4/14/2020 Microwaves101 | Coupler Fundamentals

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Coupler Fundamentals
Microwave couplers are devices which divert a fraction of the signal on one transmission line to another transmission line. The signal exiting the output
port of the rst transmission line is called the “through” (sometimes called the “direct”) signal since it is directly connected to the input port and the signal
exiting the other transmission line is called the “coupled” signal. If the coupled signal is traveling in the same direction as the through signal, the coupler is
called a “forward-wave” coupler. If in opposition, it is called a “backward-wave” coupler. Because these coupled signals are related to the direction of the
through signals, couplers are called directional couplers. The circuit based couplers are generally not called directional couplers even when they have
identical S-parameter matrices. Perhaps this is because the “through” path is obscured by the circuit element interconnections. Also, if the outputs of the
coupled and through ports are equal in amplitude, the coupler is called a hybrid coupler—I don’t know why.

Couplers are incredibly useful components and are found in almost every microwave system in use: radars, radios, test equipment, medical equipment,
communications equipment, cable entertainment systems, radio telescopes, TSA scanners and garage door openers. Here is the icon for the schematic
representation of a coupler.

In this symbol the through line is depicted as the line connecting port 1 to port 2 and we have used the convention of naming the ports in a clockwise
sequence. Don’t be confused about the port numbering, the symbol represents any coupler—forward or backward.

Coupler Types
There are two ways of designing couplers: one using coupled transmission lines and the other using interconnected circuit elements consisting of
independent transmission lines and or “lumped” elements like ideal capacitors, inductors, resistors, and transformers. The network coupler derives its
performance from its circuit elements and their interconnections and not from any coupling between transmission lines. Since this is microwaves101 we
will not be discussing the lumped element versions because for microwave frequencies these lumped elements are frequently used to model the behavior
of physical structures used in microwave circuits.

All coupled-line based couplers are both directional and quadrature (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/the-quadrature-90-degree-property-
of-symmetric-coupled-lines) couplers and are four-port circuits. The fourth port is called the “Isolated” port in contrast to the input, coupled, and through
ports. Note that sometimes an apparently three-port device is called a coupler when its fourth port is terminated by the characteristic impedance and
hidden by the packaging of the device. Symmetrical couplers based on coupled lines are designed for uniform coupling over the quarter of a wavelength
region where coupling takes place. These couplers tend to have about an octave bandwidth depending on the coupling level. Asymmetrical couplers are
quite di erent and usually have variable coupling between the two transmission lines. These couplers can have quite wide bandwidth—greater than 28:1.
The symmetrical coupler bandwidth can be increased by the addition of extra quarter-wavelength coupling sections but this maxes out at about 10:1
bandwidths.

While there are only two basic types of coupler design, there are an incredible number of manifestations of these design concepts. Once you understand
the basics, you can invent your own version of a coupler because all it requires is for you to select some transmission line structures (not necessarily the 
same as each other) and arrange them in such a way that some portions of the two structures are not isolated from each other and that, over some

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distance along the lines, the elds and waves of one line interact with the elds and waves of the other line. That’s it. The devil is in the details and you are
free to manipulate these details until the structure performs as you wish within the con nes of your imagination and the di culty of building it.

Coupler Performance Parameters

Before going into detail about various coupler structures, let’s de ne some of the performance parameters that will be used to de ne how well each
structure performs. For this purpose we will use the nomenclature of the schematic symbol for a coupler, assuming a backward-wave coupler.

Let's rst look at some de nitions using S-parameters (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/s-parameters). Let port 1 be the input port, port 2
be the "through" port, port 3 the coupled port and port 4 the isolated port. Ideally, power into port 1 will only appear at ports 2 and 3, with no power at
port 4, but in real couplers some power leaks to port 4. For an incident signal at port 1 of power P1 (and output powers P2, P3 and P4 at ports 2, 3 and 4),
then:

Insertion Loss (IL) = -10*log(P2/P1)= -20*log(|S21|)

Coupling (C) = -10*log(P3/P1) = -20*log(|S31|)

Isolation (I) = -10*log(P4/P1) = -20*log(|S41|)

Directivity (D) = -10*log(P4/P3) = 20*log(|S31/S41|)

Two additional characteristics used to de ne coupler performance are phase unbalance and amplitude imbalance between the coupled port and the
through port over the operating frequency band. Both characteristics are used to de ne the bandwidth of the coupler.

