Printed Ridge Gap Waveguide 3-dB Coupler: Analysis and Design Procedure

• Published in: IEEE access Vol. 6; pp. 8501 - 8509
• Main Authors: Ali, Mohamed Mamdouh M., Shams, Shoukry I., Sebak, Abdel-Razik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway IEEE 01.01.2018; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: 5G mobile communication; Bandwidth; Beam switching; Communications systems; Couplers; Frequencies; Hybrid coupler; Impedance; Millimeter waves; Periodic structures; printed ridge gap waveguide; Quadratures; Stripline; Subsystems; Waveguide discontinuities; Waveguides
• ISSN: 2169-3536; 2169-3536
• DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2784801

Communication systems are witnessing an outstanding revolution that has a clear impact on all aspects of life. The world technology is drifting towards high frequency and data rate solutions to accommodate the future expansion in applications such as 5G communications. The 5G technology will offer advanced features in the mm-Wave frequency band which requires intelligent subsystems such as beam switching. Therefore, the microwave components, especially couplers, still need a significant improvement to follow the rapid variations in future technologies. One of the most recent and promising guiding technologies for mm-Wave applications is the printed ridge gap waveguide (PRGW). In this paper, a design of 3-dB planar quadrature hybrid coupler based on PRGW is presented. The proposed design has superior characteristics such as compactness, low loss, and low dispersion device. The prototype of the proposed coupler is fabricated and tested, where the measured and simulated results show an excellent agreement.