1812 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO.

5, MAY 2013

Synthesis Design of Dual-Band Bandpass Filters

With Stepped-Impedance Resonators
Songbai Zhang, Student Member, IEEE, and Lei Zhu, Fellow, IEEE

Abstract—This paper proposes a class of dual-band bandpass fil- In [5] and [6], a dual-mode resonator was composed of open- or
ters with stepped-impedance resonators (SIRs) and presents short-circuited stubs attached to a transmission-line resonator.
a rigorous synthesis method for these compact filters. Firstly, Although their constituted dual-band filters have excellent iso-
SIRs are designed to generate their first two resonant modes in
the two specified passbands, and they are sequentially cascaded lation due to emergence of a few transmission zeros between
by alternative and inverters. In design, SIRs need to dual passbands, it is quite difficult in theory to mathematically
be chosen not only to satisfy the prescribed dual-band central fre- evaluate and model the stepped-impedance transmission line [5]
quencies, but also to compensate for the deficient values of in- and asymmetrical coupled-line section [6] in synthesis design.
verters at these two frequencies. Following that, a generalized syn- Meanwhile, another dual-band bandpass filter was presented by
thesis method is extensively described for design and exploration
of novel dual-band filters on the microstrip-line topology. The two simultaneously exciting the first two pairs of degenerate reso-
types of second-order dual-band Chebyshev bandpass filters with nant modes of a ring resonator [7]. In [8] and [9], a simple stub-
dual passbands are at 5.8 and 1.8 GHz (large frequency ratio), as loaded dual-mode resonator was employed for the dual-band
well as 5.8 and 2.4 GHz (small frequency ratio), respectively. Fur- filter design, but it is difficult to synthesize the corresponding
thermore, a fourth-order dual-band filter is designed using the pro- dual-band coupling degrees. In addition, the stepped-impedance
posed synthesis method to demonstrate improved dual-passband
performance with sharpened out-of-band rejection skirts and high resonator (SIR) [16] has been found to be very useful in the de-
in-between-band isolation. Finally, five filter prototypes are fabri- sign of various dual-band filters with adjustable or specified dual
cated for the experiment, and both simulated and measured results passbands [10]–[15].
validate the theoretical ones successfully. In order to design a dual-band bandpass filter with prescribed
Index Terms—Dual-band bandpass filter, quarter-wavelength dual-passband bandwidths, it is critical to individually synthe-
resonator, synthesis design, stepped-impedance resonator (SIR). size the expected dual-band inter-resonator coupling degrees.
For a dual-band coupled-line inverter, a common synthesized
method was to construct various design graphs for the dual-
band capacitive coupling degrees with varied coupling lengths
I. INTRODUCTION and gaps, and the realizable bandwidths were restricted to the
common region of all design graphs [11]. However, initial esti-

W ITH THE advance of modern wireless communication

systems, a single transceiver operating at multiple fre-
quency bands had become very popular. Besides the dual-band
mation on coupling lengths and gaps highly relies on time-con-
suming cut-and-try method. In contrast, the dual-band
verter has rarely been adopted in the dual-band filter applica-
in-

CMOS transceiver chipset [1] and the dual-band antenna [2], the tions. As studied in [17] and [18], the value of a metallic via
dual-band bandpass filter is another essential microwave fron- monotonically increases with frequency, thus blocking it from
tend component for integration of miniaturized dual-band sys- the application in dual-band filters with adjustable dual pass-
tems. bands. In [14], the structure or geometrical parameters of a few
The most intuitive method to implement a dual-band band- short-circuited SIRs were tuned aiming to match the res-
pass filter is to simply combine two bandpass filters with two onators’ reactance slopes and the pre-assumed linear increase
distinctive central frequencies [3] in parallel, at the cost of en- values. Nevertheless, to our best knowledge, synthesis on
larged circuit size and complicated matching network. In [4], a dual-band coupling structures for the bandpass filter with spec-
dual-band bandpass filter was constituted by embedding a band- ified dual-band frequencies and bandwidths still remains as a
stop filter inside a wideband bandpass filter. Recently, a large very challenging topic.
number of dual-band bandpass filters have been designed based To effectively facilitate the dual-band filter synthesis, a novel
on the two different-order resonant modes of various transmis- coupling topology was proposed in [19] to limit the dual-band
sion-line resonators [5]–[15], namely, a dual-mode resonator. couplings only for the external couplings between I/O ports
and first/last resonators. Meanwhile, the two-section dual-band
Manuscript received November 28, 2012; revised March 12, 2013; accepted impedance transformer [20] was often employed for synthesis
March 14, 2013. Date of publication April 12, 2013; date of current version May
on the dual-band external couplings [11], [14], [21]. However,
02, 2013.
The authors are with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, this transformer not only inherently operates in narrow band-
Nanyang Technological University, Singapore 639798 (e-mail: [email protected]. width, but it often requires high-impedance transmission-line
edu.sg; [email protected]).
sections. Although a multi-stage dual-band transformer can be
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. applied for broadband application, it dramatically increases the
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2013.2256143 overall circuit size and design difficulties. The other dual-band

