IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO.

7, JULY 2013 341

Ultra-Wideband Bandpass Filter With a Notch-Band

Using Stub-Loaded Ring Resonator
He Zhu and Qing-Xin Chu, Senior Member, IEEE

Abstract—A quadruple-mode ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass

filter with a notch-band and wide upper stopband is presented
in this letter. The UWB filter is realized using a ring resonator
which is loaded with two sets of stubs, i.e., one is loaded in the
center and two little stubs at the symmetrical side locations. The
loaded stubs are used to create transmission zeros in upper stop-
band thus high modes are suppressed greatly. Moreover, two iden-
tical via-loaded ring resonators are inserted within the stub-loaded
ring resonator, to create a notch-band around 5–6 GHz to avoid Fig. 1. Schematic of the proposed UWB filter.
WLAN signals. Two reflection poles appear in the notch-band, re-
sulting in a switchable bandwidth of the notch-band. Finally, a
UWB filter with a notch-band is simulated and fabricated, and
measured results provide an experimental validation of predicted
performance of the filter.
Index Terms—Bandpass filter (BPF), notch-band, stub-loaded
ring resonator (SLRR), ultra-wideband (UWB).
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuits of SLRR (a) even-mode, (b) odd-mode.

I. INTRODUCTION without a notch-band is put forward, and then a notch-band is

implemented in the improved structure. The schematic of pro-

U LTRA-wideband (UWB) radio technology is a main tech-

nique in high-speed and high-data short-range commu-
nication. UWB bandpass filter (BPF) plays an important role
in UWB systems. Many methods are studied and implemented
in design of planar filters, among which ring resonators are
widely used in filter designs [1]–[5]. In [1], the concept of mul-
tiple-mode ring resonator was well explained and an excellent
out-of-band rejection was obtained. In [2], a coupled-ring res-
onator was developed to a quasi-elliptic BPF which had an im-
proved selectivity. Ring resonator was first used in design of
UWB filter which was presented in [3]. Resonant modes and
transmission zeros were easily controlled in the design of [4],
which resulted in a switchable bandwidth using ring resonator.
In [5], a wideband BPF is constructed using a quadruple mode
ring resonator. In order to avoid signals from other commu-
nication systems like WLAN/WiMax, UWB BPFs with single
or multiple notched bands become common recent years. In
[6]–[9], embedded open stubs, asymmetric feed lines and extra
resonators were used in filter designs in order to bring upon
notch-bands in desired positions.
In this letter, a novel stub-loaded ring resonator (SLRR) is
proposed and applied in UWB BPF design. First a UWB BPF
Manuscript received January 17, 2013; revised March 04, 2013; accepted
April 18, 2013. Date of publication June 10, 2013; date of current version June
27, 2013. This work was supported by the National Natural Science Founda-
tion of China (61171029) and National Key Laboratory Foundation of China
(9140C5306021008).
The authors are with the School of Electronic and Information Engineering,
South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong 510640, China
(e-mail: he.zhu@mail.scut.edu.cn; qxchu@scut.edu.cn).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2013.2262928
posed UWB BPF is plotted in Fig. 1. Compared with tradi-
tional ring resonators, SLRR possesses two sets of stubs, re-
ferred as stub 1 and stub 2 as shown in Fig. 1, which bring up
two transmission zeros in upper stopband to improve harmonic
suppression. In addition, a notch-band is excited by inserting
two via-loaded ring resonators within SLRR. To verify the de-
sign process, a UWB BPF with a notched band is fabricated
and measured. The measured results are in good agreement with
simulated predictions.
II. UWB FILTER DESIGN
A. Transmission Poles and Zeros of the Resonator
A novel stub-loaded ring resonator is presented and analyzed.
Compared with traditional ring resonators, two stubs are added
in SLRR, one is in the center and the other two are loaded at
symmetrical positions. Besides the loaded stubs, SLRR has an
additional coupled transmission line whose length is quarter-
wavelength and impedance , and a ring whose whole
length is one-wavelength and impedance .
For the resonator is symmetric, odd- and even-mode method
could be applied in the analysis of resonant modes and trans-
mission zeros. Fig. 2 depicts the odd- and even-mode equivalent
transmission line circuits. For the even-mode case, the resonant
condition can be expressed as
(1)
where
(2)
(3)

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342 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 23, NO. 7, JULY 2013

Fig. 3. Frequency ratio of first four even-modes Fig. 5. Comparison of between UWB BPFs using aperture couple-line,
and first three odd-modes . traditional ring resonator [3] and proposed SLRR.

