As the RF spectrum becomes more crowded and the number of bandwidth battles grows each year, RF designers are looking for innovative designs that minimize interference while also increasing signal transmission power. Since phased arrays can efficiently maximize gain and signal directivity and minimize interference for both Tx and Rx, adoption of this architecture by RF designers is growing. This means RF designers are also on a quest for phased array filtering options that can help meet the size, weight, and power (SWaP) needs and performance demands required by today’s RF applications. As a result, our engineers have spent a significant amount of time working on an innovative approach that can meet this seemingly impossible combination of requirements.

The Wilkinson Power Divider, designed by Ernest Wilkinson in the 1960s, uses quarter wave transformers to split an input signal into two equal phase output signals. Since the design is reciprocal, Wilkinson Power Dividers can also be used as a power combiner. With this flexibility, they are widely used in many RF and microwave communication systems, including those with multiple channels or complex feed networks.