Small-size Rat-race Ring Coupler Using Connected Coupled-line

In order to improve performance for the size of the rat-race ring coupler, the CCL is used for the realization as the delay line. As realizing lower coupling coefficient, the ratio of the size-reduction for the CCL is enhanced. The CCL is alternated with ${\lambda}_g/4$ of the rat-race ring, and optimized two CCLs are inserted for the size-reduction. the coupling coefficient is 0.2, and electrical lengths of each CCL are $28.2^{\circ}$ and $21.7^{\circ}$. Designed rat-race ring using the CCL has the size of $18.76{\times}20.45mm^2$ and the size-reduction ratio of fabricated rat-race ring using the CCL has 76.8%. Also, fabricated rat-race ring is measured the insertion loss of 3.20dB at the center frequency of 2.45GHz and the 20dB bandwidth is 24.04%. Differenced magnitude and phase between threw port and coupled port are measured 0.1dB and $177.4^{\circ}$, respectively. These performances are almost same compared with the conventional rat-race ring. Suggested application of the CCL can be used various devices and circuits for the size-reduction.