Proceedings of Asia-Pacific Microwave Conference 2006

A Microstrip Bandpass Filter Using a Line Periodically Loaded with

Unbalanced SIRs for Size Reduction and Spurious Suppression
Jaruek Jantree* ,Thammarat Majaeng#, Sarawuth Chaimool#, and Prayoot Akkaraekthalin#
*
Department of Electronics, Rajamangala University of Technology Suvarnabhumi, Suphanburi Campus
450 Moo 6,Yanyao District, Samchuk, Suphanburi 72130, Thailand.
#
Department of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, King Mongkuts Institute of Technology
North Bangkok, 1518 Pibulsongkram Rd., Bangsue, Bangkok 10800, Thailand
Phone: +662-9132500 Ext.8519, Fax: +662-5856149
E-mail: jaruekja@hotmail.com, prayoot@kmitnb.ac.th

Abstract A bandpass filter using a microstrip line
periodically loaded with new unbalanced stepped-
impedance resonators (SIRs) is proposed. With the
proposed resonators, size reduction of approximately
16 % when comparing with the conventional SIR has
been obtained. The bandpass filter has been designed
at the operating frequency of 2 GHz with a narrow
bandwidth of 60 MHz. The filter provides a lower
insertion loss than that of parallel or cross-coupled
structure with conventional SIRs. The upper stopband
performance of the proposed filter has been drastically
improved that the first spurious suppression of better
than 20 dB has been measured.
Index Terms microstrip bandpass filter, stepped-
impedance resonator (SIR), size reduction, spurious
response suppression.
I. INTRODUCTION
Microstrip bandpass filters are finding wide
range of applications in wireless communication
systems. The filter characteristics of low insertion
losses, high selectivity, narrow bandwidth and
compact size are always required. In selecting
resonator types, filter structures must also be
considered carefully. Traditionally, parallel-coupled
line filters and hairpin filters are widely used in
microwave circuits [1]. In order to enhance filter
performances, cross-coupled filters which can
realize elliptic or quasi-elliptic responses, have been
proposed in [2-4]. Many other proposed filters use
stepped-impedance resonators (SIRs) to improve the
upper stopband performances [5-6]. However, the
proposed SIR filters with parallel or cross-coupled
structures provide spurious frequency shifts, but
their levels are still high. Slow-wave wideband
bandpass filters using SIRs with low losses have
been proposed, however, these filters size are still
comparably large [7]. Nevertheless most planar
bandpass filter implemented with half-wave length
resonators have inherently harmonic spurious
frequencies. These spurious responses are
essentially needed to be rejected, therefore, a
cascaded lowpass or bandstop filter has been used to
suppress them [8], but size and insertion loss are
necessarily increased.
In this paper, we propose a new bandpass filter
using a microstrip line periodically loaded with
unbalanced stepped-impedance hairpin resonators.
The proposed filter topology significantly reduces
insertion loss caused in parallel-coupled and cross-
coupled structures by eliminating coupling gaps
between resonators. Furthermore, this new filter
structure is smaller comparing with filters having
the same structures with conventional SIRs. The
spurious responses of the filter have been also
suppressed, resulting in the improved stopband
characteristics.
II. UNBALANCED STEPPED-IMPEDANCE RESONATOR
Fig. 1 shows the proposed basic structure of an
unbalanced stepped-impedance resonator that
consists of two segments of transmission lines with
different characteristic impedances of Z1 and Z2,
corresponding to electrical lengths of T1 and T 2 .
The resonator condition can be analyzed by deriving
the input admittance Yi seeing from an open-end [9].
tan T 2  RZ tan T1
Yi jY2 (1)
1  RZ tan T1 tan T 2
The resonance condition from Yi = 0 can be
described as follows:
tan T 2  RZ tan T1 0 (2)

Copyright 2006 IEICE

where RZ is the impedance ratio defined to be
Ln T 2  tan 1  tan T 2 / S (3)
RZ
. RZ Y1 / Y2 Z 2 / Z1

When RZ = 1, the normalized resonator length Ln is a

constant of one corresponding to a UIR. For RZ > 1,
T1 , Z1 the normalized resonator length Ln becomes smaller
T2,Z2 than one. In this case, the resonator length is
reduced compared to the UIR length and the size
minimization can be achieved.
Fig.2 (a) and (b) show structures of the
Fig.1 An unbalanced stepped-impedance resonator conventional and the proposed unbalanced stepped-
structure. impedance hairpin resonators, respectively. The
La1
resonance responses of these resonators are
evaluated by using the full-wave simulator, IE3D
Wa1
[10]. The resonators are designed on GML 1000
La3
substrate, which has a given relative dielectric of
Ga1 La2
3.2, thickness of 30 mil and loss tangent of 0.004.
La4
The unbalanced SIR has been optimized resulting in
the impedance ratio of RZ = 0.473. The sizes of the
(a) Wa2
proposed resonator include Ga1 = Gb2 = 20 mil,
Wa1 = Wb1 = 120 mil, Wa2 = Wb2 = 35 mil, La1 =
Lb1
Lb1 =514 mil, La2 = Lb2 = 260 mil, La3 = Lb3 =
105 mil, La4 = 85 mil, and Lb4 = 50 mil. The
Wb1 Lb3 simulated results of resonance responses are given
Gb1 Lb2 in Fig.3. These resonance responses are obtained
Wb2
Lb4 from both structures with the same sizes. It can be
noticed that the proposed resonator has a resonance
frequency of 2.035 GHz, lower than 2.277 GHz of
(b) the conventional one. This means the unbalanced
SIR can be made smaller than the conventional
Fig.2 (a) A conventional hairpin resonator and structure when they resonate at the same frequency.
(b) the proposed hairpin resonator. To compare their sizes at the same resonance
frequency, the conventional resonator has the size of
0 613 x 260 mil2 while the size of unbalanced SIR is
514 x 260 mil2. We can see that, the size of the
-10 proposed unbalanced SIR is 16.15% smaller than
the conventional one.
Magnitude (dB)

