7. R. Levy and T.E.

Rozzi, Precise design of coaxial low-pass lters,

IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 16 (1968), 142147.
8. R. Levy, Tapered corrugated waveguide low-pass lters, IEEE Trans
Microwave Theory Tech 21 (1973), 526 532.
9. R. Levy, General synthesis of asymmetric multi-element coupledtransmission-line directional couplers, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory
Tech 11 (1963), 226 237.
10. G.R. Haack, Optimal design of coaxial low-pass lters, IEEE Trans
Microwave Theory Tech 17 (1969), 169 170.
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12. A.I. Grayzel, A synthesis procedure for transmission line networks,
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14. R.E. Collin, Field theory of guided waves, 2nd ed., IEEE Press, New
York, 1991, p. 351.
15. FEST3D (fullwave electromagnetic simulation tool) users manual,
European Research and Technology Centre (ESA-ESTEC), Noordwijk, The Netherlands.
2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

PURE HARMONIC SUPPRESSION OF A

BANDPASS FILTER USING BINOMIALLY
DISTRIBUTED PHOTONIC BANDGAP
STRUCTURES
Md. Nurunnabi Mollah and Nemai Chandra Karmakar
Department of Electrical and Computer Systems Engineering
Monash University, Clayton Campus
VIC., Australia 3800
Received 22 June 2004
ABSTRACT: Binomially distributed photonic band-gap structures (BPBGSs) are applied to a four-section asymmetric coupled-line bandpass
lter (BPF) at 15 GHz for harmonics suppression. The frequency response of the BPF on B-PBGSs is compared with that for the same BPF
on uniform PBGSs (U-PBGSs). The proposed B-PBGSs structures provide complete harmonic suppression in both transmission and return
loss (RL) responses. The BPF on B-PBGSs produces 18-dB more harmonics suppression with negligible RL at 15 GHz, compared to the
same BPF on U-PBGSs. Promising applications include complete harmonics suppression in lters and patch antennas and savings of space
and packaging costs in HMICs and MMICs. 2004 Wiley Periodicals,
Inc. Microwave Opt Technol Lett 44: 194 196, 2005; Published online
in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.
20584
Key words: PBGs; BPF; binomial; harmonic suppression
1. INTRODUCTION

In the new millennium, the explosion of info-communication technologies has brought many new broadband design challenges. To
meet these challenges, designers need to fulll more functionality
per unit volume. For multichannel broadband operations, more
than one octave bandwidth from active and passive devices is
demanded. In broadband applications, lter banks play a signicant role in selecting required channels and rejecting unwanted
channels. Nowadays, microstrip BPFs are heavily used in modern
microwave integrated circuits. But the broadband systems performance is affected by their spurious transmission in other than
fundamental frequencies. Therefore, it is imperative to suppress
the higher harmonics of the BPF.

194

Figure 1 IE3D generated layouts of (a) microstrip line on 10-unit

B-PBGs, (b) reference BPF with w n width and s n gap of the coupled
line, (c) BPF on U-PBGs, and (d) BPF on B-PBGSs (Taconic TLX
substrate: r 10.2; thickness 0.635 mm)

Recently, T. Itoh et al. [1] proposed a uniplanar-compact photonic band-gap structure (UC-PBGS) to suppress spurious transmission. The UC-PBGS is a complex design on a 2D plane and
occupies more space in a circuit. On the other hand, classical
circular-patterned PBGSs [2] are simple in design and can be made
to be 1D and hence occupy less space and create fewer problems
in electronic packaging. It was found that both the UC-PBGS and
the classical uniform circular-patterned PBG could not completely
suppress the spurious harmonics of a BPF. There is some spurious
resonance at the 3rd-harmonic RL that may cause radiation and
interference at higher harmonic frequencies. To completely suppress the harmonics, we propose nonuniform circular patterned
PBGSs instead of uniform PBGSs. We have investigated nonuniform circular-patterned PBGS in Chebyshev and binomial distributions in [3]. The investigation reveals that these nonuniform
PBGSs suppress the passband ripples and produce distinct stopband. These characteristics are very useful for harmonics suppression in BPFs. In this paper, we demonstrate the enhanced performance of asymmetric coupled-line BPF on B-PBGSs.
2. BPF DESIGN ON PLANAR PBGS

2.1. B-PBGS Design

Figure 1(a) shows a plan view of a binomially distributed 10element PBG-engineered 50 transmission line. The PBG units
gradually diminish in dimensions proportionally to the coefcient
of the binomial polynomial [4]. The polynomial is given by
1 xm1 1 m 1x

m 1m 2 2
x
2!

m 1m 2m 3 3
x .
3!

