4764 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO.

12, DECEMBER 2019

Synthesis of Multiband Filters by

Linear Optimization
Evaristo Musonda, Rucha A. Paradkar , Ian C. Hunter , Fellow, IEEE,
and Richard Parry, Member, IEEE

Abstract— In this article, a new synthesis method for the
generation of multiband generalized Chebyshev polynomials with
prescribed transmission zeros is presented. The proposed linear
optimization technique is applicable to symmetric and asym-
metric filter responses. To demonstrate its general application,
the technique has been applied to the direct synthesis of dual-
and triple-bandpass filters. A 7th degree dual-band prototype
and a 10th degree triple-band prototype, synthesized using the
proposed technique, have been fabricated and tested to validate
the practicality of the method.
Index Terms— Chebyshev synthesis, dual-band filters,
microwave filters, multiband filters.
I. I NTRODUCTION
I N THE recent years, several techniques for the synthesis of
dual or in general, multibandpass filters have been reported.
Cascading a wide passband filter with a narrow stopband filter
to generate a dual-bandpass filter has been suggested in [1].
This technique, however, does not offer the desired level of
control over the stopband rejection levels. It also requires
matching to enable integration into single unit filters. The
design of dual- and triple-band filters by the placement of
attenuation poles in the passband of a wide bandpass filter has
been reported in [2]. This method requires further optimization
to achieve the desired response.
Advanced optimization techniques have been used in the
synthesis of dual-bandpass filters and, in general, multiband-
pass filters [3]–[5]. These techniques allow the number of
poles and zeros of the characteristic function to be imposed
and determined through numerical optimization. The disad-
vantage of these optimization techniques is that convergence
is not always guaranteed. Moreover, control of the stopband
rejection by the arbitrary placement of transmission zeros is
not always achieved.
Methods for synthesis of dual- and triple-bandpass filters
by performing frequency transformations on suitable low-pass
Manuscript received May 1, 2019; revised July 12, 2019; accepted
August 16, 2019. Date of publication October 25, 2019; date of current version
December 27, 2019. (Corresponding author: Rucha A. Paradkar.)
E. Musonda is with the Department of Electrical and Electronics
Engineering, University of Zambia, Lusaka 32379, Zambia (e-mail:
evaristo.musonda@unza.zn).
R. A. Paradkar and I. C. Hunter are with the Department of Electrical and
Electronics Engineering, University of Leeds, Leeds LS6 2JT, U.K. (e-mail:
el12rap@leeds.ac.uk; i.c.hunter@leeds.ac.uk).
R. Parry is with Radio Design, Shipley BD17 7DW, U.K.
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this article are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2019.2945755
0018-9480 © 2019 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
prototypes have been presented in [6]–[10]. Such methods,
however, are more applicable to narrowband filters due to the
dispersive nature of the coupling elements.
A better and more general approximation can be obtained
using a direct synthesis method. Direct synthesis is suitable
for general multiband filters, regardless of their relative band-
widths and separation between the passbands. The coupling
elements synthesized using this method are frequency variants.
Thus, they provide a better starting point for the optimization
of physical filters using electromagnetic techniques.
Direct synthesis techniques have been previously studied
in [11] and [12]. In [11], a dual-band characteristic function
is obtained by the superposition of individual single band char-
acteristic functions. This superposition technique implemented
is more suitable for transverse network realization [10] as
there is no control over the position of transmission zeros. The
technique in [12] involves a linear combination of low-order
basis functions to generate the dual-band characteristic func-
tion. Although this method allows some control over the
stopband transmission zeros, each basis function generates a
pair of dependent transmission zeros. Thus, there is no efficient
control over the transmission zero placement and hence limits
its general application.
The proposed optimization method involves the direct syn-
thesis of single and multiband filters. As the coupling elements
obtained using the direct synthesis technique are frequency
variant [14], the method can be applied to filters with wide
bandwidths and large band-to-band separation. The presented
algorithm is simple and efficient and provides total control
over the stopband rejection by allowing arbitrary placement
of transmission zeros. Depending upon the accuracy required,
the algorithm was found to converge after only a few iterations.
II. P ROPOSED S YNTHESIS T ECHNIQUE
It was understood [12] that moving to direct synthesis of
dual- and multibandpass filters reduces the degree of freedom
in terms of the characteristic function specifications. For a
dual-band filter, it is required that at least one pair of trans-
mission zeros must be dependent if the function is constrained
to a given passband specification. Similarly, for a triple-band
filter, it is required that at least two pairs of transmission
zeros are dependent. In general, for N B number of passbands,
(N B −1) pairs of transmission zeros must be dependent. These
transmission zeros are referred to as dependent transmission
zeros and are denoted by ωd .

