Design of the UWB Bandpass Filter by Coupled Microstrip Lines with U-shaped Defected Ground Structure*

Key Lab of All Light Network & Advanced Telecommunication Network of EMC, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China; 2 Institute of Lightwave Technology, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China
Abstract-A novel ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filter (BPF) is proposed by using coupled microstrip lines and U-shaped defected ground structure (DGS). The input and output feeding lines are connected to the ends in the same side of the coupled microstrip lines on one side of a substrate, and the U-shaped DGS is introduced behind the coupled lines on the other side of the substrate. The coupling of this kind of structure, if without DGS, is very weak. However, the U-shaped DGS generates a strong coupling, and improves the passband property of the coupled lines. The filter is simulated by 3D EM commercial software, and the results demonstrate good UWB performances. The passband defined by |S11|<-10 dB is about 3.44-10.6 GHz, and the insertion loss is about 0.11 dB at central frequency of 7 GHz. The group delay variation, which is an important factor to UWB system, is less than 0.5 ns within the operating band.
1

Zhihui Pan1,2, Junhong Wang1,2

I.

INTRODUCTION

Since the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) of the United States released the frequency band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz for commercial communication applications in 2002, the ultra-wide band (UWB) radio system has been paid universal attentions. As a critical device of the UWB system, the UWB bandpass filter allows wanted signals passing by and rejects unwanted signals. Coupled microstrip lines are commonly used in design of the UWB bandpass filters. They support two quasi-TEM modes, that is, the even mode and the odd mode, and these two modes couple to each other by the ground plane. The coupling effect of the two modes is usually employed to construct distributed component filters. Usually, bandpass filters with excellent performances can be realized by cascading these coupled lines [1]. In recent years, some new techniques have been put forward for the filter design. In [2], a novel UWB filter based on microstrip line is developed by using a single multiple-mode resonator (MMR) with one halfwavelength low-impedance line section in the center and two identical quarter-wavelength high-impedance line sections in the two ends. In [3], a microstrip ring filter is constructed to control the attenuation pole location by adjusting both the ring and the stub impedances, and a filter with sharp out-of-bandrejection is obtained. In [4], Z-transformation technique is used to synthesize UWB filter, shunt two-section open-circuited stubs are employed to produce transmission zeroes in the lower and upper stopband to get sharp attenuations. Recently, new
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UWB filters consisting coupling from microstrip line to coplanar waveguide (CPW) are proposed in [5] and [6], which are based on the principle of simple broadside-coupling structure. The proposed filters in [5] and [6] meet almost all the requirements of FCCs spectrum mask, and the natural wide band property of these filters can be used to design filters with bandwidth even wider than the FCCs mask. In this paper, a novel UWB bandpass filter is presented, which combines coupled microstrip lines with U-shaped defected ground structure (DGS). The U-shaped DGS was initially exhibited in [7], and its resonance characteristic is used in the design of filters with wide stopband. In our work, three transmission poles respectively closing to the lower-end, center and upper-end of the desired UWB passband are realized by adjusting the dimensions of the U-shaped aperture. The final filter in this paper has merits of sharp rejection edges of the main passband, and simple and compact structure. II. CONFIGURATION AND PRINCIPOLE Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed filter which is composed of a pair of coupled microstrip lines and a defected ground plane separated by a thin layer of dielectric, where Fig. 1(a) and 1(b) are the top and bottom view of the structure respectively. The coupling between each strip conductor on the substrate and the ground plane can be explained via mutual capacitance and inductance. In this paper, the input and output lines are connected to the ends in the same side of the coupled lines, which is different from the common structures where the input and output lines are connected to the ends in different sides. Thus, without the DGS, this kind of coupled structure can not be used as a UWB passband filter because of its full bandstop property in nature, as shown by the S-parameters in Fig. 2. From this figure we observe that the bandwidth defined by |S11|<-10 dB is so narrow and the property is so poor that the filter can be considered as a stopband filter over the UWB band. In [8], a method based on aperture compensation technique is developed, in which a big rectangular aperture is cut in the ground plane. By using this method originally, in our paper, two rectangular apertures respectively behind the strip conductor are cut in the ground plane. But due to input and output on the same side of coupled lines, the property

This work was supported by the NSFC under grant no. 60471053, and by NCET and PCSIRT, MOE, China under grant no. NCET-04-0096 and IRT0707.

