Design of conical transmission line power combiners using tapered line matching sections

An axially symmetric power combiner, which utilizes a tapered conical impedance matching network to transform ten 50-Ω inputs to a central coaxial line over the X-band, is presented. The use of a conical line allows standard transverse electromagnetic design theory to be used, including tapered impedance matching networks. This, in turn, alleviates the problem of very low impedance levels at the common port of conical line combiners, which normally requires very high-precision manufacturing and assembly. The tapered conical line is joined to a tapered coaxial line for a completely smooth transmission line structure. Very few full-wave analyses are needed in the design process since circuit models are optimized to achieve a wide operating bandwidth. A ten-way prototype was developed at X-band with a 47% bandwidth, very low losses, and excellent agreement between simulated and measured results. © 2008 IEEE.