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Compact Dual-Band Bandpass Filter Using Stub-

Loaded Stepped Impedance Resonators with Mixed
Electric and Magnetic Couplings
Pin Wen*1, 2, Zhewang Ma1, Haiwen Liu2, Masataka Ohira1, Baoping Ren1, 2, Xiaolong Wang1
1
Graduate School of Science and Engineering, Saitama University, 255 Shimo-Okubo, Sakura-ku, Saitama 338-8570, Japan
2
Department of Information Engineering, East China Jiaotong University, Nanchang 330013, China
[email protected]

Abstract—A compact dual-band bandpass filter (BPF) using

two stub-loaded stepped impedance resonators (SLSIRs) is 澳
presented. The first and the second resonant modes of the SLSIR
Zs, θs
can be independently controlled by the length of the open stub and
the impedance ratio of the SIR, respectively. Mixed electric and Ys Y2
magnetic coupling between two SLSIRs of the dual-band BPF are
utilized to produce multiple transmission zeros in the filter Z1, θ1 Zt , θt Z2, θ2
response. A dual-band BPF operating at 1.27 and 2.45 GHz is YinL YinR
designed and fabricated, and it demonstrates high passband
selectivity and large isolation between the two passbands. The Fig. 1. Transmission line model of the proposed SLSIR.
measured minimum insertion losses are 0.90 and 0.92 dB, and the
passband return losses are better than 13 and 18.5 dB, 0
respectively.
澳
-10 fp1
-20 fp2
Keywords—Dual band, bandpass filter (BPF), stub loaded -30
stepped impedance resonator, mixed electric and magnetic coupling
|S21| (dB)

-40
-50

I. INTRODUCTION -60
-70
In recent years, planar microstrip dual-band bandpass
-80
filters (BPFs) are widely explored and used to multiservice
-90
wireless communications. As an essential component of 1.00 1.25 1.50 1.75 2.00 2.25 2.50 2.75 3.00
wireless communications, filter should be low cost, low Frequency (GHz)
insertion loss, compact size, and high integration. In order to Fig. 2. Typical input impedance 1 / Y.
meet those demands, there are two kinds method to achieve
dual-band or multiband filters. loaded stepped impedance resonators (SLSIRs). Mixed
The first method is using single resonance mode resonator electric and magnetic coupling is introduced between two
with specific topological structure. In [1], a dual-band BPF SLSIRs to produce multiple transmission zeros located at the
was constituted by cascading a bandstop filter (BSF) with a two side of each passband, resulting in high passband
wideband BPF. In [2], two single-band BPFs cascaded with selectivity and large isolation in-between the two pasbands.
common feeding network achieved a dual-band performance. The filter is very compact and the measured results confirm
Those methods can simply to design dual-band BPFs, but the the design well.
circuit size is large usually.
II. ANALYSIS OF THE SLSIR
The second method is using multi-resonance resonators
including stub loaded multimode resonators [3, 4], ring loaded Fig. 1 shows the transmission line model of the proposed
resonators [5], stepped impedance resonators (SIRs) [6-8]. In stub-loaded stepped impedance resonator (SLSIR). The SIR is
[3]-[8], square ring loaded resonators (SRLRs), stub-loaded short-circuited at its high-impedance end. An open stub is
multi-mode resonators, and stepped impedance resonators are loaded to this SIR. At the loading point, as shown in Fig. 1,
utilized to design dual-band BPFs. Despite all this, the design the input admittance YinL looking to the left side, and YinR
of dual-band BPFs with compact size and high performance looking to the right side, can be derived easily using the
remains a challenging work. transmission line theory as
In this paper, a compact dual-band BPF operating at 1.27 Zt  Z1 tan Tt cot T1 (1)
YinL j
GHz for GPS-L2 application, and 2.45 GHz for WLAN Zt  Zt tan Tt  Z1 cot T1 
application is designed and fabricated by using two stub-

‹,((( 
 Ws gc
澳 20 mm

W1 Ls
L1

24 mm
Lt

Lf gf Wl
W Fig. 4. Photograph of the fabricated dual-band BPF
50 Ω Ll 50 Ω

L2 gl
澳 0
d2 |S11|
-10
d1
-20
-30

Magnitude (dB)
(a)
-40
-50 |S21|
SLSIR-I SLSIR-II
Mixed EM-coupling -60
I-1 II-1 TZ3
-70
Qe1 Qe1 TZ2
1st Passband -80
TZ1
S -90 Simulated TZ4
nd
L Measured
2 Passband
-100
Qe2 Qe2 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 3.5 4.0 4.5
I-2 II-2
Mixed EM-coupling
Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 5. Simulated and measured responses of the proposed dual-band BPF

(b)

