3648 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 53, NO.

11, NOVEMBER 2005

Development of Low-Loss Broad-Band Planar Baluns

Using Multilayered Organic Thin Films
Andy C. Chen, Member, IEEE, Anh-Vu Pham, Senior Member, IEEE, and Robert E. Leoni III, Member, IEEE

Abstract—

Index Terms—

Fig. 1. Equivalent TEM transmission-line model of the compensated

Marchand balun.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE MARCHAND balun [1] is a popular RF/microwave used in baluns to reduce conduction loss by Tutt et al. [5]. This
component used in broad-band advanced communication concept is further expanded here with the usage of multithick-
systems designs. When used in balanced mixers and push–pull ness dielectrics in order to avoid the drawback of a smaller band-
amplifiers, baluns convert unbalanced signals into balanced width caused by a thick thin film. We have developed one sec-
signals and vice versa. The Marchand compensated balun was tion of the coupled lines with its top microstrip transmission line
implemented originally in coaxial cables, and later converted on a thick polymer layer to increase the strip width and minimize
into planar structures suitable for miniaturized system inte- loss [11], while the other section’s top microstrip transmission
gration. Planar baluns have been implemented using various line is on a thin layer to maintain low impedance for wide band-
type of transmission lines, including coupled microstrip lines width performance. Sections II and III describe the design and
[2], [3], coupled coplanar waveguide (CPW) lines [4], and analysis of the balun; whereas Section IV discusses the origins
multilayered broadside-coupled microstrip lines [5]–[9]. The of phase imbalance and presents an equivalent-circuit model for
single-layer edge-coupled microstrip and CPW baluns are the balun. The model is based on normal mode and physical pa-
easier to fabricate, but have smaller bandwidth ratios, with rameters, and its simulation results agree well with experimental
values lower than 2.7 : 1 reported to date. Multilayered planar results. Section V shows the experimental results for the balun
baluns, on the other hand, are more complicated to fabricate, conducted in both the frequency and time domains. The mea-
but they provide larger bandwidth ratios. sured results demonstrate that the balun has an insertion loss
In this paper, we report the development of a printed cir- of less than 0.5 dB from 4 to 17 GHz, less than 0.7 dB from
cuit, multilayered, and coax-like version of the Marchand balun 17 to 20 GHz, and 0.5 dB and 5 of amplitude and phase im-
that covers a 4–20-GHz operation bandwidth. This multilayered balances, respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the
balun design is derived from that originally proposed by Bawer widest bandwidth achieved for a planar balun while maintaining
and Wolfe [10], and has been implemented on a printed circuit a lowest possible insertion loss, as compared to [9]. Time-do-
board with polymer thin films on top to allow for the integration main measurements show an indistinguishable amount of pulse
of multilayer transmission lines. The balun consists of two sec- widening of a Gaussian-like pulse passing through the balun,
tions of broadside-coupled microstrip lines, and has wide metal demonstrating the balun achieving minimal dispersion.
traces to reduce conduction loss. Wide metal traces have been
II. I
Manuscript received April 5, 2005; revised June 24, 2005. This work was
supported by the Raytheon Company, by the University of California under
a Discovery Grant, and by the National Science Foundation under CAREER
Award ECS-0300649.
A. C. Chen and A.-V. Pham are with the Electrical and Computer Engineering
Department, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA (e-mail:
acchen@ucdavis.edu; pham@ece.ucdavis.edu).
R. E. Leoni III is with the RF Components Division, Raytheon Company,
Andover, MA 01810 USA.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2005.857102
CHEN et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-LOSS BROAD-BAND PLANAR BALUNS USING MULTILAYERED ORGANIC THIN FILMS 3649

transmission lines are well isolated and operate in a single TEM

propagation mode.

