Lumped-Element Balun for UHF UWB Printed Balanced Antennas

A semi-lumped balun transformer for UHF and ultrawideband (UWB) dipole antennas is presented in this paper. The proposed structure is based on two asymmetric filters that also transform the variable antenna impedance into the desired source impedance. These asymmetric filters make use of a binomial impedance transformer in each filter section. The asymmetric filters (one low pass filter, LPF, and other high pass filter, HPF) allow the balun bandwidth to be increased while the binomial transformer matches the variable balanced dipole impedance. In this way the ripple in the balun response due to the variation of the UWB dipole impedance is reduced. A balun for a UHF and UWB dipole antenna working from 220 to 820 MHz (bandwidth of 4:1) has been achieved with losses lower than 1 dB. These types of baluns are particularly useful in the low microwave frequency band.