IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2008 581

Ultra Wideband Bandpass Filter Using Embedded

Stepped Impedance Resonators on Multilayer
Liquid Crystal Polymer Substrate
Zhang-Cheng Hao, Member, IEEE, and Jia-Sheng Hong, Senior Member, IEEE

AbstractThis letter proposes an ultra wideband (UWB)

bandpass filter (BPF) based on embedded stepped impedance res-
onators (SIRs). In this study, broad side coupled patches and high
impedance microstrip lines are adopted as quasi-lumped elements
for realizing the coupling between adjacent SIRs, which are used
to suppress stopband harmonic response. An eight-pole UWB Fig. 1. Lumped-element bandpass prototype for proposed UWB BPF.
BPF is developed from lump-element bandpass prototype and
verified by full-wave simulation. The proposed filter is fabricated
using multilayer liquid crystal polymer (LCP) process and mea-
Liquid crystal polymer (LCP) is a fairly new and promising
sured using vector network analyzer. Good agreement between
simulated and measured response is observed. The measurement organic material for microwave applications [9]. It has low
results show that the fabricated filter has a low insertion loss of thermal expansion coefficient, low dielectric constant and
0.18 dB at center frequency 6.05 GHz, an ultra wide fractional low loss tangent up to mm-wave frequency. The combination
bandwidth of 127.3% and excellent stopband rejection level higher of low cost, excellent electrical performance and multilayer
than 32.01 dB from 10.9 to 18.0 GHz. integration capabilities makes LCP is extremely attractive for
Index TermsBandpass filter (BPF), liquid crystal polymer designing RF circuits with high integration.
(LCP), stepped impedance resonator (SIR), ultra wideband In this letter, a novel UWB filter have been investigated based
(UWB). on embedded stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) structures in
multilayer liquid crystal polymer substrate. Broadside coupled
square patches are used to implement large series capacitors for
I. INTRODUCTION
strong couplings, and stepped impedance resonators are adopted

U LTRA WIDEBAND (UWB) bandpass filters (BPFs) have

drawn significant research interest due to ever-increasing
high data-rate transmission requirements, especially after the
as quasi-lumped shunt capacitors and series inductors in the de-
sign to suppress harmonic response. An eight-pole UWB BPF
of this type has been designed based on an equivalent lumped-
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decision to permit element circuit. The filter is fabricated using multilayer LCP
the unlicensed operation band from 3.1 to 10.6 GHz in February technology and measured with vector network analyzer (VNA).
2002 [1]. Low insertion loss, good selectivity, flat group-delay Good agreement between measurement and full-wave simulated
and ultra wide operation passband up to 110% fractional band- results are presented.
width are main challenges of UWB BPF design. Over the past
few years, several UWB BPFs have been proposed based on var-
ious techniques [2][8]. Multiple mode resonator technique in II. FILTER STRUCTURE AND DESIGNING EXAMPLES
[2] was used to design UWB BPF with good in-band behavior.
However, this technique has to use very narrow gap in the cou- A. Lumped-Element Bandpass Prototype
pled structures to get tight coupling, which could cause a diffi-
A lumped-element bandpass prototype is used to develop pro-
culty in fabrication. The cascaded highpass/lowpass structures
posed UWB BPF. As shown in Fig. 1, the designed lump-ele-
were proposed in [3] to design UWB BPFs, but they have draw-
ment BPF has sixteen capacitors and nine inductors. The cir-
back of a large circuit size. The electronic band gap structures
cuit response of the designed lump-element BPF is illustrated
and defected ground structures were introduced in the UWB
in Fig. 2. With the given lumped-element values, this filter ex-
BPFs reported in [4][8] with a tradeoff for the circuit size and
hibits eight transmission poles in passband, which indicates the
insertion loss.
designed lumped-element BPF is an eight-pole filter.

