Quasi-Circulator Using an Asymmetric Coupler for Tx Leakage Cancellation

A quasi-circulator is proposed by using an asymmetric coupler with high isolation between the transmitting (Tx) and receiving (Rx) ports. The proposed quasi-circulator consists of quarter-wave transmission lines, which have unbalanced characteristic impedances and the terminated port, which is purposely unmatched with the reference impedance in the coupler. The port compensates for the asymmetric impedances of the coupler using the proposed design parameter. Because of its asymmetric structure and the usage of the unmatched port, the proposed circulator can be accurately designed to have high Tx–Rx isolation without increasing the signal losses in the Tx and Rx paths at the operating frequency. The proposed quasi-circulators show isolation improvements of 9.07 dB at 2.45 GHz and 7.95 dB at 24.125 GHz compared with conventional circulators using the symmetric couplers. The characteristic improvement of the proposed quasi-circulator was demonstrated by the increase of the detectable range of the 2.45 GHz Doppler radar sensor with the quasi-circulator.