Introduction
You may have had to tax the brain hard in classes while understanding the difference between power splitters and power dividers. Divide/split, sounds about the same, right? A three-resistor divider may be a little hard to tell apart from a two-resistor splitter other than this seemingly easy count and their blameworthy, almost similar-looking appearances due to having similar components; but they actually have a few things that aren’t so common. The difference lies in their characteristics. With this, we can easily use their application to explain to you all about them.
Let’s hop on.
Understand the Difference between Power Splitters and Power Dividers:
The divider’s work is pretty simple. It has to divide, as you would presume, the input signal into two or more output signals. And mind you, the distribution is even across them all. Ideally, you do not lose power here. But in practical situations less to significantly less power may be dissipated. In each port of the power divider accessory, there is a 50-ohm resistance. Needless to say, they help in the uniform transmission of power between ports. It can measure both the frequency and power of a signal in a test system.
A divider besides dividing can combine too. They can have the same components a combiner and hence act as combiners, credits to being bi-directional themselves.
But again, they may part ways with the actual combiners that are built for the purpose, when it comes to isolation, handling of power or phase matching scenarios.
Now, both the divider and combiner may be termed as splitters. While they may be used interchangeably in your physics classes, our engineering friends aren’t quite agreeing. Splitters tend to be comparatively cheap and they have quite a resistive built. They will split the incoming/existing power over a wide bandwidth. So, you can expect a good amount of loss from here, as opposed to the divider.
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Let’s take a look at their applications.
Types of Power Splitters and Dividers:
Power dividers are of the following types:
- Resistive Power Divider: Such dividers have a star-like configuration with symmetrical ports. There is no common port, but there is one common point. This is an ideal structure for connecting multiple radios. The loss is equally divided across ports.
- Reactive Power Divider: Such dividers have a hierarchical configuration like tree branches. The ports are non-symmetrical. Here, one common port divides into multiple combiner ports. The loss is again equal. This loss is termed as isolation.
Power splitters are of the following types:
- Resistive Power Splitter: These are cheap and can be made easily. The two resistors here can maintain the impedance of the system. But there is increased loss in this setup.
- Hybrid Power Splitter: Such splitters use transformers as part of their configuration. So you can expect the loss to be comparatively lesser than resistive power splitters here. However, there exists a power loss inside the transformer itself.
Uses of Power Dividers:
- Distribution of Low Power Signals: They can be used for the distribution of a low-power signal into two antennae simultaneously.
- IMD Measurements: In Intermodulation Distortion measurements, power dividers can play the role of combiners. Such measurements need the carriers having an appropriate phase relationship among them to have a signal. This creates a simulation that can be experimented over and over. The divider here goes out of its way (or direction) to combine the different signals from the different sources into one signal for the test device under study.
- Diversity Gain Measurements: In a multipath circuit, the electromagnetic field varies, being weak at some points and strong at the others. A divider can be used to measure the diversity gain of the environment. Creating a setup with the base station, the spectrum analyzer, the switch, the chamber and the divider itself, the power of the radiated signal can be both captured and measured.
Uses of Power Splitters:
- Compression/Isolation/Gain Measurements: Power splitters can be used to measure all three of them. The power splitter allows you to ratio signals which makes source matching easy and stops signals from being reflected again. In this way, your gain measurements can be easily taken without recalibration for different radio-frequency levels.
- Leveling/Ratioing: If you want to source match the right way, leveling and ratioing with the splitters are your go-to. Of course, you have to level and ratio the source externally. They do not just help you match but improve matching if you’re already a pro at it.
Quick Sum-Up:
For those who have little time, we did a little chart to make things easier. Look into this table if you want to learn the difference between power splitters and power dividers.