-20

-30
III. FILTER IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS

-40 To demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed

proposed (s11)
conventional (s11) resonator, we have designed bandpass filters using a
-50 microstrip line periodically loaded with unbalanced
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0
Frequency (GHz) SIRs. The first proposed filter has been designed as
Fig.3 S11 of the conventional resonator compared a structure shown in Fig.4. A substrate of GML
with the proposed resonator. 1000 with relative dielectric of 3.2, thickness of 30
mil and loss tangent of 0.004 has been utilized. The
full-wave simulator IE3D has been used to finally
The length Ln is the normalized resonator length, determine the characteristics of the filter at a center
which is the ratio of the unbalanced SIR length and frequency of 2 GHz and a narrow bandwidth of 60
uniform impedance resonator (UIR) length, MHz (FBW = 3%). The sizes of the designed
therefore, from (2) it can be written as
 L1 W2
L6 L5
L3 W1
L1 L4
L2 L3 L4
W1
L2

Fig.8 Layout of the second filter.

Fig.4 Layout of the first filter.

Fig.5 Photograph of the first filter. Fig.9 Photograph of the second filter.

0 0
S11 S11
-10
-10
-20
S21 -20
-30
Magnitude (dB)
Magnitude (dB)

-40 -30
S21
-50
-40
-60
-50
-70
-80 simulation -60 simulation
measurement measurement
-90 -70
1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5 3.0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Frequency (GHz) Frequency (GHz)

Fig.6 Simulated and measured S-parameters of the Fig. 10 Simulated and measured S-parameters of the
first filter. second filter at a wide frequency range.

0 unbalanced SIR have been previously obtained from

S11
-10 the last section. The other key dimensions of the
-20 proposed filter with a microstrip line periodically
S21
loaded with four unbalanced SIRs as shown in Fig.4
Magnitude (dB)

-30
-40
include W1 = 71.93 mil, L1 = 445 mil, L2 = 780
mil, L3 = 386 mil and L4 = 110 mil. A photograph
-50
of the fabricated filter is shown in Fig.5. Fig.6
-60
simulation
shows comparisons between measured and
-70
measurement simulated performances of the filter. We can see that
-80 the passband insertion loss is approximately 3 dB at
1 2 3 4 5
Frequency (GHz) the center frequency of 2.05 GHz, which is mainly
due to the conductor loss of copper. The return loss
Fig.7 Simulated and measured S-parameters of the is greater than 10 dB within passband. The two
first filter at a wide frequency range. attenuation poles exhibit high rejection levels which
are 73.5 dB at 1.81 GHz and 63.1 dB at 2.37 GHz,
respectively. However, the first spurious response at
about 3.34 GHz is still very high as can be clearly
seen in Fig.7. Obviously, with this filter structure, it
can be concluded that the sizes can be reduced but
the spurious responses can not be suppressed,
therefore, the microstrip line has been modified to
have stepped-impedances and a new arrangement of
the proposed resonators has been performed, as a
result of the second filter structure shown in Fig.8.
The same specifications with the first implemented
filter have been designed. With a substrate of
GML1000, the resonator sizes are the same with the
previous design and other dimensions of the second
filter has been optimized using IE3D program,
resulting in W1 = 71.93 mil, W2 = 20 mil, L1 = 240
mil, L2 = 360 mil, L3 = 473 mil, L4 = 185 mil, L5 =
286 mil, and L6 = 374.5 mil. The constructed filter
is displayed in Fig.9. Fig.10 shows a wide frequency
range of simulated and measured performances of
this proposed filter, as we can notice that the
spurious suppression is superior when compared
with the first designed filter or the conventional
filter. This filter exhibits a wide upper stopband
with a rejection better than 17 dB up to about 7.6
GHz. This superior spurious suppression is caused
by the stepped-impedance microstrip line and the
proposed unbalanced SIRs properly loaded.
IV. CONCLUSION
A new bandpass filter using a microstrip line
periodically loaded with the proposed unbalanced
stepped-impedance hairpin resonators has been
demonstrated. The size of the proposed resonators
has been reduced for ~ 16%, when compared with
the conventional SIR structure. Furthermore, the
proposed filter has a lower insertion loss than the
filters using parallel or cross-coupled stepped-
impedance hairpin resonators of conventional
structures. The filter not only has a compact size of
resonators, but also provides an improved upper
stopband characteristic. The measured filter
responses agree very well with simulation
expectations. The filter structure may be applied for
several communication systems, when the superior
spurious suppression is necessarily required.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work has been supported by the National
Electronics and Computer Technology Center
(NECTEC), Thailand, under the Project No. NT-B-
22-T2-38-47-13 and the Research No. 13/2547.
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