Ultra-Wideband Balun using a Multiaperture

Ferromagnetic Core
Bryant Baker, Richard Campbell
Qorvo, Hillsboro, OR 97124, USA, Portland State University, Portland, OR 97102, USA

Abstract — This paper will describe the design of an ultra-

wideband balun using a multiaperture ferromagnetic core.
The balun is designed to operate over several decades of
bandwidth to provide a broadband solution to an increasingly
complex spectrum. This design is intended for receiver front-
end applications where wideband performance is a critical
device requirement. The characteristics of the ferromagnetic
material and unique design arrangement provides state-of-
the-art insertion loss performance when compared to
commercially available baluns.
Index Terms - Ferrite, mutual inductance, magnetic core
flux, transmission line transformer, ultra-wideband balun.
Fig 1. The transmission line TEM is equal in magnitude and
opposite in phase.
I. INTRODUCTION
There is an industry need for wideband baluns to operate core. The balun was measured on an Agilent ENA-
across several decades of bandwidth to provide a broadband E5071C vector network analyzer in a 50 Ohm system and
solution to an increasingly complex spectrum. Wideband converted to mixed-mode S-parameters using EDA
baluns can be used in a number of applications, where the software. The balun is evaluated with a 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1
conversion of a balanced source to an unbalanced load is impedance ratio, where the unbalanced port is held constant
required. In early radio communications it found at a 50 Ohm impedance. Measured results are reported for
widespread use in converting the balanced load of a dipole input VSWR, output VSWR, differential-mode insertion
antenna to the unbalanced output of a single-ended loss, common-mode rejection ratio (CMRR), magnitude
amplifier [1], [2]. The balun later found its way into the imbalance, and phase imbalance.
design of solid-state differential circuits such as mixers and
amplifiers, where network matching is required to deliver II. THEORY OF OPERATION
the maximum power transfer to the load. In the design of The ultra-wideband balun is a transmission line
RF power amplifiers, the balun plays a critical role in transformer (TLT) that transmits energy by way of
amplifier performance, including its input and output transverse electromagnetic mode (TEM), and differs from
impedances, gain flatness, linearity, and power efficiency. conventional transformers that transmit energy through flux
[3], [4]. These devices can be constructed at low cost and linkages. The TLT uses two conductors that possess line
with a relatively small bill of materials, making its currents that are equal in magnitude and opposite in phase,
deployment in communication systems both practical and and is more clearly illustrated by Fig 1. If we recall
commercially viable. Maxwell's boundary conditions, the transverse electric (TE)
This paper describes the design of an ultra-wideband and transverse magnetic (TM) refer to conditions in which
balun that is capable of performing over 3.7 decades of the electric field or magnetic field of a propagating wave is
bandwidth, encompassing the MF, HF, VHF, and UHF parallel to a boundary plane. In the case of transverse
spectrum. It was constructed using a multiaperture ferrite electromagnetic (TEM) the boundary condition of both the
core, and a pair of bifilar wires with three parallel windings. electric field and magnetic fields are parallel to the
The design arrangement, first presented in [5], is evaluated boundary plane, and no longitudinal components of either
using new ferrite material and magnet wire to provide state- field exist [6]. TLTs are especially useful in wideband
of-the-art wideband insertion loss performance. The applications because they possess greater transmission
physical size of the multiaperture ferrite core is reduced by efficiencies by arranging the windings to have uniform
a factor of five, and uses a higher gauge quadrafilar magnet transmission line properties that produce nearly equal
wire to accommodate the smaller inside diameter of the delay.
