86 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 26, NO.

2, FEBRUARY 2016

New Design of Waveguide Directional Coupler

Using Genetic Algorithm
Habib Ghorbaninejad and Reza Heydarian

Abstract—In this letter a novel design method for waveguide

directional coupler is proposed based on genetic algorithm. Us-
ing the proposed method, a waveguide directional coupler with
desired coupling coefficient (C), has been designed, so that max-
imum mean value of directivity (D) is achieved in the frequency
range. In this method, a specified patterned aperture, which can
be determined using genetic algorithm, couples power between
two parallel waveguides. In order to extract specified pattern of
coupling aperture, coupled magnetic field integral equation in Fig. 1. Side view of proposed or conventional waveguide directional coupler.
term of surface magnetic current is derived and solved by method
of moments to obtain general scattering matrix and then coupling
coefficient and directivity of directional coupler are calculated.
The proposed patterned aperture compared with conventional
circular hole directional coupler of the same length, has been im-
proved the mean value of directivity around to 137.7% for a given
coupling coefficient. The performance of the proposed method is
verified with the results of simulation. To validate the simulation
results, a waveguide directional coupler using patterned aperture
is designed, fabricated and measured.
Index Terms—Genetic algorithm, magnetic field integral equa- Fig. 2. Top view of (a) proposed and (b) conventional waveguide directional
tion (MFIE), waveguide directional coupler. coupler.

I. I NTRODUCTION
designs, it is not possible to achieve a desired frequency re-

D IRECTIONAL coupler as a kind of directional power

distribution is a four port passive microwave device which
have many applications in microwave and millimeter wave cir-
cuits and widely used in measuring, communication and radar
equipments [1], [2]. There are various types of directional
couplers such as waveguide, strip line and micro strip line
forms. In waveguide directional coupler, coupling between
waveguides is based on apertures with various shapes [3], [4].
These directional couplers are narrow band devices so that they
have good performance only near designed frequency and are
based on Beth’s small hole coupling theory [5]. Multi holes and
optimization techniques with arbitrary aperture spacing have
been used to improve the frequency response and frequency
bandwidth of the waveguide directional coupler [6]. A cross-
aperture coupling problem is analyzed using mode matching
method in [7], which is exact, and computationally efficient
compared with cascading techniques. In many cases, design
procedure for a directional coupler with broadband frequency
response specification, requires many holes and hole-spacing
that increase the device length. Furthermore, in many optimum
Manuscript received September 22, 2015; revised October 31, 2015;
accepted November 18, 2015. Date of publication January 28, 2016; date of
current version February 10, 2016.
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, University of
Guilan, Rasht, Iran (e-mail: ghorbaninejad@guilan.ac.ir).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2016.2517165
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sponse specification in a limited length of the device.
In this letter, an exact and efficient full wave numerical
method is presented, based on genetic algorithm, to design
waveguide directional couplers with patterned apertures. Pat-
terned aperture is a metal plane with determined removed parts.
In the proposed structure, a part of common wall (either narrow
wall or broad wall) of two parallel waveguides is replaced with
a patterned plane. The presented design improves Bethe-hole
topologies in terms of bandwidth through existing genetic
algorithm (GA) techniques, producing a specific patterned aper-
ture. In the proposed design procedure, magnetic field integral
equation (MFIE) for the waveguide directional coupler with
patterned aperture, is derived and solved for magnetic current
of aperture to calculate scattering parameters of the structure.
A fitness function is defined to compare the desired coupling
coefficients (C), directivity (D) and isolation (I) with those of
the designed waveguide directional coupler that can be obtained
using scattering parameters. Genetic algorithm finds the desired
patterned aperture by minimizing the fitness function. The
proposed waveguide directional coupler results are compared
with those obtained by Ansoft’s HFSS and measurements.
II. M AGNETIC F IELD I NTEGRAL E QUATION F ORMULATION
Fig. 1 shows the side view of proposed or conventional
waveguide directional coupler and Fig. 2 shows the top view of
the proposed waveguide directional coupler compared with that
more information.
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GHORBANINEJAD AND HEYDARIAN: NEW DESIGN OF WAVEGUIDE DIRECTIONAL COUPLER USING GA 87

of a conventional one. In the proposed structure, conventional

circular hole is replaced by a designed patterned aperture.
Patterned aperture is a metal plane, with determined removed
parts. Patterned aperture is a connected metal region. It can be
also backed by a thin and low relative permittivity dielectric
layer. Coupled magnetic field integral equation in term of mag-
netic current is derived. According to the equivalence theorem,
unknown induced surface magnetic current, on the blank parts
of patterned aperture in upper and lower waveguides, can be
used to obtain electric and magnetic fields in two waveguides.
By deriving appropriate dyadic magnetic Green’s function, tan-
gential magnetic fields due to magnetic currents are expressed
in terms of eigen-modes series expansion. The Green’s function
with the series form can be accelerated by Poisson summation
formula and the Kummer transform. Finally, a set of obtained
coupled magnetic integral equations are solved by the method
of moments (See supplementary material) [8].
The coupling coefficient (C), directivity (D) and isolation
(I) of directional coupler are as follows:
   
 Pin   
C = 10log10   = 20log10  1  (1)
P3   S31 
   
 P3   S31 
 
D = 10log10   = 20log10    (2)
P4 S41  Fig. 3. (a) Coupling coefficient and (b) directivity of proposed and conven-
tional waveguide directional coupler along with simulation results.
 
