Author(s)

Tamer Gaber Abouelnaga¹, Ashraf Shawky Mohra²

¹Microstrip Circuits Department, Electronics Research Institute, Giza, Egypt.
²Faculty of Engineering, Benha University, Qalyubia, Egypt.

In this paper, a new idea of reconfigurable 3/6 dB branch line coupler is proposed. The proposed coupler is tuned through a simple open and short circuit at the coupler’s branches’ edges. At the short edges case, a 3 dB branch line coupler is obtained. In this case, the coupler’s branches are considered as microstrip transmission lines with 0.3 mm slot width which is etched in each coupler’s branch. At the open edges case, the coupler’s branches are considered as asymmetric coupled microstrip lines. In this case, a 6 dB branch line coupler is obtained. Both CST and IE3D simulators are used to optimize the reconfigurable 3/6 dB branch line coupler dimensions. As a prototypes, two BLCs are designed, analyzed and tested at the “on” and “off” states at 2.5 GHz. The measured S-parameters confirm the proposed concept of the reconfigurable 3/6 dB branch line coupler.

Branch Line Coupler, Microstrip Lines, Asymmetric Coupled Microstrip Lines, 3/6 dB Coupler

Abouelnaga, T. and Mohra, A. (2017) Reconfigurable 3/6 dB Novel Branch Line Coupler. Open Journal of Antennas and Propagation, 5, 7-22. doi: 10.4236/ojapr.2017.51002.