0018-9480/$31.00 © 2013 IEEE

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ZHANG AND ZHU: SYNTHESIS DESIGN OF DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTERS WITH SIRs 1813

to judiciously extract the values of the inverter over a broad

frequency range, including two designated central frequencies.
This paper is organized as follows. In Section II, resonant
properties of a SIR are investigated, and based on that, the
dual-band bandpass filter design process is outlined. Subse-
Fig. 1. Schematic of the proposed transmission-line dual-band bandpass filter quently, the first type of dual-band filters with central frequen-
with SIRs, which are cascaded by alternative and inverters.
cies at 1.8 and 5.8 GHz (large-frequency ratio) are synthesized
in Section III. Section IV presents three types of dual-band
bandpass filters with central frequencies at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz
(small-frequency ratio). In this work, four second-order and
one fourth-order dual-band bandpass filters are synthesized,
designed, and tested. Lastly, Section V concludes this paper.

II. FILTER SYNTHESIS

A. Quarter-Wavelength SIR
Fig. 2(a) shows the schematic of a SIR, which consists
of two impedance sections as and with electrical lengths
of and , respectively. The left-end of section is short
circuited; hence, ; the impedance , as indicated in
Fig. 2(a), is formulated as

(1)

where the impedance ratio is defined as . According

to the resonant condition , the numerator in (1)
becomes zero, i.e.,

(2)

By labeling the frequency ratio of the second and first reso-

nant modes as , the second resonant mode excluding
the dispersion effect is restricted as
Fig. 2. (a) Schematic of a SIR to be investigated. (b) Reactance slope ratio
versus ratio of first two resonant frequencies under varied structure parameters,
and . (3)

For both resonant modes, the reactance slope of this

external coupling structures, i.e., the coupled-line section [10],
SIR is defined and derived as
tapped-line structure [19], and dual-finger structure [22], require
time-intensive full-wave analysis and optimization.
The dual-band bandpass filter based on the SIRs fea-
tures a large central frequency ratio and small circuit size as
compared with the ones based on SIRs. The dual-band
filter in [23] possessed the central frequencies ratio as only 2.18
(5.34 GHz/2.45 GHz), and this work restricted itself to anal-
ysis rather than synthesis for the proposed filter structure. In this (4)
paper, we proposes a class of novel dual-band bandpass filter
based on the miniaturized SIRs, as shown in Fig. 1, where where and are the two distinctive electrical lengths of the
SIRs are coupled by alternative inverters [24]–[27], SIR at the first resonant mode with the frequency . In
and then presents a rigorous synthesis method to these filters synthesis, (4) is then numerically analyzed and solved with re-
with varied dual-band central frequencies and expected in-band sorting to a varied impedance ratio ranging from 0.3 to 1.6
frequency responses. In synthesis design, resonant frequencies and varied length ratio ranging from 0.2 to 0.7,
and reactance slopes of the constructed SIR in Fig. 1 or
2(a) are firstly formulated in details to facilitate independent (5)
design for varied cases of the dual passbands. In the two sep-
arated passbands, the inverter network, implemented by a Fig. 2(b) depicts the numerical demonstration of normalized
semi-lump metallic via, is modeled and its initial value deviates reactance slope ratio versus frequency ratio at the two resonant
from the previous works in [17] and [18]. Therefore, an accu- frequencies of the SIR with varied parameters, and .
rate de-embedding method [26] is used in full-wave simulation Fig. 2(b) firstly indicates the case where the frequency ratio

