A three‐way fan‐shaped power divider as a feed‐network of aperture‐coupled antenna arrays

Abstract

AbstractThis letter describes a low‐profile three‐way fan‐shaped power divider integrable with aperture‐coupled antenna arrays. Each unit element is designed with a circular cavity‐based eighth‐mode substrate integrated waveguide. For better impedance matching, tapered feedlines are used at the output side. This structure is well suited for aperture‐coupled antenna arrays with a ground plane between the two substrates. The low‐profile power divider offers a 1 dB insertion loss (excluding the ideal power division of 4.8 dB). Magnitude and phase imbalance between output ports is  dB and , respectively. The performance of the power divider is validated by using it as a feeding circuit for an aperture‐coupled array antenna with three circular patches. The antenna array resonates at 10.5 GHz and gives a gain of 4 dBi.