Isolation Enhanced Multiway Power Divider for Wideband (4: 1) Beamforming Arrays

This paper proposes a multiway power divider for wideband (4:1) beamforming arrays. The divider’s input reflection characteristic (S11) is achieved using a multisection stepped-impedance transformer. Moreover, the divider’s isolation (S32) bandwidth is increased by incorporating inductors and capacitors in addition to the conventional resistor only isolation networks of the divider. The analysis of the proposed divider and comparison with the previous research model was conducted with four-way configuration. A prototype of a wideband eight-way power divider is fabricated and measured. The measured fractional bandwidth is about 137% from 1.3 to 6.8GHz with the −10 dB criteria of input reflection (S11), output reflection (S22) and isolation (S32) simultaneously. key words: bandwidth optimization, beamforming array, isolation bandwidth, wideband multiway power divider