Recessed ground microstrip line at 60 GHz and its application of band‐pass filter

The effect of finite‐size recessed ground on characteristic features of a microstrip transmission line is investigated and verified experimentally on alumina substrate of height 0.127 mm with ε_r = 9.8 at 60 GHz. A measured characteristic impedance of 238 Ω, effective dielectric constant of 3.09, and attenuation constant of 3.4 Np/m is achieved by using a recessed ground of dimensions (width × depth) 4.5 mm × 0.95 mm, below a 50‐Ω (on conventional ground plane) microstrip line. The effect of recessed ground on lumped equivalent circuit elements of microstrip line discontinuities including series‐gap, open‐end, and step discontinuities is also studied. To show the usefulness of recessed ground microstrip line, a prototype of fifth‐order Chebyshev‐type recessed ground end‐coupled band‐pass filter is designed and fabricated at 60 GHz. The filter exhibits measured insertion loss lower than 2.2 dB and return loss better than 13 dB over 3‐dB passband of 6% centered at 60 GHz. The measured results show good consistency with simulated results and confirm the usefulness of recessed ground plane microstrip line.     

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filter with the modified Minkowski‐island‐based fractal patch

An equivalent circuit model for the wide‐band band‐pass filters (BPFs) using modified Minkowski‐island‐based (MIB) fractal patch are proposed in this article. The BPF is mainly formed by a square patch resonator in which a modified MIB fractal configuration with second‐order iteration is embedded in the patch. By the equivalent circuit model with diamond structure, the wide‐band responses are analyzed. The design procedure included equivalent circuit model is available for wide‐band design. For wide‐band characteristics, at 5.0 GHz central frequency, it has good measured characteristics including the wider bandwidth of 3.14–6.89 GHz (3‐dB fractional bandwidth of 75%), low insertion loss of 0.39 dB, and high rejection level (?48.5/?44.9 dB). The patch size is 7.4 λ 7.4 mm² (0.25 λ_g × 0.25 λ_g) with 14.1% reduction. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:170–176, 2014.     

A compact band‐pass filter using multi‐element resonators

A compact, band‐pass filter utilizing multi‐element resonators, structured from sections of distributed transmission lines, is presented. A band‐pass filter design procedure is established that emphasizes CAD techniques to characterize the individual resonators and to determine the resonator coupling values required for a specified pass‐band response. Detailed band‐pass filter design examples are illustrated and simulation results are employed to validate the design procedure. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 13, 447–458, 2003.     

Compact quad‐band band‐pass filters using stepped‐impedance coupled‐line resonators

In this article, compact quad‐band band‐pass filters are realized by using stepped‐impedance coupled‐line quad‐mode resonators (SICLQMRs). The compactness of the quad‐mode resonator relies in its folded structure without extra space between the parallel lines. Unlike stepped‐impedance resonators, SICLQMRs provide more design freedoms for controlling the four resonating frequencies since the even‐ and odd‐mode equivalents can be separately assigned with characteristic impedances. Internal and external couplings are also parallel couplings, resulting in very compact dimensions of the filters. Simulated and measured S parameters are compared with good agreement, demonstrating the feasibility of the design.     

Coupled‐line band‐pass filter with T‐shaped structure for high frequency selectivity and stopband rejection

A coupled‐line band‐pass filter (BPF) with T‐shaped stub structure is presented. Five transmission poles within the passband and eight deep transmission zeros (TZs) from 0 to 2f₀ (f₀ denotes filter's center frequency) are realized through input impedance calculations. With the simple T‐shaped structure, the positions of six TZs can be appropriately adjusted to achieve high frequency selectivity and stopband rejection. For demonstration, a BPF prototype centered at 2.05 GHz is designed and fabricated, whose measured rejection levels are of over 45.5 dB at lower stopband and better than 19.5 dB at upper stopband. The simulation and measurement results are in good agreement, which validates the design idea.     

