A new compact and low phase imbalance microstrip coupler for 5G wireless communication systems

by Salah I. Yahya, Farid Zubir, Leila Nouri, Zubaida Yusoff, Muhammad Akmal Chaudhary, Maher Assaad, Abbas Rezaei, Binh Nguyen Le

Microstrip couplers play a crucial role in signal processing and transmission in various applications, including RF and wireless communication, radar systems, and satellites. In this work, a novel microstrip 180° coupler is designed, fabricated and measured. The layout configuration of this coupler is completely new and different from the previously reported Rat-race, branch-line and directional couplers. To obtain the proposed coupler, the meandrous coupled lines are used and analyzed mathematically. To improve the performance of our coupler, an optimization method is used. The designed coupler is very compact with an overall size of 0.014λg². The obtained values of S₂₁ and S₃₁ are -3.45 dB and -3.75 dB, respectively at the operating frequency, while the fractional bandwidth (FBW) is 56.2%. It operates at f_o = 1.61 GHz (suitable for 5G applications) and can suppress harmonics up to 2.17f_o. Another advantage of this coupler is its low phase imbalance, while the phase difference between S₂₁ and S₃₁ is 180°± 0.023°. Therefore, our device is a balanced coupler with ±0.3 dB magnitude unbalance at its operating frequency. It is important to note that it is very difficult to find a coupler that has all these advantages at the same time. The proposed 180° coupler is fabricated and measured. The comparison shows that the measurement and simulation results are in good agreement. Therefore, the proposed coupler can be easily used in designing high-performance 5G communication systems.