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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006

Compact Wide-Band Branch-Line Hybrids

Young-Hoon Chun, Member, IEEE, and Jia-Sheng Hong, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractWide-band branch-line couplers are designed and

tested. The proposed couplers feature compact size on a single circuit layer structure without via-holes. For the broad-band property
and cost effectiveness, we have designed a four-branch hybrid with
mixed distributed and lumped distributed elements. Analysis on
the equivalent circuits was performed carefully in order to obtain
a sufficient bandwidth with reduced design area. The fabricated
hybrids have the fractional bandwidth larger than 56% at the
center frequency of 2 GHz. They also show size reduction up to
55.2% compared with the conventional design method.
Index TermsBranch-line, broad-band, couplers, hybrids,
lumped distributed elements, microstrip line, planar circuits.

I. INTRODUCTION

IDE-BAND circuits are now in demand as wide-band

systems such as ultra-wideband (UWB) become practical. In general, a wide-band circuit requires a large design
area or complicated structure such as a three-dimensional coupling structure or wire-bonding connections. Modern communication systems also need various hybrids to enable digital data
transmit via microwave bands. Thus, several types of microwave
quadrature hybrids have been reported for the realization of
balanced circuits and matched attenuators and phase shifters
[1][4]. The branch-line coupler is one of the most popular hybrids for the convenience of design and implementation. It, however, has narrow-band characteristics and requires a large circuit
area. In order to reduce the size of branch-line hybrids, many
authors have suggested several solutions [3][7]. While lumped
or lumped distributed elements give us a chance to have a small
design area, they cannot enhance the bandwidth. Only the cascaded branch line can enlarge the bandwidth when we choose
it as a quadrature hybrid circuit. In fact, there are other circuits
for a broad-band hybrid, such as a Lange coupler, tandem coupler, and so on. Although they show wide-band performances
with small sizes, most of them need multilayered or air-bridged
structures for tight coupling and signal routing (crossover) over
a wide frequency range. The requirement for air-bridges results
in more masks and fabrication processes, leading to more costs.
Moreover, these air-bridges would represent a bottleneck for
power handling and, hence, limit the applications of Lange and
tandem couplers. To this end, it would be desirable to develop
an alternative hybrid that can achieve a better tradeoff between
bandwidth, size, and power handling. This study stemmed from

Manuscript received July 10, 2005; revised September 12, 2005. This work
was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Science Research
Council under Grant GR/S68910/01. The work of Y.-H Chun was supported by
the Korea Research Foundation under a Postdoctoral Fellowship Program.
The authors are with the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer
Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, U.K. (e-mail:
younghoon@ieee.org; j.hong@hw.ac.uk).
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2005.862657

Fig. 1. Size reduction scheme using lumped distributed elements.

(a) Conventional transmission line. (b) Equivalent transmission line with
a series transmission line and two open stubs. (c) Equivalent lumped-element
model for calculating the cutoff frequency.

our recent development of high-power RF microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) switches for which 90 -hybrids with high
power-handling capability are needed for designing high power
single-poledouble-throw (SPDT) switches.
The loaded line is a popular method to reduce the size of
transmission-line circuits such as branch-line and ring hybrids,
which is important for planar integrated circuits [5][7]. The
results using a loaded line show good efficiency with regard to
size reduction. Nevertheless, more consideration of analysis and
design for wide-band applications is required. In [8], we have
shown a highly miniaturized branch-line hybrid, as well as its
simple analysis.
In this paper, we further propose a novel design of a cascaded
branch-line coupler, which has four branch lines using lumped
distributed elements. The desired 90 hybrid should have a good
performance such as return loss and isolation better than 20 dB
over 55% or wider bandwidth, and a small size on a single-layer
circuit without using any air-bridges. The investigation has led
to the design of the proposed hybrids. For our design, we use an
approach based on circuit models. Since an equivalent circuit
may make the bandwidth shrink in general, and it can be critical
when it is used for broad-band designs, we take into account the
frequency responses of the equivalent circuit used and decide a
proper configuration for broad-band circuits. Furthermore, the
simulated and measured results of the proposed hybrids are also
presented.
II. ANALYSIS
Fig. 1 shows a conventional transmission line and its equivalent circuit using lumped distributed elements. By applying
-parameters of the equivaa matrix formulation, the
lent circuit shown in Fig. 1(b) can be deduced. Equating the

