A miniaturized Marchand balun based on the LTCC technology

Abstract

In this paper, a miniaturized multilayer Marchand balun based on low temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology is presented. By folding the broadsided coupled transmission line vertically and horizontally in the three dimensional (3-D) space, the circuit size of the balun is greatly reduced comparing to the conventional design of the balun circuits realized on the printed circuit board(PCB). A Marchand balun at 1.1GHz is designed and simulated with the whole size of 5mm×4.8mm×1.8mm.The simulation results of the design show a good performance of the balun. Thus, it can be suitable for the application of wireless communication systems.