Towards Practical Implementation of Tri-ridged Orthomode Transducers

In this paper, two practical designs of tri-ridged orthogonal mode transducers are explored. These designs investigate the effect of including a well-matched central TEM port to help balance the system. The devices were designed to operate over a 3.6:1 bandwidth for a return loss of more than $20 \mathbf{d B}$. Full-wave simulation results confirm the theoretical result that the excitation ports of the system cannot be simultaneously matched and isolated without the matched central TEM port.