5. CONCLUSION
This article has introduced a lightweight crossed dipole antenna
with a compact size and CP radiation for RFID in the UHF
band. The proposed antenna was designed and fabricated on
both sides of a thin substrate with a low density to achieve a
light weight. Printed inductors were inserted in the dipole arm
with a barbed-shaped end to reduce the dipole length and, con-
sequently, to achieve a compact size. To generate the CP radia-
tion, two dipoles were crossed through a 90
phase-delay line of
a vacant-quarter printed ring, which enabled the broadband char-
acteristic in terms of impedance and the 3-dB AR bandwidths.
This antenna, exhibiting many advantages, can be widely
applied to UHF RFID handheld readers.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research was supported by The Ministry of Knowledge
Economy, Korea, under the Information Technology Research
Center support program (NIPA-2012-H0301-12-2007) supervised
by the National IT Industry Promotion Agency.
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V
C
2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
90
BRANCH-LINE COUPLER WITH
RECONFIGURABLE OUTPUT POWER
RATIOS
Ariunzaya Batgerel
1
and Soon-Young Eom
2
1
Department of Mobile Communication and Digital Broadcasting
Engineering, Daejeon, South Korea; Corresponding author:
ariunzaya@etri.re.kr
2
Department of Radio Technology Research, Smart Radio Infrastruc-
ture Research Team, Electronics and Telecommunications Research
Institute, Daejeon, Korea
Received 12 December 2012
ABSTRACT: This letter introduces a new 90
branch-line coupler with
reconfigurable output power ratios (90
BC-ROPR). Unlike a conven-
tional branch-line coupler structure, each arm of the proposed 90
BC-
ROPR is defined by an asymmetrically coupled-line, and its characteris-
tic impedance depends on the configuration of the coupled-line. The
main problem that challenged this structure was unwanted loop reso-
nance from the inner transmission lines which form a loop in a discon-
nected configuration. The proposed structure was designed to obtain 1:1
and 4:1 output power ratios at 3 GHz. Both the simulation and measure-
ment results confirm that the proposed branch-line coupler successfully
dealt with the loop resonance and achieved excellent performance.
V
C
2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 55:1878–
1881, 2013; View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. DOI
10.1002/mop.27703
Key words: power divider; 90
branch-line coupler; reconfigurable
branch-line coupler; reconfigurable output power ratio
1. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, reconfigurable RF and antenna systems are
attracting more and more attention. To achieve such versatile sys-
tems, microwave components are also required to be reconfigura-
ble or multifunctioning. A branch-line coupler is one of the key
components in microwave circuits and used in power amplifiers,
phase shifters, mixers, and array antenna feed systems.
A large number of coupler structures have been reported for
unequal or arbitrary power splits, and dual or broadband charac-
teristics [1–4]. Despite of its need in many applications, struc-
tures for a reconfigurable coupler which can provide different
output power ratios are, however, less in the literature.
In this letter, we propose a new 90
branch-line coupler with
reconfigurable output power ratios (90
BC-ROPR). A slot with
a certain width splits each arm of the proposed structure into
two parallel transmission lines creating inner and outer loops.
Two bypass capacitors, four diodes, and two DC biasing circuits
were used to control the proposed structure for reconfigurable
outputs.
The proposed structure and its designing considerations are
given in Section 2. The simulation and measurement results are
discussed in Section 3. In the final section, conclusion can be
found.
2. PROPOSED STRUCTURE AND DESIGNING
CONSIDERATION
In Figure 1(a), a conventional 90
branch-line coupler is shown.
Matched with the impedance of Z
0
at all four ports, the conven-
tional structure obtains power split with ratio of M:N at two out-
put ports if the branch-line characteristic impedances, Z
1
and Z
2
,
satisfy the Eqs. (1) and (2), Ref. 5. The electrical length of each
arm is 90
at an operating frequency, that is, h
1
5 h
2
5 90
.
1878 MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 55, No. 8, August 2013 DOI 10.1002/mop