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1814 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013

Alternatively, for the dual-band external coupling ,

(8)

where is the I/O port impedance and superscripts I and II

denote the first and second passbands, respectively. As the ratio
of two fractional bandwidths is predetermined, values of the
shunt stubs short circuited with a metallic via at different fre-
quencies are also fixed. The required SIR reactance ratio
among different stages can be calculated from (7) or (8), and
subsequently, its value can be found from Fig. 2(b). Hence, the
Fig. 3. De-embedded value and associated electrical length as the function SIR can be preliminarily decided. Furthermore, based on
of frequency with the parameters of mm, mm, and
mm.
[11], a set of design graphs for each coupling between the con-
structed SIRs can be formulated so as to derive the corre-
sponding coupling structures of the dual-band inverters. How-
is less than 3 and the reactance slope ratio ranges from 0.7 to 5.1.
ever, due to limitation on the general synthesis for dual-band
Of course, the frequency ratio is larger than 3 as the impedance
coupling, a novel filter topology with only single-band
ratio is selected greater than the unity. For any prescribed res-
coupling is implemented for a fourth-order dual-band bandpass
onant frequency ratio, there are ample choices for the SIR
filter in Section IV.
structure, whose reactance slope ratio can be determined as a
In the following sections, this proposed synthesis method will
degree of freedom based on different values of the chosen
be effectively demonstrated to synthesize a variety of dual-band
inverters as inquired in the prototype in Fig. 1.
bandpass filters based on the compact SIRs.

B. Filter Synthesis III. DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTER AT 1.8/5.8 GHz

A second-order Chebyshev dual-band bandpass filter with
Besides the formulation of the dual-mode resonators for a central frequencies, GHz and GHz, and
dual-band filter in Fig. 1, the inductive inverter needs to be fractional bandwidths, % and %, is
introduced between two adjacent resonators and its coupling de- exemplified with 20-dB in-band return loss, namely, the Type I
gree near the designated dual passbands must be analyzed and filter. Firstly, an appropriate inverter with shunt stub length
investigated. In this paper, a shunt short-circuited stub is formed mm, mm and via diameter mm,
to serve as the inverter and its physical structure is shown as portrayed in the inset of Fig. 3, is chosen to function as
in the inset of Fig. 3. This stub could be characterized using the dual-band . The full-wave extracted result is plotted in
the lump model [17] and distributed model [18], but the resul- Fig. 3, in analog to [26], and it indicates that at
tant is only valid for the narrowband case since these models GHz and at GHz. The theoret-
have not included any junction effect or frequency dispersion. ically required reactance slope ratio of the SIR at 1.8 and
As a result, we need to carry out accurate characterization on 5.8 GHz can be calculated based on (7) as
this shunt stub with a metallic via in a wide frequency range that
must cover the desired dual passbands. In this paper, the broad- %
(9)
band value is extracted or de-embedded from the full-wave %
simulated -parameters [26].
With the prescribed central frequencies ratio of 3.22 (5.8/1.8)
According to the classical synthesis method as summarized in
and reactance slope ratio of 4.6, the impedance ratio and
[18], the required theoretical inter-resonator coupling degree
length ratio of the SIR can be determined in a straightfor-
can be expressed as
ward manner with reference to the design graph in Fig. 2(b), and
they are found as and . The electrical lengths
(6) of the SIR can be subsequently calculated according to (2)
as and at GHz. The theoret-
where is the fractional bandwidth, is the resonator’s ically required reactance slope at is calculated based on
reactance slope of the synchronously tuned resonator, and are (6),
the normalized elements in the low-pass filter prototype. There-
fore, the ratio of inter-resonator at two dual-band frequencies (10)
%
can be calculated based on
Therefore, the impedance is determined as 49.9 from (4),
whereas is calculated as .
(7) In the remaining part of this work, the Roger’s RT/Duriod
6010 substrate with , , and thickness

