Hilbert-Shaped Complementary Ring Resonator and
Application to Enhanced-Performance Low Pass
Filter with High Selectivity
He-Xiu Xu, Guang-Ming Wang, Chen-Xin Zhang, Jian-Gang Liang
Department of Electromagnetic Field & Microwave Technique, Missile Institute of Air Force
Engineering University, Sanyuan, People’s Republic of China
Received 16 November 2010; accepted 19 January 2011
ABSTRACT: In this article, a novel single negative metamaterial (MTM) transmission line
(TL) consisting of a Hilbert-shaped complementary ring resonator (H-CRR) on the ground
plane is initially presented and studied in depth. Then based on the proposed MTM TL, a
novel six-section Hi-Lo microstrip low-pass filter (LPF) with a cut-off frequency 2.5 GHz is
developed, fabricated, and measured. Measurement results indicate that: by integrating H-
CRR, the selectivity has been significantly improved which is 77.3 dB/GHz due to the single
negative permittivity; by etching a crown square on low-impedance section, the bandwidth
characterized by 20 dB return loss was obviously enhanced by 26.2% and the maximal
sidelobe level of in-band return loss was reduced from 22 to 24.6 dB. What’ more, the
developed LPF achieved a 36.3% size reduction with respect to its conventional counter-
part. The design concept, which was confirmed by the measurement data, is of practical
value and can be popularized in other microwave devices where high selectivity is
requested.
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2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J RF and Microwave CAE 21:399–406, 2011.
Keywords: complementary ring resonator (CRR); fractals; metamaterials (MTMs); low-pass filter
(LPF)
I. INTRODUCTION
Low pass filter (LPF) is one of the most important micro-
wave passive components in modern telecommunication
systems. Hence, a high-performance LPF including
enhanced selectivity, compact size, together with low inser-
tion loss and sidelobe is highly desirable and a challenging
constraint which must be faced by our designers and engi-
neers. To meet these requirements, extensive experimental
works and several techniques have been reported in previ-
ous literatures, e.g., LPFs implemented by complementary
split ring resonators (CSRRs) [1, 2], defected ground struc-
ture (DGS) [3], stepped-impedance hairpin resonators [4],
electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure [5], using line
section combined with an interdigital capacitor [6], and
even based on fractal geometry [7], etc.
Recently, left handed (LH) metamaterials (MTMs)
especially the CSRRs-based MTM transmission line (TL)
have generated much of interest. They allow signals to
transmit freely due to the double negative permittivity (-e)
and permeability (-l), whereas reversely inhibits signal
propagation to the single negative-e or -l. Up to now,
most researches focus on the double negative issue but
few literatures are reported concerning the single negative
MTMs. CSRRs, proposed in [8], is a frequently loaded
sub-wavelength particle in contribution to the negative
permittivity, thus can be adopted in LPF to achieve a
sharp cutoff frequency response [1, 2]. As exposed to
fractal geometry, it has been currently introduced in
CSRRs and results in significant lower resonance [9],
namely miniaturization of MTM TL cell, multiband
behavior [10], broadband effect [11], and even exploited
in CRLH-based UWB filter for elevation of passband per-
formance [12].
In view of them, the goal of this article is to develop a
high-performance LPF using compact single negative
MTM TL to pursue high selectivity and simultaneously
extend the concept of Ref. 12 to this work for passband
performance enhancement. In this regard, novel miniatur-
ized single negative MTM TL adopting Hilbert-shaped
complementary ring resonator (H-CRR) with controllable
Correspondence to: H.-X. Xu; e-mail: hxxu20008@yahoo.cn
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2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
DOI 10.1002/mmce.20529
Published online 10 May 2011 in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com).
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