Broadband constant voltage multicoupler

Abstract

Abstract A broadband, constant voltage multicoupler including an input port and a plurality of output ports wherein the impedance rises in the same proportion as the power falls in the internal branches so that the voltage is substantially constant therein. The multicoupler comprises a signal splitter transmission line network having an electrical characteristic which maintains the same voltage throughout and a plurality of active devices associated therewith. In particular, the signal splitting network comprises a first transmission line connected at one end to the input and terminating at the opposite end, and a plurality of additional transmission lines having an impedance equal to n times the impedance of the first transmission line where n equals the number of the outputs. The active devices are in the form of buffer amplifiers, one for each of the outputs, each of the active devices having an input connected to one of the additional transmission lines and each of the active devices properly terminating the corresponding transmission line and providing a desirable output impedance value. As a result, the voltage level at the terminations of the additional transmission lines is substantially the same as the voltage at the input resulting in substantially no degradation of signal to noise ratio. This, in turn, allows the multicoupler to be connected directly to a signal source without need for a preamplifier. In addition, the transmission lines are properly terminated so as to be length-independent and frequency independent thereby advantageously resulting in broadband operation.

Inventors

• 👤 Daniel A. Barczys

Bibliographic Details