2008 IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Workshop Series on Art of Miniaturizing RF and Microwave Passive Components

Band-Stop Filter with Far

Spurious

Stop

Bands

Bao-Xin Wang, Qing-Yuan Wang, and Rong-Jun Liu

School of Physical Electronics, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China,
Chengdu 610054, P. R. China, E-mail: qywangguestc.edu.cn, Website: www.drwqy.com.
*

Abstract This paper presents a band-stop filters with far

spurious stop bands. At first, a coaxial cavity with far spurious
stop band is proposed. Then several such coaxial cavities are
connected in series to form a band-stop filter. To illustrate the
design process, a coaxial band-stop filter has been designed, with
a stop-band centered at 5 GHz, a bandwidth of 2 GHz, and its
first spurious stop-band higher than 18 GHz. The sample filter
has been fabricated and tested. Tested results show good
agreement with simulated results.
The parameters of the band-stop filter are explicitly derived
from those of a standard filter, which is assumed as a reference. It
has been proved in both the simulation and the measurement.
Index Terms-Band-stop filter, Spurious stop-bands, Coaxial
cavity

I.

INTRODUCTION

With the urgent requirements from military equipments and

the rapid development of the wireless communication systems,
the demands for filters with good eliminating characteristic is
more an d m ore po pular t oday. As a p art of th e filters, bandstop filters are i mportant for m any app lications su ch as
communication transceivers, radar and measuring instruments,
especially in the area to s uppress the spurious outputs from a
high power transmitter and harmonics from a nonlinear power
amplifier [1-2].
In the design of the band-stop filter, the undesired spurious
bands or harmonics prese nt a fu ndamental 1 imitation whi ch
can seriously degrade the performance of the filter and can be
critical in certain applications in the microwave and millimeter
wave system s. T o reject t hese frequency parasites, many
techniques su ch as half wavelength sh ort circuit stub s, chip
capacitors or cascad ed rej ection band filters have b een
reported in literature[3]-[6].
The disadvantage of the existing band-stop filter is t hat the
spurious stop-bands are too close to the working stop-band. To
solve this problem, we will propose a coaxial cavity which can
have a working st op-band a nd very far a way sp urious stop
bands.
The rest o f the paper is a rranged as fo llows: In Section II,
The unique coaxial cav ity will b e proposed, to gether with its
transmitting ch aracteristics. Several co axial cav ities of th is
kind are then used to construct a band-stop filter. CST is th en
used to optimize the configuration parameters of the band-stop
filter. In Section III, the tested results from a sample filter with

978-1-4244-2877-9/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE

the optimized configuration parameters will b e presented. The

last section is a conclusion.
II. FILTER DESIGN

A.

The Prototype

About sev enty years ago , H. Salin ger [7 ] repo rted filters
using circular cavities. Each cavity is a radial transmission line
with its outer port shorted. The filter is formed by such shorted
radial t ransmission 1 ines co nnected by ci rcular waveguide
sections. In ord er to decrease th e size o f t he filter, Saling er
also su ggested t o be nd t he shorted radial transmission 1 ines
along the axis of the structure.
The coaxial cavity proposed in this paper is shown in Fig. 1.
It is similar to the bended radial transmission line proposed by
Salinger, e xcept that our st ructure is a c oaxial one a nd a
circular disk is added on the inner conductor. The circular disk
has two functions. First, it further minimizes the cavity and the
second, it ca n push the spurious stop band far away from the
working stop band.

Fig. 1. Configuration of the coaxial cavity with far spurious stop-band

In order to demonstrate th e feasib ility o f th is typ e of the

structure, we use the software of the CST Microwave Studio to
calculate and simulate th e co axial cav ity filter. Acco rding t o
the 5 0 Q stand ard im pedance, th e air-filled cav ity and both
circular ports with SMA co axial tran sition, we can draw th e
calculated S- parameters sho wn i n Fi g. 2 and t he pa rameters
shown in TABLE I.

164

December 2008,

Chengdu, China

TABLE I

Working as a capacitance 1 oad, the ci rcular disk plays a n

important part in the position of spurious stop bands, referring
to th e Fig. 3, wh ere it shows S 21 param eter u nder di fferent
situations. To be sp ecified, th e position and size of circu lar
disk significantly influence spurious stop bands.
Fig.4 sho ws t he S-p arameter of two su ch co axial cav ities
connected back to back. The correspondi ng parameters are
given i n T ABLE I I. E xcept t hat t he bandwidth of t he s topband is a little to o narrow, th e filter alm ost satisfies ou r
requirement.