0018-9480/$20.00 2006 IEEE

CHUN AND HONG: COMPACT WIDE-BAND BRANCH-LINE HYBRIDS

705

-matrices for both the circuits shown in Fig. 1(a) and

(b) results in (1), shown at the bottom of this page, where
(2)
is the input admittance of the open stubs in Fig. 1(b). From (1),
two design equations can be derived as follows:
(3)
(4)
Note that we assume
for our applications
and discussions, which makes
in (3) always positive for a
capacitive loading. We can also estimate the cutoff frequency for
the low-pass filter-like structure in Fig. 1(b) and its equivalent
circuit in Fig. 1(c). Each parameter in Fig. 1(c) is defined as
follows [9]. Define a 3-dB cutoff frequency as follows:
(5)
We then obtain
(6)

is the cutoff frequency of the equivalent circuit in

where
Fig. 1(b) and
is, in general, a nominated operation frequency
and
are deterat which the equivalent lumped elements
can be taken as the center frequency of
mined. In our case,
a coupler.
Equation (6) sets out the higher frequency or bandwidth limit
for the equivalent circuit, which depends on several design pais
rameters. For wide-band operations, a larger ratio of
desirable, which, however, will be a tradeoff with size reduction. Using (4) and (6), Fig. 2 plots the cutoff frequency and
the required characteristic impedance of series transmission
against the ratio of the electrical length
and for
line
and . The ratio of
and represents the
given values of
size reduction of the transmission line. Its lower value ensures
the compact design area. Fig. 2 indicates a guideline to choose
a unit section.
For a demonstration, we select a transmission line of Fig. 1(a)
and the electrical
with the characteristic impedance
as a unit line section. It can be replaced by an
length
equivalent distributed lumped element circuit in Fig. 1(b) with
the characteristic impedance of a series transmission line

and the cutoff frequency varying with the value of the electrical
length of a series transmission line . This is shown in Fig. 2(a).
and the cutoff frequency when
Fig. 2(b) shows the ranges for
the electrical length of the unit line section is 45 .
For a broad-band circuit, we should choose a unit section with
transmisthe higher cutoff frequency. As shown in Fig. 2, a
sion line of Fig. 1(a) can hardly be converted into a single unit
section of Fig. 1(b) for wide-band operation. In order to have
more than 50% higher cutoff frequency, the maximum size reduction is approximately 10% when we look at Fig. 2(a). Comequivalent transmission line, which
pared with this result, a
consists of two 45 unit sections, as shown in Fig. 2(b), has a
higher cutoff frequency than the case of using a single unit section in Fig. 2(a). If the desirable size reduction is 50%, the ratio
of and should be approximately 0.5. For this condition, the
can be improved from 0.8 to 1.5 when
cutoff frequency
the unit length is shortened from 90 to 45 , which is found in
Fig. 2(a) and (b). The cutoff frequency is, however, defined as
a 3-dB degrade frequency for a unit section such as (5). Therefore, cascading unit sections shrink the bandwidth. For example,
while a unit section has the cutoff frequency of 7.7 GHz, the cascade circuit with four unit sections has the cutoff frequency of
7.2 GHz. Moreover, the line impedance varies as the frequency
goes near the cutoff frequency.
Furthermore, the dimension of an open stub, as well as the
unit length of a series line, influences the cutoff frequency. It
arises from the frequency-dependent characteristic of a distributed element that has not only capacitive, but also inductive
characteristics while the analysis is performed for a capacitive
loaded line. The amplitude and phase responses of the reduced
lines with the same series line and different open stubs are
plotted in Fig. 3. As the impedance of an open stub decreases,
the cutoff frequency increased. This is because the length of
the open stub shrinks for a lower line impedance in order to
given by (3) and, thus, a shorter
have a desired admittance
open-circuited stub with lower characteristic impedance leads
to a better approximation to a lumped-element capacitor over a
wide frequency range. For the case of using a 50- open stub,
the cutoff frequency can go down up to 80% of the calculated
, and it can be enhanced by the use of a
cutoff frequency
short open stub (low-impedance line stub). The higher limit for
this value is close to the calculated value in (6), which is also
shown in Fig. 4.
From this condition, even if a 45 unit section could enhance
the performance rather than a 90 unit section, we need higher
cutoff frequency for wide-band applications, which require
more than 50% fractional bandwidth. As you can find in
Fig. 2(c), when we adopt a 30 line section for the unit section,

(1)

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006

Fig. 3. Block diagram of: (a) a miniaturized transmission line and its
characteristics with different open stubs. (b) Amplitude responses. (c) Phase
responses.

