Miniaturized Wideband Three-Way Power Dividers With Arbitrary Band Ratio Using a New Analytical Design Technique

In this paper, we present a novel analytical design technique to implement a miniaturized 3-way power divider (3PD) supporting a wideband operation with a band ratio from 1-6.5. The proposed 3PD configuration comprises four distinct commensurate transmission lines and two different isolation resistors. A comprehensive theoretical analysis is conducted to arrive at a set of completely new and rigorous design equations by utilizing the text dual-band behavior of the commensurate transmission line and the recombinant approach. Additionally, corresponding text S-parameter equations are derived, which manifest the wideband capability of the proposed 3PD, as validated through several design examples. A fabricated prototype of the proposed technique exhibits excellent input return loss (>15 dB), output return loss (>15 dB) as well as insertion loss (< 5.32 dB), with remarkable isolation (>16 dB) from 0.94-2.24 GHz and even achieves a fractional bandwidth of 132% (band ratio=4.96) considering a 10 dB reference. The different features and performance provided by this simple yet compact planar structure make the design an ideal choice for applications such as microwave ICs, antenna feed networks, and Doherty power amplifiers.