Published in IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation
Received on 20th March 2012
Revised on 1st February 2013
Accepted on 24th April 2013
doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2012.0356
ISSN 1751-8725
Dual-band filter using asymmetrical stub-loaded
resonator with independently controllable
frequencies and bandwidths
Qing-Xin Chu, Zhi-Hui Li
School of Electronic and Information Engineering, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou,
Guangdong 510640, People’s Republic of China
E-mail: qxchu@scut.edu.cn
Abstract: A new kind of asymmetrical stub-loaded resonator is proposed and applied to design a dual-band bandpass filter (BPF)
with independently controllable frequencies and bandwidths. The asymmetrical stub-loaded resonator presented in this study has
more superior performance than the conventional symmetrical stub-loaded resonator. By appropriately selecting the lengths of the
loaded stubs of the resonator, the first two resonant frequencies can be tuned independently without having influence on each
other. The bandwidth of each passband of the proposed dual-band filter using asymmetrical stub-loaded resonators can be
controlled independently by adjusting the coupling parameters. To validate the concept, one microstrip dual-band BPF
centred at 2.4 GHz/5.2 GHz is designed, fabricated and measured. It is found that the simulated and measured results are in
good agreement.
1 Introduction
Recently, the development of multi-service mobile wireless
communication systems has become attractive for
commercial product, especially in the combination of global
position system (GPS), wireless local area network
(WLAN) and global system for mobile communications
(GSM). For example, Samsung Corporation provides the
latest commercial product of I-series cell phones with three
function services, including GPS, WLAN and GSM. Thus
it can be seen that dual- or multi-bandpass filters (BPFs) are
highly desired. To meet the needs, much research regarding
them has been carried out and various design approaches
have been proposed.
Among them, one straightforward method was that
two BPFs with individual passbands using additional
impedance-matching networks were combined to be a
dual-band filter in [1]. There were still other ways to
achieve dual-band BPFs. For instance, stepped impedance
resonators (SIRs) had been widely implemented to realise
dual-band BPFs. Theoretical analysis and practical
applications revealed that the fundamental and the second
resonant frequencies of a SIR were easily controlled by the
impedance ratio. The dual-band BPFs using SIRs had
attractive features such as, simple and compact structure in
[2], low insertion loss in [3] and high isolation in [4].
However, both passband frequencies and bandwidths of
these aforementioned filters were dependent. Stub-loaded
resonators were adopted in dual- or tri-band BPFs design.
The dual- or tri-band filters were designed by using
centrally symmetrical stub-loaded resonators proposed in
[5, 6]. Theoretical analysis showed that the even-mode
resonant frequencies of centrally symmetrical stub-loaded
resonators could be conveniently tuned without affecting
the odd-mode resonant frequencies in [5]. There were four
kinds of centrally symmetrical stub-loaded resonators,
which were short stub-loaded resonators proposed in [7],
open stub-loaded resonators proposed in [8], crossed
resonators proposed in [9] and active component loaded
resonators proposed in [6], respectively. All of those filters
designed using symmetrical stub-loaded resonators had a
characteristic of independently controllable frequencies.
However, only Chen et al. [ 7] presented detailed discussion
on adjusting the bandwidth of each passband independently.
Some researchers put forward a new topology of N-band
resonator together with its associated synthesis in [10]. This
kind of topology allowed the independent control of
different transmission zeros and resonances.
In this paper, an asymmetrical stub-loaded resonator
with an open-circuit terminated stub on one side and a
short-circuit terminated stub on the other side is proposed.
Based on our investigation, the passband frequencies of the
dual-band BPF using asymmetrical stub-loaded resonators
are independently adjusted by the lengths of the loaded
stubs. The designed dual-band filter has two independent
coupling paths. One delivers only the signals of the lower
passband and the other only passes the signals of the upper
passband. By properly controlling the coupling strength at
each path, the desired coupling coefficients of each
passband can be obtained independently. Thus the
bandwidths can be controlled without affecting each other,
when the external quality factors keep fixed. Consequently,
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doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2012.0356
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