International Journal of Microwave and Wireless Technologies, page 1 of 6.

# Cambridge University Press and the European Microwave Association, 2015

doi:10.1017/S1759078715001129

research paper

Compact dual-band bandpass filter using

asymmetric stepped impedance stub loaded
multimode resonator
manimala pal1, rowdra ghatak2 and pankaj sarkar3

This paper presents, a dual-band bandpass filter using asymmetric stepped impedance stub loaded open loop resonator (OLR)
for WLAN and WiMAX application. The outer OLR is realized to operate at lower passband of 2.45 GHz which is directly
coupled to input and output ports whereas the asymmetric stepped impedance stub that loads the outer resonator contributes
to 3.5 GHz passband. The introduction of asymmetric stepped impedance stub provides further control of improving the upper
passband edge selectivity of second passband and in shifting the spurious modes away from second band thereby contributing
to the wide upper stopband. The insertion loss is within 1.5 dB for each passband with 10 dB passband bandwidth of 250 MHz
at both bands. A stopband up to 10 GHz is also obtained. A prototype is developed and the s-parameters obtained from elec-
tromagnetic simulation, equivalent transmission line model and measurement are in close agreement. The overall dimension
of the filter is 25.45 × 15.89 mm2 which renders it a compact size.

Keywords: Bandpass filter, Dual-band filter, Stub loaded resonator, Asymmetric stepped impedance resonator

Received 25 March 2015; Revised 9 June 2015; Accepted 10 June 2015

I. INTRODUCTION have been incorporated with asymmetric SIR. Short ended

Bandpass filters (BPFs) are indispensable components in
receiver front ends. Planar BPFs are preferred in wireless
systems because they can be fabricated using printed circuit
technology and are suitable for commercial applications due
to their compact size and low cost of integration [1]. Over
the years various techniques have been employed in design
of multiband BPF. In [2], a compact dual-band BPF is pre-
sented by coupling hairpin shaped stepped impedance reson-
ator (SIR) introduced by Makimoto and Yamashita [3].
Hairpin shaped half wavelength SIRs with interdigital coup-
ling is used to design dual-band narrow BPF in [4]. The con-
ventional half wavelength SIR underwent a transformation
resulting in an asymmetric SIR. The direct implication was
increased degree of design freedom as in addition to the
impedance ratio, filter designers could also tune the electrical
length ratio. This variant of SIR has been used to realize a fifth
order dual-band BPF [5]. Mutually exclusive dual passband
has been reported in [6] where active devices like PIN diode
1
Radio Engineering and Antenna Laboratory, Department of Electronics and
Communication Engineering, NFET, NSHM Knowledge Campus Durgapur,
Durgapur-713212, India
2
Microwave and Antenna Research Laboratory, Electronics and Communication
Engineering Department, National Institute of Technology Durgapur,
Durgapur-713209, West Bengal, India
3
Electronics and Communication Engineering Department, School of Technology,
North Eastern Hill University, Shillong-793022, Meghalaya, India
Corresponding author:
M. Pal
Email: manimalapal@yahoo.com
SIRs have been utilized to design a dual mode dual-band
BPF in [7]. In [8], a set of four shorted l/4 SIR have been
used to implement a dual-band BPF with equal number of
reflection and transmission zeros. Two different SIR dimen-
sions have been coupled using interdigital capacitor to
obtain dual passband BPF with a stopband till 7 GHz [9].
Variable width coupled line segments and stepped impedance
stubs are used to realize a dual passband BPF [10].
In this work investigations on a novel resonator configur-
ation comprising of an asymmetric stepped impedance stub
loaded uniform impedance open loop resonator (OLR) is pre-
sented. Precisely, a pair of inward folded half wavelength
OLRs with asymmetric stepped impedance stub is utilized to
generate two passbands at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz, respectively. In
addition, three transmission zeros are obtained close to the
passband that brings about high selectivity. An inherent
wide stopband performance is achieved till 10 GHz. Rest of
the paper is organized as follows. Section II deals with pro-
posed asymmetric SIR type stub loaded OLR. Filter topology
and analysis is discussed in Section III. Concluding remarks
are given in Section IV.
II. ASYMMETRIC SIR SHAPED
STUB LOADED OLR
An inward folded OLR loaded with asymmetric SIR as a stub
can be observed in the overall filter design as shown in Fig. 1.
The substrate chosen for the design is RT Duriod 5880 which