(1)

In this case, m 5 for the 10-unit PBG line. In our design we vary
the area of the PBG units proportionally to the coefcients of the
binomial polynomial, as shown in Figure 1(a). The lling factor
(FF), which is the ratio of the radius of the central unit to the period
of the PBG unit, plays a signicant role in the stop-bandwidth. The

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 44, No. 2, January 20 2005

larger the FF, the larger the stop-bandwidth, but with more passband ripples.
2.2. Coupled-Line Filter
A four-section coupled line bandpass lter with 0.5-dB equal
ripple response at centre frequency of 7.5 GHz is designed. The
width and gap of the two side resonators are w 1 0.43 mm and
s 0.2 mm, respectively. The two middle resonators have a width
and gap of w 2 0.53 mm and s 0.71 mm, respectively. The
length of the coupled-line section is 3.683 mm. The width of the
50 microstrip line is 0.61 mm. The lter is designed on Taconic
with r 10.2 and thickness 0.635 mm.
2.2. PBG Engineered Coupled Line Filter
We implement both the U-PBGS and B-PBGS to form different
models of the BPF shown in Figures 1(c) and 1(d). As can be seen
in Figure 1(a), the B-PBG patterns are etched on the ground plane
of a standard 50 transmission line with a constant lattice period
(the distance from centre to centre of any two PBG elements) to
form a PBG-engineered transmission line. For B-PBGSs, the central elements have the largest radii and the radii of the adjacent
elements decrease proportionally to the square root of the amplitude coefcient of the distribution. Therefore, the areas of the PBG
elements vary proportionally with the coefcient of the PBG
distribution. The design equation of PBGSs originates from
Braggs condition [5]. The three BPF models are: (i) the reference
BPF shown in Figure 1(b); (ii) BPF on U-PBGSs having FF
0.25 under all the coupled lines and input and output 50 lines, as
shown in Figure 1(c), and in this design, all the PBG elements have
constant radii; (iii) BPF on B-PBGSs having FF 0.4 under two
50 lines along with the central coupled lines (the other two
coupled lines are loaded by U-PBGSs with FF 0.25). The
geometry is shown in Figure 1(d).
3. RESULTS

We fabricated all the structures on Taconic TLX substrate with

dielectric constant of 10.2 and thickness of 0.635 mm using a
milling machine. For the binomially distributed PBG-engineered

Figure 3 Frequency response of the reference BPF (width and gap of the
two side resonators: w 1 0.43 mm and s 0.2 mm; width and gap of
the two middle resonators w 2 0.53 mm and s 0.71 mm; length of the
coupled-line section: 3.683 mm; substrate: r 10.2; h 0.635 mm)

transmission line, the centre frequency was selected to be 9 GHz

and the period was calculated to be 6.29 mm. The radius of the
central circular element was 2.52 mm. Similar design parameters
were followed for the U-PBGS design. The circuits were measured
with a full two-port calibration using an HP8510C vector network
analyzer. We investigated the dispersion characteristics in terms of
S-parameters versus frequency for (i) the B-PBG-assisted transmission line, (ii) the reference BPF, (iii) the BPF on U-PBGSs, and
(iv) the BPF on B-PBGSs.
3.1. B-PBGS Assisted Transmission Line
Figure 2 shows the S-parameters versus frequency of a 50
microstrip transmission line on 10-unit B-PBGs for FF 0.4. As
can be seen, the 20-dB (S 21 ) rejection bandwidth is 3.71 GHz, and
the 10-dB passband RL bandwidth (RL-BW) is 6.60 GHz. The
ripples near the cutoff frequencies and in the low-pass region are
insignicant. Maximum RL loss is found to be 43 dB and the
maximum isolation is found to be 31 dB. The center of the
stopband is shifted due to fabrication error. The ripple-free passband and stopband responses of the B-PBGs are useful for suppressing the spurious transmission of a BPF, as shown in the
following results.
3.2. Reference Coupled-Line BPF
The measured frequency response of the reference BPF is shown
in Figure 3. The presence of spurious harmonic transmission at
around 15 GHz is dominant. At this frequency, the maximum RL
value is found to be 12 dB and the insertion loss is 4 dB. At the
fundamental frequency of 7.5 GHz, the maximum RL value is 8.5
dB. No attempt was made to optimize the BPF.

Figure 2 Measured response of B-PBGSs with FF of 0.4 at 9 GHz

(substrate: r 10 and h 0.635 mm)

3.3. BPF on U-PBGSs

We applied U-PBGSs in the ground plane of the reference BPF to
suppress harmonics at 15 GHz. The measured frequency response
is shown in Figure 4(a). At 15 GHz, the maximum RL value is
found to be 6.5 dB and the transmission coefcient is 35 dB.

