Meander-Line and Hybrid Meander-Line Transformers

A new application of meander lines to impedance transformers is proposed and developed. Meander-line transformers are shown to have less bandwidth than stepped-impedance transformers for a given passband VSWR, but can have greatly preferred shape factors in stripline and MIC realizations. Hybrid meander-line transformers allow circuit designers greatly increased flexibility in choosing transformer shape factors, while allowing (basically) the same electrical performance as with either stepped-impedance or meander-line transformers. Experimental confirmations are presented.