Design of Dualband Metamaterial Bandpass Filter

Using Zeroth Order Resonance

Geonho Jang #1, Eun Chul Shin1 , Cheon-Hee Lee 2, Chul-Min Shin2 and Sungtek Kahng1
1
Dept. of Information Telecommunication Engineering, University of Incheon
Dohwa-dong, Nam-gu, Incheon, Korea
2
Div. of Antenna Systems, AceAntenna Co, .Korea
21
s-kahng@incheon.ac.kr

Abstract — This paper proposes the design method based on dual-band bandpass filter. The metamaterial transmission line
the composite right/left-handed (CRLH) structure to as small as around one eighth of a quarter wavelength plays a
miniaturize and generate the dual-band characteristic. For resonator and the inverter that accounts for the inductive
realization, we used the zero-th order resonance point of the
CRLH and the simple theory of Inverter. The proposed coupling is realized between the immediate resonators. After
technique is validated by the performance predictions and the design process, we will implement the entire filter and
experiments, and it is found out that the suggested method verify the proposed technique with the performance
enables the huge size reduction from the conventional filters prediction and experiment based on EM simulation.
such as the parallel coupled type which was designed following
the half-wavelength resonance.
Index Terms — Metamaterial, CRLH, Bandpass filter, Dual-
band II. THEORY AND DESIGN
Conventional and CRLH(Composite right-left handed)
I. INTRODUCTION resonator have a characteristic in common. Resonant point
As RF systems play a important role in mobile can be generated when phase is pi or multiple.
communication, the traveling users tend to pursue more General resonator has the resonance when β*l is
convenience such as not only multi-functions but also higher +nπ(n=1,2,3…) but CRLH resonator has at ±nπ(n=1,2,3…).
mobility. The former results in the multi-band service- This is because of structural restriction. Basically, CRLH
oriented device, and the latter drives the development of the resonator is smaller than quarter-wavelength. So, it is
equipment into the size reduction. possible to make equivalent circuit using inductor or
For a long time, a number of techniques have been capacitor. As LH(Left-handed) transmission line is
reported to reduce the size of the component. Active implemented, β is negative value and can be zero because of
components are indebted to the RFIC technology for mutual effect with RH(Right handed) transmission line.
miniaturization. An antenna is designed to have a smaller
feeding circuit. For the filter as a passive component, specific
loads or meander lines are often times used for size reduction.
But, the conventional practice above encounters the difficulty,
because it is basically concerned with the half-wavelength
resonance.
To make an conventional RF filter from the circuit
expression, half guided-wave long transmission lines are
used as resonators
The size of filters using half-wavelength resonator depends
on the structural resonance at resonant frequency and
undesirable resonance can be made because of spurious mode. (a) Traditional transmission line
Therefore, stopband characteristic of filter can be worsened.
To overcome these problems, very recently, a new area called
Metamaterial emerged and is becoming a post-holder in
improving the components’ performance and/or minimizing
their spatial volumes.
In this paper, we propose the prototype of bandpass filter
that is reduced size. And we present the novel bandpass filter
based on the Left-handed material to reduce the
size(miniaturized by CRLH, no lumped elements) in dual-
band(UHF-band and ISM-band) application. And then, we
propose the new filter design approach that is to couple (b) Left- and right handedness combined line
inverter between metameterial resonators and develop the
Fig.1 Typical dispersive characteristic

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Prior to the main part of the design, the basic differences
between the traditional(Right-handed) transmission line and
the composite Left-handed and Right-handed geometry are
addressed with their dispersion diagram in Fig.1
Fig.1 (a) shows the linear relationship of the frequency and
the wavenumber which takes the positive values. Despite the
increment of frequency for a line, the velocity is kept
constant. The dispersion curve of the composite right- and
left-handed line with Fig. l (b) moves nonlinearly. On top of
it, for a certain frequency band, the wavenumber becomes
negative, even though the slope of the curve is positive. This
means the left-handed propagation in the medium happens,
which is featured by the phenomenon that the phase velocity
has the opposite sign to the group velocity. Furthermore, Fig.
l (b) has the 0 and negative wavenumbers as resonance points
in the left-handed material region. Especially, the
wavenumber goes to zero at non-zero Hz, which in-phase
resonance is generated regardless of the position along the
geometry, and can be interpreted that we are free from the
length-related resonance and can make the size-reduction
possible(no mo re quarter wavelength conditions).
Here we suggest the left-handed transmission line combined
with the right-handed line as the resonator. In other words,
we are about to take advantage of the resonance behavior of
the composite right-handed and left-handed transmission line
that is independent of the physical length. To figure out the
capacitive and inductive elements of a metamaterial resonator
that fits its corresponding Resonator 1, 2 and 3 in Fig. 2, we
equate the center frequency and band-edges of the following
metamaterial circuit to those of the Resonator i with the
formulae which are given below.
Fig. 4 Equivalent circuit of a unit metamaterial resonator
κ = L R C L + LL C R , 1 , 1
ωL = ωR =
LL C L LR C R