Note that these numbers are supposed to be positive in dB. Quite often, microwave engineers present these quantities as negative numbers, it is not a
great faux pas.

Note that directivity requires two, two-port S-parameter measurements, the other quantities require only one. Directivity is the ratio of isolation to
coupling factor. In decibels, isolation is equal to coupling factor plus directivity.

A Little History
The earliest directional coupler is generally credited to H. A. A el of ATT whose U.S. Patent 1615896 was led in 1922 and granted in 1927. The illustration
from the patent is shown below and appears to be a two wire transmission line coupled to another two wire transmission line. Shown next to it, doing
pretty much the same thing, is a pair coaxial lines joined together with a portion of their outer shields removed to allow for coupling.

In the 1940s at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, a wide variety of waveguide couplers were invented and characterized, including the Bethe hole coupler,
multihole couplers, and the Schwinger coupler.

In the 1950s coupled TEM line directional couplers were designed by a group at the Stanford Research Institute primarily using stripline transmission line
structures. Next came microstrip couplers which were planar and open-sided which made it convenient to mount semiconductor and other devices. The
popularity of these designs was hastened by their low manufacturing costs compared to waveguide couplers. Currently, great strides in new microwave
materials and fabrication techniques as well as new computer-aided-design tools for layout and circuit simulation including 2D and 3D EM analysis
programs are giving you the opportunity to revise and improve on existing coupler designs as well as to create entirely new families of designs. Flexible
substrates, low-loss substrates, multilayer substrates with vias, semiconductor substrates, substrates with thermal expansion rates matched to
semiconductor devices, micro-machined substrates, and metamaterials provide additional options for innovative designs.

Check out this article for more Historical information. History of Microwave Passive Components with Particular Attention to Directional Couplers
(https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/articleDetails.jsp?
arnumber=1132816&queryText=The%20history%20of%20microwave%20passive%20components%20with%20particular%20attention%20to%20directional%2
by S. B. Cohn (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchWithin=%22Authors%22:.QT.S.%20B.%20Cohn.QT.&newsearch=true), R. Levy
(http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/search/searchresult.jsp?searchWithin=%22Authors%22:.QT.R.%20Levy.QT.&newsearch=true), IEEE Transactions on Microwave
Theory and Techniques (http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/RecentIssue.jsp?punumber=22), 1984, Volume 32, Issue: 9
(http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/tocresult.jsp?isnumber=25138), pp 1046 - 1054, DOI: 10.1109/TMTT.1984.1132816 
(http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TMTT.1984.1132816)

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Coupled Line Design Equations

Let’s look at a collection of couplers based on coupled lines. All of these structures can be modeled using the even and odd mode technique for analysis.
Hence, all symmetric couplers based on uniform coupling between two transmission lines over a single quarter-wave section have a closed form center
frequency solution based on their even and odd mode impedances— and .

The coupling section length is a quarter-wave long at the center frequency and the system characteristic impedance is . Let C be the desired coupling
in dB and the corresponding coupling factor k = . The conditions necessary to meet the desired performance at the center frequency for a lossless
coupler are expressed in the following equations.

Z02=Z0e*Z0o

Z0e=Z0*[ (1+k)/(1-k) ]0.5

Z0o=Z0*[ (1-k)/(1+k) ]0.5

For this ideal case, the frequency response is:

= =0

where = βl = 2π =

Typical 3 dB Coupler Frequency Responses

Now let’s plot the response for two versions of an ideal 3 dB coupler: one with exactly 3 dB coupling at the center frequency and one with 2.5 dB coupling at the center frequency. If you
de ne bandwidth as the frequency range for losses in the range 3 +/- 0.5 dB, then the 3 dB coupler has a bandwidth of approximately 7-13 GHz and the 2.5 dB coupler has a bandwidth of 6-14
GHz. Clearly it’s important to pick your center frequency coupling target with the bandwidth in mind. Also note that small changes in the even and odd mode impedances result in signi cant
coupling changes. If you would like to use a di erent coupling factor to nd the even and odd mode impedances needed to create a coupler with the coupling of your choice and to see a table
of its frequency response, we have a handy calculator for that purpose. Just click here (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/coupled-line-couplers) to start the fun.  Notice also
that I have only shown the response from 2 to 18 GHz. The coupled lines are a quarter-wave long and as such the lossless response at 10 GHz is identical to that at the 30 GHz (the 3rd
harmonic) and, in fact, to that at every odd harmonic. Most of the time the additional losses that occur at higher frequencies will impair the upper pass band resonse but beware.