III. DESIGN OF WIDE-BAND HYBRIDS

Fig. 2. Z and the normalized cutoff frequency variations as a function of

 = . (a) Z = 50
and  = 90 . (b) Z = 50
and  = 45 . (c) Z =
50
and  = 30 .

we can get a cutoff frequency ratio

of 2.2, which
guarantees a wide-band operation in spite of degradation due
to cascading unit sections and adopting open stubs.
From the results in this section, we can assume that unit element with the length of 12.5 (for a size reduction factor of
and the impedance of an open stub of less than
50 make the fractional bandwidth more than 50%.

With the results in Section II, we can start to design hybrids

with wide bandwidthmore than 50%. Initially, we followed
a design method described in [10], and designed a cascaded
branch-line coupler, which has four branch lines to achieve a
fractional bandwidth of 60%, as shown in Fig. 5(a). The design
parameters can be found as follows:

This design, however, occupies a large circuit area. In order

to reduce the area, we adopted lumped distributed elements, as

CHUN AND HONG: COMPACT WIDE-BAND BRANCH-LINE HYBRIDS

707

TABLE I
CHOICE OF OPEN STUB

Fig. 4. Comparison of frequency responses between distributed model in

Fig. 1(b) (solid lines) and lumped-element model in Fig. 1(c) (symbolized
lines) when the line impedance of the open stub is 15
.

Fig. 6. Simulation result of a prototype branch-line hybrid, which adopts ideal

transmission-line elements with the calculation results from the Section III.

the parameters as follows because its cutoff frequency will be

high enough and its dimension is practical to implement:

Fig. 5. Conventional branch-line hybrid with four branch lines. (a) Schematic
diagram. (b) Designed prototype hybrid.

shown in Fig. 1. We should consider frequency responses for the

equivalent circuit over a wide frequency range because it would
be used in a broad-band circuit.
Thus we chose to be 30 for the broad-band property, and
to be 12.5 for the size reduction and implementation of the high
and
characteristic impedance of . Once is determined,
can be calculated by (3) and (4). The dimensions for an open
stub can also be determined by (2) and the layout conditions. We
designed the initial values for a unit section, which operates as
transmission line with
as follows:
a

S
We can choose one of the parameters of open stubs in Table I
S. In this case, we decide
with the susceptance of

At the same time, we can design the 58- line as well by the
identical method. Its design parameters are as follows:

Other four high impedance lines with

and
will maintain their parameters because the
impedance of a series line for an equivalent circuit is too high
to implement for a meaningful size reduction. Fig. 6 shows the
simulation result for the parameters that are calculated here.
All the elements in this simulation are ideal transmission lines.
IV. SIMULATED AND MEASURED RESULTS
For experimental demonstration, two hybrids were constructed using a dielectric substrate with a relative dielectric

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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 54, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2006

Fig. 7. Fabricated hybrids. (a) Type A: each open-stub is rearranged for

size reduction. (b) Type B: high-impedance lines are meandered for further
reduction.

Fig. 9. Measured phase difference between two quadrature outputs for hybrids
of types A and B.

TABLE II
SUMMARY OF PERFORMANCES FOR HYBRIDS

Fig. 8. Simulated and measured S -parameters of the hybrids: (a) type A and
(b) type B. (Solid linessimulated results, symbolsmeasured results.)

constant of 3.05 and a thickness of 1.54 mm. The two quadrature hybrids operated at the center frequency of 2 GHz were
designed using the design parameters that were determined
in Section III. We have performed both circuit modeled simulation and electromagnetic (EM) simulation using Agilent
ADS. The lumped distributed elements make the frequency
responses different from the prototype hybrid, which consists
of conventional transmission lines. In order to achieve a good

frequency response, optimization was performed using Agilent

ADS.
The fabricated hybrids are shown in Fig. 7. Type A in Fig. 7(a)
has open stubs, which are arranged to reduce the circuit area. The
further size reduction can be achieved by meandering the highimpedance lines. The resultant coupler is shown in Fig. 7(b) as
type B design.
Scattering parameter measurements were performed using an
Agilent 8753 D network analyzer over the frequency range from
1 to 3 GHz. Fig. 8 gives the simulated and measured responses
of the hybrids in which the fractional band width were found
to be over 55%. Furthermore, the phase unbalance between two
quadrature outputs of less than 3 over the operating bandwidth
was observed in Fig. 9. Comparing modeled and measured results reveals a very good agreement. It was believed that the
little discrepancy between simulated and measured results is
mainly caused by the junction discontinuities and the tolerance
in fabrications.
Table II shows a comparison of the bandwidth and the circuit
areas occupied by the conventional hybrid design and those proposed in this paper. The size of the proposed branch-line coupler
is from 44.8% to 54.0% of a conventional design, while the fractional bandwidth was similar to conventional hybrids. This level
of size reduction is expected to be achievable for other frequencies and substrates.

