New N-way Hybrid Power Combiner to Improve the Graceful Degradation Performance

In this paper, a new N-way hybrid power combiner for improving the graceful degradation performance has been proposed. The proposed combiner has been configured with two dummy transmission lines per each section, where each dummy transmission line has a different characteristic impedance, of the standard combiner. Under this proposed configuration, a detailed theoretical analysis has been performed to show the general function of a power combiner. When any M amplifiers among N identical amplifiers are suffering the failure mode in a power combining circuit or system, the graceful degradation performance has been improved due to the separation of a transmission line and an internal resistor in every failed section from the proposed combiner by simultaneously operating two shorting devices. Simulation results for all the items which can be measured from all the items which can be measured from the proposed combiner with an eight-way configuration have been presented.