 Pin 
I = 10log10  =C +D (3)
P4 

where Pin is the incident power, P3 is the coupled power, P4

is the power out of isolation port and Sij are the scattering
parameters of waveguide directional coupler that are calculated
by the method of moments.

III. PATTERNED A PERTURE D ESIGN P ROCEDURE

U SING G ENETIC A LGORITHM
In the design procedure, it is aimed to find a specific pat-
terned aperture to maximize the mean value of directivity of
waveguide directional coupler in a frequency range and for a
given coupling coefficient. For this purpose, the rectangular
area of length L and width W on the common broadwall, is
divided to NL × NW sections. A patterned aperture is formed
by keeping some sections as metal parts and replacing the left
sections by blank parts. In genetic algorithm, metal parts and
blank part are presented by 0 s and 1 s, respectively.
Optimization based on genetic algorithm find the desired
pattern due to a suitable fitness function which is defined as
 
1   0.5
M
2 2
fitness = |S11 (fm )| +|C −S31 (fm )| (4)
M m=1 Fig. 4. (a) Coupling coefficient and (b) directivity of proposed waveguide
directional coupler compared with the results of measurements and simulations.
where Sij (fm ), which are calculated by the method of mo-
ments, are scattering parameter of the structure at frequency
sample fm . C is the desired coupling coeffficient and M is the of an arbitrary aperture can be extracted from these basic ma-
number of sample frequencies in the frequency range. In the trices. This allows to considerably decrease the computational
used numerical method, the derived equations are solved only time. To obtain basic matrices, it is assumed that all parts of
one time and stored as basic matrices; so, scattering parameters pattern are non metalized part.
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88
Fig. 5. The photographs of fabricated proposed waveguide directional coupler.
IV. E XAMPLES AND R ESULTS
Using the proposed method, a waveguide directional coupler
with C = 20 dB is designed and fabricated in the frequency
range of 8–12 GHz. Two identical parallel waveguides are
WR90 with dimensions a = 22.86 mm and b = 10.16 mm. It is
assumed that W = 22.86 mm, L = 10 mm, which are divided
to 10 × 10 (NL = NW = 10) sections and with zero common
broad wall thickness. In the genetic algorithm optimization
procedure, population size is selected to be 20 and single point
cross over with rate 0.8 and uniform mutation rate of 0.05
is chosen [9], [10]. In the given frequency range, M = 21
frequency sample is considered, which are equally spaced.
Fig. 2(a) shows the pattern of designed aperture. Fig. 3 shows
the coupling coefficient and directivity of designed directional
coupler compared with that of conventional one with d0 =
9.68 mm and s0 = 5.7 mm [6]. It is clear from the figure
that coupling coefficient of the proposed structure is closer to
desired value of C = 20 dB than to the coupling coefficient
of conventional one, reported in [6]. Moreover, the mean value
of directivity of proposed directional coupler, in the range of
frequency, is nearly 28.56 dB which shows a considerably
improvement compared with reported value of 12.02 dB in [6].
For fabrication consideration, common broad wall thickness is
chosen 0.05 mm and the optimization is forced so that the metal
parts of designed aperture to be connected. Fig. 4 shows the
coupling coefficient and directivity of designed proposed direc-
tional coupler which is compared with measurement results of
fabricated one, in which common wall has 0.05 mm thickness.
Due to fabrication tolerance, measurement results shift to a little
higher frequency range side. Fig. 5 shows the photograph of the
fabricated proposed waveguide directional coupler. The fabrica-
tion complexity and the physical lengths of both structures are
nearly the same; however, the proposed structure performance
is better, so that it has considerably improved the mean value
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IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 26, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 2016
of directivity, for a given coupling coefficient. The distribution
of magnetic currents changes according to the aperture pattern
and make it possible to deliver the desired power to each port
that in turn, can maximize directivity of the proposed structure
rather than that of conventional one.
Moreover, the utility of small apertures coupling theory is
based on accurate values for the electric and magnetic polariz-
abilities of apertures with various shapes. For any aperture, the
electric and magnetic polarizabilities depend on aperture shape,
and are different. However, the proposed design method is the
same for any patterned coupling aperture, and is not depend on
the aperture shape. In addition, the patterned coupling aperture
has removed the restriction of using only small-size apertures
in the directional coupler design.
V. C ONCLUSION
A new method to design a waveguide directional coupler
using patterned aperture has been presented. The proposed
structure has considerably improved the mean value of di-
rectivity of a waveguide directional coupler without affecting
its coupling coefficient. Coupling and directivity of proposed
structure were calculated by MFIE formulation and pattern
design was based on genetic algorithm optimization. For given
coupling coefficient C = 20 dB, the mean value of directivity
of designed directional coupler was improved about 137.7%
compared with the results of conventional one. In addition, the
proposed method can be used to design waveguide combiners
or power dividers.
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