Implementation of a Microstrip Square Planar N-Way

The work done in this thesis focuses on the design of a square-shaped 20-way metamaterial power divider which is fabricated in microstrip technology and operates at 1 GHz. The divider comprises 12 square-shaped left-handed unit cells and 13 square-shaped right-handed unit cells, and these unit cells have the same size and are placed in a checker-board tessellation, where the left-handed unit cells are connected only to right-handed unit cells and vice versa. The divider is based upon the infinite wavelength phenomenon in two-dimensions, and this means that the insertion phase between any two ports of the left-handed unit cell is equal, but with opposite sign, to that of the right-handed unit cell. The divider gives an equal-amplitude equal-phase power division from the central input port to the output ports which are located on a straight line on each side. Thus, it is convenient to integrate with, or interconnect to, other planar circuits in a system, such as power amplifier modules. The design concept can be extended to an N-way power divider, where N = 4n and n is an odd integer