An Inductor-Loaded Microstrip Directional Coupler for Directivity Enhancement

A directivity-enhancement technique is demonstrated for a microstrip directional coupler. By loading the coupler with shunt inductors, the phase velocities of the even and odd modes are altered in such a way that an isolation null is achieved. Compared with other compensation techniques for directivity enhancements, the proposed method provides the advantages of being simple yet easily application to high frequencies. For a 10 dB directional coupler at 0.9 GHz, a maximum directivity improvement of nearly 38 dB is measured over the conventional counterpart.