1
2 manimala pal, rowdra ghatak and pankaj sarkar
Fig. 1. Layout of the proposed BPF. L1 ¼ 9.39, L2 ¼ 7.22, L3 ¼ 6.54, L4 ¼ 3.87,
L5 ¼ 1.575, Ls1 ¼ 3.82, Ls2 ¼ 5.1, W ¼ 0.88, Ws1 ¼ 0.37, Ws2 ¼ 1.85, g ¼ 0.25,
t ¼ 3.1, and tap portion Lp ¼ 3.21, Wp ¼ 1.67 (all dimensions are in mm)
has relative dielectric constant 2.2 and height 0.787 mm. The
outer OLR is designed to be half wave length long at 2.45 GHz.
The impedance ratio of the asymmetric SIR is controlled to
obtain the second passband at 3.5 GHz. This stub consists of
narrow (high impedance) and wide sections (low impedance)
with characteristic impedances Zs1, Zs2, respectively, and cor-
responding electrical lengths us1 and us2 which in turn are
Fig. 2. Parametric study of impedance ratio K of asymmetric SIR stub. A coarse value of U is taken as 0.6 for this study.
Fig. 3. Parametric study of electrical length ratio U of asymmetric SIR stub. A coarse value of K is taken as 0.5 for this study.
connected to an OLR. The impedance ratio K and the
length ratio U of an asymmetric SIR are defined as follows.
Zs2
K= , (1)
Zs1
us2
U= . (2)
us1 + us2
A conventional SIR [3] would have provided only one
degree of freedom which is the impedance ratio. The use of
asymmetric SIR enhances this design freedom by including
the length ratio. Parametric study of the asymmetric stepped
impedance stub loaded OLR is performed by loosely coupling
the resonator to input/output (I/O) 50 V port. The resonance
modes are identified and the effects of different design para-
meters on these modes are studied using transmission line
model of the proposed resonator. From the parametric
study of impedance ratio, a coarse value of K ¼ 0.5 is found
to be suitable to achieve the passband close to 3.5 GHz as indi-
cated in Fig. 2. However, to bring the first spurious frequency
at 3.5 GHz the value of K is fine tuned to 0.46. The parametric
study of an asymmetric SIR shaped stub for various electrical
length ratio U is shown in Fig. 3. The stub is designed with a
 dual-band bpf using step impedance stub loaded mmr 3

find tuned value of U ¼ 0.57 which is close to the desired fre-
quency of 3.5 GHz. Eventually, it is seen that an asymmetric
SIR shaped stub has provided increased degree of design
freedom by which two parameters namely K and U can be fine
tuned to obtain second mode at 3.5 GHz. It is observed, from
parametric study of impedance ratio K and electrical length
ratio U of asymmetric SIR, that second passband varies widely
for change in K in comparison with that for the variation in U.
Next important design parameter is position of the asymmet-
ric stub which is connected to a folded OLR. For this the length
L2 and L3 decide the vertical position of the stub. The parametric
study is shown in Fig. 4. One can observe that the parameters not
only influence the second resonance but also the unwanted third
spurious resonance also drastically varies. To achieve the desired
passband frequency as well as to ensure that separation between
second and third resonance is maximum, the position of the stub
corresponding to L2 ¼ 7.25 and L3 ¼ 6.5 mm is obtained as
indicated in Fig. 4. The values of L2 and L3 are fine tuned to
7.22 and 6.54 mm, respectively. Comparison of resonance
characteristics of only OLR and asymmetric stepped impedance
stub loaded OLR is as shown in Fig. 5. It can be observed that
apart from introducing the second passband, the selectivity of
this band is also improved by the introduction of a transmission
zero at 4.3 GHz. As seen from the parametric study that the posi-
tions of transmission zero is also dependent on the asymmetric
SIR design parameters. The ease in controlling the position of the
transmission zero, second passband, as well control over pos-
ition of third spurious resonance is brought about by the intro-
duction of asymmetric stepped impedance as a stub. This
enhances degree of design freedom with additional benefit of
achieving wide upper stopband.
III. FILTER DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
The filter design begins with the design of fundamental ingre-
dient which is a resonator. The resonator is an asymmetric SIR
stub loaded OLR that helps in achieving the resonance

Fig. 4. Parametric study of the stub position depending on variation of L2 and L3 for K ¼ 0.46 and U ¼ 0.57.