A covering Ka‐band two‐way switch filter module using a three‐line and an E‐plane waveguide band‐pass filters

A millimeter‐wave ultrawideband two‐way switch filter module is presented in this article. The switch filter module covers whole Ka‐band (26–40 GHz), and is composed of two wideband band‐pass filters and two monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) single pole two throw (SP2T) switches. One filter is realized using E‐plane iris waveguide band‐pass filter, and another is realized by a novel 11‐pole three‐line microstrip structure band‐pass filter. Compared with the traditional three‐line filter, the proposed three‐line filter not only retains virtues of the traditional three‐line filter, but also resolves drawbacks of it, which include discontinuities between adjacent sections, many parameters of design, and no effective matching circuits at input/output ports. The developed switch filter module is fabricated using hybrid integrated technology, which has a size of 51 × 26 × 9.8 mm³, and interconnections between MMICs and microstrip are established by bond wires. The fabricated switch filter module exhibits excellent performances: for two different states, the measured insertion loss and return loss are all better than 7 and 10 dB in each pass‐band, respectively. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 25:305–310, 2015.     

Continuously varying coupled transmission lines applied to design band‐pass filters

This article presents a technique to analyze and optimize Continuously Varying Transmission Lines (CVTL's), used to design microwave band‐pass filters in planar technology. For millimeters waves, radiation losses can increase quickly, especially for sharp discontinuities in planar circuits. In this approach, rather than taking account of this effect in a full‐wave analysis, we generate structures without discontinuities. Moreover, the line shape is optimized to reduce spurious responses out of the band‐pass. For several filters, measurements are compared with simulation results. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 12: 288–295, 2002.     

Bandwidth‐controllable band‐stop filter using spoof surface plasmon polaritons

This article presents a bandwidth‐controllable band‐stop filter based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) transmission line in the microwave frequency band. The approach of introducing rectangular slots into the corrugation strips offers a greater degree of flexibility in the SSPPs unit cell design. Meanwhile, the high‐order mode can be pulled to the low frequency segment of interest. The lower and upper edge of the stop band of this filter, therefore, can be controlled independently and conveniently. An equivalent circuit model of this unique unit cell is proposed for analyzing stop band formation and guiding the design of this SSSPs filter. Both numerical simulations and measured results demonstrate excellent stop band performance of the filter. The proposed filter may have potential applications in the SSPPs‐based communication system.     

Novel application of a new metamaterial complementary electric LC resonator for the design of miniaturized sharp band‐pass filters

In this article, we introduce a new metamaterial complementary electric LC resonator (CELC) and investigate its operational mechanism, characteristics, and potentialities for application in microwave components and devices, such as filters. We consider the excitation of CELC by the electric and magnetic fields of microstrip lines and its resonance characteristics by the diagrams of effective permittivity (ε_eff) and permeability (μ_eff). A circuit model is obtained by the consideration of its coupling with the loaded microstrip line. We then realize a novel left‐handed (LH) cell by the combination of the CELC resonator and a short circuited stub. It is designed by the least mean square method. We finally use the cascade connection of such LH cells for the design of a miniaturized narrow‐band band‐pass filter with high out of band rejection. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2013.     

Wide stopband harmonic suppressed low‐pass filter with novel DGS

In this article, a wide stopband 20 dB harmonically suppressed low‐pass filter (LPF) using novel defected ground structures (DGSs) is proposed. The DGSs has been analyzed as a low pass filter which shows a significant harmonics suppression in the stopband. The lumped parameter equivalent of the DGSs has been developed to show its effectiveness. The modified equivalent circuit model of the filter helps in placing the transmission zero near ?3 dB cutoff frequency. The LPF is designed on a 0.10 λ_g× 0.09 λ_g substrate size where λ_g is guided wavelength at ?3 dB cut‐off frequency (f_c) equal to1 GHz. The simulation shows a 20 dB harmonic suppression up to 50 f_c. The prototype of the LPF has been developed and with the available vector network analyser, the S‐parameters have been measured upto 20 GHz (20 f_c).The state of the art comparison of the LPF shows a high figure of merit equal to 26 250 which is higher than many recently published works.     