A. Bandwidth Calculation
Based on the above assumptions, the bandwidth of the TEM
balun has been traditionally calculated [12] by matching with
the source impedance

(1)

where is the impedance looking into the balun at the gap point,
as shown in Fig. 1, and is the sum of the load impedances
and . The bandwidth can also be found from an explicit
expression of derived from the TEM model of the balun

(2a)

where and are

3650 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 53, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2005

Fig. 3. Normalized bandwidth (NBW) of a single-layer thin-film balun and

conduction loss versus dielectric thin-film thickness. The normalized bandwidth
is defined to be (f 0 f )=f with f being the passband center frequency and Fig. 4. Effect of bottom dielectric material selection on balun’s bandwidth.
f and f being the high and low cutoff frequencies of the passband where Value of " was fixed at 2.65, while " is varied from 3.38 to 6.8 and 12.9. All
S =S occurs. Bandwidth was calculated using (3), while conduction other parameters are fixed with H = 20 m, H = 10 m, H = 813 m,
loss was calculated using (4). Values used were fixed at Z = 50 ; Z = W = 42 m, W = 182 m, L = 3575 m, and L = 3575 m.
144 ; and Z = Z = 35 .

larger bandwidth, but also increases the conduction loss dras-

tically due to the narrow lines of microstrip . A thickness
of 10–25 m is optimal for the single thin-film thickness case,
which can typically be implemented with polymer dielectrics
such as bisbenzocyclobutene (BCB).1

B. Twin Dielectric Thin-Film Thickness

In order to decouple the tradeoff between bandwidth and con- Fig. 5. Representative flow of c- and  -mode currents in a multilayered balun.
duction loss, as seen in Fig. 3, one must give the design an extra
degree of freedom. Since the value of characteristic impedance two modes are designated as the - (in-phase) and -mode (an-
is normally set to 50 and determined by the ratio tiphase), first analyzed by Tripathi [15]. For the compactness of
of the line, it is independent of the exact dielectric thickness. the analysis presented below, two new parameters and
Hence, a thicker dielectric thin film can be assigned for the con- are introduced as the following:
struction of transmission line to specifically reduce conduc- (5a)
tion loss, while keeping a thin dielectric for microstrip line
to maintain the bandwidth.
(5b)
C. Dielectric Material Selection
The selection of dielectric materials and their corresponding (5c)
dielectric constants directly alter the effective electrical lengths
for each of the two coupled transmission-line sections. The di-
electric materials were chosen to have near identical dielectric
constants to meet the homogenous assumption listed earlier. The (5d)
exact effect of using different dielectric constant materials is where and are the total currents flowing on conduc-
evaluated using the -mode model discussed in Section IV tors 1 and 2, respectively (Fig. 5), and are the - and
with results shown in Fig. 4. Materials having large dielectric- -mode phase constants, – are the intensities of the re-
constant differences for the top and bottom dielectrics cause a spective incident and reflected and modes, and and
large ratio and longer electrical lengths for -mode propa- are the characteristic admittances of conductor 1 for the two
gations, shrinking the bandwidth of the balun since not all trans- modes. The ratios of currents in the two modes are defined to
mission lines are equal to a quarter-wavelength at the center fre- be
quency in their respective modes.
(6a)
IV. MULTIMODE ANALYSIS and
A. Multimode Propagation and Imbalance of the Balun
Metal traces on the two layers M2 and M1 together with the (6b)
back ground plane form a pair of broadside coupled microstrip
The - and -mode currents of the two conductors can be
lines capable of supporting two distinct propagation modes. The
visualized in Fig. 5 to explain the operation of the multilayered
1[Online]. Available: http://www.dow.com/cyclotene/index.htm balun. Conductor 2 is located on top of conductor 1 in case of
CHEN et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-LOSS BROAD-BAND PLANAR BALUNS USING MULTILAYERED ORGANIC THIN FILMS 3651

a pair of broadside coupled lines. The -mode currents and

are opposite in directions, whereas the -mode currents
and flow in the same direction by definition of in-phase. The
ground return currents for and perfectly cancel out each
other in the back ground plane when , effectively
making conductor 1 the ground trace for microstrip transmission
line with the signal trace on conductor 2.
Ratios and are dependent on the coupled lines cross-
sectional structure as

