A Compact Six-Port Power Divider With Two Independent Out-of-Phase Dividing Operations

This paper presents a compact six-port power divider with simple structure that performs two independent out-of-phase divisions. The proposed power divider consists of a uniplanar ring crossover with four transmission lines for output and two feeding lines. The S-parameter matrix of the proposed power divider is derived analytically, and it is shown that the two independent out-of-phase divisions are realized when the circumferential length of the ring is one guided wavelength lambda(g) whereas conventional power dividers require a 2 lambda(g) or 2.5 lambda(g) ring. Two power dividers configured with striplines were designed to have -10-dB impedance bandwidths of 5% and 10% with a center frequency of 2.45 GHz. The designed power dividers were fabricated and two independent out-of-phase divisions having small amplitude imbalance were verified by measurements. Because of its compactness, the proposed power divider might be applied to the feeding network of dual-feed dual-polarized array antennas with narrow element spacing.