 The desired low frequency response of this particular tradeoff using 3 parallel turns is used to obtain the desired
design eliminates the use of Marchand and other planar low frequency response, resulting in a slight reduction to
balun types; however the desired performance can be easily the capacitive coupling of the device.
attained using magnetic materials. The introduction of a The design arrangement shown in Fig. 2, depicts the
ferromagnetic core increases the magnetically induced balanced port on the left where conductors A and D
inductance of the conductors to achieve the low frequency terminate to individual female SMA connectors and
response required to minimize the VSWR and differential- conductors B/C are twisted together terminating to ground.
mode insertion loss. The magnetic coupling between the For a balun with a 2:1 impedance ratio, the balanced port
primary and secondary dominates at low frequencies, while represents the 100 Ohm differential impedance measured
at higher frequencies the leakage inductance increases and across terminals A and D, where each terminal represents a
the permeability of the magnetic material decreases. This 50 Ohm impedance. The unbalanced port on the right
characteristic limits the high frequency bandwidth, unless represents a 50 Ohm single-ended impedance where the
adequate capacitive coupling between the coils is twisted pair of conductors A/B terminate to ground and the
maintained [7]. The low frequency response is dominated twisted pair C/D terminate to a female SMA connector.
by the magnetizing inductance of the windings, where the The ultra-wideband balun is mounted on 62.5 mil FR4
magnetic material increases the length of the transmission substrate. The FR4 substrate provides a rigid surface to
line by approximately l' = l(μ), where l' is the apparent mount the female SMA connectors and also provides a
length of the transmission line, l is the actual physical common ground between SMA ports.
length, and μ is the permeability of the ferrite core. This The equivalent circuit model for the ultra-wideband
approximation is especially appropriate for transmission balun design can be seen in Fig 3. By examination we can
line transformers made with twisted or parallel wires see L3 is shorted to ground between nodes B and C and the
because they are directly influenced by magnetic material single-ended port where A/B terminates to ground.
due to stray coupling [8]. Intuitively it would seem that shunting L3 to ground would
impede the function of L4, resulting in degraded high
frequency performance. However, this design arrangement
III. DESIGN PROCEDURE
has led to improved wideband performance, because its
The ultra-wideband balun was realized using a Fair-Rite symmetrical design layout and increased magnetic core
2843002302 multiaperture ferrite core and MWS Wire flux reduces common-mode currents and group delay,
Industries #32 insulated quadrafilar magnet wire [9]. The thereby extending its wideband performance.
multiaperture ferrite core, presented in this work is
approximately five times smaller than the ferrite core used
in [5], leading to enhanced wideband performance
extending into the microwave spectrum. A higher gauge
quadrafilar magnet wire is selected for this design in an
effort to scale to the physical dimensions of the ferrite core
while maintaining low leakage inductance at higher
frequencies. The quadrafilar magnet wire is split into a pair
of bifilar conductors and wound around the ferrite core as
shown in Fig 2. The polyurethane nylon insulated magnet
wire offers exceptional dielectric properties and low losses.
Due to the physical constraints of the cores inside diameter, Fig 3. Equivalent circuit model of the ultra-wideband balun.
3 turns of twisted wires through the core would damage the
insulation resulting in short circuits. Alternatively, a design IV. MEASURED RESULTS
The balun was measured using an Agilent ENA-E5071C
vector network analyzer, where its 3-port scattering
parameters were recorded in a 50 Ohm system. The single-
ended S-parameters were converted to mixed-mode S-
parameters using EDA software, using the method
described in [10]. The measured results in Fig. 4 provides
the results for the input VSWR, output VSWR, differential
insertion loss, CMRR, magnitude imbalance, and phase
Fig 2. The design arrangement of the ultra-wideband balun. imbalance. The performance of the balun was evaluated
 Fig. 4. Ultra-wideband balun measured results with an impedance ration of 2:1 (blue), 3:1 (red), and 4:1 (green).