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ZHANG AND ZHU: SYNTHESIS DESIGN OF DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTERS WITH SIRs 1815

Fig. 4. Schematic of two inductively coupled SIRs with specified resonant

frequencies at 1.8 and 5.8 GHz.

mm is employed for synthesis design and implementation

of all the dual-band filters. Using the above-discussed synthesis
approach, the preliminary dimensions of an uncoupled SIR can
be determined as mm, mm, mm,
Fig. 5. Schematic of a dual-band impedance transformer attached to a SIR.
and mm, referring to Fig. 2(a). If the resulted microstrip
widths of the or section is too narrow for the practical
extracted, whereas the coupled SIR pair in Fig. 4 is weakly
fabrication, a metallic via with a different diameter should be
excited, i.e.,
iteratively chosen, stronger can be easily achieved by in-
creasing shunt length , while weaker can be realized by
a via with larger diameter, multiple vias connected in parallel, (13a)
or the two closely spaced vias. The reactance slope here is cal-
culated as based on (4), and it matches well with (13b)
theoretically required value of 154.0 from (6) at GHz.
Two SIRs are inductively coupled with the aforementioned
where and represent the pair of high/low reso-
inverter, whose associated electrical length at
nant peak frequencies of the two inductively coupled SIRs with
GHz is from Fig. 3, and the equivalent phys-
respect to and GHz.
ical length is calculated as mm using LineCalc
Next, the dual-band impedance transformer, as shown in
in Advanced Design System (ADS). While at GHz,
Fig. 5, is introduced and investigated to tap and feed the
the associated electrical length is , and its corre-
SIRs to meet the specified dual-band external coupling degrees.
sponding physical length is mm. The deviation
With reference to [18], the required external quality factor
between and is mainly attributed to the discrep-
of the singly loaded resonator is expressed as
ancy between effective permittivity at different frequencies,
i.e., 1.8 and 5.8 GHz, due to unexpected frequency dispersion (14)
in the inhomogeneous microstrip-line structure. To mitigate the
length mismatch in the two passbands, an average-weighted The external impedance , seen from the SIR at the tapped
length defined in (11) is subtracted from in the stand- point for different central frequencies, can be expressed,
alone SIR in Fig. 2(a) as two of them are coupled together,
(15)
mm (11)

As such, the overall dimensions of two inductively coupled where is the total resonator’s susceptance seen from the
SIRs, as sketched in Fig. 4, can be preliminarily determined impedance transformer at the tapped point. and for two
with the detailed dimensions mm, mm, central frequencies can be calculated from (14), and
mm, mm, mm, mm, are generally different from each other according to (15). By
and mm. gradually sliding the tapped point along the SIR, the proper
In order to take into account all the effects of discontinuities, tapped point can be eventually chosen with the identical
such as the open-end effect and the step-impedance junction and . Herein, the tapped point is found as mm when
of SIR, to formulate the final filter’s layout, further minor . A two-stage dual-band impedance trans-
full-wave adjustment needs to be performed on the inductively former is synthesized [20] so that I/O ports’ 50- impedance
coupled SIRs shown in Fig. 4. In this way, the coupling proper- can match well with at two central frequencies.
ties are characterized with the dual central frequencies, as well The initial dimension of the dual-band transformer in Fig. 5
as the theoretically prescribed coupling coefficients , de- are mm, mm, and mm. Thus,
fined in (12a) and (12b), as follows: all the physical dimensions for the first filter, i.e., Type I, have
been determined.
(12a) Fig. 6(a) portrays the photograph of the fabricated Type I
filter. Fig. 6(b) illustrates the full-wave simulated and measured
results. The measured in-band return losses for the first/second
(12b) passbands are 20.4/20.2 dB, the measured insertion losses at 1.8
and 5.8 GHz are 1.84 and 1.18 dB, respectively, while two mea-
From the full-wave simulated -parameters, the realistic sured and simulated 3-dB FBWs match well with each other
coupling coefficient, , at these two frequencies can be as 17.5% for the first passband at 1.8 GHz and 10.3% for the

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1816 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013

