148 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO.

3, MARCH 2010

Investigation in Open Circuited Metal Lines

Embedded in Defected Ground Structure
and Its Applications to UWB Filters
Wen-Jeng Lin, Jian-Yi Li, Lih-Shan Chen, Ding-Bing Lin, and Mau-Phon Houng

Abstract—A novel method for notch implementation in ultra-

wideband (UWB) bandpass filter (BPF) using open circuited metal
lines embedded in a defected ground structure (DGS) is proposed.
Distinct from traditional notch implementation, the proposed
method uses the additional metal lines with half waveguide length
embedded in defected ground structure to produce additional
notch band behavior based on the DGS bandpass behavior. Fur-
thermore, the equivalent circuit model of the proposed UWB BPF
with notch implementation is established for explaining the circuit
behaviors more explicitly. In this way, the proposed circuit has a
very small size, only amounting to 0.41 by 0.22 guided wavelength
at the center frequency of 6.85 GHz. The experimental filter has a
notchband frequency of 5.5 GHz, with two observable attenuation
Fig. 1. Schematic diagrams of (a) top view of proposed UWB BPF, (b) bottom
poles at 1.65 and 11.36 GHz, respectively. The measured BPF view of proposed UWB BPF, (c) top view of proposed UWB BPF with notch
insertion loss is less than 1.0 dB throughout the passband of 3.1 to band implementation, (d) bottom view of proposed UWB BPF with notch band
10.6 GHz, and the variation of group delay is less than 0.2 ns in implementation.
this band, except for the notched band.
Index Terms—Defected ground structure (DGS), notchband, To our knowledge, the defected ground structure is applied to
ultra wideband (UWB) filter. introduce a stopband for microwave applications [8]. Up to now,
DGS is used to introduce a stopband or passband by collocating
with a transmission line structure or coupled transmission line
I. INTRODUCTION structure, respectively [9]. Furthermore, an UWB BPF based on
defected ground structure BPF is presented [10].
HE U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) In principal, to achieve a notch band within the passband
T approved the unlicensed use of UWB (range of
3.1–10.6 GHz) for commercial purposes [1]. Most of the
by using cascaded circuits increases the insertion loss. Alterna-
tively, open circuited metal lines embedded in defected ground
wireless local-area network (WLAN) systems are designed to structure may be utilized as illustrated here to overcome this
operate in the 2.4 GHz (IEEE 802.11b and g) and 5.0 GHz problem. Our investigation revealed open circuited metal lines
frequency bands, e.g., 5.15 to 5.35 GHz (IEEE 802.11a lower embedded in defected ground structure provide a notch band
bands) and 5.725 to 5.825 GHz (IEEE 802.11a upper bands) for practical use of the UWB filter. The length controls the fre-
are used in the USA. Due to existing undesired narrow band quency location, and the gap between the ground plane and open
radio signals such as WLAN that may interfere with the UWB circuited metal line affects the bandwidth of the notch band.
range defined by the FCC, the subject of small, ultra-wideband
bandpass filters (BPFs) with a notch band is generating greater II. DESIGN OF UWB BPF WITH NOTCH BAND
interest. Several researchers have proposed some new structures Fig. 1 shows the configuration of the proposed UWB BPF
to realize UWB BPFs with a notchband [2]–[7]. with/without open circuited metal lines embedded in the de-
fected ground structure, which illustrates schematic diagrams
of (a) top view of proposed UWB BPF, (b) bottom view of pro-
Manuscript received September 12, 2009; revised November 23, 2009. First posed UWB BPF, (c) top view of proposed UWB BPF with
published January 26, 2010; current version published March 10, 2010. This notch band implementation, (d) bottom view of proposed UWB
work was supported by the National Science Council under Contract NSC97-
2221-E-006-239-MY2.
BPF with notch band implementation. In order to introduce a
W.-J. Lin, J.-Y. Li, and M.-P. Houng are with the Institute of Microelec- narrow notched band, open circuited metal lines embedded in
tronics, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Cheng-Kung Univer- the defected ground structure were investigated for this purpose
sity, Tainan 701, Taiwan (e-mail: mphoung@eembox.ncku.edu.tw).
L.-S. Chen is with the Department of Electronic Engineering, I-Shou Univer-
and are presented in Fig. 1(c) and (d). The open circuited metal
sity, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. lines were implemented on the ground plane of a microstrip sub-
D.-B. Lin is with the Institute of Computer and Communication Engineering, strate with a relative dielectric constant of 4.4 and a thickness
National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
of 0.8 mm.
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. The equivalent circuit of the proposed UWB BPF with notch
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2010.2040213 band implementation is illustrated in Fig. 2, which consists of
1531-1309/$26.00 © 2010 IEEE

