What Are RF Power Combiners/Splitters?
RF Power Combiners/Splitters, sometimes referred to as either RF combiners, RF splitters, or RF dividers, are a fundamental passive RF component used to combine power from multiple inputs to a single output or split RF power from one input to multiple outputs. RF Power Combiners are often used to combine the output powers of several amplifiers to realize a higher output power level than is possible or viable with a single amplifier. An example of this is replacing high power traveling wave tube amplifiers (TWTAs) with a combined gang of solid-state power amplifiers (SSPAs).
Other applications include adding redundancy to critical transmission systems where the high-power output amplifiers may fail. Using a RF Power Combiner with several redundant amplifiers, only one of which is active at a time, can enable continuous transmission even in the event of an amplifier failure. Other use cases include splitting the input from an antenna or other source to multiple RF signal paths for the purpose of filtering or feeding different radio systems with the same antenna/source.
RF Combiner/Splitter
More recently, there are also emerging applications for RF Power Combiners/Splitters with modern advanced/active antenna systems (AAS). One such case is splitting the power from a single RF source to feed multiple AAS antenna elements in an analog phased array antenna. Another is using an RF Power Combiner/Splitter to divide/split the RF power from a single local oscillator (LO) and feed that RF source to the two sides of a quadrature demodulator.
