The design and fabrication of miniature microwave bandpass filters using multilayer liquid crystal polymer technology

This thesis presents the design and fabrication techniques for miniature microwave bandpass filters using multilayer liquid crystal polymer (LCP) technology. As a multilayer technology for microwave devices, LCP is of low cost and light weight. It also has excellent electrical properties across a wide frequency range. These characteristics make it promising for the development of next generation microwave devices for applications across commercial, defence and civil sectors. However, very limited work has been found in the open literature to apply this technology to the design of miniature bandpass filters, especially at low microwave frequencies. In addition, the reported work shows lack of fabrication techniques, which limits the size reduction of multilayer LCP devices. To address these problems, this thesis develops advanced fabrication techniques for sophisticated LCP structures, such as multilayer capacitors, via connections and cavities. These techniques are then used to support the design of novel miniature bandpass filters for wideband and narrowband applications. For the design of miniature wideband bandpass filters, a cascaded approach, which combines highpass and lowpass filters, is presented first to provide a flexible design solution. This is followed by another novel ultra-wideband bandpass filter which produces extra transmission zeroes with minimum number of elements. It does not only have high performance but also a compact structure for high yield fabrication. For narrowband applications, two types of advanced coupled-resonator filters are developed. One type produces a very good selectivity at the upper passband edge, and its spurious-free stopband is extremely wide and of high interference attenuation. The other type, based on novel mixed-couplings approaches developed in this thesis, provides a solution to produce almost the same response as the coupling matrix prototype. This type is used to generate arbitrarily-located transmission zeroes. All designs presented in this thesis are simulated using CAD design tools and then validated by measurements of fabricated samples. Good agreements between simulations and measurements are shown in the thesis

Compact, Efficient, and Wideband Near-Field Resonant Parasitic Filtennas

As a hybrid component in RF front-end systems, filtennas possess the distinctive advantages of simultaneously combining filtering and radiating performance characteristics. Consequently, filtennas not only save space and costs but also reduce transmission losses. In this chapter, three sorts of filtennas have been proposed: the first sort is band-pass/band-stop filtennas, which are mainly realized by assembling band-pass/band-stop filters and antennas to achieve the combined functions; the second sort is multi-resonator-cascaded filtennas, which are obtained by altering the coupled-resonators in the last stage of the filters to act as the radiating elements; and the third sort is near-field resonant parasitic, bandwidth-enhanced filtennas, which are accomplished through organically combining radiator and filtering structures. For the second and third sorts, it is worth noting that the design methods witness significant electrical size reduction without degrading the radiation performance of the filtennas in general

A Compact UWB BPF with a Notch Band using Rectangular Resonator Sandwiched between Interdigital Structure

This paper presents a compact design of an ultra wide band bandpass filters with a notch band using interdigital structure. The aim of the design is to reduce the size of filter, reduce the complexity of the design, and improve the performance of filter response. The proposed filter comprises of a rectangular resonator sandwiched between Interdigital structures, with rectangular slot as defected microstrip structure at the input and output ports. This design has been used for the first time to achieve the above aim. The advantage with this design is that, it does not use any via or defected ground structure. The insertion loss of proposed filter, in passband between 3.1 GHz to 10.8 GHz, is less than 0.7dB, and for the notched band it is 21.5 dB centred at 7.9 GHz. The proposed filter is fabricated, tested and compared with simulated results. The proposed design was small in size with less complexity, and shows performance better than the other designs available in the literatures at this dimension

High aspect ratio transmission lines and filters

There are a significant number of microwave applications, where improvement of such qualities as manufacturing costs, size, weight, power consumption, etc. have attracted much research interest. In order to meet these requirements, new technologies can be actively involved in fabrication of microwave components with improved characteristics. One such fabrication technology is called LIGA (a German acronym with an English translation of lithography, electroforming, and moulding) that allows fabrication of high aspect ratio (tall) structures, and only recently is receiving growing attention in microwave component fabrication. The characteristics of high aspect ratio microstrip and coplanar waveguide (CPW) transmission lines are investigated in this thesis. Very low impedance high aspect ratio CPW transmission lines can be realized. A high aspect ratio microstrip folded half wavelength open loop resonator is introduced. Effective configurations for external and bypass gap coupling with open loop resonators are given. Filters with transmission zeros in the stopband, consisting of high aspect ratio single mode open loop resonators are presented to demonstrate the advantages of high aspect ratio structures in realizing lower external quality factors or tight coupling. The transmission zeros are created by novel coupling routings. Some of the filters are fabricated and the filter responses are measured to validate high aspect ratio coupling structures. High aspect ratio diplexers with increased channel isolation are also designed by appropriately combining filters with transmission zeros. A wideband bandpass filter design method, based on the electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) concept is introduced in this thesis. The wideband filters are miniaturized as a result of using the EBG concept in design. An EBG based wideband filter consisting of unit cells that are realized by using high aspect ratio CPW stepped impedance resonators is also presented. The main advantage of this approach is that the high aspect ratio CPW structures make short unit cells practically realizable, resulting in compact filter structure

Frequency Coded Chipless RFID Tag using Spurline Resonators

A novel compact chipless RFID tag using spurline resonators is discussed in this paper. The detection of the tag's ID is using the spectral signature of a spurline resonator circuit. The tag has a data capacity of 8-bits in the range 2.38 to 4.04 GHz. The tag consists of a spurline multiresonating circuit and two cross polarised antennas. The prototype of the tag is fabricated on a substrate C-MET/LK4.3 of dielectric constant 4.3 and loss tangent 0.0018. The measured results show that group delay response can also be used to decode the tag’s identity