Fig. 3. (a) Layout of the proposed dual-band BPF. (b) Coupling routing
scheme of the proposed dual-band BPF. to reduce the circuit size and increase the coupling. The
fringing electric fields across the gap gc between the open
stubs of the SLSIRs provide electric-coupling between the two
Z s cot T 2  Z 2 tan T s (2) resonators, while the electrical currents flowing on the open
YinR Y2  Ys j
Z2Zs stubs and meander high impedance line produce magnetic-
coupling between the two resonators. So the coupling between
where Zi (1, 2, s, t) and θi (1, 2, s, t) represent the characteristic both the lower modes and higher modes of the SLSIRs are
impedances and electrical lengths of the transmission lines mixed electric and magnetic couplings [9]. Fig. 3(b) shows
shown in Fig. 1, respectively. In order to make the design the coupling routing scheme of this proposed dual-band BPF.
easier, we assume Zt = Z2 = Zs = Z, and use K = Z/Z1 to
represent impedance ratio. The open stub creates one transmission zero (TZ1) located
at the lower sideband of the first passband. One the other hand,
The resonance of the resonator occurs when Y YinL  YinR = 0. due to the cancelling effect of the mixed electric and magnetic
On the other hand, when Y YinL  YinR approaches infinity, we couplings, the proposed dual-band BPF has another three TZs
will get a transmission zero. Fig.2 shows the resonance (TZ2, TZ3 and TZ4). In addition, the coupling gap gc and the
characteristic with week coupling of the proposed SLSIR. It is folded open stubs can also be used to control the coupling
seen that the proposed SLSIR resonates at two frequencies, fp1 coefficient of the dual-band BPF. It can meet the needed
and fp2. By using Equation (1) and (2), and with appropriate coupling coefficient for two passbands by selecting
choosing of the parameters of K and θi, we can make the two appropriate dimensions of gc, gl, Lt, and Wl. The external
resonant modes operating at 1.27 and 2.45 GHz, respectively. quality factor Qe1 and Qe2 can be met by choosing the length Lf
of the folded feedline. According to [10], once the coupling
routing scheme, coupling coefficient, and external quality
III. DESIGN OF THE DUAL-BAND BPF AND ITS factor of the dual-band filter are determined, it can obtain an
MEASUREMENT initial dual-band response. And then, the initial dimensions of
Fig. 3(a) shows the layout of the proposed dual-band BPF. the dual-band filter can be determined. In order to obtain the
Two SLSIRs are used. The lower modes resonating at 1.27 desire response, the layout of electromagnetic effects in Fig.
GHz of the two SLSIRs are used to build the first passband, 3(b) should be considered. The final parameters optimized by
while the higher modes resonating at 2.45 GHz are used to using an electromagnetic simulator, Sonnet em, are as follows:
form the second passband. The input and output feed lines and L1 = 3.65, L2 = 5.97, Lt = 5.55, Ls = 29.9, Lf = 25.85, Ll = 1.8,
the loaded open stubs of the SLSIRs are folded and interlaced W = 1.7, W1 = 2.4, Ws = 0.5, Wl = 0.2, gf = gc = 0.2, gl = 0.6, d1


 determined by the impedance ratio K of the SIR and the length
TABLE I. PERFORMANCE COMPARISON WITH OTHER DUAL-BAND BPFS of the loaded open stub. Four transmission zeros are generated
by the open stubs and the cancelling effect of the mixed
CFs 3-dB FBW Circuit size
Refs IL (dB) TZs
(λg u λg)
electric and magnetic couplings between the SLSIRs, which
(GHz) (%)
improve significantly the frequency selectivity and isolation
[3] 1.0/1.44 10/9.3 0.85/0.9 5 0.1 u 0.25
between the two pasbands. The design is verified by
[4] 2.45/5.2 18/4.8 0.6/0.9 3 0.11 u 0.23 simulation and measurement. The circuit size of the proposed
[5] 3.32/5.32 27.71/19.17 0.62/0.91 4 0.084 u 0.102 dual-band BPF occupies only 0.084λg u 0.102λg. These merits
make the newly proposed dual-band BPF attractive for
[6] 0.58/1.31 39.6/18.3 0.3/0.9 3 0.04 u 0.54
possible applications in modern communication systems.
[8] 1.63/2.73 7.5/5.1 1.5/2.15 7 0.25 u 0.25
This
1.27/2.45 21.3/14.7 0.90/0.92 4 0.084 u 0.102 ACKNOWLEDGMENT
work
λg represents the guided wavelength of the 50 microstrip line at the center This work is supported in part by the Grant-in-Aid for
frequency of the first passband on the used substrate. Scientific Research (KAKENHI 17K06373) from the Japan
Society for the Promotion of Science.

= 0.4, d2 = 0.8, all in mm. The characteristic impedances of the

input and output ports are both 50 Ohms.
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IV. CONCLUSION
A compact dual-band BPF using two SLSIRs is presented.
The center frequencies of the two passbands can be easily