Coupling Approaches
Here is a sample of the transverse cross-sections of some of the popular coupled-line couplers plus the layout of some variants of uniform coupling.

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Coupler Approaches
Illustrated below are three primary examples of network couplers: the branchline coupler, the rat race coupler and the magic Tee coupler. The rat race
hybrid and magic Tee hybrid both provide in phase and 180 degree power splits and the branchline coupler is a forward-wave quadrature coupler. The rat
race and magic tee couplers are generally narrowband and unlike coupled-line couplers or branchline couplers cannot add extra sections or more magic
tees to increase the coupling bandwidth. Recently, C. F. Marki, v. D. Kodwani, F. A. Marki have devised a new kind of Magic-T circuit composed of a balun and
two parallel coupled transmission lines which has already exceeded octave bandwidth performance using suspended substrate, broadside coupled lines—
the balun tends to be the bandwidth limiting element of this coupler.

Asymmetric Coupler Approaches

Asymmetric couplers are quite di erent and usually have variable coupling between the two transmission lines. These couplers can have quite wide
bandwidth—greater than 28:1. Tapered asymmetric couplers can be quite compact. A special class of asymmetrical couplers consists of interconnected
coupled lines with uniform coupling in each quarter wave section of the coupler. While each section is a symmetrical pair of coupled lines, the overall
coupler is asymmetrical.

The di erential phase response of the asymmetric 3 section coupler is not in quadrature and is relatively linear with frequency instead of constant with
frequency since it is an asymmetric coupler.

    

 
k 0.17418 0.50875 0.86000

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Coupling 0.134 1.3 5.84

 

Z0o Ohms 41.932 28.53 13.718  

Z0e Ohms 59.62 87.625 182.25  

At the center frequency the coupler has quadrature phase. The addition of phase compensation transmission lines can atten the phase frequency
response around the center frequency at the expense of additional line loss and increased size.

Do I Really Need a Coupler?

Sometimes you just want to share an input signal between two other transmission line ports. While all of the above couplers can do this, there is a
collection of microwave circuits called power dividers that might be more convenient than the coupler circuits. One of the most widely used versions of a
power divider is called the Wilkinson power divider. We will look at power divider circuits (or splitters if the division is equal) on another page.

Further Design Information

Here are a collection of microwaves101 pages that continue the discussion by providing additional information and design details for most of the coupler
design approaches mentioned earlier on this page.

Click here to go to our even and odd mode analysis page. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/even-and-odd-mode-impedances)

Click here to go to our main page on couplers and splitters. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/couplers-and-splitters)

Click here to go to our page on directional couplers. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/directional-couplers)

Click here to learn more about multi-section symmetric couplers. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/multi-section-symmetric-couplers)

Here's a page on a microstrip "3 dB" coupler! (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/microstrip-3-db-coupler)

Why does the coupled-line have a natural 90 degree phase split? Look on this page. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/the-quadrature-90-
degree-property-of-symmetric-coupled-lines)

Check out the Lange coupler. (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/lange-couplers)

Short slot (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/short-slot-waveguide-hybrid)(Riblett) waveguide coupler

Hybrid (3-dB) couplers (90 degree and 180 degree) (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/hybrid-couplers)

Converting a branchline to a 180 degree hybrid (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/hybrid-couplers#convert)

Quadrature couplers (90 degree hybrids) (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/quadrature-couplers)

Branchline couplers (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/branchline-couplers)

Unequal-split branchline couplers (/encyclopedias/branchline-couplers)

Rat-race couplers (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/rat-race-couplers)

Unequal-split rat-race couplers (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/rat-race-couplers)

Overlay couplers (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/quadrature-couplers#overlay)

180 degree hybrids (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/hybrid-couplers)

Magic tees (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/magic-tees)

Basic network theory (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/basic-network-theory)

Properties of reciprocal and non-reciprocal networks (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/basic-network-theory#reciprocal)

Properties of lossless networks (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/basic-network-theory#lossless)

Properties of matched networks (https://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/basic-network-theory#matched)

Multi-section symmetric Multi-section symmetric couplers (http://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedias/1162-multi-section-symmetric-couplers)

  

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Author : The Other Editor

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