A NEW MINIATURIZED MICROSTRIP BRANCH-LINE COUPLER WITH GOOD HARMONIC SUPPRESSION

A new miniaturized microstrip branch-line coupler with good harmonic suppression is proposed in this paper. The new structure has two significant advantages, which not only effectively reduces the occupied area to 20.4% of the conventional branch-line coupler at 0.96 GHz, but also has high 6th harmonic suppression performance. The measured results indicate that a bandwidth of more than 120 MHz has been achieved while the phase difference between S21 and S31 is within 90◦ ± 1◦. The measured bandwidth of |S21| and |S31| within 3 ± 0.3 dB are 145 MHz and 150 MHz, respectively. Furthermore, the measured insertion loss is comparable to that of a conventional branch-line coupler. The new coupler can be easily implemented by using the standard printed-circuit-board etching processes and is very useful for wireless communication systems.