Improvement of the design of 180° rat-race hybrid

An innovative and simple design for a 180° rat-race hybrid is proposed which has a substantially improved phase shift characteristic over a large bandwidth compared with that of a conventional rate-race hybrid. The proposed hybrid has been fabricated with a three-dimensional technology to benefit from a high level of integration. It exhibits a bandwidth of 31% from 28.8 to 39.4 GHz with -15 dB input and output matching, a coupling loss of 4.6 dB with a power dividing balance better than 1.1 dB, and a phase balance better than 2