1 dB and plusmn5deg, respectively.