1303 HFE Wilkenson

High Frequency Design
Wilkinson Power Dividers
Feasibility of Microstrip
Wilkinson Power Dividers on
FR4 Substrates for L-Band
(1-2 GHz) Applications
By Christos Kalialakis, EETT
1. Introduction resistive divider or the T-junction. The design

The feasibility of using Microstrip structures principles are included here for completeness,
FR4 is investigated via are very popular choices following Pozar [5]. The signal from the input
the testing of Wilkinson both for circuits and port is split into two coupled lines quarter
power dividers operating antennas. Wilkinson wavelength long that lead to the two output
in portions of the L-band power dividers in ports. The layout of Figure 1 assumes microstrip
(1-2 GHz). microstrip form are indis- form i.e. a signal line printed on the top side of
pensable components for a fully metalized substrate, the bottom side
printed antenna array feeding networks. In serving as the ground plane.
principle, low loss specialized microwave sub- There is no power lost in the divider. All the
strates are used for best results. However, since ports can be matched. The presence of resistor
substrate cost is the dominant factor for dissipates only the reflected power.
microstrip passive circuits [1], there is a need The most important performance metric is
to use cheaper materials such as FR4 without the 3 dB power split. Adopting the port conven-
compromising the performance. tion of Figure 1 the power split is expressed via
In this paper, the feasibility of using FR4 is the S21 and S31 scattering parameters. The
investigated via the testing of Wilkinson power isolation between ports is measured by S23 and
dividers operating in portions of the L-band S32. The matching of each port is measured by
(1-2 GHz). The 1-2 GHz band serves significant S11, S22, S33. All scattering parameters can be
wireless applications such as cellular mobile [2] readily measured via a vector network analyz-
and mobile satellite data [3]. er.
The principles of the Wilkinson power
divider operation, microstrip imple-
mentation and fabrication details are
given in section 2. Results are given
in section 3 using a divider built on
Duroid as a performance benchmark.
A discussion on FR4 tolerances
and potential consequences on ampli-
tude and phase errors is also includ-
ed in Section 4.
2. Principles of Wilkinson Power

Divider Design
Wilkinson [4] proposed a power
divider design that provides isolation Figure 1 • Conceptual layout of a microstrip Wilkinson
between the output ports unlike the Power Divider.
22 High Frequency Electronics

Figure 2 • Layout of a microstrip Wilkinson Power Divider

(top layer) with a chip resistor.
Figure 2 shows the actual layout of the divider. Recall

that the impedance for a given substrate dielectric con-
stant and height is governed by the width of the line [6]
(see Equation 1 below) whereas the length is equivalent to
a delay expressed in wavelengths or degrees at the target
design frequency. The resistance of Figure 1 is in reality a
chip resistor of 100Ω.
It should be noted that there are many design varia-
tions extensions that achieve broadbanding or multiple Figure 3 • Measured power split for Wilkinson dividers
band operation, see for example [7,8]. The focus of this note for FR4 substrates compared with Duroid.
is on the substrate choice rather than optimal design.
of greater loss. Considering that substrates with varying
3. Experimental Results
thickness exhibit different loss and variations from the
Substrates are characterized mostly by their dielectric
nominal dielectric constant, FR4 thin substrates with
constant and loss tangent. Usually for microwave applica-
thickness h=0.5mm and h=1mm were tested. As bench-
tions low loss highly stable dielectric constant such as
mark substrate a Duroid microwave substrate with thick-
Duroid are used. On the other hand, PCB circuits are usu-
ness 1.11 mm and dielectric constant εr=2.2 is used.
ally fabricated on FR4 which is cheap but on the expense
Two dividers were built on FR4 and one on Duroid.
Input matching was better than -10 dB for all three ver-
sions. The 3 dB power split is shown in Figure 3.
It can be seen (Figure 3) that the power split of the
FR4-1mm substrate introduces about 0.5 dB loss whereas
the FR4-05mm substrate, maintains a good split but for
half the bandwidth of the Duroid one.
The measured return loss, for the frequency band of
Figure 3, was better than 10 dB, i.e. VSWR<2 for all the
dividers.
4. Tolerance Analysis and Error Effects

The substrate used was FR4 with a nominal dielectric
constant of εr=4.2. FR4 is a mix of epoxy resin and glass.
The glass additions can cause variations of the constant up
to 4.6 especially for thicker substrates. The 4.2 value is
more appropriate for thin substrates. The impedance of a
microstrip line is given by [6].
(1)
The tolerance in the dielectric constant could lead to a
maximum impedance error of about 2 Ω .
The dielectric constant variations change the guided
wavelength. Since the divider is using quarter wavelength
sections (Figure 1), the tolerances can cause phase errors
up to 4.4 degrees/ quarter wavelength.
These substrate tolerances can cause errors in the Dr. Kalialakis is an IEEE Senior Member and a regular
power splitters. The most direct consequence of that in an reviewer for several journals.
antenna array fed by such splitters is an increase in the
minor sidelobes level. References:
[1] R.Garg, P.Bartia, I.Bahl and A.Ittipiboon, Microstrip
5. Conclusions Antenna Design Handbook, Artech House, 2001.
It was found that the Wilkinson divider on the 0.5 mm [2] T.S.Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and
thickness FR4 has comparable behavior to the specialized Practice, IEEE Press, 1996.
substrate divider and could be considered as a cheap and [3] K.Y. Jo, Satellite Communications Network Design and
viable alternative for applications in the 1-2 GHz band. Analysis, 2011.
[4] E.J.Wilkinson, “An N-Way Hybrid Power Divider, “ IRE
About the Author: Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol.8, no.1,
Christos Kalialakis was born in Watrellos, France. He pp.116-118, January 1960.
was awarded a Ph.D. in Electronic and Electrical [5] D.Pozar, Microwave Engineering, 2nd edition, John Wiley,
Engineering from the University of Birmingham, UK in 1998.
1999. He received the B.Sc. in Physics and the Master in [6] T.C. Edwards, Foundations for Microstrip Circuit Design,
Telecommunications in 1993 and 1995, both from the John Wiley, 1992.
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece (A.U.Th). He [7] S.Horst, R.Bairavasubramanian, M.M.Tentzeris, J.
has industry experience working in the UK as an antenna Papapolymerou, “Modified Wilkinson Power Dividers for
designer and then in Greece as an RF Hardware Engineer Millimeter-Wave Integrated Circuits,” IEEE Transactions on
working on RFIC testing and measurement. Since the end Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol.55, no.11, pp.2439-2446,
of 2002, he has been employed by EETT (National Nov. 2007.
Regulatory Authority of Greece), first as an Expert on [8] Y. Wu, Y. Liu, S. Li, C. Yu, and X. Liu, “Closed-form design
Wireless Communications and since 2004 as Deputy Head method of an N-way dual-band Wilkinson hybrid power divider,”
of the Thessaloniki Regional Office. He is also a lecturer Progress In Electromagnetics Research, Vol. 101, 97-114, 2010.
adjunct at the Radiocommunications Laboratory, A.U.Th.

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High Frequency Design

Wilkinson Power Dividers

1. Introduction resistive divider or the T-junction. The design

2. Principles of Wilkinson Power

22 High Frequency Electronics

Figure 2 • Layout of a microstrip Wilkinson Power Divider

Figure 2 shows the actual layout of the divider. Recall

4. Tolerance Analysis and Error Effects

26 High Frequency Electronics

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