PARAMETERS OF THE COAXIAL CAVITY

Parameters

Initial Values

Descriptions

3.00mm

Inner diameter of the coaxial

7.00mm

do

22.00mm

di
g

14.00mm

Outer diameter of the coaxial

Diameter of the circular disk
Outer diameter of the cavity
Gap width

3.00mm

1.50mm

1.50mm

Length of the shorting stub

Thickness of the circular disk
-1 0-

-602

10

12

14

16

1E8

freq, GHz
Fig. 4. Simulated S-parameters from 2 coaxial cavities connected back to back
TABLE II

freq, GHz

PARAMETERS OF TWO COAXIALS CONNECTED BACK TO BACK

Parameters
a
b
do

Fig. 2. Simulated S-parameters from the single circuit of the sample filter

From Fig. 2, it can be easily seen that the working stop band
is centered at 4.85 GHz. Please note that the first spurious stop
band does not show up until 18 GHz.

dl
d2

gI
g2
sl
s2
t

Initial Values
3.00mm
7.00mm
22.00mm
14.00mm
14.00mm
1.50mm
1.50mm
3.00mm
3.00mm
1.50mm

Optimaized Values
3.00mm
7.00mm
23.26mm
14.72mm
15.1 Omm
1.66mm
1.54mm
3.28mm
2.62mm
1.00mm

B. Simulation ofMulti- Cavities

In order to expand the bandwidth of the stop band to 2 GHz,
20 coaxial cavities are co nnected in series in such a way that
the fi rst a nd seco nd ca vities, an d eac h s ubsequent o dd
numbered ca vity and a djacent e ven numbered ca vity are
connected back to back.

Fig.3. Simulated S-parameters from the sample filter with the different disk

165

The S-p arameters of the order-20 b and-stop filter is shown

in Fi g. 5. It can be seen that the st op band i s cent ered at 5. 0
GHz, wi th a bandwidth of 2.2 G Hz a nd elimination hi gher
than 46 dB. The reflection in all the pass-bands is lower than 10 dB.

-10-

-20

-30-

freq, GHz

-40-

Fig. 7. Tested S-parameters from the sample filter

SIil

50~ ~ ~ ~~-S21

IV. CONCLUSIONS

-602

10

12

14

16

In this paper, a band-stop filter with far spurious stop bands

has been reported. At first, a co axial cav ity with far sp urious
stop band was proposed. Then two such co axial cav ities are
connected in series to form a b and-stop filter. In o rder to
expand the bandwidth of the stop band, an o rder-20 filter h as
been designed, fabricated and tested. To illu strate the design
process, a co axial b and-stop filter has been presented, with a
stop-band centered at 5 GHz, a ban dwidth of 2 GHz, and its
first spurious stop-band higher than 18 GHz. The sample filter
has the spurious response more than 3.6 times far away from
the centre frequency, with re flection lower than -10 dB in th e
pass ba nd. It s st op-band re jection has al so been i mproved
considerably. Tested resu lts show good agr eement w ith
simulated results.

freq, G Hz
Fig. 5. Simulated S-parameters from an order-20 band-stop filter with
coaxial cavities

III. TESTED RESULTS

Fig. 6 shows t he photo of a sam ple fi lter fa bricated

according to the parameters ob tained from s imulations. The
total volume of the filter is 180 mm X 30 mm X 30 mm. Finetuning scre ws ha ve bee n u sed t o c ompensate fo r t he
fabrication errors.
Fig. 7 sh ows t he measured S- parameters of the sample
filter. The centre frequency of the stop band is 5 GHz, with 2
GHz bandwidth. At the same time, the filter is free of spurious
stop band up to 1 7.9 GHz. The reflection in the pass band is
lower than -10 dB, the stop-band rejection from 4.0 GHz to 4.2
GHz is better than -40 dB, and the stop band rejection from 4.2
GHz to 6.0 GHz is even better than -63 dB.

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1]
[2]

[3]

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[4]

[6]

Fig. 6. Photo of a sample filter fabricated

[7]

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