INVESTIGATIONS OF FOUR-PORT CIRCULATOR UTILIZING CYLINDRICAL FERRITE COUPLED LINE JUNCTION

In this paper the numerical and experimental investigations of four-port circulator utilizing longitudinally magnetized cylindrical ferrite coupled lines (CFCL) section are presented for the first time. In comparison to earlier models the proposed structure of circulator utilizes multilayer magic-T junction cascaded with cylindrical ferrite section of π/4 Faraday angle. The advantage of utilization of cylindrical section over the planar one is the possibility to design shorter ferrite junctions ensuring lower insertion losses. Moreover, the multilayer magic T-junction allows to improve performance of the proposed circulator by omitting the bandwidth limitation which exists in commonly used hybrid couplers with air-bridges. In the analysis of CFCL junction the full wave hybrid approach combining finite difference frequency domain method with method of moments and mode matching technique is applied. The planar feeding structures of circulator are designed with the use of commercial software. The simulated results of the entire circulator are compared with the measurement results of the fabricated prototype and a good agreement is achieved.