HTS coplanar meander-line resonator filters with a suppressed slot-line mode

The design and experimental results of a four-pole coplanar waveguide (CPW) quasi-elliptic filter using high-temperature superconductor (HTS) films are presented. Quarter-wavelength meander-line resonators are used in the filter topology. Although the resonators are aligned in two lines, no bond-wire bridges are required to balance the ground planes in the design and measurement. The slot-line mode of the filter was shifted to be higher than its third harmonic. The filter is highly miniaturized and the performance is significantly improved by the use of superconductors. The main circuit of the filter only has an area of about 6.6 mm /spl times/ 2.4 mm on a magnesium oxide substrate, coated with 600-nm-thick YBCO HTS thin film on single side of the substrate. The 3-dB bandwidth is about 1.6% centered at 2.95 GHz. The performance measured at 30 K, without any tuning, gives an insertion loss of better than 0.4 dB and a return loss of about 12 dB in the passband. The first spurious mode is about triple the center frequency.