(7a)
Fig. 6. Maximum in-band phase imbalance versus " for the broadside
coupled balun. Simulation conditions are the same as those used for generating
(7b) Fig. 4.

where and are the self-impedance

and admittance per unit length of lines 1 and 2, and and
are the mutual impedance and admittance per unit length.
A special case occurs when the width of conductor 1,
or , is set to infinite, where conductor 2 is completely
shielded off from the back ground plane. In this case,
and ,
where and are the mutual capacitance and in-
ductance and self-capacitance and inductance of the conductors
per unit lengths, assuming lossless dielectrics and conduc-
tors. This leads to the result of and
, indicating a complete elimination of
the -mode current on conductor 2. If we further assume that
the open-stub line is replaced by a perfect short, and the Fig. 7. Phase imbalance versus IR -parameter for planar baluns of different
structures. (a) Twin-thickness broadside coupled balun. (b) Single-thickness
section B side transmission line is replaced by , as in broadside coupled balun. (c) Single-thickness broadside coupled balun
Fig. 5 such that currents on both sides are also cancelled out, with a very wide W = 1842 m. (d) Symmetric edge-coupled balun.
a perfect balance of currents at the balanced ports is achieved, (e) Asymmetric edge-coupled lines balun.
same as that of the ideal coaxial balun case.
As implied from (5), the exact amount of imbalance is a com-
plex function of not only ratios and , phase velocities
and (which are all dependent on the balun’s cross-sectional
structure and dimensions), but also a function of frequency and
load terminations. Thus, one may expect the imbalances of the
balun to worsen under severely mismatched loads at the bal-
anced ports.
Fig. 6 shows the effects of material selection for the bottom
dielectric. As is increased from 2.65 to 12.9 while keeping Fig. 8. Original circuit diagram of the coaxial balun by Marchand [1] with the
representative flow of currents indicated at center frequency.
, the - and -mode phase velocities become more
and more mismatched (larger ratios). However, since the
value of becomes closer to 0, the current on conductor B. Detailed Modeling of the Balun
2 becomes more and more suppressed, and the phase imbalance The model originally proposed by Tsai and Gupta [8] based
actually decreases. Fig. 7 also demonstrates that phase imbal- on quasi-static normal mode analysis [15] can be further ex-
ance is much more dependent on than on the ratio. panded to include the modeling of secondary effects such as the
Different structures were analyzed to investigate their phase parasitic inductance of ground via through holes and the stray
velocities and phase imbalances. As shown from this figure, capacitance across the gap between transmission line and
balun structures using edge-coupled microstrip lines show a . To accurately model phase imbalance of the balun, the extra
much higher amount of phase imbalance due to their higher gap also has to be taken into account since a physical delay will
values and -mode intensities. The trait of higher phase be added to the signal passing through it before reaching port 3
imbalances for edge-coupled lines baluns is also observed from compared to the signal reaching port 2. As shown in Fig. 8,
the measurement results in [16]. where all transmission lines operate in a dominant TEM mode,
3652 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 53, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2005

Fig. 9. Detailed network model for the multilayered microstrip balun. The model is based on normal mode and physical parameters (Z = 166 ; =
3 ;L = 0:01 nH, and L = 0:03 nH).

Fig. 10. Fabricated: (a) single balun and (b) pair of back-to-back connected
baluns.