Fig. 6. Schematic of the improved UWB filter with a notch-band.

troduced by parallel coupled lines and SLRR. First, three trans-

mission zeros are generated at and by parallel coupled
lines whose length is quarter-wavelength at center fre-
quency In this design, center frequency is set at 6.85 GHz,
therefore are determined at 0, 13.7 and 27.4 GHz.
Moreover, due to stub 1 and stub 2, two extra TZs )
are introduced. As illustrated in Fig. 4(a), when the electrical
Fig. 4. (a) Frequency ratio under vari- length ratio is varied from 0.3 to 1, TZ decreases
ation of ; (b) Frequency ratio under dramatically from high frequency to . Thus when the length
variation of . ratio equals to 0.58, could be suppressed. Similarly,
stub 2 also contributes to high modes suppression in the same
way. When the electrical length ratio is varied from 0 to
(4) 1, as shown in Fig. 4(b), TZ decreases from about 11
to 4 . Here we determine as 0.32, where could
When the odd-mode is excited, the resonant modes are derived be suppressed. In this way a UWB BPF is designed, and simu-
lated S-parameters are plotted in Fig. 5, in which a comparison
(5)
of simulated between structures using SLRR and conven-
where tional ring resonator could also be observed. As for designed
(6) resonant modes, the first two odd-modes are 3.1 and 9.4 GHz
while the first two even-modes are 5.4 and 10.7 GHz, when po-
(7) sitions of TZs are determined. The associated dimensions are:

Subsequently, (1)–(7) allow one to determine all the

even- and odd-mode resonant frequencies in an explicit
manner. Fig. 3 plots the ratio of first four even-modes
when the impedance ratio of
is varied, while the ratio of first three odd-modes
remain unchanged at 3.1 and 5.5. Here we
use the first two odd-modes to form an ultra-wide passband,
and equals to 3.1. Based on the analysis above, a UWB
BPF is designed using SLRR, as shown in Fig. 1. Since there
is little difference of ratio of even-modes when
as observed in Fig. 3, we assume
that is 0.3 mm in physical fabrication, for consideration to meet
requirement of coupling strength under limited tolerance of
fabrication accuracy. Under such circumstance, the first two
even-mode ratio is selected around 2.1. Therefore
the first four resonant frequencies could be allocated in a wide
range in favor of UWB filter design.
As studied in [10], open-stub in resonator could introduce
transmission zeros (TZ) to suppress harmonics in upper-stop-
band. In this design, five TZs are in-
(all in millimeter).
B. Notch-Band
In order to create a notch-band for WLAN which is around
5.5 GHz, two via-loaded resonators are embedded in SLRR. The
configuration of the improved UWB BPF with a notch-band is
shown in Fig. 6. A good bandstop characteristic is obtained, due
to two reflection poles generated by via-loaded ring resonators.
The via-loaded ring resonator is a small ring with via loaded at
, one side of the ring. Fig. 7(a) displays different properties when
s is varied, from which it is easily seen that two reflection poles
are excited when s is small and a wider notched bandwidth is
achieved, whereas a smaller bandwidth is observed when is
larger. This is attributed to different coupling strength between
SLRR and via-loaded resonators. Besides, the dB band-
width of the notch-band is able to attain 5.02 to 5.37 GHz, which
is larger than the cover range of WLAN. Moreover, the posi-
tion of the notch-band is also easily tuned from 5.2 to 5.8 GHz
without affecting the shape of the notch-band, as in Fig. 7(b).
ZHU AND CHU: UWB BPF WITH A NOTCH-BAND USING SLRR
Fig. 7. Variation of the notch-band when (a) is equals to 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 mm,
mm, (b) and 0.5 mm, mm.
Fig. 8. Photograph of the fabricated UWB filter.
TABLE I
COMPARISON WITH THE REPORTED UWB BPFS
III. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
Based on the above analysis, a UWB BPF with notch-band
is realized. Table I is the comparison of proposed UWB filter
with reported ones. Table I includes following specifications:
notch-band, insertion loss, return loss, bandwidth of notch and
size. Fig. 8 is the photograph of the fabricated filter. The sub-
strate used in this structure is with a relative dielectric con-
stant of 2.55 and a thickness of 0.8 mm. The dimensions op-
timized by IE3D are
(all in millimeter).
Fig. 9 is the simulated and measured results of the proposed
UWB BPF, and good agreement between simulated and mea-
sured results are observed. As seen in Fig. 9(a), the 3 dB pass-
band covers the range of 3.1–10.6 GHz in UWB application.
The insertion loss is less than 1.5 dB and return loss is larger than
10 dB in the passband expect at the notch. There is a wide notch-
band with two reflection poles obtained around 5.5 GHz to avoid
WLAN signals (i.e., 5.2 and 5.8 GHz bands). Measured 10 dB
bandwidth of notch-band is from 5.2 to 5.9 GHz, indicating a
good bandstop characteristic. In addition, the group delay within
the UWB passband is 0.5–0.8 ns, showing a good linearity. The
measured upper stopband with 20 dB attenuation level is ex-
tended to 27.6 GHz as shown in Fig. 9(b). Some slightly discrep-
ancies between simulation and measurement may due to unex-
pected tolerances in fabrication.
343
Fig. 9. Simulated and measured results of fabricated UWB BPF with a notch-
band in (a) 1–15 GHz; (b) 0–30 GHz.
IV. CONCLUSION
A quadruple UWB BPF using a stub-loaded ring resonator
is presented. Stubs which are loaded in the ring resonator are
utilized to produce transmission zeros to suppress harmonics
in upper-stopband. Two via-loaded ring resonators laid in the
stub-loaded ring resonator realize a wide notch-band to avoid
WLAN signals around 5.2 and 5.8 GHz. In this way, two reflec-
tion poles are obtained so that the bandwidth of the notch-band
is easily tuned. The simulated and measured results demonstrate
that the proposed filter possesses a wide notch-band, a good
upper stopband and a small size at the same time.
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