Performance Comparison of 4x4 Bulter Matrices Designed with Stripline Broadside-Couplers and Microstrip Branch-Line Couplers

S.-C. Chang, S.-F. Chang, and C.-J. Tsai (Taiwan)

Keywords

Bulter matrix, broadside coupler, branch-line coupler, phase shifter, multi-beam antenna, switched-beam antenna

Abstract

This paper presents and compares two realization methods of a 4×4 Bulter matrix for the third-generation mobile communication applications. The first realization method is based on the tri-layer stripline broadside coupler and the other method uses the microstrip branch line couplers. The stripline broadside coupler makes use of the tight coupling effect to achieve broadband 3-dB quadrature coupling performance than the branch-line coupler. Therefore, the Bulter matrix based on the broadside coupler has wider bandwidth and takes significantly less size. The measurement results of the broadside-coupled Bulter matrix show that the insertion losses are less than 0.6 dB, amplitude imbalances are within ±0.65 dB, and phase imbalances within ±3o from 1.5 GHz to 2.5 GHz and its size is only 20% of the branch-line-coupler-based Bulter matrix.

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