Ultra‐wide stopband low‐pass filter using symmetrical cascaded modified hairpin resonators

An elliptical function low‐pass filter (LPF) with ultra wide stopband and sharp cutoff frequency is proposed. This filter is composed of symmetrical cascaded modified hairpin resonators and U‐shaped resonators. The transition band is from 1 to 1.21 GHz with ?3 and ?20 dB, respectively. For this filter, the return loss is better than 17 dB in 80% of passband width, where the insertion loss is less than 0.3 dB. The band‐stop rejection is greater than 20 dB from 1.21 to 26.35 GHz and 40 dB from 1.35 to 12.5 GHz. To validate the design and analysis, the proposed LPF has been designed and fabricated on a 20 mil thick RO4003 substrate with a relative dielectric constant 3.38 and loss tangent of 0.0021. The filter is evaluated by experiment and simulation with a good agreement. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:314–321, 2014.     

Broadband Doherty power amplifier with improved band‐pass auxiliary network

In this article, a Doherty power amplifier (DPA) with improved band‐pass auxiliary impedance inverter is proposed for broadband operation. As a wideband DPA solution, the output matching networks of main and auxiliary devices are designed to achieve proper impedance matching at back‐off and peak power by employing a two‐point matching technique without the λ/4 impedance transformer. It is found that the modified band‐pass network has broader bandwidth feature and is compact in form from the comparison with some different topologies of matching networks. So, it is more suitable to be the auxiliary transformer to achieve the broadband configuration of DPA. For validation purpose, a Doherty power amplifier based on two commercially available gallium nitride HEMT (Cree CGH 40010F) devices was designed, fabricated, and measured. Under the drive of continuous wave (CW) signal, the measurement results show that the DPA has a 6‐dB back‐off efficiency of 35% to 48% and a saturated efficiency of 44% to 64% within the frequency band from 1.50 GHz to 2.35 GHz, which is about 44% fractional bandwidth.     

Band‐pass filter design using modified CSRR‐DGS

In this article, a novel compact band‐pass filter (BPF) with sharp cutoffs and a wide stop‐band is presented. The BPF is basically designed by cutting a modified complementary split‐ring resonator (CSRR) from the ground of two separated microstrip feed lines and has a 71% fractional bandwidth from 4.1 to 9 GHz. Because of the high insertion loss, the designed filter should be packed in a metallic cavity that has undesirable resonances in the stop‐band of the BPF. For eliminating cavity resonances, an evolutionary optimization technique based on changing the pixels of the CSRR defected ground structure is used. A prototype of the final structure obtained from the optimization technique is fabricated. The measurement results show that the optimized filter have a pass band from 4 to 8 GHz with a rejection better than 15 dB from 4 to 15 GHz. The designed filters have compact dimensions of 12 × 12 × 0.787 mm³. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:544–548, 2014.     

On the thru‐reflect‐line (TRL) numerical calibration and error analysis for parameter extraction of circuit model

In this work, a resistor standard is introduced into our previously proposed numerical thru‐reflect‐line (TRL) calibration procedure in order to determine the characteristic impedance of the line standard of calibration on the basis of a deterministic method of moments (MoM) algorithm. A comprehensive analytical derivation is presented with regards to electrical properties of such a resistor standard in comparison to other standards. In addition, an error analysis is detailed, which reveals correlations of characteristic parameters in connection with equivalent circuit model development from the conversions from field‐based S‐parameters to circuit‐based Y‐ or Z‐parameters. Interesting properties and criteria are derived, allowing accurate parameter extractions. To validate the proposed numerical TRL calibration procedure with this new resistor standard concept and the developed error analysis, the characteristic impedance of a microstrip line is extracted from a commercial software. In addition, a further example with microstrip discontinuity is shown and the effectiveness of the proposed technique is verified. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE, 2006.     

Broadband gap‐coupled half‐hexagonal microstrip antenna fed by microstrip‐line resonator

Half‐hexagonal microstrip antenna (H‐HMSA) is a compact version of HMSA, as it resonates at the same fundamental mode frequency. In this article, a compact configuration of a single layer, broadband gap‐coupled H‐HMSA has been proposed. Gap‐coupled H‐HMSA is fed indirectly by a λ/2 microstrip‐line resonator. Broad bandwidth (BW) is achieved with an effective use of resonance introduced by λ/2 resonator and gap‐coupled half‐hexagonal radiating patches. A peak gain of 7.07 dBi and measured BW (S₁₁ ≤ ?10 dB) of 11.5% at the center frequency of 5.2 GHz have been achieved, which occupies a small volume of 0.023 λ₀³ including the ground plane. The radiation patterns remain in the broadside direction throughout the return loss BW. Simulated results of the proposed antenna configuration are experimentally validated with good agreement.     