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 MUSONDA et al.: SYNTHESIS OF MULTIBAND FILTERS BY LINEAR OPTIMIZATION 4765

Suppose the multibandpass transfer function to be synthe-

sized has N B passbands (assume N B > 1 as N B = 1 is a
trivial case without the loss of generality). The degree of such
a multibandpass filter can be given by

NB
N= Ni (1)
i=1
where Ni is the degree of the i th passband. The power transfer
function of a two-port multiband filter of degree N can be
represented in terms of its characteristic function T2N (ω)
as [10]
1
|S21 |2 = (2)
1 + |T2N (ω)|2
Fig. 1. Example of a 14th degree (7th degree dual-bandpass filter with 4th
where ω is the real frequency variable used for the conven- degree lower passband and 3rd degree upper passband) characteristic function
tional lumped element realization without loss of generality. with four cutoff points and five in-band turning points (critical points).
However, for distributed element realization, the variable ω
is replaced by t = tan(θ ) (which is related to the complex
variable p× p = j t) as in the design examples. Let the system of linear equations using the known critical points (as
characteristic function of degree 2N in the above equation defined in Section III-B) unknown coefficients are calculated
be defined by so that the characteristic function can be determined. An initial
F2N (ω) solution is found for the position of the turning points which,
T2N (ω) = if solved iteratively, may lead to the convergence of the system
PN T Z (ω)
to an optimum solution. As the procedure allows for arbitrary
ω2N + f N−1 ω2N−2 + · · · + f 1 ω2 + f 0 placement of transmission zeros, there is full control over the
= . (3)
ε Pdep (ω)Prem (ω) stopband rejection levels. The initial turning points used in
Here, f 0 , f 1 , . . . , f N−1 are the N coefficients of the reflection the determination of the characteristic function coefficients are
characteristic polynomial F2N (ω), ε is the normalization scalar estimated using an approach discussed in Section III-B. The
parameter, and Pdep (ω) is a monic polynomial whose roots description of the formulation of the linear system of equations
are the N B − 1 pairs of dependent transmission zeros at fre- is presented in Section III-A. Section III-C describes the
quencies ω = ωdi with coefficients d0 , d1 , . . . , d N B −3 , d N B −2 . procedure for obtaining the value of the characteristic function
Mathematically, it can be expressed as at the critical points. Execution of the iterative procedure is
described in Section III-D. Three synthesis examples are given
B −1
N
 2  in Section IV before concluding in Section V.
Pdep (ω) = ω − ωdi
2
As both the filter design examples are realized using coaxial
i=1 cavity structures, synthesizing the elements directly in the
= ω2N B −2 + d N B −2 ω2N B −4 + d N B −3 ω2N B −6 · · · distributed domain provides a better approximation.
+ d1 ω 2 + d0 (4)
III. S YNTHESIS OF C HARACTERISTIC P OLYNOMIAL
where Prem (ω) is the polynomial whose zeros are the pre-
VIA L INEAR O PTIMIZATION
scribed transmission zeros of the multibandpass filter network.
The transmission characteristic polynomial PN T Z (ω), thus, A. Formulation of a Linear System of Equations
consists of possible pairs of prescribed transmission zeros Consider Fig. 1. A linear system of equations may be
contained in the Prem (ω) polynomial and the dependent trans- formed by rewriting (3) as
mission zero pairs contained in the polynomial Pdep (ω).
F2N (ω) − T2N (ω)PN T Z (ω) = 0. (5)
The degree of Prem (ω) must be at most 2N − 2(N B − 1).
Note that the degree of the characteristic function is 2N Substituting for F2N (ω) and PN T Z (ω) yields
for direct bandpass realization. Each pole and zero of the
characteristic function occurs in pairs, except the poles at the ω2N + f N−1 ω2N−2 + · · · + f 1 ω2 + f 0
origin and infinity. This is a necessary condition for realization − T2N (ω)ε Pdep (ω)Prem (ω) = 0. (6)
using real lumped or distributed elements. Furthermore, substituting for Pdep (ω) yields
Note that the multibandpass characteristic function is
defined in N + N B unknowns [i.e., N unknown coefficients ω2N + f N−1 ω2N−2 + · · · + f 1 ω2 + f 0
of the reflection characteristic polynomial F2N (ω), the nor- − T2N (ω)ε Prem (ω)[ω2N B −2 + d N B −2 ω2N B −4
malization parameter ε, and N B − 1 unknown coefficients of
+ · · · + d1 ω2 + d0 ] = 0. (7)
the polynomial Pdep (ω)]. Using (3), a linear problem for the
lossless synthesis of characteristic polynomials [10] for multi- Conventionally, the Chebyshev characteristic function (3)
band transfer function has been developed. By solving this ripples in each of the passbands such that at each of the

