47

8th International Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering

20-22 December, 2014, Dhaka, Bangladesh

A Simple Wideband Microstrip Bandstop Filter for

WLAN and WiMAX Band Rejection Purpose
Lakhindar Murmu1* and Sushrut Das 2
1, 2

Department of Electronics Engineering

Indian School of Mines, Dhanbad, India.
*
lakhndar.kgec25@gmail.com

Abstract In this paper, a simple hexagonal wideband

microstrip bandstop filter with an open-end stepped impedance
stub has been proposed for the rejection of WLAN and WiMAX
bands. Controlling the dimensions of the shunt open-end stepped
impedance stub, the rejection bandwidth and the level of
rejection can be controlled. The structure is very simple and is
also easy to fabricate. The final filter structure provides a stop
band that extends from 3.19 GHz to 5.36 GHz within and more
than -20dB rejection and hence it can reject the 3.5 GHz WiMAX
bands and 5.2 GHz WLAN frequency bands. The simulated
response has been validated after comparing it with the
measured data.
Index TermsOpen loop hexagonal filter, bandstop filter
(BSF), stepped impedance resonator (SIR).

I. INTRODUCTION
With rapid growth of communication technologies, WLAN
and WiMAX communications have been developed a lot.
These technologies have become so popular that in present
days it has become almost a part of our life and almost every
corner of the world is flooded with the signals from WLAN
and WiMAX. These high speed WLAN and WiMAX signals
propagate rapidly through the infrastructure of office and
home environments and couple with other RF systems. These
coupled signals propagate along the transmission line and
circuits of the RF system and may result in an undesired
behaviour of the system. Therefore to protect the RF systems
from these signals bandstop filters can be used.
Recently, numerous methods and structures have been
proposed for realizing the bandstop filters [1-2]. Based on the
formulae of SIR, bandstop filters with high skirt selectivity as
well as wide rejection bandwidth and miniature circuit
configuration were presented in [1,2]. Divyabramham et al. [2]
presented a design technique of sharp-rejection wideband
bandstop filters by using a lossless transmission line model. In
the year 2008, a new compact bandstop microstrip filter using
two cascaded ring resonators was presented and the equivalent
circuit model was developed to characterize the proposed
bandstop structure [3]. One year later, in [4] a technique to
design a dual-band bandstop filter (DBBSF) was presented
with a dual-mode loop resonator.
The hexagonal geometry promises better confinement in
the microstrip circuits due to their large interior angles (as
compared to rectangle and square counterparts).Open loop
hexagonal multiplexer for communication system were
proposed by R. Kumar and G.A. Edae [5]. In that paper they
have presented the tri-band band multiplexer topology based
on the hexagonal close loop resonators of different size which
were capacitive coupled from a single input. In [6] a novel
microstrip bandstop filter was proposed, where signal
978-1-4799-4166-7/14/$31.00 2014 IEEE

interference technology was applied for achieving the

bandstop behaviour. Two open loop resonators were
introduced to the conventional transmission line with larger
electrical length. Then, two transmission zeros were obtained
in the stopband. Meanwhile, several transmission poles were
used to improve the flatness of the passband. In comparison
with the traditional bandstop filters using signal interference
technique, the proposed filter has wider stopband and flat
passband. In the same year, a new and miniature circuit
configuration for wideband bandstop filter (BSF) operating at
X-band range was presented [7]. The presented planar
microstrip filter consists of a three-section stepped impedance
resonator (SIR) paralleled with three open-circuited stepped
impedance stubs (SISs).
In this paper the authors have proposed a compact open
loop hexagonal resonator filter with open-end stepped
impedance stub which has been designed for the rejection of
3.5 GHz WiMAX band and 5.2 GHz WLAN frequency band.
Commercial IE3D simulator has been used to design the
structure.
II. OPEN LOOP HEXAGONAL FILTER DESIGN
An open loop hexagonal loop filter with direct coupled
tapered ports is shown in Fig.1. The length L (total loop
length, L= [(6a) g]) determines the centre frequency of
filter. A Pair of 50- collinear tapered lines feed with the
resonator. RT/Duroid 6010 with a thickness of 1.27 mm and a
relative dielectric constant of 10.2 has been used as the
substrate. The simulated response i.e. insertion loss and return
loss versus frequency is shown in Fig.2. The figure reveals
that it has a band pass response from DC to 2.2 GHz (up to 2.2
GHz) and a band stop response from 2.2GHz to 5.4 GHz.