with an impedance ratio of 2:1, 3:1, and 4:1, where the The performance of the balun evaluated with a 3:1 and
single-ended unbalanced port is held constant at 50 Ohms. 4:1 impedance ratio produces an improved input and output
The device is evaluated with varying impedances at the VSWR, from its low frequency response and extends well
balanced port to expose the performance tradeoffs of this into the UHF spectrum. The impedance on the unbalanced
design in various system impedances. port is held constant at 50 Ohms, and by observation we can
The performance of the balun evaluated with a 2:1 see that increasing the impedance on the balanced port
impedance ratio reports an input and output VSWR less improves the match for both the input and the output of the
than 2.2, a differential insertion loss less than 3dB, and device. This suggests that the device characteristics of the
CMRR greater than 15 dB from 300 kHz to 1.5 GHz. The ferrite core and inductance of the magnet wire possesses a
magnitude imbalance less than 2 dB is reported up to 1 higher device impedance. The impedance of the device at
GHz, with a phase imbalance less than 10 degrees from 300 lower frequencies is a result of the magnetic coupling
kHz to 1.5 GHz. The imbalance of the device can be between the primary and secondary. As the frequency
calculated from the single-ended S-parameters using the increases the permeability of the ferromagnetic material
following equation. decreases, while leakage inductance increases, limiting the
higher frequency performance.
Sss 21 (1) The differential insertion loss also benefits from the
imbalance 
Sss 31 improved match, reporting insertion loss less than 2 dB for
frequencies ranging from 300 kHz to 800 MHz. The
The magnitude and phase imbalance can be improved by CMRR is a key figure of merit of any balun because its
adjusting the spacing between the turns on the primary role is to reject undesired common-mode currents
multiaperture ferrite core, which affects the capacitive with minimal impact on the desired differential mode
coupling between coils. Alternatively, trimming the currents. The CMRR results are comparable to the 2:1
physical length of the magnet wire A or D, in an effort to results for frequencies under 800 MHz, but degrades from
make the physical length of the two conductors equal, has 900 MHz to 1800 MHz. The phase imbalance also
shown to improve the magnitude and phase imbalance. improves for these impedance ratio conditions, but it comes
This trimming method can also lead to improved CMRR at the cost of increased magnitude imbalance. Due to the
due to the reduction in common-mode currents and group bandwidth limitation of the vector network analyzer, it is
delay [5]. The reduction in the common-mode response can thought that the low frequency performance extends below
be observed by inspection from the sum of magnitudes 300 kHz. Further work investigating the frequency
given in the following equation derived from the single- response of the ultra-wideband balun for frequencies below
ended S-parameters. 300 kHz is required to confirm this theory.
1
SCS  SSS 21  SSS 31 (2)
2
 TABLE I and characteristics of the ferromagnetic material led to its
Comparison with State-of-the-Art extended bandwidth capabilities. The increased magnetic
coupling between the primary and secondary dominates at
low frequencies, while at higher frequencies the leakage
inductance increases and the permeability of the ferrite core
decreases, limiting the high frequency bandwidth. The
measured results of the balun were reported for a 2:1, 3:1,
and 4:1 impedance ratios with the unbalanced port held
constant at 50 Ohms. This balun design was compared with
commercially available baluns and represents state-of-the-
art in terms of its wideband 2 dB insertion loss performance
with a 2:1 impedance ratio as well as its 2dB and 3 dB
V. STATE-OF-THE-ART COMPARISON insertion loss performance measured with a 4:1 impedance
The insertion loss performance of the balun presented in ratio.
this work is compared to those commercially available from
MiniCircuits in Table 1. The ultra-wideband balun has a ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
3dB bandwidth of 3.7 decades, and a 2 dB bandwidth of
The authors' would like to thank Portland State
approximately 3.3 decades with a 2:1 impedance ratio.
University and Qorvo who supported this research. A
However, please note that the insertion loss performance is
special thanks to Fair-Rite Products Corporation and MWS
relatively flat from 600 MHz to 1300 MHz, hovering just
Wire Industries for providing product samples, and making
below the 2 dB insertion loss specification. This effectively
this work possible.
produces a 2dB insertion loss bandwidth of 3.6 decades.
Regardless, the 2 dB bandwidth performance represents
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