An Efficient and Comapct Design of Coupled-Line Unequal Wilkinson Power Divider

In this paper, 3:1 and 10:1 unequal Wilkinson power dividers are designed and investigated. Unequal power dividers are an integral part of the feeding network for antenna array where their performance affects a group of elements rather than an individual element. Thus, there is a need for an accurate design for such dividers. A coupled-line section with two grounding via has been used to attain the high characteristic impedance line. This is done in order to outplay the microstrip fabrication constraints of printing very thin/fine conductor lines. Further to reduce the size of the structure, meandering of the transmission line has been done which procreates three designs, namely: 00 Serpentine Flexure, 1800 Serpentine Flexure and Compact Meandered Flexure. Verification of the design methodology has been done by creating a 10:1 Unequal WPD. The structures are implemented on a high-resistive silicon substrate (HRS) for a centre frequency of 1.575 GHz. Further, their EM analysis is done in terms of S-parameters such as return loss and insertion loss using commercially available FEM solver. Satisfactory RF performance, with return loss better than -10 dB and required power split for all the structures, has been achieved.