Manuscript received February 29, 2008; revised May 13, 2008. Current ver-
sion published September 5, 2008.This work was supported by the U.K. Engi-
B. Stepped-Impedance Resonator
neering and Physical Science Research Council (EP/E02923X/1).
The authors are with Department of Electrical, Electronic and Computer En- The stepped impedance resonator structure can be treated
gineering, School of Engineering and Physical Sciences, Heriot-Watt Univer- as a cascading of high- and low-impedance transmission lines
sity, Edinburgh, EH14 4AS, U.K. (e-mail: Z.C.Hao@hw.ac.uk; J.Hong@hw.ac. [10]. The high-impedance lines act as series inductors, while
uk).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
the low-impedance lines act as shunt capacitors. Fig. 3 shows
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. basic configuration of SIR with its electrical parameters, i.e.,
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2008.2002448 electrical length and impedance , respectively. For
1531-1309/$25.00 2008 IEEE
582 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 18, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2008

Fig. 2. Circuit response of lumped-element prototype shown in Fig. 1 (

pF, pF, pF, pF, pF,
pF, pF, pF, nH, nH,
nH, nH, nH).

Fig. 3. Configuration for stepped impedance resonator (SIR).

Fig. 4. Structure for proposed UWB filter. (a) 3-D structure. (b) Top layer. (c)
Middle layer (all dimensions are in millimeter and only half is drawn for the
this structure, the input admittance from the open plane can be 2-D structure due to symmetry).
written as [10]

