IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INDUSTRIAL ELECTRONICS
1
Abstract—In this paper, a microstrip reconfigurable four-way
filtering power divider (FPD) with tunable center frequency (CF),
bandwidth (BW), and power division ratio (PDR) is presented. A
novel coupling scheme is proposed based on four stub-loaded
quad-mode resonators (SL-QMRs), two three-line coupled
structures, and two quarter-wavelength transformers, which can
achieve tunable CF, BW, PDR and wide isolation BW. Switchable
single/dual/wide-band filtering response and the CF and BW of
dual-band FPD can be tuned by controlling the varactor diodes
loaded onto the open-ends of SL-QMRs. Meanwhile, the PDR is
controlled by varying the coupling strength between the center
line and sidelines of three-line coupled structure. Compared with
the conventional wideband FPDs, the capacitor loaded onto the
parallel coupled line of two outputs is to enlarge the coupling,
which can improve the return loss (RL) and thus relieve the
limitation of the line space. Based on the coupled-resonator theory,
the parameters of the resonators and coupling sections are
analytically determined. For dual-band FPD, the measured
results show that the 3-dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) of lower
passband can be tuned from 23.4% to 30.9%, while the one of
upper passband is tuned from 12.3% to 18.5%. The measured CF
for upper passband can be tuned independently from 1.98 to 2.21
GHz while the lower one maintains fixed. Then the measured PDR
is controlled from 1:1:1:1 to 1:2:1:2. The proposed four-way
reconfigurable FPD exhibits switchless single/dual/wide-band
filtering responses, high isolation level, wide isolation BW, and the
control of CF, BW, and PDR.
Index Terms—Four-way, filtering power divider (FPD),
single/dual/wide-band filtering response, tunable center
frequency, bandwidth and power divider ratio.
Manuscript received Sep 22, 2017; revised Nov 03, 2017; accepted
Dec 12, 2017. This work was supported in part by the State Key
Laboratory of Millimeter Waves open research program under Grant
K201614, the National Natural Science Foundation of China under
Grant 61401358, the Young Talent Fund of University Association for
Science and Technology in Shaanxi under Grant 20160202, and Natural
Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China under Grant
2017JM6034.
C. Zhu, and W. Wu are with the Ministerial Key Laboratory, JGMT,
Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
(email: zcmmzr@163.com).
J. Xu is with the School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern
Polytechnical University, 710072, Xi'an, China, and also with the State
Key Laboratory of Millimeter Waves, Southeast University, 210096,
Nanjing, P.R. China.
I. INTRODUCTION
ICRSTRIP four-way power dividers (PDs) with
high-selectivity, high isolation, and reconfigurability are
in great demand in RF/Microwave circuits and modern phased
antenna arrays. Many planar microstrip four-way PDs are
explored on the wide bandwidth [1], compact size [2], equal
ripple [3], dual-band performance [4], and arbitrary power
division [5]. However, the passband selectivity in [1]-[5] is
relatively poor. The passband selectivity of four-way PDs can
be improved by cascading a four-way PD and a bandpass filter
(BPF), which will lead to large circuit sizes. To reduce the
circuit sizes and the mismatching loss, extensive examples of
four-way filtering power dividers (FPDs) with various
advantages are conducted, such as the abilities to achieve single
/ triple-band [6], to obtain narrow BW [7], and to achieve wide
BW [8]-[10]. Nevertheless, the isolation [6] is relatively poor
since no isolation resistor is found in the circuit. In [7], a
four-way FPD is achieved by substituting a BPF for a
conventional quarter-wavelength transformer, leading to the
increased size. In [8]-[10], four-way wideband FPDs are
realized by adding multiple shunt stubs onto a conventional
four-way Wilkinson PD, which can realize multiple
transmission zeros (TZs) out of passband. However, the input
return losses in [8]-[10] are relatively poor. Moreover,
above-mentioned four-way FPDs [6]-[10] are designed at fixed
frequency and power division ratio (PDR), and some four-way
FPDs [7]-[10] are limited to single-band application.
Then several tunable FPDs are reported to realize tunable
single frequency [11]-[13], reconfigurable dual frequency
[14]-[16], and tunable frequency and BW [17]. Nevertheless,
most reported FPDs [11]-[17] are focused on two-way and
fixed PDR applications. Subsequently, a two-way
ultra-wideband PD with tunable PDR is realized in [18].
However, the passband selectivity is relatively poor and the
work is also designed at fixed frequency. Moreover, in those
reported multi-way PDs [1]-[10] and [18], the isolation
bandwidth (BW) for the output ports, especially for two
neighbor output ports (i.e., port 2 and 3, or 4 and 5), is relatively
narrow. So far, a microstrip four-way reconfigurable FPD
having wide isolation BW and simultaneous control of
frequency, BW, and PDR is less explored.
In this paper, a microstrip four-way reconfigurable
single/dual/wide-band FPD with tunable frequency, BW, and
Chuanming Zhu, Jin Xu, and Wen Wu, Senior Member, IEEE
Microstrip Four-Way Reconfigurable
Single/Dual/Wide-Band Filtering Power Divider
With Tunable Frequency, Bandwidth, and PDR
M