1 , 1 , ω 0 = ω Rω L
ω se = ω sh =
LR C L LL C R

LL , LR (1)
ZL = ZR =
CL CR

Fig.2 Prototype of traditional bandpass filter ωcL = ω0

[κ + (2 / ω ) ]ω
L
2
0
2
− [κ + (2 / ω ) ] ω
L
2 2
0
4
−4
2
Now a circuit is constructed as a prototype for a bandpass
filter to meet the following specifications. That is described
ω cR = ω 0
[κ + (2 / ω ) ]ω
L
2
0
2
− [κ + (2 / ω ) ] ω
L
2 2
0
4
−4
above, shown as Fig.2 2
0
The elements of the circuit are converted to the physical
dimensions using the relation formulae for realization, if the
S-parameter (dB)

-10 geometry is decided.

III. IMPLEMENTATION AND RESULTS

-20
S11 Prototype For the real implementation of the metamaterial resonator,
S21 Prototype we will choose the interdigital geometry with the stub short-
-30 circuited.
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3
Frequency(GHz)
Fig.3 Frequency response of the prototype bandpass filter

Resonator i and Inverter mean the i-th shunt resonator and

the line type of inverter, respectively. Its frequency is shown
as Fig.3.
As a next step, it needs to be addressed how the resonators
in Fig. 2 can be made with the structure whose length is not (a) Asymmetrical type (b) symmetrical type
half wavelength but much less than the quarter wavelength. Fig. 5 Interdigital line and shor-circuited stub for ZOR

493

The geometry Fig. 5 (a) will be changed to a symmetric
type(pi-shaped) as Fig.5 (b) for facilitating coupling elements.
Since this structure turns out appropriate for Fig. 4, the
realization proceeds with the corresponding conversion
formulas.
parameters of transmission and reflection coefficients of the
energy flow from port 1 to port 2. And moving on to prove
the metameterial characteristic,. we are going to obtain
dispersion curve of the resonators
0

Zc -10

S-parameter (dB)
LL = tan( β eff l )
ω
-20
C L ≈ (ε r + 1)l[(n − 3) A1 + A2 ]( pF )
-30
[ ]
A1 = 4.409 tanh 0.55(h / w) 0.45 ⋅10−6 ( pF / μm )
-40 S11 Simulated
[
A2 = 9.92 tanh 0.52(h / w) 0.5
]⋅10 −6
( pF / μm) -50
S21 Simulated
0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5
Frequency(GHz)
We find the physical dimensions, considering the microstrip
with the 50 mil thick substrate of relative dielectric constant Fig. 7 3D EM Simulation result of the S11 and S21 on the
10.2. More technically speaking, the asymmetric geometry in proposed CRLH bandpass filter
Fig. 5 is modified to a symmetric form similar to the pi-
model to take into account the inductive coupling as an So we can find the ZOR point, β=0 below. Each
inverter. resonator’s dispersion curve is described below, shown as
After CRLH resonators are designed, we can induce mutual Fig. 8..
coupling between resonators using inductor as inverter. Fig. 6
shows the conceptual & actual structures we proposed for a
2.5
metamaterial BPF.
2
Frequency (GHz)

1.5

0.5

EM simulation

0
-3 -2 -1 0 1 2 3
Beta*p (rad)

(a) Conceptual CRLH ZOR resonators in the filter

Fig. 8 Dispersion diagram of CRLH resonator s1 and 3.

Originally, this ZOR element with the first harmonic has no

cntrollable stopband,. However, the stopband is adjusted by
the coupling realtions of the enighboring ZOR elements. The
following is the tablated elements extracted from the 3D EM
simulation

TABLE I : Extracted elements of the 3D structure

(b) Actual CRLH ZOR resonators in the filter Element Value
Fig. 6 Proposed CRLH ZOR bandpass filter with inverter Ls1 134.7 nH
Cs1 0.215 pF
The proposed CRLH bandpass filter shown above should
Ls2 3.1644 nH
undergo the trustworthy 3D EM simulation as an indirect
experiment. We selected the Ansoft HFSS and the CST- Cp3 0.507 pF
MWS to see how the electromagnetic fields behave to result Lp1 0.215 nH
in the frequency response of scattering parameters(The Ls3 3.1644 nH
results predicted by these two commercial simulators turned Cs2 0.215 pF
out almost the same). Firstly, we present the scattering Ls4 133.69 nH

494
 IV. CONCLUSION
This paper proposed the design of a compact Dual-band
Bandpass Filter working in the GSM and ISM band. To
reduce the overall size of the component, the concept of the
ZOR where the Left-Handedness is adopted and combined
with the Right-handed lines for using the resonators a lot less
than a quarter-wavelength. In addition to the basic
metamaterial theory, the inverters are included and
implemented to control the stopband between the ZOR and
the first harmonic. This proposed technique is validated by
the 3D EM simulation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
This work was supported by the IT R&D program of
MKE/IITA. [2009-S-001-01, Study of technologies for
improving the RF spectrum characteristics by using the meta-
electromagnetic structure]

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