Compact 2–28 GHz planar multi-octave bandwidth Wilkinson power dividers

In this paper, two broadband Wilkinson power dividers in microstrip technology are presented. A broadband operation from 2 to 28 GHz could be achieved by a multisectional layout. The dividers differ in the number of cascaded steps, which allows application dependent usage. Furthermore, the dividers make use of commercially available, surface mounted thinfilm-resistors, allowing a straightforward implementation. The maximum occupied area is around 30mm2 for the longer version and around 16mm2 for the shorter version. Measurements show a matching better than 13 dB and an isolation of better than 10 dB over the whole frequency range. The achieved bandwidth ratio of 14:1 represents, in combination with the compact layout, the highest ratio for Wilkinson dividers published so far.