CHUN AND HONG: COMPACT WIDE-BAND BRANCH-LINE HYBRIDS

V. CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed a compact broad-band branch-line
hybrid and has analyzed it. Following a design process through
this analysis, we have designed and tested two types of wideband hybrids. It is promising for high-power and wide-band applications with a single-layered structure. The measurement of
experimental demonstrators has demonstrated that the proposed
quadrature hybrid does have a broad bandwidth and small size.
This hybrid can be easily constructed by applying conventional
monolithic-microwave integrated-circuit (MMIC) techniques. It
could be an especially good choice for the application in which
the operating bandwidth increases and the handling power goes
higher. Furthermore, we hope that it helps to decrease the fabrication costs and increase the yields because it consists of no element that needs a multilayered or air-bridged structure. The application of this type of hybrid to the development of high-power
RF MEMS SPDT switches is under consideration.
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[1] J. Lange, Interdigitated strip-line quadrature coupler, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. MTT-17, no. 12, pp. 11501151, Dec. 1969.
[2] G. Carchon, W. De Raedt, and B. Nauwelaers, Integration of CPW
quadrature couplers in multilayer thin-film MCM-D, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 49, no. 10, pp. 177017 776, Oct. 2001.
[3] D. P. Andrews and C. S. Aitchison, Wide-band lumped-element quadrature 3-dB coupler in microstrip, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol.
48, no. 12, pp. 24242431, Dec. 2000.
[4] Y.-C. Chiang and C.-Y. Chen, Design of a wide-band lumped-element
3-dB quadrature coupler, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 49,
no. 3, pp. 476479, Mar. 2001.
[5] R. W. Vogel, Analysis and design of lumped- and lumped-distributedelement directional couplers for MIC and MMIC applications, IEEE
Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 40, no. 2, pp. 253262, Feb. 1992.
[6] K. W. Eccleston and S. H. Ong, Compact planar microstripline branchline and rat-race couplers, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 51,
no. 10, pp. 21192125, Oct. 2003.
[7] H. Ghali and T. A. Moselhy, Miniaturized fractal rat-race, branch-line,
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709

[8] Y.-H. Chun and J.-S. Hong, Design of a compact broad-band branchline hybrid, presented at the IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig.,
Long Beach, CA, Jun. 2005.
[9] J.-S. Hong and M. J. Lancaster, Microstrip Filters for RF/Microwave
Applications. New York: Wiley, 2001, ch. 4, pp. 93102.
[10] M. Muracuchi, T. Yukitake, and Y. Naito, Optimum design of 3-dB
branch-line couplers using microstrip lines, IEEE Trans. Microw.
Theory Tech., vol. MTT-31, no. 8, pp. 674678, Aug. 1983.

Young-Hoon Chun (M00) received the M.S.

and Ph.D. degrees in electronic engineering from
Sogang University, Seoul, Korea, in 1995 and 2000,
respectively.
From 2000 to 2005, he was with the research
staff of the Millimeter-Wave Innovation Technology
(MINT) Research Center, Dongguk University,
Seoul, Korea. In June 2004, he visited Heriot-Watt
University, Edinburgh, U.K. Since July 2005, he has
been a Research Associate with the Department of
Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering,
Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K. His research area includes microwave
active filters, RF MEMS, passive and active millimeter-wave devices, and
multifunctional integrated devices for RF front-ends.

Jia-Sheng Hong (M94SM05) received the D.Phil.

degree in engineering science from the University of
Oxford, Oxford, U.K., in 1994. His doctoral dissertation concerned EM theory and applications.
In 1994, he joined the University of Birmingham,
where he was involved with microwave applications
of high-temperature superconductors, EM modeling,
and circuit optimization. In 2001, he joined the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Computer Engineering, Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K.,
as a faculty member leading a team concerned with
research into advanced RF/microwave device technologies. He has authored and
coauthored over 100 journal and conference papers. He also authored Microstrip
Filters for RF/Microwave Applications (Wiley, 2001). His current interests involve RF/microwave devices, such as antennas and filters, for wireless communications and radar systems, as well as novel material and device technologies including RF MEMS, ferroelectric, and high-temperature superconducting
devices.