A Wideband LTCC Quad-Phase Power Dividing Network and its Application to Ceramic-Based Quadrifilar Helix Antennas

A wideband LTCC quad-phase power dividing network, which owns one input and four outputs, is proposed in this paper. It is composed of a 1-to-4 Marchand balun and two 90° phase shifters so as to realize four outputs with equal amplitudes and 90° progressive phase shifts. An example, covering a frequency band from 1.2 GHz to 1.6 GHz, is designed for most frequency bands of the world's four satellite communication and navigation systems. The measured results show that the proposed power dividing network features good performance, such as an amplitude imbalance smaller than 0.8dB and a phase deviation within ±10°. For verification, two ceramic-based quadrifilar helix antennas (QHAs) fed by the proposed power dividing network are designed at 1.561 GHz with right-handed circular polarization (RHCP) and left-handed circular polarization (LHCP), respectively. Both QHAs owns superiorities in size, axial ratio (AR), beamwidth, cross-polarization discrimination, front- to-back ratio, which validates the function of the proposed power dividing network as well.