Keynote address VI A new ultra-wideband balun and its associated components

A recently developed ultra-wideband (UWB) balun opens new possibilities for the low-cost, mass-producible, and surface mountable UWB components with 10psilas of GHz bandwidth. The balun is a simple microstrip-to-coplanar stripline transition structure, but a single balun can be designed to have operating frequency range from DC to over 40 GHz. The balun design is based on optimal impedance matching and smooth field transformations between adjacent transmission lines. Utilizing this uniplanar balun, new low-cost and mass-producible components-e.g., mixers, doublers, antennas, detectors, differential amplifiers, etc.-with 10psilas of GHz bandwidth are being developed. The new UWB components can also be designed in the form of low-cost surface-mountable chips, which may open new commercial UWB application areas. In this presentation, the design of the ultra-wideband balun will be described, and recent developments of new UWB components utilizing the balun will also be introduced.