Wide-Stopband Microstrip Bandpass Filters Using Quarter-Wavelength Stepped-Impedance Resonators and Bandstop Embedded Resonators

Novel compact microstrip bandpass filters (BPFs) with extended stopband are proposed using both quarter-wavelength (lambda/4) stepped-impedance resonators and bandstop embedded resonators. First, by properly designing the impedance and length ratios of the stepped-impedance resonators, the developed filter may be made compact and its spurious harmonics may be pushed to the higher frequency region. Next, by suitably designing the bandstop structure so as to suppress the lower spurious harmonics of stepped-impedance resonators and then embedding the bandstop structure into the lambda/4 resonators, one may realize the BPFs with wideband spurious suppression. In particular, by connecting the bandstop embedded resonators to the input/output ports, a compact fourth-order BPF of dimension 0.089 lambdag times 0.27 lambdag is implemented and its stopband is extended up to 8.25 f ₀ with an adequate rejection of greater than 32.49 dB, where f ₀ is the passband center frequency and lambdag is the microstrip guided wavelength at f ₀.