Design of a dual band branch line coupler using a CRLH transmission line structure

This paper proposes a dual band branch line coupler (BLC) using a composite righl/left handed (CRLH) transmission line. The existing dual band BLCs with open stubs require hundreds of line impedance for the open stub as the frequency bands approach to each other, so it has been almost impossible to realize them. However in the proposed BLC, a CRLH transmission line replaces the open stub with an extremely high line impedance so that the BLC circuit may be realized even two frequencies are close to each other. As an example, a dual band BLC operating at 1800MHz and 2300MHz (the frequency ratio is 1:1.28) is designed and measured. Open stubs with 560 line impedance are replaced by CRLH transmission lines for realizing the dual band BLC. The measured performances prove that the dual band operation is well acceptable and the proposed design method is successful even the ratio between two frequencies is not around two nor more.