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 4766 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2019

in-band turning points, the value of the function T2N (ω) may
be set (usually normalized to ±1) as illustrated in Fig. 1.
The function has N − N B in-band turning points in both
passbands and 2N B known cutoff points. Hence, the function
will have N + N B critical points stored in the column matrix
ωcp . If the in-band turning points were assumed to be known, Fig. 2. Determination of the initial turning points for dual-bandpass filter
then evaluating the functions Prem (ω) and T2N (ω) at each used in the optimization on the frequency axis.
of the critical points (i.e., the cutoff points and the in-band
turning points) yields N + N B by 1 column matrices of the for the upper passband. However, the in-band turning points
form Prem (ωcp ) and T2N (ωcp ), respectively. This results in an for the lower and upper passbands are not known. In the
N + N B system of linear independent equations of the form proposed solution, an initial guess of the turning points is
  made and the linear system in (9) is then solved. Once the
f N−1 ω2N−2
cp + f N−2 ω2N−4
cp + · · · + f 1 ω2cp + f 0 N + N B unknowns in (12) are solved, the coefficients of the
 
− ε T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp2N B −2 dependent transmission zero polynomial Pdep (ω) are evaluated
 2N B −4
 by dividing the last N B − 1 coefficients in x by ε. The
− εd N B −2 T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp
  dependent transmission zero positions are then evaluated from
2N B −6
− εd N B −3 T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp ··· the solution of Pdep (ω) = 0. The new turning points may
  then be evaluated from the known characteristic function.
− εd1 T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp 2
  These new turning points are, in turn, used to solve (9)
− εd0 T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp so that the new unknowns in (12) are again obtained. This
= −ω2N
cp (8) is done iteratively, each time updating the in-band turning
points computed from (3) with known coefficients computed
where T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp implies an element-by-element
from (9). Before discussing the iterative procedure in detail,
multiplication of the three vector matrices. Similarly, (ωcp )2N
the procedure for determining the initial critical points and
and similar power representations imply element-by-element
the value of the characteristic function at these points are
powers. Equation (8) may be written in the form
discussed in Sections III-B and III-C, respectively.
Ax = b (9)
B. Initial Critical Points
where A is an N + N B ×N + N B square matrix defined as
 The critical points for each passband consist of the cutoff
A = ω2N−2
cp ω2N−4
cp . . . ω2cp 1 points that define the passband and the in-band turning points.
2N B −2
− T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp For each passband, the number of in-band turning points is
2N B −4 equal to one less than the degree of that passband. Thus, for
− T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ωcp ···
i th passband, there exists two cutoff points and Ni −1 in-band
− T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp )ω2cp turning points, accounting for the Ni + 1 critical points. For

− T2N (ωcp )Prem (ωcp ) (10) N B number of passbands, there exist N + N B critical points.
To find the initial turning points for a multibandpass filter,
b is an N + N B ×1 column matrix defined as divide the i th passband (i ∈ {1 : N B }) into Ni + 1 equal
  frequency intervals in the range [ωli , ωui ]. Here, ωli and ωui
b = − ω2N
cp (11)
are the lower and upper cutoff frequencies for the i th passband,
and x is an N + N B ×1 column matrix defined as respectively. The Ni −1 midpoints of these frequency intervals
are extracted to form the initial set of in-band turning points
x = [ f N−1 f N−2 · · · f1 f0 ε for the i th passband. These Ni − 1 turning points (represented
εd N B −2 εd N B −3 · · · εd1 εd0 ]T . (12) by the row vector ω Tt pi ), along with the cutoff frequency points
for the passband (ωli , ωui ) constitute the initial critical points
Since (9) is a well-defined system of linear independent
for the i th passband. The procedure is repeated to compute
equations [i.e., the number of unknowns (N + N B ) equals the
the initial turning points for each passband. The N + N B ×1
number of equations (N + N B ), defined at N + N B critical
critical points column matrix for the multibandpass filter can
points], then the coefficients in (12) for a well-conditioned
be given by
square matrix A may be evaluated from N

i−1  
 B 
x = A−1 b. (13) ωcp = zeros 1, Nm +i −1 , ωli , ω Tt pi , ωui ,
i=1 m=1
For an ill-conditioned matrix A, a solution may be found

  T
from the solution of (9) (e.g., by Gaussian elimination). 
i

To solve (9), the position of the critical points (ωcp ) and zeros 1, N + N B − Nm −i . (14)
the value of the characteristic function at these critical points m=1
must be known a priori. The cutoff points are given from the The notation zeros (m, n) is used to denote a m × n matrix
specifications. For a dual bandpass, the four cutoff frequency of zeros. To illustrate, consider the case of a dual-bandpass
points are ω1 and ω2 for the lower passband, and ω3 and ω4 filter (N B = 2) with N +2 critical points (Fig. 2). The column

