A Novel Microstrip Line Balun With Transparent Port Impedance and Flexible Open Arm Structure

In this letter, a novel microstrip line balun with transparent port impedance and unconnected flexible output arms is presented. The proposed balun is designed from a symmetric four-port device with an open end at its isolation port. To achieve balun function, a shunt stub is attached between the unbalanced port and the virtual open-ended port to generate a transmission zero under the even-mode circuit. Its odd-mode circuit is treated as an impedance transformer, where the transformer is independent of the terminal impedance. In addition, the proposed balun has flexible open arm branches and does not require a closed loop structure, which provides design flexibility to integrate with other devices compared to conventional closed-loop branch line baluns. The theoretical design equations are derived first to prove the design concept. Then, two prototypes are designed with 35 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> system impedance and loaded with 50 and 75 <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\Omega $ </tex-math></inline-formula> port impedance, and the measured results match well with the simulation, which further validates the proposed design theory.