Enhancement of Stopband Rejection of Microstrip Bandpass Filters

by Radial Stubs
Jiwen Zhu, Zhenghe Feng

State Key Lab on Microwave & Digital Communications, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, P.R.China
Tel: +86-10-62781453, Fax: +86-10-62781453, E-mail: zhujiwen00@mails.thu.edu.cn

Abstract — The use of radial stubs in microstrip stopband. By comparing with conventional SIR
stepped-impedance resonator bandpass filters is invest- bandpass filter, it is found that the rejection level
igated. It is noticed that the stopband rejection level can be increased with negligible degradation in the
can be enhanced with minor deterioration in the
filter’s passband characteristics. Demonstration filters
were fabricated with the measured and simulated
results presented.
Index Terms — Bandpass filters, microstrip
resonators, radial stubs, SIR.

I. INTRODUCTION
In recent years, microstrip bandpass filters are
increasingly in demand for expanding mobile
communication systems due to their low cost, light
weight and planar structure[1]-[4]. Conventional
microstrip filter comprising parallel coupled half- (a)
wavelength resonators not only occupies too large a
size, but also suffers from harmonics at two or three
times that of the center frequency [1]. Stepped-
impedance resonator [2], which has two segments of
transmission lines with different characteristic impe-
dances, can achieve smaller size as well as higher
spurious-mode frequency, thus wider stopband, but
the rejection level in the stopband can not be speci-
fied in advance. Some other techniques are then
proposed in order to further suppress the stopband
harmonics, including creating transmission zeros in
the stopband via cross-coupling of non-adjacent (b)
resonators [3] or tapped feed-lines [4].
Radial stubs are widely applied in many
microstrip circuits such as matching networks, bias
lines, lowpass filters, etc., where both an accurate
localization of a zero-point impedance and a very
low level of characteristic impedance is needed
[5],[6]. When used as notch filters, it has been
demonstrated that the radius of radial stubs will
mainly decide the attenuation pole frequency, while
the angle mainly affects the stopband bandwidth [7].
In this letter, we investigate the suppression of
spurious response of SIR bandpass filters with the (c)
aid of microstrip radial stubs, which can act as either
loaded reactance to increase the attenuation level or Fig.1. (a) Conventional SIR bandpass filter with no radial
notch filters to introduce transmission zeros in the stubs. (b) Filter with one stub. (c) Filter with two stubs.
passband response. Two filters with same SIR
resonator layout but different radial stubs were
fabricated and the measured performances are in
good agreement with the simulation results, which
verifies the proposed method to suppress the
stopband harmonics.
II. RADIAL STUBS AS LOADED REACTANCE
Fig.1 (a) shows a conventional two-stage
microstrip λ/2 SIR bandpass filter, with the center
network analyzer. The measured and simulated
curves are compared in Fig. 3, which coincide well
with each other.
III. RADIAL STUBS AS NOTCH FILTERS
From the above discussion, it can be concluded
that when employed as loaded reactance, the radial
stubs have large dimensions, and the rejection
around the filter’s spurious-mode frequency cannot
0

frequency at 2.08 GHz and 4% bandwidth. The -5

circuit board has a relative dielectric constant of εr =

Insertion & return loss (dB)

-10

2.65 and a thickness of h = 0.8 mm. The width of -15

the high-Z line is 0.7 mm (corresponding to an -20

impedance of 88.1 Ω) and that of the low-Z line is -25

3.5 mm (corresponding to an impedance of 34.3 Ω). -30

50 Ω feed lines are tapped to introduce necessary -35

coupling strength at the input and output terminals, -40

(a)
and a transmission zero is created in the lower -45 (b)
(c)
stopband to enhance the slope of the lower passband -50
1.9 1.95 2 2.05 2.1 2.15 2.2 2.25 2.3
skirt. The electrical lengths of both the high-Z and Frequency (GHz)
low-Z sections are chosen to be equal so as to (a)
minimize the total resonator length [2]. The width of 0
(a)
the coupling slot is 0.4 mm. The electromagnetic (b)
(c)
simulation was executed using IE3D, with the -10

results plotted in Fig.2 (a) and (b). The filter has a

Insertion loss (dB)

-20
stopband extended up to 8.7 GHz with a rejection
level of 20 dB at least. -30

To give a demonstration of employing radial stubs

as loaded reactance, first we added a stub with a -40

radius of r = 15 mm and a span angle of φ = 600 to -50

the center middle of one of the microstrip SIR
resonators (shown in Fig.1 (b)). The dimensions of -60
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
the stub were chosen so that a zero-point impedance Frequency (GHz)
is formed exactly at the filter’s center frequency, (b)
and therefore the stub should have no impact on the
filter’s passband response. As shown in Fig.2 (a) Fig.2. Simulated response of the three bandpass filters in
and (b), the passband of the filter is almost Fig.1. (a) Passband response. (b) Spurious response.
unaffected by the radial stub, except for a decrease
0
in the slope of the passband skirt, and the rejection Measurement
-5 Simulation
level in the upper stopband is improved by about 3
-10
dB at most.
Insertion loss (dB)

-15
Furthermore, two radial stubs with the same
-20
dimensions above were added to the center of each
-25
of the resonators, as depicted in Fig.1 (c). The
-30
passband of the filter expands a little because its
-35
skirt becomes even smoother, and the spurious
-40
response is further pushed downward by about 3 dB
-45
at most. However, the level around the first
-50
spurious-mode frequency (about 7 GHz) is so far 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Frequency (GHz)
still not improved. This filter was fabricated on a
Fig.3. Comparison of measured and simulated spurious
FR4 board with the parameters specified above, and response of the filter in Fig.1 (c).
its response was measured using an HP8510C
be ameliorated. Instead, if used as notch filters, they
can introduce attenuation poles in the stopband and
the rejection level can be further improved,
especially around the spurious-mode frequency.
A demonstration filter is devised with the
resonator parameters kept the same as above,
whereas the radius and span angle of the radial stubs
are tuned in order to achieve an optimal spurious
response. The layout of the filter is finally deter-
mined as shown in Fig.4 (a). One of the radial stubs
still owns r = 15mm and φ = 600, while the other is
changed to has r = 3 mm and φ = 1200. From the
simulation results plotted in Fig.4 (b), compared
with that of the filter without stubs, it can be
summarized that the rejection level around the
spurious-mode frequency is dramatically increased
(from 20 dB to 37 dB), and thus illustrated the
method proposed above. This filter was fabricated
on the same FR4 board, with the measured and
simulated responses compared in Fig. 4 (c).

IV. CONCLUSION
Two ways of using radial stubs to enhance the
rejection level of microstrip bandpass filters are
discussed. It has been demonstrated that when the
dimensions of stubs are properly chosen, the
spurious response of the filter can be improved
significantly. Therefore an efficient method of
(a) controlling the stopband rejection of bandpass filters
0
Without stubs
has been provided.
With stubs
-10

-20
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Insertion loss (dB)

-30 The authors wish to acknowledge the support of

Qualcomm and National Natural Science
-40
Foundation of China (under Grant 60496318).
-50

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0
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