current is opposite in direction to current and serves as the

mirrored ground return current. Current has to travel through
the extra length of the gap before being shorted from point to
point by the open-stub resonator, where the lower the charac-
teristic impedance of , the better short it makes and, hence, the
wider the bandwidth of the balun. Transmission line in Fig. 9
models the extra distance current has to travel through due to
the gap; models the parasitic inductance of the step height Fig. 11. (a) Measured insertion and return losses of a pair of back-to-back
discontinuity in the dielectric thicknesses, and models the configured baluns compared to Sonnet simulation results and that predicted
parasitic inductance of the ground via. This detailed model is by the network model. (b) Enlarged scale of the insertion loss of a pair of
back-to-back configured baluns. Also shown is the estimated insertion loss
based on quasi-static analysis and does not include microstrip predicted by (4) represented by the cross marks.
dispersion effects. Exclusion of the effect of resulted in a
1.2 difference in our phase imbalance simulation.
cated back-to-back Marchand baluns [see Fig. 10(b)]. The en-
V. MEASUREMENT RESULTS larged scale plot [see Fig. 11(b)] of the passband insertion-loss
data demonstrates a less than 1.4-dB loss throughout the speci-
A. Frequency-Domain Measurement fied operating bandwidth, which is the equivalent of a less than
-parameters of the baluns were measured on a Cascade RF 0.7-dB insertion loss per balun. Discrepancies between the mea-
probe station by an Agilent E8364B two-port network analyzer sured results and Sonnet simulation return-loss results are at-
with the third port terminated by a standard 50- termination for tributed to the process variations of the BCB thickness. The in-
the single balun configuration [see Fig. 10(a)]. Fig. 11(a) shows sertion-loss difference ( 0.1 dB per balun) is within the mea-
the insertion- and return-loss measurement results of the fabri- surement and simulation tolerances.
CHEN et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-LOSS BROAD-BAND PLANAR BALUNS USING MULTILAYERED ORGANIC THIN FILMS 3653

conduction loss reduction of 0.5 dB per balun at 20 GHz is

achieved with the use of the twin-thickness structure.

B. Time-Domain Measurement
Phase distortion or, equivalently, dispersion across the balun
will cause distortion of signals passing through it even as a linear
device. Taking the derivative of from (2a)–(2c) with re-
spect to frequency leads to a nonzero result, indicating a non-
linear phase response and a certain amount of phase distortion
even for the ideal TEM balun. The amount of phase distortion
is greatest at the lower and higher ends of the passband.
The amount of dispersion can be calculated from the group
delay data taken during the -parameter frequency-domain
Fig. 12. Measured and modeled amplitude and phase imbalances of a single
balun. measurements. Group delay, also known as signal delay and
envelope delay, can be written as
TABLE I
PARAMETERS USED IN DETAILED MODEL OF THE BALUN
(8)

where is the amount of phase delay over the signal path. Phase
constant is the amount of phase change per unit length, and is
expressed as

(9)

where is the length of the path. Group velocity is defined as

(10)

and the group velocity dispersion (GVD) [18] is a measure of

the amount of group velocity variation versus frequency

(11)

The widening of a Gaussian pulse with width increases with

the length traveled and can be expressed as a function of GVD
as [13]

(12)

For small values of GVD and short path lengths of a balun, the
amount of Gaussian pulse widening of signals passing through
Fig. 13. Measured bandwidth and insertion-loss comparison between a single the balun is expected to be nearly zero. Dispersion characteris-
and twin-thickness thin-film balun. BCB thickness used for the single- and tics and distortion [17] were also confirmed through time-do-
twin-thickness baluns are 10 and 20 m, respectively.
main measurements to be compared with those predicted and
calculated by frequency-domain measurements (Fig. 14). The
Amplitude and phase imbalance of the balun are directly measurement setup consists of an Agilent E8267C PSG vector
calculated from the measured three-port -parameters of signal generator to generate a Gaussian-like modulated pulse
a single balun. The amplitude imbalance is calculated as input signal into the unbalanced port with the balanced port out-
- , and is smaller than 0.5 dB for 4–20 GHz, puts sampled by an HP 54750A digitizing oscilloscope. The sig-
as shown in Fig. 12. The phase imbalance is calculated as nals have a center frequency swept from 4 to 20 GHz, modulated
180 , and is shown to be less than 5 . by the Gaussian-like pulse. The output waveforms are compared
The measured and modeled phase and amplitude imbalances to that of a short through line in substitute of the balun under test.
are correlated. Table I lists the parameters used in the detailed The GVD can be back calculated by substituting the difference
model for the modeled results plotted out in Figs. 11 and value back into (12). Time-domain measurement waveforms are
12. Fig. 13 compares the insertion loss of a balun using twin plotted out as shown in Fig. 15, indicating an indistinguishable
thin-film thickness versus that using a single thickness. A amount of pulse widening and near-zero dispersion.
3654 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 53, NO. 11, NOVEMBER 2005