Fig. 5. Resonance modes of only OLR and OLR loaded with asymmetric SIR as stub. For the asymmetric SIR shaped stub loaded OLR, the values of K ¼ 0.46,
U ¼ 0.57, L2 ¼ 7.22, and L3 ¼ 6.54 mm.
4 manimala pal, rowdra ghatak and pankaj sarkar

Fig. 8. Comparison between s-parameter obtained from full wave EM

Fig. 6. Transmission line model of the proposed asymmetric stepped simulation, transmission line model and measurement.
impedance stub loaded OLR.

u2 ¼ 23.988, and u3 ¼ 27.608 computed at 2.45 GHz and cor-

characteristics. The next step is to ensure proper coupling respondingly Z0 indicates impedances Z1, Z2, Z3, and Z4 for
between the resonators to ensure passband bandwidth that the various segments of the uniform impedance resonators
includes all the channels of the desired bands. The final with reference to Fig. 6. The overall matrix for the resonator
stage of design is to ensure proper extraction of the resonance is a product of five ABCD matrices which includes a matrix
modes with I/O feed lines. The I/O coupling is realized by a for the asymmetric stub portion. The net ABCD matrix of
50 V tap line as shown in layout of the dual-band BPF this resonator is given below
given in Fig. 1. The tap position “t” and separation “g”
       
between the outer resonators as indicated in Fig. 1 are opti- AT BT A1 B 1 A 2 B2 As Bs
mized to achieve the passband bandwidth that includes all = × ×
CT DT C 1 D1 C 2 D2 Cs Ds
channels in these bands. A tap position of 3.1 mm and     (4)
spacing 0.25 mm between the outer resonators is found to A3 B 3 A4 B 4
× × ,
be suitable for achieving passband bandwidth that covers C3 D 3 C 4 D4
the desired frequency bands.
The transmission line model of this dual-band resonator is
shown in Fig. 6. The outer resonator impedances are same    
As Bs 1 0
because it is a uniform impedance resonator. To analyze the = , (5)
Cs Ds Yin 1
net equivalent transmission line model of the proposed
filter, total ABCD matrix is obtained from the transmission
line model of proposed resonator as illustrated in Fig. 6. The where
ABCD matrix of a transmission line is given by
Zs1 tan us2 + Zs2 tan us1
Yin = −jYs1 . (6)
    Zs1 tan us1 tan us2 − Zs2
A B cos u jZ0 sin u
= , (3)
C D jY0 sin u cos u
The overall ABCD matrix of the equivalent transmission
where u indicates the electrical lengths u1, u2, u3 or u4 model including the I/O as well as inter resonator coupling
which are computed for this design as u1 ¼ u4 ¼ 57.798, of proposed dual-band BPF is computed using an in house