Design of compact stop-band extended microstrip low-pass filters by employing mutual-coupled square-shaped defected ground structures

A new technique to reduce the size, improve the rejection in the stop-band of a low-pass filter using modified defected ground structure (DGS) is proposed. An equivalent circuit model is used to study the DGS characteristics. The parameters are extracted by using a simple circuit analysis method. Several comparisons between the EM-simulations and the circuit simulations of the new structure are demonstrated to show the validity of the proposed equivalent circuit model. We demonstrated that the filter can provide a sharp transition domain and a wide rejection in stop-band. To further verify the new technique, a filter employing the new deformed DGS is fabricated and measured. The agreement between the simulation and the measured results confirms the effectiveness of the proposed concept. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 50: 1107–1111, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.23273Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58033/1/23273_ftp.pd

Novel miniature microwave quasi-elliptical function bandpass filters with wideband harmonic suppression

Filters are integral components in all wireless communication systems, and their function is to permit predefined band of frequencies into the system and reject all other signals. The ever-growing demand in the use of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum for new applications has resulted in the need for high performance microwave filters with strict requirements on both inband and out-of-band characteristics. High selectivity, high rejection, low loss and extremely wide spurious-free performance are required for both transmitter and receiver channels. In addition, these devices need to be highly compact, easy to integrate within transceivers and should be amenable to low cost manufacturing. High selectivity is essential to enable the guard band between adjacent channels to be reduced thus improving the efficiency of the RF spectrum and hence increasing the capacity of the system. A low insertion-loss, high return-loss and small group-delay in the passband are necessary to minimize signal degradation. A wide stopband is necessary to suppress spurious passbands outside the filter’s bandwidth that may allow spurious emissions from modulation process (harmonic, parasitic, intermodulation and frequency conversion products) and interfere with other systems. The EMC Directive 89/336/EEC mandates that all electronic equipment must comply with the applicable EN specification for EMI. This thesis presents the research work that has resulted in the development of innovative and compact microstrip bandpass filters that fulfil the above stringent requirements for wireless communication systems. In fact, the proposed highly compact planar microstrip filters provide an alternative solution for existing and next generation of wireless communications systems. In particular, the proposed filters exhibit a low-loss and quasi-elliptic function response that is normally only possible with filter designs using waveguides and high temperature superconductors. The selectivity of the filters has been improved by inserting a pair of transmission zeros between the passband edges, and implementing notched rejection bands in the filter’s frequency response to widen its stopband performance. The filter structures have been analysed theoretically and modelled by using Keysight Technologies’ Advanced Design System (ADS™) and Momentum® software. The dissertation is essentially composed of four main sections. In the first section, several compact and quasi-elliptic function bandpass filter structures are proposed and theoretically analysed. Selectivity and stopband performance of these filters is enhanced by loading the input and output feed-lines with inductive stubs that introduce transmission zeros at specified frequencies in the filter’s frequency response. This technique is shown to provide a sharp 3-dB roll-off and steep selectivity skirt with high out-of-band rejection over a wide frequency span. In addition, the 3-dB fractional bandwidth of the filters is shown to be controllable by manipulating the filter’s geometric parameters. Traditional microwave bandpass filters are designed using quarter-wavelength distributed transmission-line resonators that are either end-coupled or side-coupled. The sharpness of the filter response is determined by the number of resonators employed which degrades the filter’s passband loss performance. This results in a filter with a significantly larger footprint which precludes miniaturization. To circumvent these drawbacks the second section describes the development of a novel and compact wideband bandpass filter with the desired characteristics. The quasi-elliptic function filter comprises open-loop resonators that are coupled to each other using a stub loaded resonator. The proposed filter is shown to achieve a wideband 3-dB fractional bandwidth of 23% with much better loss performance, sharp skirt selectivity and very wide rejection bandwidth. The third section describes the investigation of novel ultra-wideband (UWB) microstrip bandpass filter designs. Parametric study enabled the optimization of the filter’s performance which was verified through practical measurements. The proposed filters meet the stringent characteristics required by modern communications systems, i.e. the filters are highly compact and miniature even when fabricated on a low dielectric constant substrate, possess a sharp quasi-elliptic function bandpass response with low passband insertion-loss, and ultra-wide stopband performance. With the rapid development of multi-band operation in modern and next generation wireless communication systems, there is a great demand for single frequency discriminating devices that can operate over multiple frequency bands to facilitate miniaturization. These multi-band bandpass filters need to be physically small, have low insertion-loss, high return-loss, and excellent selectivity. In the fourth section two miniature microstrip dual-band and triple-band bandpass filter designs are explored. A detailed parametric study was conducted to fully understand how the geometric parameters of the filters affected their performance. The optimized filters were fabricated and measured to validate their performance

Novel Compact Three-Way Filtering Power Divider Using Net-Type Resonators

In this paper, we present a novel compact three-way power divider with bandpass responses. The proposed power divider utilizes folded net-type resonators to realize dual functions of filtering and power splitting as well as compact size. Equal power ratio with low magnitude imbalance is achieved due to the highly symmetric structure. For demonstration, an experimental three way filtering power divider is implemented. Good filtering and power division characteristics are observed in the measured results of the circuit. The area of the circuits is 14.5 mm x 21.9 mm or 0.16 λg x 0.24 λg, where the λg is the guide wavelength of the center frequency at 2.1 GHz