where and are the characteristic admittance, length

(1) and propagation phase velocity of open-end microstrip patch;
(in m), and represent the length, width and thickness of
The resonance condition given by Y is described as the high-impedance microstrip line; is the height of substrate.
To design the given shunt lumped-capacitor and series
(2) lumped-inductor, by letting and be smaller than and
where the impedance ratio K is defined by using a small impedance ratio , one can design SIR with a
root-searching program developed from (1)(7).
(3)
C. Physical Implementation for Proposed UWB BPF
The first spurious resonance frequency is given by A multilayer structure is used to implement the designed
lumped-element bandpass prototype. The three-dimensional
(4) view of the proposed filter is shown in Fig. 4(a), and top layer
and middle layer layouts with its geometrical parameters are
where is the resonance frequency of SIR. From (4), it can be illustrated in Fig. 4(b) and (c), respectively. The multilayer
concluded that the smaller impedance ratio, , that is used, the structure includes three layer metals, i.e., top layer, middle layer
higher the first spurious resonance frequency is obtained. and ground layer. The SIRs embed on the middle layer are
The capacitance and inductance of open-end microstrip patch adopted to realize series inductor and shunt capacitors
and high-impedance microstrip line can be evaluated as follows: , and . On the top layer, 50 microstrip lines are
used for input and output; the series capacitors and
(5) are implemented using broadside coupled microstrip square
patches. As shown in Fig. 4(b), high impedance microstrip lines
are adopted to realize series inductors and , respectively.
The shunt inductor is implemented by a short-circuited high
impedance microstrip line.
(6)
The proposed filter is designed on LCP substrate which has
and . In Fig. 4, the top layer and
(7) bottom layer LCP substrates have thicknesses of mm and
HAO AND HONG: UWB BPF USING EMBEDDED SIRS
Fig. 5. Photograph of fabricated eight-pole UWB bandpass prototype.
Fig. 6. Measured results and simulated results for fabricated prototype.
Fig. 7. Measured group-delay for proposed filter.
mm, respectively. The metallic through via has a diameter of
0.75 mm and a pad of 1.2 mm by 1.2 mm.
With the initial geometry parameters obtained from (1)(7),
full-wave EM simulator [11] is used to finalize the physical di-
mensions for the proposed filter, which are illustrated in Fig. 4.
It should be noted that in the full-wave design, the thinner the
thickness of LCP substrate was, the larger series capacitance
was obtained. For proposed filter, and are chosen as 50 m
and 750 m, respectively. Moreover, to take into account the mi-
crostrip discontinuities for realizing the given lumped-elements
and to achieve good in-band return loss, the open-end microstrip
patches of embedded SIR have been tuned with slightly different
sizes. The full-wave simulated S-parameters are illustrated in
Fig. 6, where good agreement between full-wave simulation and
circuit response can be observed. The simulated filter has a pass-
band from 2.2 to 9.9 GHz with an in-band return loss better than
10.2 dB and an insertion loss of 0.3 dB at 6.1 GHz.
III. IMPLEMENTATION AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The proposed prototype is fabricated using multilayer LCP
lamination process. In the fabrication, due to the thickness limi-
tation of available LCP substrate, three types of LCP substrates
583
are used in the fabrication. 50- m-thick and 100- m -thick
LCP films with 315 C melting temperature is used as core film
and 50- m-thick LCP substrate with 280 C melting temper-
ature is used as bonding film in the fabrication process. Fig. 5
shows a photograph of the fabricated proposed prototype, which
has a size of 37.6 mm by 5.6 mm.
The fabricated filter is measured using an HP8720 VNA, and
the measured results are plotted in Figs. 6 and 7. It can be seen
from Fig. 6 that a good agreement between simulation and mea-
surement has been achieved. The fabricated filter has a passband
from 2.2 to 9.9 GHz and an insertion loss of 0.18 dB at center
frequency (6.05 GHz). The measured return loss is greater than
10.0 dB over the passband. It also can be seen from Fig. 6, the
fabricated filter has a good rejection level, which is higher than
32.01 dB from 10.9 to 18.0 GHz. Fig. 7 shows the measured
group delay which is 0.45 ns at 6.1 GHz within a variation of
0.35 ns in the passband.
IV. CONCLUSION
This letter presents a novel UWB filter using embedded
stepped impedance resonator structure. The embedded stepped
impedance resonator is designed as quasi-lumped elements to
suppress stopband harmonic response. Moreover, broadside
coupled patches are adopted to realize the tight coupling be-
tween adjacent SIRs. The designed UWB BPF is implemented
with multilayer LCP bonding process and measured with
a VNA. Measured results show proposed UWB BPF has a
low insertion loss, a wide stopband high rejection level up to
32.01 dB from 10.9 to 18.0 GHz and a flat group delay with a
variation within 0.35 ns over whole passband.
REFERENCES
[1] FCC, Revision of Part 15 of the Commisions Rules Regarding Ultra-
Wideband Transmission System, Federal Communications Commis-
sion, Tech. Rep. ET-Docket 98-153 FCC02-48, Apr. 2002.
[2] L. Zhu, S. Sun, and W. Menzel, Ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass
filter using multiple-mode resonator, IEEE Microw. Wireless Compon.
Lett., vol. 15, no. 11, pp. 796798, Nov. 2005.
[3] C. L. Hsu, F. C. Hsu, and J. T. Kuo, Microstrip bandpass filter for
ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless communications, in IEEE MTT-S Int.
Dig., 2005, pp. 679682.
[4] J. Garcia-Garcia, J. Bonache, and F. Martin, Application of electro-
magnetic bandgaps to the design of ultra-wide bandpass filters with
good out-of-band performance, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech.,
vol. 54, no. 12, pp. 41364140, Dec. 2006.
[5] H. N. Shaman and J.-S. Hong, Compact wideband bandpass filter with
high performance and harmonic suppression, in Proc. 37th Eur. Mi-
crow. Conf., 2007, pp. 528531.
[6] K. Li, A novel UWB bandpass filter and its application to UWB pulse
generation, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Ultra-Wideband (ICU05.), Sep.
2005, pp. 446451.
[7] T. N. Kuo, S. C. Lin, and C. H. Chen, Compact ultra-wideband band-
pass filter using composite microstrip-coplanar-waveguide structure,
IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 54, no. 10, pp. 37723778,
Oct. 2006.
[8] G. M. Yang, R. Jin, J. Geng, X. Huang, and G. Xiao, Ultra-wideband
bandpass filter with hybrid quasi-lumped elements and defected ground
structure, Microw., A. & P., IET, vol. 1, pp. 733736, Jun. 2007.
[9] D. C. Thompson, O. Tantot, H. Jallageas, G. E. Ponchak, M.
Tentzeris, and J. Papapolymerou, Characterization of liquid crystal
polymer(LCP) material and transmission lines on LCP substrates
from30110 GHz, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., vol. 52, no. 4,
pp. 13431352, Apr. 2004.
[10] J.-S. Hong and M. J. Lancaster, Microwave Filters for RF/Microwave
Applications.. New York: Wiley, 2001.
[11] EM Users Manual, ver. 10, Sonnet Software, Inc., 2006.