Low-Loss Broadband Planar Balun with CPW-to-Slotline Transition for UHF Applications

This paper presents a low-loss broadband balun that uses a coplanar waveguide-to-slotline field transformation. It operates over a very wide frequency range and is of compact size since it does not depend on a resonant structure. To analyse imbalance, the coplanar wavelength(CPW) input ground is connected to the CPW output ground through various capacitors to introduce common-mode impedances. As the common-mode impedance increased the imbalance became significantly higher at the higher-frequency band compared with the lower-frequency band. The bias-circuit approach is used to improve the operation bandwidth of the lower-frequency band. The measured results show a passband of 200 MHz to 2 GHz, an insertion loss of less than 0.75 dB, and a size of $20{\times}14\;mm$. The amplitude imbalance is approximately 0.3 dB and the phase imbalance is less than $6^{\circ}$ over the entire operational range.