Fig.1. Hexagonal open loop bandstop filter (Filter A).

Inspired by the band stop behaviour of a simple hexagonal

open loop, a second hexagonal bandstop filter, but this time
loaded with open ended stepped impedance stub, has been

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developed as shown in Fig.3. The filter structure has been

studied by varying the dimensions of the stubs of the
hexagonal resonator. The frequency response of the proposed
filter is shown in Fig.4 for different parameter values. The
respective filter parameters are tabulated in table 1.

g=2mm (Filter B) as shown in Fig. 5 and then measured for

frequency response. The measurement was carried out using
an Agilent E5071C Vector Network Analyzer and the
measured response is shown in Fig.6. Simulated frequency
response of the proposed filter is also shown in same figure.
The measure frequency response shows the 3dB cut-off
frequencies of 2.62 GHz and 5.63 GHz. The highest insertion
loss in the low and in the high frequency pass-band is better
than 0.3 dB and 1.5 dB, respectively. The highest return loss
in the stop-band is better than 0.4 dB. The measured result
provides a stop band that extends from 3.03 GHz to 5.28 GHz
within and more than -20dB rejection and hence it can reject
the 3.5 GHz WiMAX bands and 5.2 GHz WLAN frequency
bands. The measured result shows a good agreement with the
simulated data. The result shows a passband return loss of
about 20dB & stopband return loss about 0.4 dB.

Fig.2. Simulated response of hexagonal open loop bandstop filter (Filter A).

Fig.5. Photograph of bandstop filter (Filter B).

Fig.3. Hexagonal resonator bandstop filter with open-end stubs (Filter B).

Fig.6. Measured and simulated frequency response of the proposed filter

(Filter B).
Fig.4. Simulated frequency response of the proposed (Filter B).
Table 1: Geometrical dimensions of the filters A-B

Filter
a
b
d
f
g
w1
w2
w3

A
6mm
--2.05mm
1mm
0.85mm
---

B
6mm
3mm
4mm
2.05mm
2mm
0.2mm
3mm
1mm

III. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS

All Based on the simulated results obtained from IE3D, the
filter has been fabricated with the proposed dimensions:
a=6mm, b=3mm, d=4mm, w1=0.2mm, w2=3mm, w3=1mm,

The stop band insertion loss is better than 30dB. Fig. 6 also
shows that at the rejection band plenty of ripples are present
whereas the simulation is smooth. The ripples are due to the
connector's flanges and screws that are missing in the
simulation model.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
A Compact open loop hexagonal resonator bandstop filters
with and without a loaded open stub have been presented in
this paper. The bandwidth of the filter with a loaded open stub
has been observed to have a better performance. The
optimization of the various parameters of the filter has been
accomplished to achieve a good response. The proposed filter
is compact, easy to fabricate and easy to integrate with
MIC/MMIC microwave circuits. The final filter structure
provides a stop band that extends from about 3.19 GHz to
5.36 GHz and hence it can reject the 3.5 GHz WiMAX and

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5.2 GHz WLAN frequency bands. The simulated response has

been validated after comparing it with the measured data. In
the measured results, the centre frequency of the fabricated
filter has been shifted towards a lower frequency. This is due
to the fabrication tolerance.
REFERENCES
[1]
[2]
[3]

[4]
[5]

[6]

[7]

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H.-K. Chiou and C.-F. Tai, Dual-band microstrip bandstop filter using
dual-mode loop resonator, Electronics Letters, Vol.45, No.10, pp.507509, 2009.
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