978-1-4244-1880-0/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE.

ICMMT2008 Proceedings

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|S11|,|S21| (dB)

improvement is not significant, as shown in Fig. 3, only a sharp fall of the |S11| is observed at about 15 GHz. The resulting passband defined by |S11|<-10 dB fails to meet FCCs requirement and is far from UWBs application. In [9], a dumbbell-shaped DGS model is proposed, in which the defect disturbs the current distribution on the ground plane and changes the characteristics of the transmission line such as the line capacitance and inductance, resulting in certain attenuation pole at some frequencies. Meanwhile, this DGS unit is equivalent to a low-pass filter constructed by the LC parallel connected circuit. The principle of the dumbbell-shaped DGS is also applicable to the design of this paper, but the location of the horizontal narrow slot is moved down, so the horizontal narrow slot together with the two rectangular slots forms a Ushaped defect, as shown in Fig. 1(b). The coupling by this structure is rather weak at DC and low frequencies as a result of the high capacitive impedance between the coupled lines. Thus, most of the energy at lower frequencies is reflected to the input port, which displays a high-pass property. However, at high frequencies, the DGS exhibits low-pass property, and some attenuation poles occur at high frequencies.

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Fig. 3 Simulated S-parameters of the coupled lines without the horizontal narrow slot (the slot width g=0 in Fig. 1)
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Fig. 1 Structure and dimensions of the proposed UWB bandpass filter

III. STRUCTURE OPTIMUM Fig. 4 shows the simulated insertion loss as function of length L of the coupled lines, from which we find that the passband can be easily extended by shortening the coupled length while the insertion loss almost remains the same over the main band. From this figure we can see, when L = 4 mm, the passband approximately meets the bandwidth requirement of FCC. Fig. 5 depicts the frequency variation of the transmission zero, which is near the upper edge of the passband, with the length of coupling lines. If we denote the wavelength corresponding to this transmission zero by g , then the length of coupled lines is almost the half of g , this relationship is also given in Fig 5. Therefore, the upper transmission zero actually is determined by the length of coupling lines. The novel UWB filter of this paper is constructed on the Duroid 6010 substrate with the relative dielectric constant of 10.8 and the thickness of 0.508 mm. From g = 0 r we know, high permittivity will result in a short guide wavelength, that is, the length of coupled lines can be reduced, which is applicable to the miniaturization requirement of the developed filter.

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Fig. 4 Simulated |S21| as function of frequency and the length of coupled lines

Meanwhile, we also find that the width g of the narrow horizontal slot has a great influence on the filtering performance, as depicted in Fig. 6 and Table 1. From Fig. 6(a), we see, when the slot width increases, location of transmission zero at the low frequency end changes little, while at the high frequency end, the location of zero shifts to higher frequency obviously, which leads to the increasing of the passband. Fig. 6(b) shows the return loss as function of horizontal slot width. Tab. 1 gives the detailed data of the frequency range defined by |S11|<-10 dB and the number of resonant poles as functions of horizontal slot width. As can see from the table, the bandwidth as well as the number of resonant poles varies with

the slot width significantly. In the case of g=0.5 mm, a maximum bandwidth of 7.16 GHz can be obtained and 3 poles within the UWB band can be observed. Interestingly, when g<0.5 mm or g>0.5 mm, the bandwidth decreases rapidly and the number of poles reduce either. Coupling theory can be employed here to give explanations of this phenomenon. As g is enlarged from 0.1 to 0.3 mm, the magnetic coupling between the two big apertures tends to rise up quickly, while the electric coupling between each strip and the ground plane weakens slowly. Then, the overall coupling will become stronger and stronger and the passband defined by |S11|<-10 dB is enlarged from 5.66 to 6.64 GHz. The |S11| rapidly goes down and two resonant poles occur within the band. When g continuously goes up to 0.5 mm, the electromagnetic coupling reaches its optimum state, and a widest bandwidth from 3.44-10.6 GHz is achieved, which meet FCCs demand. In this optimum state, the number of resonant poles reaches maximum and all the poles fall in the passband. When g increases further, the magnetic coupling keeps enhancing but the electric coupling decreases rather quickly, and the optimum resonance state disappears. As g goes from 1.5 to 2.5 mm, the number of poles within passband reduces from 2 to 1.
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(b) |S11 | Fig. 6 S-parameters vs. the width of the horizontal slot

