Electromagnetic simulation of some common balun structures

Baluns serve many applications in RF and microwave communications, radar, and instrumentation equipment. The word balun is an acronym for balanced-to-unbalanced converter, and the function is employed to change a single-ended signal, i.e., a signal that is referenced to ground, to a balanced signal with equal potentials with respect to ground but opposite polarity. These balun structures are employed in such common RF and. microwave components as mixers' antenna-feed networks, and frequency multipliers. In this paper some common balun structures are investigated using the electromagnetic simulation software package Microwave Office, available from Applied Wave Research. The Microwave Office design suite is an integrated software package that includes an object-oriented linear and nonlinear circuit simulator as well as a full-wave, electromagnetic analysis of planar, physical structures that may be imported within the circuit simulator.