Design of a substrate integrated waveguide matrix amplifier

Developments in microwave systems have increased the need for matrix amplifiers, which provide both high gain and wide frequency bands. The aim of this paper is to design a novel 2×4 matrix amplifier with a substrate integrated waveguide (SIW)-based power divider and combiner and a microstrip gain equalizer in the X and low Ku frequency bands. The proposed amplifier can be easily integrated with any microstrip, rectangular waveguide, or SIWbased circuits. The analysis and design of the amplifier is performed using two full wave simulators with different computational techniques (finite element method and finite integration technique) to verify the results. Simulation results show that the amplifier provides 16 dB gain with less than 4 dB ripple and more than 10 dB of input and output return losses in the frequency band of 8–15 GHz. This amplifier can be used as a wide band and high gain block in many microwave applications.