Fig. 7. (a) Photograph of the fabricated improved second-order dual-band

bandpass filter (Type II) at 1.8 and 5.8 GHz. (b) Simulated and measured
Fig. 6. (a) Photograph of the fabricated initial second-order dual-band band- results.
pass filter (Type I) at 1.8 and 5.8 GHz. (b) Simulated and measured results.
IV. DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTERS AT 2.4/5.8 GHz
second passband at 5.8 GHz. The blurred transmission zeros lo-
cated around 2.6 and 7.8 GHz are attributed to the virtual ground A. Second-Order Dual-Band Bandpass Filter Design
created by the microstrip line section in Fig. 5, and
they are slightly deteriorated due to the weak in-phase cross cou- As compared to the above dual-band filters with ,
pling between the two transformers. The spurious response due the second type of filters with the reduced frequency ratio as
to the SIR third resonant mode happens around 9.3 GHz. is synthesized in this section. The two second-order
The measured frequency responses match well with the simu- dual-band bandpass filters, namely, Type III and IV, are de-
lated counterparts over a broad frequency range. signed herein with the target of the central frequencies of
To further improve the dual-passband performance, the I/O and GHz, fractional bandwidths of
coupling path is introduced by properly moving two dual-band % and %, and 20-dB in-band return loss. As
impedance transformers closely to each other, resulting to form the diameter of the metallic via is chosen as 0.6 mm, the ex-
up an improved dual-band bandpass filter, namely, the Type II tracted values at two central frequencies are and
filter. Slight structure tuning is performed to achieve the optimal . Hence, the SIR reactance slope ratio can be
frequency response. Fig. 7(a) is the photograph of the fabri- calculated from (7),
cated filter. Fig. 7(b) is its simulated and measured frequency re-
sponses. Due to the existence of a weak cross coupling path be- %
(16)
tween the I/O ports, the two transmission zeros are created at 4.6 %
and 6.4 GHz when the coupled-line length of 2.3 mm and gap of
0.85 mm are selected. As can be seen in Fig. 7(b), these trans- From the design graph in Fig. 2(b), the impedance ratio and
mission zeros can not only raise the highly sharp rejection skirts length ratio can be determined as 0.55 and 0.6, respectively.
at both sides of the second passband against the initial result in The electrical lengths are found as and
Fig. 6(b), but also enhance the previous finite transmission zeros based on (2) under . The reactances of the SIR at
at 2.6 and 7.7 GHz. For the improved Type II filter, the measured two central frequencies can be then determined from (6),
in-band return losses are 19.7 and 14.2 dB, insertion losses for
dual passbands are 0.61 and 1.5 dB, and the measured and simu-
lated dual-band 3-dB FBWs are 16.2% and 9.5%, respectively. %
The overall circuit size, excluding the feeding ports, is reduced (17a)
with the area of or ,
where and are the free-space and guided wavelengths at %
1.8 GHz. (17b)

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ZHANG AND ZHU: SYNTHESIS DESIGN OF DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTERS WITH SIRs 1817

Fig. 8. Schematic of two inductively coupled SIRs with specified resonant

frequencies at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz.

As is found from (17a), the two characteristic im-

pedances can be calculated as and
. Therefore, the initial dimensions of the SIR can be
derived at GHz as mm, mm,
mm, and mm. The parameters of the
SIR with these dimensions are founded as and
, which are very close to the respective theoretic
values in (17a) and (17b).
The associated lengths of the concerned shunt stub with a
metallic via are equal to (0.94 mm) at
GHz and (0.75 mm) at GHz. Thus,
the average-weighted length is calculated from (11),

mm (18)

