Composite Corporate Traveling-Wave Power Dividers for Slot Array Waveguide Antennas

A composite corporate traveling-wave power divider is presented. The single-layer structure is composed of three parts: two interdigital traveling-wave subsections combined with a power splitter. An iterative design technique is described in which the divider is split into a number of basic blocks. Large-scaled networks are then easily designed because the whole structure does not need to be simulated. A method to take into account the insertion losses is also proposed and bandwidth enhancement is discussed, which is done by increasing the number of corporate layers. Experimental results are also shown for a 1:4 subsection. It provides equal output power with 0.5 dB of insertion loss. The phase-shift between output ports is close to the specifications of -150 at 30 GHz, with an error of less than 2. It is also shown that this topology is well suited for frequency scanning antenna. (C) 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 19: 177 186 2009.