This study describes a concept of a novel microstrip directional coupler for differential signal decoupling, which can be used to digital signal overhearing on printed-circuit-boards. The complete design method is proposed with rules given analytically. Considered methodology is suitable for synthesis of couplers with low coupling factors, which have negligible influence on the transmission in main line. Theoretical considerations...

In this work, a step-by-step development of a compact microstrip rat-race coupler (RRC) has been presented and discussed. A high degree of miniaturization has been obtained by substituting six quarter-wavelength uniform atomic building blocks of a RRC by their nonuniform counterparts. The miniaturization procedure has been realized in three progressive steps: (i) the first layout solution of a miniaturized RRC has been acquired...

In this paper, a novel structure and design procedure of a miniaturized microstrip rat-race coupler (RRC) is described. Small size of the RRC is achieved by folding the transmission lines of the conventional circuit into its interior, as well as by implementation of the structure on three layers. The final size of the coupler realized for the operating frequency of 1 GHz is only 220 mm2, which gives over 95% footprint reduction...

In this paper, a novel structure of a miniaturized microstrip rat-race coupler has been proposed. Surrogate-based optimization procedures are applied to explicitly reduce the coupler size while maintaining equal power split at the operating frequency of 1 GHz and sufficient bandwidth for return loss and isolation characteristics. The optimization is performed using the objective function with four penalty components. The footprint...

Microwave hybrid couplers are crucial components of mixers, phase shifters, amplifiers and other high-frequency systems. Conventional couplers are characterized by large size which limits their usefulness in modern applications. In this work, a novel compact rat-race coupler with enhanced bandwidth has been proposed. The structure consists of six compact microstrip resonant cells. It is implemented on two separate layers which permits...