With reference to the schematic of the coupled SIRs in Fig. 8, Fig. 9. (a) Photograph of the fabricated initial second-order dual-band band-
pass filter (Type III) at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. (b) Simulated and measured results.
the initial dimensions are determined as, mm,
mm, mm, mm, and
mm. The dual-band impedance transformer is tapped at
the position of mm so as to achieve the good dual-
band impedance matching between and I/O port
impedance 50 . The resultant dimensions of the transformers
are mm, mm, and mm, as
referring to Fig. 5.
The final layout with detailed dimension for the Type III
filter is portrayed in Fig. 9(a). Simulated and measured fre-
quency responses are plotted in Fig. 9(b), from which the
measured in-band return/insertion losses are 25.0/0.95 dB,
and simulated/measured 3-dB FBW is 8.8% for the first
passband at 2.4 GHz, and the in-band return/insertion losses
are 15.3/1.61 dB for the second passband at 5.8 GHz with
simulated/measured 3-dB FBW 5.4%. By introducing an I/O
cross-coupling path described before, the Type IV filter is con-
structed as illustrated in Fig. 10(a) with slight fine tuning. As the
coupled-line length and gap are selected as 1.975 and 1.4 mm
in the I/O cross-coupled section, two more transmission zeros
are created at 4.54 and 6.36 GHz. Furthermore, it also enhances
the transmission zeros at 3.1 and 7.4 GHz created by virtual
ground of , the emergence of these transmission zeros
can really improve the out-of-band rejection skirts and in-be-
tween-band isolation, as observed from Fig. 10(b). The overall Fig. 10. (a) Photograph of the fabricated improved second-order dual-band
size of the Type IV filter is now reduced to bandpass filter (Type IV) at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. (b) Simulated and measured re-
sults.
or at 2.4 GHz. Meanwhile, the measured
in-band return and insertion losses at 2.36 GHz are 18.6 and
B. Fourth-Order Dual-Band Bandpass Filter Design
1.1 dB with both simulated and measured 3-dB FBWs of 8.0%.
The in-band return loss and insertion losses for the second In addition to the inverters, as the filter order increases,
passband at 5.8 GHz are 12.4 and 2.2 dB. The simulated and the dual-band inverter may be required, as shown in Fig. 1.
measured 3-dB FBWs are 5.0%. As studied in [11], the conventional dual-band coupled-line

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1818 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 61, NO. 5, MAY 2013

average-weighted length is 2.1 mm according to (11). The re-

quired SIR reactance slope ratio of the first/fourth SIR is
calculated based on (8) as

%
(19)
%

Its structure parameters and can then

be determined based on Fig. 2(b), the electrical lengths for two
sections of the SIR are calculated as and
, which are equivalent to 8.1 and 5.8 mm at GHz,
as referring to Fig. 2(a). Next, the theoretical required reactance
slope can be calculated as

(20)
%

Subsequently, is calculated as 49.8 from (4), and

. Meanwhile, is 145.9, and it agrees well
with the theoretic required value of 146.76. The minor full-
wave adjustment is then performed to meet the theoretic ex-
ternal quality factors and . With the de-
termination of , the first/fourth resonators, all the remaining
resonators and coupling stages can be characterized and syn-
thesized under the single-band operation only [26]. Second and
third resonators for the 5.8-GHz passband are implemented with
the uniform microstrip line resonators with a width of 0.4 mm.
The metallic via with a diameter of 0.98 mm is derived to func-
tion as [26]. By noticing that the third resonant mode of
first/fourth SIR are located at 9.8 GHz, the SIR with equal sec-
tion lengths is employed for the second and third resonators at
the 2.4-GHz band to push the spurious band as high as 9.85 GHz.
Under this consideration, single-band and can be easily
Fig. 11. (a) Photograph of the fabricated fourth-order dual-band bandpass achieved by varying the pertained coupling gaps since the de-
filter (Type V) at 2.4 and 5.8 GHz. (b) Coupling diagram for synthesis design. sign of the coupling stages, second and third resonators for each
(c) Simulated and measured results.
band, are independent from each other.
The final fourth-order dual-band filter with detailed dimen-
sions is shown in Fig. 11(a). The simulated and measured fre-
inverter is prohibited from general synthesis. To alleviate this quency responses are plotted in Fig. 11(c). Measured return loss
problem, a fourth-order dual-band Chebyshev bandpass filter in the first passband at 2.36 GHz is 9.16 dB, whereas the max-
[18] is designed, and all the couplings are limited as the single imum insertion loss is 2.05 dB, and simulated and measured
band coupling only. In our synthesis design, the specifications 3-dB FBWs are the same as 11.5%. In the second passband of
for this fourth-order dual-band filter, namely, the Type V filter, 5.8 GHz, the measured return loss is 15.6 dB, whereas the max-
are summarized as GHz, % and imum insertion loss is 2.05 dB as well, simulated and measured
GHz, %. Fig. 11(a) is a photograph of 3-dB FBWs are 13.5%. In particular, two pairs of transmission
the fabricated filter prototype. From its coupling diagram in zeros, located at 1.98, 2.83, 4.81, and 6.72 GHz, are due to two
Fig. 11(b), we can understand that the first and fourth resonators embedded quadruplet sections, which take the critical role in
are commonly used for 2.4- and 5.8-GHz bands, the ren- shaping the highly rejected skirts out of both passbands and
ders the required dual-band external couplings. There exist two deeply attenuated mutual band isolation. In this case, the mu-
pairs of second and third resonators for each individual pass- tual band isolation of this fourth-order filter achieves as high
band. Since all the resonators are in the form of the SIR, as 45.0 dB against about 20 dB for all four of the second-order
they are necessarily coupled in series by alternative and filters discussed above. In conclusion, the overall area of this
inverters. fourth-order filter is equal to and
The via with the specified value possesses a diameter of at 2.4 GHz.
0.4 mm and the shunt short-circuited stub is 2.0 mm in length.
The de-embedded values of the stubs at two central frequen-
V. CONCLUSION
cies are equal to and , respectively.
Besides, their associated lengths at dual central frequencies are In this paper, a rigorous synthesis method for a class of dual-
(2.52 mm) and (1.87 mm). The band microstrip bandpass filters based on SIRs has been

