A compact 1.7 - 2.1 GHz three-way power combiner using microstrip technology with better than 93.8% combining efficiency

This letter presents the design and measured performance of a microstrip three-way power combiner. The combiner is designed using the conventional Wilkinson topology with the extension to three outputs, which has been rarely considered for the design and fabrication of V-way combiners. It is shown that with an appropriate design approach, the main drawback reported with this topology (nonplanarity of the circuit when N > 2) can be minimized to have a negligible effect on the circuit performance and still allow an easy MIC or MHMIC fabrication.