Low-Loss 16-Way Ultra-Wideband Wilkinson Power Divider

Authors

  • Jorge A. Caripidis Troccola Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA
  • Satheesh Bojja Venkatakrishnan Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA
  • Cedric W. L. Lee National University of Singapore, Singapore 117411
  • Theng Huat Gan National University of Singapore, Singapore 117411
  • John L. Volakis Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.13052/2026.ACES.J.410201

Keywords:

Feed network, power divider, ultra-wideband, Wilkinson

Abstract

Several power divider designs exist in the literature and are also commercially available. However, these dividers are not wideband. In this paper, a low-loss, ultra-wideband (UWB) 16-way power divider for UWB applications is presented. Notably, the design employs 15 cascaded multi-stage Wilkinson power dividers with a total of 90, 0402 package surface mounted chip resistors to enable operation from 0.2 to 3.6 GHz. Remarkably, the fabricated prototype achieves an 18:1 input and output impedance bandwidth with VSWR<1.2 thanks to an optimization approach that eliminates any additive reflection from each of the power division stages. In addition, the maximum insertion loss is 3 dB at the highest frequency of operation, while the maximum phase imbalance between output ports is 4 degrees. The measurements show excellent agreement with the simulations.

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Author Biographies

Jorge A. Caripidis Troccola, Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA

Jorge A. Caripidis Troccola (Member, IEEE) was born in Caracas, Venezuela, in 1997. He received the bachelor’s degree (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering and the M.Sc. degree from Florida International University, Miami, FL, USA, in 2020 and 2024, respectively, where he is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering with RFCOM Lab. His current research interests include ultrawideband arrays, deployable antennas for space applications, millimeter-wave antennas, and reconfigurable antennas.

Satheesh Bojja Venkatakrishnan, Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA

Satheesh Bojja Venkatakrishnan (S’13 – M’18) was born in Tiruchirappalli, India, in 1987. He received his bachelor’s degree in electronics and communication engineering from the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India, in 2009, and graduated with his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Ohio State University (OSU), Columbus, OH, USA, in 2017. He was a Scientist for DRDO, India, from 2009 to 2013, working on the development and implementation of active electronic steerable antennas. He is currently an Assistant Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University. His current research includes RF system design for secure wideband communications, data sensing and imaging, interference mitigation techniques, and RFSoC based Simultaneous Transmit and Receive System (STAR) to improve the spectral efficiency. In parallel, Bojja Venkatakrishnan has been working on developing RF sensors and circuits including fully passive neural implants and multi-modal patch sensors for bio-medical applications. Bojja Venkatakrishnan has won numerous awards and recognitions including the IEEE Electromagnetic Theory Symposium (EMTS-2019) Young Scientist Award, and the best paper award in the International Union of Radio Science General Assembly and Scientific Symposium (URSI-GASS) held at Montreal, Canada in August 2017. He is a member of Phi Kappa Phi, and also an Associate member of USNC-URSI.

Cedric W. L. Lee, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117411

Cedric W. L. Lee (Senior Member, IEEE) received B.Eng. and M.Sc. degrees in electrical engineering from the National University of Singapore, Singapore, in 2010 and 2013, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Ohio State University, USA, in 2016, under the mentorship of John L. Volakis. He joined the Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore, as a Senior Research Scientist, in January 2024. He is currently Deputy Head of the Antenna Group. Previously, he was with DSO National Laboratories as a Senior Member of Technical Staff, where he was involved in the development and testing of space-borne antennas and radar systems.

Theng Huat Gan, National University of Singapore, Singapore 117411

Theng Huat Gan (Senior Member IEEE) received his B.Eng. degree (Hons) in electrical and Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2007 and 2015, respectively. From 2007 to 2020, he was with DSO National Laboratories, Singapore. Since 2020, he has been a Senior Research Scientist with the Temasek Laboratories, National University of Singapore, where he concurrently serves as the Head of the Antenna and the Head of Computational Electromagnetics Group. His research interests focus on antenna design and computational electromagnetics. Gan has received several awards, including the First Prize in the IEEE AP-S Student Design Competition, in 2013, and the Best Student Paper Award from the IEEE Singapore MTT/AP Chapter, in 2014. He has held several leadership roles within the IEEE Singapore MTT/AP Joint Chapter, where he was Chair, in 2025, Vice-Chair, in 2024, Secretary, in 2023, and a Treasurer, from 2021 to 2022. Additionally, he was the Founding Chair of the IEEE AP-S Student Branch Singapore Chapter.

John L. Volakis, Department of Electrical Engineering Florida International University, Miami, FL, 33174, USA

John L. Volakis (S’77-M’82-SM’89-F96) was born on 13 May 1956 in Chios, Greece, and immigrated to the USA in 1973. He obtained his B.E. degree, summa cum laude, in 1978 from Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, USA, M.Sc. in 1979 from Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, and Ph.D. degree in 1982, also from the Ohio State University.

Volakis started his career at Rockwell International (1982–1984), now Boeing. In 1984, he was appointed Assistant Professor at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, becoming a full Professor in 1994. He also served as the Director of the Radiation Laboratory from 1998 to 2000. From January 2003 to August 2017, he was the Roy and Lois Chope Chair Professor of Engineering at the Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, and served as Director of the ElectroScience Laboratory from 2003 to 2016. Effective August 2017, he is Dean of the College of Engineering and Computing and a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University (FIU).

Over the years, he carried out research in antennas, wireless communications and propagation, computational methods, electromagnetic compatibility and interference, design optimization, RF materials, multi-physics engineering, millimeter waves, terahertz and medical sensing. His publications include eight books, 430 journal papers, nearly 900 conference papers, 29 book chapters and 25 patents/disclosures. Among his co-authored books are: Approximate Boundary Conditions in Electromagnetics, 1995; Finite Element Methods for Electromagnetics, 1998; 4th edition Antenna Engineering Handbook, 2007; Small Antennas, 2010; and Integral Equation Methods for Electromagnetics, 2011. He has graduated/mentored 95 doctoral students/post-docs with 43 of them receiving best paper awards at conferences. His service to Professional Societies include: 2004 President of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Society (2004), Chair of USNC/URSI Commission B (2015–2017), twice the general Chair of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Symposium, IEEE APS Distinguished Lecturer, IEEE APS Fellows Committee Chair, IEEE-wide Fellows committee member & Associate Editor of several journals. He was listed by ISI among the top 250 most referenced authors (2004), and is a Fellow of IEEE, ACES, and URSI. Among his awards are: University of Michigan College of Engineering Research Excellence award (1993), Scott award from Ohio State University College of Engineering for Outstanding Academic Achievement (2011), IEEE AP Society C.-T. Tai Teaching Excellence award (2011), IEEE Henning Mentoring award (2013), IEEE Antennas & Propagation Distinguished Achievement award (2014), Ohio State University Distinguished Scholar Award (2016), Ohio State University ElectroScience George Sinclair Award (2017), and URSI Booker Gold Medal (2020).

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Published

2026-02-20

How to Cite

[1]
J. A. C. . Troccola, S. B. . Venkatakrishnan, C. W. L. . Lee, T. H. . Gan, and J. L. . Volakis, “Low-Loss 16-Way Ultra-Wideband Wilkinson Power Divider”, ACES Journal, vol. 41, no. 02, pp. 108–117, Feb. 2026.

Issue

2026: Vol 41 Iss 2

Section

Advances in Next-Generation Antenna Systems and Their Testing Methodologies

Categories