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ZHANG AND ZHU: SYNTHESIS DESIGN OF DUAL-BAND BANDPASS FILTERS WITH SIRs 1819

presented and demonstrated in detail. In synthesis, the imped- [18] G. Matthaei, L. Young, and E. Jones, Microwave Filters, Impedance-
ances or strip widths and the length of these SIRs can be Matching-Networks, and Coupling Structures. Norwood, MA:
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[12] M. Jiang, L. M. Chang, and A. Chin, “Design of dual-passband mi- from the Nanjing Institute of Technology (now
crostrip bandpass filters with multi-spurious suppression,” IEEE, Mi- Southeast University), Nanjing, China, in 1985
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[13] J. T. Kuo and H. P. Lin, “Dual-band bandpass filter with improved in electronic engineering from the University of
performance in extended upper rejection band,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan, in 1993.
Theory Techn., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 824–829, Apr. 2009. From 1993 to 1996, he was a Research Engineer
[14] W. S. Chang and C. Y. Chang, “Analytical design of microstrip with the Matsushita-Kotobuki Electronics Industries
short-circuit terminated stepped-impedance resonator dual-band Ltd., Tokyo, Japan. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Re-
filters,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 59, no. 7, pp. search Fellow with the École Polytechnique de Mon-
1730–1739, Jul. 2011. tréal, Montréal, QC, Canada. Since July 2000, he has been an Associate Pro-
[15] W.-H. Tu, “Design of switchable dual-band bandpass filters with four fessor with the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Nanyang Tech-
states,” IET Microw. Antenna Propag., vol. 4, no. 12, pp. 2234–2239, nological University, Singapore. He has authored over 220 papers in journals
Dec. 2010. and conferences. His papers have been cited over 2400 times with the H-index
[16] M. Makimoto and S. Yamashita, “Bandpass filters using parallel cou- of 25 (source: ISI Web of Science). His research interests include microwave fil-
pled stripline stepped impedance resonators,” IEEE Trans. Microw. ters, periodic structures, planar antennas, numerical EM modeling techniques.
Theory Techn., vol. MTT-28, no. 12, pp. 1413–1417, Dec. 1980. Dr. Zhu has been an associate editor for the IEEE MICROWAVE AND
[17] M. E. Goldfarb and R. A. Pucel, “Modeling via hole grounds in mi- WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS since 2006 and an associate editor for the
crostrip,” IEEE Microw. Guid. Wave Lett., vol. 1, no. 6, pp. 135–137, IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES since 2010.
Jun. 1991. He was the recipient of the 1997 Asia–Pacific Microwave Prize Award.

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