The Design of a 48-way High Power Capacity

Sectorial Waveguide Power Divider

Ru Meng, Heng Zhang, Badar Muneer, and Qi Zhu
Department of Electronic Engineering and Information Science
University of Science and Technology of China
Hefei, Anhui, China
E-mail: zhuqi@ustc.edu.cn

Abstract — A 48-way high power capacity (HPC) sectorial width of the sectorial power divider is 800mm and the length
waveguide power divider in X band is designed. The design from the input port to output ports plane is 500mm.
approach and simple analysis of the power divider are discussed.
The simulated results demonstrate that the maximum magnitude
difference among all outputs is 0.8dB, and the maximum phase
difference is 9°. The 20dB return loss bandwidth is 900MHz from
Sectorial Waveguide Cavity
8.9GHz to 9.8GHz. The power handling capability of the divider
reaches 2.7GW in vacuum state. The proposed power divider has Rectangular Waveguide
the advantages of simple fabrication, low insertion-loss and high Input Circular
power capacity. Waveguide
800mm
I. INTRODUCTION Circular-Rectangular
Power dividers are microwave devices widely used in many Transition
radar and communication systems. During the design of HPM Phase Adjusting Structure
(High Power Microwave) power dividers, some critical 48-way outputs
requirements should be satisfied, including low loss, multi-way
outputs and high power capacity, for an example, the typical
power handling capacity reaches several GW. Waveguide
power divider is a better solution compared with conventional Fig. 1. Configuration of the proposed sectorial waveguide-
microstrip divider, due to its high power handling capacity and based power divider
low loss characteristics. Several types of waveguide-based
power divider have been developed. A directional coupler A. Circular-Rectangular Transition
divider is studied in [1], which has the disadvantage that
Fig. 2 shows the detail of the circular-rectangular taper
outputs are not in phase. The work presented in [2] is based on
section. Circular waveguide is selected as input port to fit the
coaxial radial waveguide with good results reported, but the
output port of HPM generators [3]. Because the electric field of
coaxial divider cannot be applied in planar array directly circular TE11 mode is not uniform in the cross section plane, a
because the output ports are not in the same plane. rectangular waveguide is introduced between the input port and
An X-band 48-way high power waveguide divider is the sectorial cavity to transform the TE11 mode to TE10 mode.
presented in this paper. The divider consists of three parts: The E-field of rectangular TE10 mode keeps constant along y
circular-rectangular waveguide transition, sectorial waveguide direction, thus the magnitude uniformity of all output ports is
cavity and phase adjusting structure. The simulation results guaranteed. The sectorial waveguide operates at TE10 mode,
indicate that the presented divider can realize 48-way in-phase and the E-field is invariable along the circumference [4].
outputs with 2.7 GW power handling capacity.
Propagation
direction
II. DESIGN OF THE POWER DIVIDER Circular
Waveguide
The present 48-way sectorial waveguide power divider z Rectangular
consists of input circular waveguide, circular-rectangular TE10 Mode
x
transition, sectorial waveguide cavity, phase adjusting y
structures, and waveguide bends. The circular-rectangular Circular Rectangular Waveguide
transition converts the input microwave from circular TE11 TE11 Mode Circular-rectangular Transition
mode to rectangular TE10 mode. The power is divided
uniformly by metal walls inside the sectorial cavity. The phase Fig. 2. Detail of the circular-rectangular transition and
adjusting structures adjust the phases of all outputs to the same. operating mode of each section
Fig. 1 shows the basic structure of the proposed waveguide
power divider. The input port is a circular waveguide of which B. Design of Phase Adjusting Structure
the diameter is 49mm. The 48 output ports are identical
rectangular waveguides with the dimension of 23×15 mm. The The basic structure of phase adjusting section is shown in
Fig. 3. This structure consists of three parts: two waveguides

978-1-4799-3540-6/14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE 643 AP-S 2014

with different width and an exponential taper between them. division. The simulated results indicate that the proposed
The exponential taper is introduced to avoid electric field design can realize multi-way uniform in-phase power division
concentration caused by waveguide discontinuity. The power of input microwave, meanwhile exhibiting a high power
capacity of the divider is increased remarkably as the field handling capability.
intensity decreases. S21~S49,1
-15
180

S-parameters (dB)
a2 120
-20

Phase (deg)
L1
Rectangular 60
L− -25
waveguide width a2 0
a1 L2
L− -60
-30 S21~S49,1
L1 S11 -120
L2 Exponential transition -180
-35
8.8 9.0 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8 8.8 9.0 9.2 9.4 9.6 9.8
Rectangular Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)
waveguide width a1
(a) Magnitude (b) Phase
Fig. 3. Schematic of phase adjusting structure and formation of
phase differences Fig. 4. Simulated S-parameters of the power divider

The phase adjusting structure is designed based on the

theory that the propagation constant β of rectangular waveguide
TE10 mode is dependent on the width of the waveguide. The
following relation is derived from waveguide theory. [5]

   k 02   a 2 
where k0 is the wave number in the vacuum. Thus the phase
differences between the two structures can be deduced as
follows.
    L1     L  L1     L2     L  L2 
 
       L
where β, β′ is the propagation constant of the waveguide with
width a1 and a2 respectively. The overall design process is as
follows. Firstly, simulating the whole divider without phase
adjusting structure, and then obtaining the phase differences of
each channel, and then calculating the required lengths ΔL
which are used to compensate the phase differences among
output ports.
III. SIMULATED RESULTS
The whole power divider structure is designed and
simulated. Fig. 4 illustrates the magnitude and phase of S-
parameters. The return loss of the power divider is better than
−20dB from 8.9GHz to 9.8GHz. The maximum magnitude
difference is less than 0.8dB at the center frequency 9.3GHz,
while the maximum phase difference less than 9 degree.
The electric field distribution of the divider is simulated and
shown in Fig. 5. The maximum field intensity is 1528V/m with
1W input power. According to [6], the RF breakdown threshold
at 9GHz is 80MV/m inside the power divider if vacuum state is
maintained; the power capacity of the divider could reach
2.74GW, which is appropriate for HPM applications.
IV. CONCLUSION
An X-band 48-way waveguide power divider is
investigated and simulated. The sectorial waveguide cavity and
phase adjusting structure is employed to realize in-phase power


Fig. 5. Simulated electric field distribution at 9.3GHz inside the
power divider when input power is 1W
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The authors would like to thank the National Natural
Science Foundation of China (Grant No.61131002) for their
supports in this research.
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