Bandwidth broadening for stripline circulator.

This work provides a detailed analysis and simulation to demonstrate how to broaden the operating bandwidth of a circulator. A double-Y junction circulator is designed, and the shape of the central stripline is optimized with the knowledge of a modified equation. The equation predicts two resonant conditions. The overlapping of the two resonant conditions jointly constitutes the broad bandwidth. The bias magnetic field is simulated and then used in full electromagnetic-wave simulation. The designed circulator was fabricated in the S-band for communication purpose. The measured results agree very well with simulation. The overall operation range is from 1643 to 2027 MHz with the insertion loss less than 0.35 dB, reflection, and isolation better than 20 dB. The mechanism will be discussed.