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How thick is the board material, and what material is it? The
propagation velocity depends on the permittivity (dielectric constant) of the material. The impedance depends on the material and the spacings and trace widths. Presumably there's a ground plane behind the microstrip lines (else they aren't microstrip). There are many web sites that will let you play with microstrip designs, and some that will give you the response of a coupler like you're describing. Do a web search for things like "directional coupler" and "90 degree [microstrip] hybrid". But if you plot the coupler's coupling versus frequency, you'll find it's zero at DC, increasing to a fairly broad maximum when the freq makes it 1/4 wave long (accounting for the velocity factor), and falling again to zero at twice that frequency where the line is 1/2 wave long. That pattern repeats. If you account for the response, the coupler is useful over a broad range of frequencies, as the directivity stays good even as the coupling decreases (if it's accurately made). You can extend the frequency range (make the peak even broader) by "tapering" the coupling. (Easier to see in a picture than trying to explain in words...basically a cascade of sections, with the center one coupled most closely.) A point to note: if you make the coupled line say 5/4 wave long at 10GHz, it will couple nicely at 10GHz, but you only have to move by 2GHz in either direction to hit a null at 4/4 and 6/4 wave long for the same physical line length. But if you make the coupled line 1/4 wave long, then you don't see a null till 20GHz, and the coupler should be quite useable between 8 and 12GHz. You can make the coupled section short by leading the ends to the 50 ohm load and the diode detector away from the coupled section, at right angles to it, so you don't have to worry about the length of the resistor and the diode adding in some difficult-to-calculate way to the overall length. Perhaps they already are done that way, but from your description that's not clear to me. Cheers, Tom |
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