Now a days all the microwave power amplifier circuits uses Power dividers and Power combiner circuits.

Due to the recent rise in trend of multiband mobile phones worldwide efforts are made for implementing dual-band power dividers .One of the most commonly used power dividers is the Wilkinson power divider. A Conventional Wilkinson power divider operates only at one design frequency f1 and at all of its odd harmonics. Such power dividers are not suitable for dual band operations .So for dual band operation we need to go for a Wilkinson power divider which operates at two arbitrary frequencies f1 and m f1,where m is the frequency ratio.

Ref [2]
Normally lossless T junction suffers from the problem of not being matched at all ports and in addition it does not have any isolation between output ports. The Resistive divider can be matched all the ports, but even though it is not lossless, isolation is still not achieved. However we know that a lossy three port network can be made having all ports matched with isolation between the output ports. Wilkinson power divider is such a network that has a useful property of being lossless when the ports are matched; that is only reflected power is dissipated. The Wilkinson power divider can be made to give arbitrary power division that is both equal split as well as unequal split. The divider is often made in microstrip or stripline form.

The Wilkinson power divider can also be generalized to an N-way divider or combiner. A disadvantage is however is the fact that the divider requires crossovers for the resistors. This will make fabrication difficult in planar form.

Conventional Wilkinson Power divider

An N-way, equal split Wilkinson Power divider

As discussed before, the problem with this conventional power divider is it operates only at design frequency f1 and its odd harmonics. Therefore in order to work with dual band operations we are moving towards Dual-Frequency Wilkinson Power divider circuit.

Ref [1]
This power divider consists of two branches of impedance transformer, each of which consists of two sections of transmission line with different characteristic impedance, and a parallel connection of a resistor, an inductor, and a capacitor, which shunts the two output ports. This Wilkinson power divider has an equal power division at two arbitrary frequencies. Z0 is the reference impedance. Each quarter-wave branch of this power divider is substituted by two sections of transmission line with the characteristic impedance of Z1 and Z2 and the length of l1 and l2,respectively.

The circuit here is symmetric hence we can use even as well as odd mode analysis to determine the circuit parameters for dual frequency power divider.

In this case when two signals of same magnitude and phase are applied at the output ports 2 and 3, no current flows through the plane of symmetry. Hence circuit can be bisected as follows:

In case of an odd mode, the two signals applied to ports 2 and 3 have the same magnitude, but are 180 degree out of phase; there is a voltage null along the middle of the power divider. Thus we can bisect this circuit by grounding the midplane. Hence the circuit appears as follows

In this case when two signals of same magnitude and phase are applied at the output ports 2 and 3, no current flows through the plane of symmetry. Hence circuit can be bisected as follows: Since no current flows through the plane of symmetry, the circuit elements R, L and C, which shunt ports 2 and 3, can be omitted. The impedance Z0 at port 1 is doubled in the bisected circuit. For an impedance matching at the outputs, the impedance 2Z0 at port 1 must be transformed to Z0 at port2.

Ref [1]

Which implies where

therefore

Let be Z0 be50 ohm and the dual-frequency Wilkinson power dividers have been fabricated on a 0.81mm-thick RO4003 substrate, which has a relative permittivity of 3.38 and a conductor thickness of 17 um. The first power divider has been designed for f1=1GHz and f2=1.8GHz 1 < m= f2/f1 < 3 Therefore n=1 can be chosen

Which implies lengths

Impedances

Parameters

From these parameter values we can calculate the value of Capacitance and Inductance

Ref [1]
By observing the S Parameters of this dual band Wilkinson power divider following inferences can be made :

Indicates that the input signal is almost equally divided and transmitted to the output ports, both at 1 and 1.8 GHz.

Indicates that the power divider passes the signals at both frequencies very well.

Indicates a good isolation between ports 2 and 3 is also fulfilled at these two frequencies.

Indicates impedance matching at the output Ports.

At the output ports the power is almost equally divided The power divider operates at both the frequencies. Good impedance matching at the output ports. Also good isolation is observed between output ports at the two desired frequencies.

Due to the reactive components this dual-band wilkinson power divider cannot be used at very highfrequencies such as the operating frequency f which is greater than three. The range of frequency ratios is very narrow. Since we are using passive elements in the circuit some of the power will get dissipated and at high frequencies power dissipation at inductor is very large. So in order to avoid these disadvantages we need to work with a power divider without passive elements some examples are shown below. The figure shows dual band impedance transformer includes three sections of transmission lines where all the elements used are active.

1. LEI WU, ZENGGUANG SUN, HAYATTIN YILMAZ, AND MANFRED BERROTH A Dual-Frequency Wilkinson Power Divider,in IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE AND TECHNIQUES ., vol. 54, Jan 2006. 2. D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley, 1998,