Chapter 8 presents a comprehensive treatment of subjects regarding coupled res-
onator circuits. These are of importance for design of RF/microwave filters, in par-
ticular the narrow-band bandpass filters, which play a significant role in many ap-
plications. There is a general technique for designing coupled resonator filters,
which can be applied to any type of resonator despite its physical structure. For ex-
ample, it can be applied to the design of waveguide filters, dielectric resonator fil-
ters, ceramic combline filters, microstrip filters, superconducting filters, and micro-
machined filters. This design method is based on coupling coefficients of
intercoupled resonators and the external quality factors of the input and output res-
onators. Since this design technique is so useful and flexible, it would be desirable
to have a deep understanding not only of its approach, but also its theory. For this
purpose, the subjects cover the formulation of the general coupling matrix, which is
of importance for representing a wide range of coupled-resonator filter topologies,
the general theory of couplings for establishing the relationship between the cou-
pling coefficient and the physical structure of coupled resonators. This leads to a
very useful formulation for extracting coupling coefficients from EM simulations
or measurements. Formulations for extracting the external quality factors from fre-
quency responses of the externally loaded input/output resonators are derived next.
Numerical examples are followed to demonstrate how to use these formulations to
extract coupling coefficients and external quality factors of microwave coupling
structures for filter designs.
Chapter 9 is concerned with computer-aided design (CAD). Generally speaking,
any design that involves using computers may be called CAD. There have been ex-
traordinary recent advances in CAD of RF/microwave circuits, particularly in full-
wave electromagnetic (EM) simulations. They have been implemented both in com-
mercial and specific in-house software and are being applied to microwave filter
simulation, modeling, design, and validation. The developments in this area are cer-
tainly being stimulated by increasing computer power. Another driving force for the
developments is the requirement of CAD for low-cost and high-volume production.
In general, besides the investment for tooling, materials and labor mainly affect the
cost of filter production. Labor costs include those for design, fabrication, testing,
and tuning. Here the costs for the design and tuning can be reduced greatly by using
CAD, which can provide more accurate design with less design iterations, leading to
first-pass or tuneless filters. This chapter discusses computer simulation and/or
computer optimization. It summarizes some basic concepts and methods regarding
filter design by CAD. Typical examples of the applications, including filter synthe-
sis by optimization, are described. Many more CAD examples, particularly those
based on full-wave EM simulation, can be found through this book.
In Chapter 10, we discuss the designs of some advanced filters, including selec-
tive filters with a single pair of transmission zeros, cascaded quadruplet (CQ) fil-
ters, trisection and cascaded trisection (CT) filters, cross-coupled filters using
transmission line inserted inverters, linear phase filters for group delay equaliza-
tion, and extracted-pole filters. These types of filters, which are different from con-
ventional Chebyshev filters, must meet the stringent requirements of RF/microwave
systems, particularly wireless communications systems.
4
INTRODUCTION