Fig. 7. Current distribution at (a) 2.45 GHz, and (b) 3.5 GHz.
 dual-band bpf using step impedance stub loaded mmr
Table 1. Comparison with other related dual band BPFs.
References Substrate parameters Passband center
1r/h (mm) frequency (GHz)
[2] 3.25, 0.75 2.45/5.75
[4] 2.55, 0.8 2.4/5.2
2.4/5.7
[6] 6.15, 0.635 2.4/5.2
2.4/5.2
[10] 2.65, 1.0 1.32/2.67
This work 2.2, 0.787 2.45/3.5
developed MATLABTM code to obtain the |S11| (dB) and |S21|
(dB). The proposed filter is also simulated using electromag-
netic (EM) simulator CST Microwave StudioTM . Current dis-
tribution as shown in Fig. 7 is obtained from EM simulation
confirming the design that establishes the fact that outer res-
onator contributes to 2.45 GHz and asymmetric SIR based
stub is effective in tuning the second passband at 3.5 GHz.
The stubs do not support any current flow at the first band.
However, current flow in the stubs establishes its contribution
to the second resonance. A fabricated prototype is developed
as shown in inset of Fig. 8 that shows the S-parameter. The
measured S-parameters using Rohde & Schwarz ZVA 40
VNA are in close agreement to that obtained by EM simula-
tion as well as that from transmission line model. The mea-
sured insertion loss of the two passbands is within 1.5 dB.
The measured 10 dB passband bandwidth at first as well as
second band is 250 MHz. This results in a 10.2 and 7.2% frac-
tional bandwidth at the first and second passband, respective-
ly. Three transmission zeros as obtained from measurement
are at 2.1, 3.05, and 3.95 GHz, respectively, that improves
the selectivity of the desired passbands. The first two are
due to source load coupling and the third one due to the asym-
metric SIR stub is explained in Section II. However, the net
coupling effect results in a shift from 4.3 to 3.95 GHz. An
upper stopband till 10 GHz is obtained with measured attenu-
ation better than 10 dB. The overall dimension of the designed
dual-band BPF including the I/O fed lines is 25.45 ×
15.89 mm2. A comparison of the proposed work with other
related works is given in Table 1.
IV. CONCLUSION
A compact dual-band BPF filter is presented by using a novel
resonator configuration realized by loading an inward folded
OLR with asymmetric stepped impedance open stub resonator
that creates two passbands at 2.45 and 3.5 GHz, respectively. It
is seen that the asymmetric stub provides increased degree of
design freedom in tuning the passband, positioning the trans-
mission zero as well as shifting the third spurious band away
from the second passband. A wide upper stopband is realized
till 10 GHz. The overall dimension of the proposed filter is
25.45 × 15.89 mm2 which renders the compact size.
REFERENCES
[1] Hong, J.S.; Lancaster, M.J.: Microstrip Filter for RF/Microwave
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,2.0 25 × 25
1.75, 3.03 –
2.27, 2.88
,0.9 –
,1.5 25.45 × 15.89
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[7] Sun, S.-J.; Su, T.; Kun, D.; Wu, B.; Chang- Hong, L.: Shorted-ended
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[8] Zhan, S.; Zhu, L.: Fully Canonical dual band bandpass filter with l/4
stepped impedance resonators. Electron. Lett., 50 (3) (2014), 192–194.
[9] Sarkar, P., Ghatak, R., Pal, M.; Poddar, D.R.: A planar compact dual-
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Manimala Pal received her M. Tech.
(Microwave Engineering) from The
University of Burdwan in 2010. She
started her research in microwave cir-
cuits at Radionics Laboratory with Dr.
Rowdra Ghatak. Presently she holds a
faculty position in Electronics and Com-
munication Engineering Department of
NSHM Knowledge campus, Durgapur
Group of Institutions, Durgapur, West Bengal. She set up
the Radio Engineering and Antenna Laboratory with the
introduction of openwares in electromagnetic simulation at
her Institute from where many undergraduate students have
done commendable work. Her areas of interest lie in design
and optimization of planar bandpass filters, fractal shaped
antennas for multiband and UWB communication, metama-
terials, RFID, computational electromagnetics and planar cou-
plers. She has more than 50 publications in various
international and national journal as well as conferences.
She is a regular reviewer of IEEE (USA), IET (UK), and
6 manimala pal, rowdra ghatak and pankaj sarkar
Progress in Electromagnetics Research journals. She is a
member of microwave and antenna research group at NIT
Durgapur as an external fellow. She has been convener and
technical program chair in IEEE workshops in microwave
engineering.
Rowdra Ghatak received his M. Tech.
(Microwave Engineering) from The
University of Burdwan and Ph.D.
(Engg) from Jadavpur University in
2002 and 2008, respectively. Presently
he is a professor in Electronics and
Communication Engineering depart-
ment of National Institute of Technol-
ogy Durgapur. He is a recipient of the
URSI Young Scientist Award in 2005. He has recently received
support under DST Young Scientist scheme for development
of UWB antennas for imaging RADAR. He has more than 180
publications in various National/International journals and
conferences. His research interest lies in the areas of fractal
antenna, metamaterial, application of evolutionary algorithms
to electromagnetic optimization problems, RFID, computa-
tional electromagnetic and microwave passive circuit design.
He is a reviewer of IEEE, IET, Elsevier, JEMWA, Journal
from Brazilian Microwave Association, John Wiley and
PIER journals. He is a member of IEEE and has organized
workshops in the capacity of workshop chair/convener on
Microwave Circuits and Antenna.
Pankaj Sarkar received his M. Tech.
degree from University of Burdwan
University in 2009. He worked 1 year
in Space Applications Center –
Ahmedabad as a trainee for M. Tech.
project entitled as “Design of MMIC
Mixer at 50–60 GHz”. He initiated his
teaching career from ITER (Siksha “O”
Anusandhan University-Bhubaneswar),
after that he served Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology
and National Institute of Technology-Sikkim. Presently he is
Assistant Professor in Electronics and Communication Engin-
eering Department of North-Eastern Hill University-Shillong.
He has more than 30 publications in various National/Inter-
national journals and conferences. His research interest lies
in the area of microwave passive circuit design, metamaterials,
MMIC, antenna. Presently he is pursuing Ph.D. from Jadav-
pur University. He is a reviewer of many international and
national journals.