Size reduction and harmonic suppression of rat-race hybrid coupler using defected ground structure

摘要

In this letter, a defected ground structure (DGS) is applied to design a compact microstrip rat-race hybrid coupler. The proposed structure can achieve both a significant reduction of size and harmonic signal. By embedding the DGS section, it is observed that the resonant frequency of the hybrid coupler is significantly lowered, which can lead to a large amount of size reduction for a fixed frequency operation. Besides, the third harmonic signal is suppressed to -30 dB with respect to a conventional rat-race hybrid coupler. In this case, the measured insertion loss is comparable to that of a conventional hybrid coupler.