This paper presents an efficient yet straightforward passive reconfiguration technique to tune the operating frequency of a branch-line crossover (BLCO). The underlying principle is to fill rectangular dielectric channels (RDCs) prepared beforehand with either air or materials of different relative permittivity. Two configurations (one RDC and three RDCs in each arm) of the branch-line crossover are employed to estimate the tunability...

In this letter, a miniaturized hybrid dual-band branch-line coupler (BLC) with enhanced fractional bandwidths is proposed. Compact size and bandwidth enhancement are obtained using meandered transmission line sections with broken symmetry between cross-coupling branches. The circuit is designed at a low numerical cost using surrogate-assisted techniques. The optimized design features small size of only 0.25λg×0.19λg(28% miniaturization...

A case study of novel slow-wave resonant structures dedicated to efficient microstrip branch-line coupler size reduction has been presented. A compact 3-dB branch-line coupler has been designed to mimic the performance of its conventional counterpart, simultaneously demonstrating a substantial 88% surface area reduction. The vital usefulness of the approach in the process of microstrip line abbreviation has been experimentally...

This paper presents a novel design of a wideband highly-selective bandpass filtering branch-line coupler (FBLC). By integrating a coupled microstrip line, and an open-ended stub at each port of a single-section BLC, bandpass filtering characteristics with excellent selectivity and broad operating bandwidth have been achieved. The proposed circuit has been verified through EM simulations and physical measurements of the fabricated...

Branch-line couplers (BLCs) are important components of wireless communication systems. Conventional BLCs are often characterized by large footprints which make miniaturization an important prerequisite for their application in modern devices. State-of-the-art approaches to design of compact BLCs are largely based on the use of high-permittivity substrates and multi-layer topologies. Alternative methods involve replacement of transmission-line...