Microstrip stepped‐impedance ring all‐pass filter and wideband 90° phase shifter

A new all‐pass filter (APF) is proposed. The APF is based on a symmetrical ring, consisting of four sections of transmission line, which are identical in electrical length, different in characteristic impedance. Two input/output ports are connected orthogonally to the ring. The APF is analyzed by using the odd‐even model, and the all‐pass condition is then theoretically obtained. Meeting the condition, the circuit is all‐pass in frequency, but nonlinear in transmission phase. The nonlinear transmission phase with frequency may be adjusted by changing the lines' impedances, while remaining the all‐pass property. Then the APF is used to design a wideband 90° differential phase shifter with adjustable bandwidth. Samples are designed, fabricated and measured. Good agreements are achieved among the theoretic, numerical and experimental results. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:191–195, 2014.     

Computer‐aided design of microstrip extracted‐pole lossy filter

In this article, computer‐aided design of a new type of microstrip lossy filter is described. The new type of lossy filter is realized by introducing resistive cross couplings into a microstrip extracted‐pole filter to achieve a flat passband. The high selectivity is achieved by introducing 2 transmission zeros using 2 extracted poles, which can be adjusted. An equivalent circuit model is established and its circuit parameters, which are useful for physical implementation of the filter, are determined in light of computer modeling. For demonstration, two 6‐pole filters centered at 2 GHz with fractional bandwidth (FBW) 6% and 20% are implemented. Experimental results, together with a theoretical comparison between different FBWs, and full‐wave electromagnetic simulation results are also presented.     

A novel triple notch‐bands ultra wide‐band band‐pass filters using parallel multi‐mode resonators and CSRRs

This article discusses a technique based on combination of multimode resonators (MMR) and complementary split ring resonators (CSRR) to design multi notch‐bands ultra wide‐band (UWB) band‐pass filters (BPF). The proposed structure consists of two parallel multimode resonators, resulting in a dual notch‐band UWB BPF, integrated with a single cell of CSRR to realize the third notch‐band. The mechanism of realizing the notch‐bands is mathematically presented and a triple notch‐bands UWB BPF is designed, simulated and fabricated. The overall size of the proposed filter is reported to be around 36 × 7.7 mm² where a size reduction of around 35% is demonstrated in comparison to the conventional filter. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:375–381, 2014.     

Yield‐oriented design protocol and equivalent circuit model for W‐band E‐plane waveguide‐to‐microstrip transitions

This work presents a comprehensive design protocol for a W‐band E‐plane waveguide‐to‐microstrip transition covering all aspects, from the probe design, matching, cut‐off cavity size estimations, verification analysis with different 3D EM simulators, and the entire fabrication process, with special emphasis on tolerances and yield with optimized costs. In fact, a complete study of the manufacture yield is done without the need to fabricate a large number of units of the microstrip‐to‐waveguide transition by taking advantage of the Monte Carlo tools embedded in 3D EM simulators. A simple equivalent circuit model of the transition is proposed and validated to be used in W‐band system level simulations. These are requirements to enable massive use of W‐band products (i.e., concealed weapons detection, imaging, etc.) with reasonable costs. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:77–91, 2014.     

Dual‐band band pass filter using stub‐loaded open‐loop resonators with wide controllable bandwidths

Two dual‐band band pass filters (BPF) using stub‐loaded open‐loop (SLOL) resonator are presented in this article. A novel coupling tuning method by changing the relative coupling position of the resonators is proposed to control the bandwidth of each passband in a wide range. Transmission zeros are created to improve the selectivity by source‐load coupling. Because of the large ratio of two bandwidths, a novel dual‐band matching method is proposed to match the different load impedances at two passband frequencies to the same source impedance. Hence, relax the fabrication requirement of gap. The proposed dual‐band band pass filter is designed and fabricated. The measured 3 dB fractional bandwidths (FBWs) of two 2.45/5.25 GHz dual‐band BPFs are 6.5%/14.5% and 9.8%/5.5%, respectively. The results are in good agreement with the simulation. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 24:367–374, 2014.