than for those employing edge-coupled lines. Dispersion has

also been characterized and measured to be near-zero for this
broad-band balun.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors wish to thank the reviewers of this paper for
their helpful comments. The authors would also like to thank
Prof. A. Knoesen and Q. Chen, both with the Department of
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California
at Davis, for their assistance in the time-domain measurements.
Fig. 14. Group delay and dispersion characteristics predicted from
S -parameter measurements of the balun. Black lines show the results for REFERENCES
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crowave baluns having three symmetric coupled lines,” in IEEE MTT-S
been presented demonstrating a less than 0.7-dB insertion loss Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., vol. 1, Jun. 2002, pp. 117–120.
throughout the 4–20-GHz specification bandwidth. A proposed [17] D. L. Lee, Electromagnetic Principles of Integrated Optics. New York:
multilayered thin-film structure has been successfully em- Wiley, 1986, ch. 10, sec. 6, pp. 301–314. .
[18] G. Keiser, Optical Fiber Communications, 3rd ed. New York: Mc-
ployed to reduce the insertion loss without having to sacrifice Graw-Hill, 2000, ch. 3.
the balun’s bandwidth.
The low insertion loss was achieved by the usage of wide
metal traces. Low-cost printed circuit dielectric materials with
similar dielectric constants were selected to equalize the - and Andy C. Chen (M’97) received the B.S. degree in electro-physics from Na-
-mode phase velocities and preserve a wide bandwidth. Low tional Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, R.O.C., in 1997, the M.S. degree in elec-
trical engineering from San Jose State University, CA, in 2001, and is currently
amplitude and phase imbalances of 0.5 dB and 5 were achieved working toward the Ph.D. degree at the University of California at Davis.
through the usage of the multilayered broadside coupled mi- From 1997 to 2003, he was with Atelic Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, as a main
crostrip lines, suppressing the -mode wave propagation within CMOS Design Engineer involved in the development of mixed-signal integrated
circuits (ICs) and digital signal processors (DSPs). His current research interests
the transmission lines. The in-band phase imbalance is con- include RF integrated circuit (RFIC), microwave, and high-speed digital circuit
cluded to be lower for baluns using broadside coupled lines design and packaging.
CHEN et al.: DEVELOPMENT OF LOW-LOSS BROAD-BAND PLANAR BALUNS USING MULTILAYERED ORGANIC THIN FILMS 3655

Anh-Vu Pham (SM’03) received the B.E.E. (with highest honors), M.S., and Robert E. Leoni III (M’98) received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering,
Ph.D. degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1995, 1997, B.S. degree in physics, and M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering
and 1999, respectively. from Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA, in 1992, 1993, 1995, and 1998, re-
In 1997, he cofounded RF Solutions LLC, an RFIC company that was ac- spectively.
quired by Anadigics in 2003. He has held faculty positions with Clemson Uni- He is currently a Senior Scientist with the RF Components Division,
versity and the University of California at Davis, where he is currently an Asso- Raytheon Company, Andover, MA. He has authored or coauthored over 30
ciate Professor. He is also an active consultant to industry. He has authored or technical papers. He was the editor of High Performance Devices—Proceedings
coauthored over 50 technical journal and conference papers. His research inter- of the 2004 IEEE Lester Eastman Conference.
ests are in the area of RF and high-speed packaging and signal integrity, RFIC
design, and wireless sensors.
Dr. Pham serves as a member of the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques
Society (IEEE MTT-S) International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Technical
Program Committee (TPC) on Power Amplifiers and Integrated Circuits. He
has been the chair of the IEEE MTT-12 Microwave and Millimeter Wave Pack-
aging and Manufacturing Technical Committee of the IEEE MTT-S. He was
the recipient of the 2001 National Science Foundation CAREER Award on mil-
limeter-wave organic packaging.