IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO.

3, MARCH 2010 139

Miniature Microstrip Bandpass Filter Using

Resonator-Embedded Dual-Mode Resonator
Based on Source-Load Coupling
Mingqi Zhou, Xiaohong Tang, Member, IEEE, and Fei Xiao

AbstractA novel miniature microstrip bandpass filter (BPF)

using resonator-embedded dual-mode resonator is proposed. Two
transmission zeros are created to improve the selectivity of the
filter. Furthermore, source-load capacitive coupling is introduced
to create a transmission zero above the passband. A 2.28 GHz BPF
with 300 MHz bandwidth is designed and measured, the measured
result agrees well with the simulation. The size of the filter is less
than 0 21 0 15 , where is guided wavelength at the central
frequency.
Index TermsBandpass filter (BPF), dual-mode resonator, em-
bedded resonator, transmission zero.

I. INTRODUCTION
Fig. 1. Schematic of the proposed filter.
IGH performance, compact planar bandpass filters
H (BPFs) have found wide application in many RF/mi-
crowave circuits. In these filters, transmission zeros at finite
frequencies are always needed to improve the passband se-
lectivity or reject unwanted signals without sacrificing the
performance of the passband. Therefore, a low-order filter with
the help of transmission zeros may meet the stopband require-
ment that is usually achieved by higher-order filters. Thus, the
insertion loss and the size can be minimized. In the literature,
most of them are based on cross-coupled schemes such as a cas-
Fig. 2. Schematic of (a) embedded resonator (b) dual-mode resonator.
cade trisection and cascade quadruplet [1][3]. To make filters
more compact, various structures also are proposed, including
hairpin resonator filters [4] and open loop resonator filters [5].
Recently, a novel extended doublet coupling schematic is dual-mode resonator used here is a ring-loaded, open loop,
proposed in [6] that exhibits one pair of transmission zeros, the dual-mode resonator. The open-end split quarter wavelength
same as that of a cross-coupled quadruplet filter. Therefore, the resonator is embedded in the ring to form an extended dou-
selectivity of the passband is improved. Its microstrip realiza- blet coupling schematic. Thus, one pair of transmission zeros
tion is presented in [7] by combining an E-shape resonator and near the passband is created to improve the selectivity of the
a half wavelength, short circuit terminated resonator. However, filter. Source-load capacitive coupling is introduced to create
this microstrip filter has a large size and, it is difficult to realize an additional transmission zero at the upper stopband to reject
a fully canonical coupling schematic. Thus, these shortcomings unwanted signal and improve stop band rejection level. A 2.28
make it less attractive for applications in the design of a high GHz filter with 300 MHz bandwidth is designed to validate
performance and compact filter. the concept, and the measured result agrees well with the
In this letter, we propose a very compact fully canonical simulation.
extended doublet microstrip filter using a resonator- em-
bedded, dual-mode resonator, as shown in Figs. 1 and 2. The
II. ANALYSIS OF THE PROPOSED FILTER

Manuscript received August 28, 2009; revised December 16, 2009. First pub- A. Characteristic of the Resonators
lished January 26, 2010; current version published March 10, 2010.
The authors are with School of Electronic Engineering, University of Elec- Since both the dual-mode resonator and the embedded res-
tronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Chengdu, China. (e-mail:
mingqizhou@gmail.com). onator are symmetric structures, even-odd mode theory can be
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2010.2040210 adopted to analyze it.
1531-1309/$26.00 2010 IEEE

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140 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, MARCH 2010

Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit of (a) odd-mode resonance of the dual-mode res-

onator (b) even-mode resonance of the dual-mode resnonator (c) even-mode
resonance of the open-end split resonator. Fig. 4. Coupling schematic of the proposed filter.

For the odd-mode resonance of the dual-mode resonator, the

symmetry plane will be short circuited, resulting in the equiva-
lent circuit shown in Fig. 3(a). The resonance condition must be

(1)

where and are the character-

istic impedance and electrical length of the half wavelength line,
respectively.
The first even-mode resonance frequency of the half wave-
length resonator can be lower down to the vicinity of the first Fig. 5. Coupling coefficient k with regard to variation of coupling space s .
odd-mode resonance frequency by loading an element at the
midpoint of the resonator. Thus, a dual-mode resonator is
formed. For the even-mode resonance of the dual-mode res- the coupling schematic of the filter can be illustrated in Fig. 4.
The coupling matrix can be written down as
onator, the symmetry plane will be open end, whose equivalent
circuit is shown in Fig. 3(b). The resonance condition must be

(4)
(2)

where and are The governing equation of finite transmission zeros can be
the characteristic impedances and electrical lengths of the two expressed as
sections of the loaded element, respectively.
The equivalent circuit of the embedded resonator is shown
in Fig. 3(c), the first resonance frequency of which is an even- (5)
mode resonance, and the resonant condition must be
Since the coupling coefficient of source to odd-mode is
always stronger than that of the source to even-mode in the
(3) open-loop dual-mode resonator [8], i.e., , two
transmission zeros can be created near the passband to improve
the selectivity of the filter.
where and For the design of the proposed filter, the three resonant fre-
are the characteristic impedances and electrical lengths of quencies should be placed at central frequency of the passband.
the two sections of the embedded resonator, respectively. The bandwidth is mainly determined by , i.e., coupling co-
efficient between two even-mode resonances. It can be ac-
B. Analysis of the Filter quired by altering coupling space and . Fig. 5 shows the
variation of the coupling coefficient with regard to different
As seen from Figs. 1 and 2, the embedded resonator is only values of coupling space when mm.
coupled to the even-mode resonance of the dual-mode resonator In this letter, by introducing source-load capacitive coupling,
because the odd-mode resonance of the dual-mode resonator has an additional transmission zero can be created above the pass-
a short circuit at the midpoint of the resonator, which means band. Fig. 6 shows the simulated response of the filter with re-
there is no current flow into the loaded element, i.e., there is no gard to different values of coupling length . It should be noted
energy in it. Thus, the embedded resonator acts as a nonresonant that the increase of will make transmission zero move
element to the odd-mode of the dual-mode resonator. Therefore, towards to the passband without affecting and . Thus,

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ZHOU et al.: MINIATURE MICROSTRIP BANDPASS FILTER 141

Fig. 6. Simulated response of the filter with regard to different values of cou- Fig. 7. Simulated and measured results of the proposed filter.
pling length L .

the same central frequency. The proposed filter also uses less
TABLE I
DIMENSIONS OF TWO FILTERS (UNIT: MM) grounding via than the filter in [7, Fig.10]. Thus, it may results
in a more convenient implementation.

IV. CONCLUSION
In this letter, a novel miniature, microstrip, fully canonical,
extended doublet filter using resonator-embedded dual-mode
resonator based on source-load coupling is proposed. Three
transmission zeros are created to improve the performance of
the filter. Compared with a conventional, microstrip, extended
doublet coupling structure, a significant miniaturization of the
filter size is realized. The measured result agrees well with the
can be used to reject unwanted signal or improve the stop simulation. With these features, it is believed that the proposed
band rejection level. filter is suitable for high performance and compact microwave
system.
III. DESIGN OF PROPOSED FILTER
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