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LIN et al.: INVESTIGATION IN OPEN CIRCUITED METAL LINES 149

Fig. 4. Diagram of simulated current distribution at 5.5 GHz for the bottom
Fig. 2. Equivalent circuit of the proposed UWB BPF with notch band imple- view.
mentation by using open circuited metal lines embedded in defected ground
structure.

Fig. 5. Full-wave EM simulation of the designed UWB BPF with varying gap
G
between the open circuited metal line and ground plane .
Fig. 3. Circuit calculation and electromagnetic simulation of the proposed
UWB BPF with notch band implementation.
The parameters can be calculated as follow, nH,
nH, nH, nH, nH,
six blocks with respective dash-lines. Two high selectivity stubs pF, pF, pF, pF,
and coupling microstrip line construct the top layer circuit of pF, pF, pF,
the proposed UWB BPF. On the other hand, two open circuited pF.
metal lines and DGS BPF construct the bottom layer of the pro- Fig. 3 shows the simulated performances of the UWB BPF
posed UWB BPF. with notch band implementation by circuit calculation and
As is known, the conventional high selectivity stub is equiv- electromagnetic simulation, and these two agree well with
alent to a series resonator, resulting in a rejection band. More- each other. It is expected from the simulated results that the
over, the proposed open circuited metal line is equivalent to a frequencies of the notch and stub can be accurately obtained
parallel resonator, resulting in a notch band inserted on the de- by (1) and (2). Fig. 4 shows the diagram of simulated current
fected ground structure bandpass behavior. Changing the phys- distribution at 5.5 GHz for the bottom view. It is obvious that in
ical dimensions of the open circuited metal line can easily con- the notch band frequency at 5.5 GHz, the open circuited metal
trol the effective inductance and shift of notch band, which line embedded in defected ground structure has a resonance
can be designed for any notch frequency application. Moreover, coupled to the ground plane. Fig. 5 shows the simulated perfor-
the bandwidth of the notch band due to the effective coupling mances of the filter as a function of the gap between the open
, can be well controlled by varying the gap between the open circuited metal line and ground plane . The open circuited
circuited metal line and ground plane . The notch band fre- metal line, embedded in defected ground structure, can vary the
quencies produced by the high selectivity stubs and the proposed notchband bandwidth for practical use of the UWB filter.
open circuited metal lines are
III. SIMULATION AND MEASUREMENT RESULTS
(1) The proposed filter is designed and fabricated on an FR4
substrate with thickness mm and relative dielectric
(2) constant . The embedded metal line with a length

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150 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 20, NO. 3, MARCH 2010

TABLE I
COMPARISONS WITH OTHER REPORTED UWB BPFS

Fig. 6. Simulated and measured results of Fabricated UWB BPF.

with notch band implementation at 5.5 GHz is shown in Fig. 7.
Within the UWB lower and higher passband, the group delay is
below 0.2 ns. The total size of the filter is 11.7 mm 6.3 mm.
Table I shows the comparisons with other reported UWB BPFs;
the proposed filter has a very compact size only amounting to
0.41 by 0.22 guided wavelength at the center frequency.

IV. CONCLUSION
A novel method for notch implementation in UWB filters
are proposed in this letter. This letter shows the validity of the
proposed filter and its equivalent circuit by demonstrating the
BPF design example. Both EM simulation and experiment have
demonstrated this interesting filtering characteristic. We can ex-
pect that this newly proposed filter and its equivalent circuit
should find application to design of various microwave compo-
nents required a resonant circuit.

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