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 44, No. 2, January 20 2005

195

sion co-efcient is found to be 48 dB. At 7.5 GHz, the maximum

RL is found to be 12 dB, which is more than the reference BPF.
Therefore, performance superior to that for the BPF on U-PBGS is
achieved.
4. CONCLUSION

From the measured results of all the BPF designs presented in this
work, it can be seen that both U-PBGSs and B-PBGSs can suppress unwanted spurious transmission in a BPF. In the case of
U-PBGSs, the RL is suppressed by 5.5 dB and the transmission
coefcient by 31 dB at 15 GHz. However, the selectivity of the
BPF is destroyed at the fundamental frequency of 7.5 GHz with a
9-dB improvement in RL performance. On the other hand, at 15
GHz, the B-PBGSs stem better harmonic suppression, thus providing 44-dB suppression for the transmission co-efcient and full
suppression for the RL. The RL at 7.5 GHz also improves by 3.5
dB, as compared to that for the reference BPF. Therefore, BPBGSs can nd potential application in harmonic suppression, as
compared to the available work in the open literature.
REFERENCES
1. F-R Yang, K-P Ma, Y. Qian, and T. Itoh, A uniplanar compact photonic-bandgap (UC-PBG) structure and its applications for microwave
circuits, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 47 (1999), 1509 1514.
2. V. Radisic, Y. Qian, R. Coccioli, and T. Itoh, Novel 2D photonic
bandgap structures for microstrip lines, IEEE Microwave Guided Wave
Lett 8 (1998), 69 71.
3. N.C. Karmakar and M.N. Mollah, Investigation into non-uniform photonic bandgap microstripline lowpass lters, IEEE Trans Microwave
Theory Tech 51 (2003), 564 572.
4. R.E. Collin, Foundations for microwave engineering, 2nd ed., McGraw
Hill, New York, 1992.
5. D. Sievenpiper, L. Zhang, R.F.J. Broas, N.G. Alexopolous, and E.
Yablonovitch, High-impedance electromagnetic surfaces with a forbidden frequency band, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Tech 47 (1999),
2059 2074.
2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Figure 4 PBG-engineered BPFs responses on 10-element (a) U-PBGSs

and (b) B-PBGSs (dimensions are as in Fig. 3)

Although the harmonics are suppressed at 15 GHz, the RL is still

present. This resonance can cause radiation at 15 GHz from the
circuit. At 7.5 GHz the passband selectivity is destroyed with a
maximum RL value of 17.5 dB. Therefore, with the inclusion of
U-PBGS, the match at fundamental frequency has improved and
the spurious transmission is signicantly suppressed. It is worthwhile to note here that the RL plot with UC-PBGS is not produced
in [1]. Since UC-PBGS is a uniform distribution, we suspect that
the complete suppression of the S 11 parameters was not possible.
We encourage the reader to verify the results for the design of a
UC-PBG-engineered BPF.
3.4. BPF on B-PBGSs
Finally, we tested the BPF on the B-PBGSs and the measured
S-parameter results are shown in Figure 4(b). It can be seen that
the B-PBGS suppresses both resonance and spurious transmission
signicantly. At 15 GHz, the RL is about 0 dB and the transmis-

196

WIDE WAVELENGTH-SWITCHED
OPTICAL-PULSE GENERATION IN AN
L-BAND MODE-LOCKED ERBIUMDOPED FIBER LASER
Xinhuan Feng, Yange Liu, Hao Zhang, Yao Li, Shuzhong Yuan,
Guiyun Kai, Weigang Zhang, and Xiaoyi Dong
Institute of Modern Optics
Nankai University
Tianjin, P.R. China
Received 21 June 2004
ABSTRACT: A simple actively mode-locked erbium-doped ber-ring
laser operating in the L-band for the generation of wavelength-switched
picosecond pulses is demonstrated. The conjunction of a polarizer and a
polarization controller introduces wavelength-dependent cavity loss, and
wavelength switching is achieved by adjustment of the polarization controller. The output wavelength can be switched in a wide range of about
39.2 nm, from 1568.6 to 1607.8 nm. A high-birefringence loop mirror
predenes the wavelengths spaced about 0.8-nm apart. During the
wavelength-switching process, the modulation frequency of about 2.5
GHz remains unchanged and the pulse-width is less than 56 ps for each
wavelength. 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol
Lett 44: 196 199, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.
interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.20585

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 44, No. 2, January 20 2005