Tab. 1 Frequency range and poles vs. the width of the narrow slot -10dB frequency Bandwidth (GHz) Number of poles Width g (mm) range (GHz) (|S11|<-10 dB) over the band 0.1 5.66 1 3.188.84 0.3 6.64 2 3.359.99 0.5 7.16 3 3.4410.6 1.5 5.18 2 3.949.12 2.5 4.19 1 4.608.79

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IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Fig. 7 illustrates the simulated S-parameters as functions of frequency, which exhibit good edge characteristics of the pass band due to the transmission zeroes at the low and high frequency ends respectively. The realized UWB passband defined by |S11|<-10 dB is from 3.44 to 10.6 GHz corresponding to a fractional bandwidth (FBW) of about 103%. The insertion loss at the center frequency is about 0.11 dB and the return loss over the passband is better than 15 dB, demonstrating a satisfactory performance of the design.
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Fig. 7 Simulated S-parameters of the filter in Fig. 1

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When considering filtering properties in time-domain, the inserted phase shift which is sensitive to the frequency should be considered. As depicted in Fig. 8(a), the phase of |S21| of the designed filter shows a good linear property over the passband.

The group delay as the derivative of the phase varies from 0.11 to 0.58 ns as shown in Fig. 8(b), that is to say, the maximum variation of group delay is about 0.47 ns, representing a good flat property of the designed filter. Fig. 8(c) reveals the waveform of the output signal after the filter. The input signal is a narrow window pulse on which the useful information can be modulated by its amplitude, position, polarity or phase. The output pulse is delayed but the waveform is maintained, which implies that the signal can pass through the filter without significant distortion.
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A novel compact UWB bandpass filter is successfully developed by using coupled microstrip lines and U-shaped defected ground structure together. Simulation results indicate that the transmission zero near the upper edge of passband is dependent on the length of the coupled microstrip lines, and the electrical length of the coupled microstrip lines in terms of the wavelength at upper transmission zero keeps invariable. This property can be used to design filter with very wide passband, even wider than that defined by FCC. The proposed filter exhibits an excellent bandpass performance, the insertion loss is less than 0.6 dB and the return loss is greater than 15 dB, while the group delay varies in between 0.11 and 0.58 ns within the passband of 3.44-10.6 GHz. REFERENCES
[1] [2] [3] RalphLevy, RichardV.Snyder, and GeorgeMatthaei, Design of Microwave Filters [J]. IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 50, no. 3, March 2002. L.Zhu, S.Sun, and W.Menzel, Ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filters using multiple-mode resonator. IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon. Lett, vol. 15, no. 11, pp. 796-798, Nov. 2005. H. Ishida and K. Araki, Design and Analysis of UWB Bandpass Filter with Ring Filter. IEEE MTT-s Int. Dig., vol. 3, pp. 1307-1310, Jun. 2004. Peng Cai, Zhewang Ma, Xuehui Guan, Xuexia Yang, Yoshio Kobayashi, Tetsuo Anada and Gen Hagiwara, A Compact UWB Bandpass Filter Using Two-Section Open-Circuited Stubs to Realize Transmission Zeros. Proc. Asia-Pasific Microw. Conf. (APMC), Dec.2005, vol. 5. K.Li, D.Kurita and T.Matsui, An Ultra-Wideband Bandpass Filter Using Broadside-Coupled microstrip-coplanar waveguide structure. IEEE MTT-S Int. Dig., pp. 675-678, Jun. 2005. Daisuke Kurita and Keren Li, Super UWB bandpass filter. IEICE Electronics Express, vol. 4, No. 9, pp. 300-305, May 2007. Jun-Seok Park, Jun-Sik Yun, and Dal Ahn, A Design of the Novel Coupled-Line Bandpass Filter Using Defected Ground Structure With Wide Stopband Performance. IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 50, no. 9, pp. 2037-2043, Sep. 2002. Lei Zhu, Huizheng Bu, and Ke Wu, Aperture compensation technique for innovative design of Ultra-Broadband microstrip bandpass filter. IEEE MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Dig., Boston, MA, pp. 315-318, June 1999. D. Ahn, J.S. Park, C.S. Kim, Y.Qian, and T.Itoh, A Design of the LowPass Filter Using the Novel Microstrip Defected Ground Structure, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 49, no. 1, pp. 86-93, Jan. 2001

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V. CONCLUSIONS