A compact design of ultra-wideband microstrip-slot six-port network for wireless communication applications

Abstract

There is a lot of interest in the research and development related to ultra-wideband (UWB) systems because of the increasing demands on applications with low power, low cost, and low interference. Thus, to cope with these demands, various kinds of research are required for the development of a wireless communication transceiver front-end, which includes a six-port network as an alternative to a mixer-based design. Hence, this article presents a compact design for the UWB six-port network that uses two 3-dB couplers, an in-phase power divider, and a 90° power divider. The proposed network is developed using the microstrip-slot technique, which guarantees satisfactory operation across the UWB frequency range with compact dimensions. The design is performed via the use of CST Microwave Studio and realized using Rogers TMM4 with a conductor coating of 35 µm, a thickness of 0.508 mm, and a dielectric constant of 4.5. The developed prototype of the proposed design is verified by measurement using a vector network analyzer (VNA). Performance analysis concerns transmission and reflection coefficients, phase characteristics, and q-points. The presented UWB performance of the proposed six-port network is expected can be implemented for quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulator and demodulator applications in various wireless communication transceivers such as fifth generation (5G), and wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi).