BUILDING LOW COST COUPLER: MADE EASY
Keywords:
Power combiner, power splitter, FR-4, Wilkinson combiner, power dividers.Abstract
Power dividers (also power splitters and, when used in reverse, power combiners) are passive devices used in
the field of radio technology. They couple a defined amount of the electromagnetic power in a transmission line to
another port where it can be used in another circuit. The Wilkinson divider splitter / Wilkinson combiner is a form of
power splitter / power combiner that is often used in microwave applications. It uses quarter wave transformers, which
are easily fabricated as quarter wave lines on printed circuit boards and as a result it offers the possibility of proving a
very cheap and simple splitter / divider / combiner while still providing high levels of performance. In principle, low loss
specialized microwave substrates are used for best results. However, since substrate cost is the dominant factor for
microstrip passive circuits there is a need to use cheaper materials such as FR4 without compromising the performance .