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 MUSONDA et al.: SYNTHESIS OF MULTIBAND FILTERS BY LINEAR OPTIMIZATION
matrix comprising of the critical points can be computed using
the procedure described above
  4) Evaluating the new characteristic function (obtained in
ωcp = ωl1 , ω Tt p1 , ωu1 , zeros(1, N − N1 + 1)
 T
+ zeros(1, N1 + 1), ωl2 , ω Tt p2 , ωu2
 T
= ωl1 , ω Tt p1 , ωu1 , ωl2 , ω Tt p2 , ωu2 . (15)
If all unknown coefficients in (12) were known, then the
in-band turning points are obtained from the differential of (3),
i.e., the solution of
 
d d F2N (ω)
{T2N (ω)} = = 0. (16)
dω dω PN T Z (ω)
The in-band turning points matrix (ω Tt pi ) is obtained from
Ni − 1 in-band turning points in the range [ωli , ωui ]. Once
the in-band turning points are determined, the critical point
matrix ωcp may be formed as before in (14).
C. Value of the Characteristic Function at the Critical Points
The value of the Chebyshev characteristic function at the
critical points can be assigned because the function ripples
between two values in each passband. By convention, the char-
acteristic function is normalized to ±1 so that the maximum
or minimum value at the in-band turning points and the cutoff
points is either 1 or −1 as depicted in Fig. 1. In each of
the passbands, the characteristic function, therefore, alternates
between 1 and −1. Using the degree of each passband and set-
ting the number of transmission zeros in the inner stopband(s),
the value of the characteristic function at the critical points can
easily be set so that the column matrix T2N (ωcp ) is known.
These set values are the expected values that the optimization
routine will seek to achieve [i.e., T2N (ωcp )ex pect ed ]. Also,
note that the column matrix Prem (ωcp ) may easily be com-
puted. Given the prescribed transmission zeros, the polynomial
Prem (ω) is generated. Evaluating this polynomial at each of
the critical points, the required Prem (ωcp ) column matrix
can be computed. It is now left to demonstrate how the
iterative procedure is executed to obtain an optimal solution
for the Chebyshev characteristic function using the proposed
approach.
D. Iterative Procedure
The iterative procedure is executed as follows.
1) Using the N + N B × 1 column matrices ωcp
(initially obtained as explained in Section III-B),
Prem (ωcp ), and T2N (ωcp )ex pect ed (obtained as explained
in Section III-C), form an N + N B system of linear
independent equations of the form (9).
2) Solve the linear system (9) to obtain the N coefficients
of the reflection polynomial F2N (ω), the normaliza-
tion parameter ε and the dependent transmission zero
positions(s) ωdi . These newly computed parameters are
substituted in (3) to form the new characteristic function
T2N (ω).
3) By differentiating the new function T2N (ω) with respect
to ω, obtain the in-band turning points as described in
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4767
Section III-B. The new values of the turning points are
used to form a new critical points column matrix ωcp .
step 2) at each of the new critical points (obtained in
step 3) yields the column matrix T2N (ωcp )opt i mi zed .
5) If |T2N (ωcp )opt i mi zed − T2N (ωcp )ex pect ed )| < α ∀ ωcp ,
then the iteration is terminated; otherwise, steps 2–4 are
repeated. α is the maximum allowable error.
This procedure usually converges after a few iterations
depending on the accuracy required. The entire iterative pro-
cedure is amenable to computer programming, e.g., using
MATLAB. The fact that the characteristic function contains
atleast one pair of dependent transmission zero means that
a satisfactory solution is not always achieved. One possible
scenario occurs when the determined dependent transmission
zero is located in one of the passbands. This may be the correct
solution mathematically, but it is not the desired solution for
filter synthesis. A possible solution to this is to constrain the
dependent transmission zero position to be outside any of
the passbands. However, in this case, the system in (9) may
not have a solution. This further implies that the prescribed
transmission zeros may only take certain positions that would
force the dependent transmission zero(s) to lie outside any
of the passbands. Although the position of the dependent
transmission zero(s) may not be known at the start, they may
be constrained to be in one of the stopbands. Thus, the number
of transmission zeros in the inner stopband(s) is a control
parameter. This determines the values of the characteristic
function at the turning points (T2N (ωcp )ex pect ed ). Once the
number of transmission zeros in the inner stopband(s) is fixed,
it does not matter which one of the transmission zeros is
considered as dependent or prescribed. Interchanging any one
of the prescribed transmission zeros with a dependent trans-
mission zero yields the same transfer function. The number
of transmission zeros in the inner stopband, the degree of the
N B passbands, and the relative bandwidths of the passbands
will determine the position of the dependent transmission
zero(s).
IV. S YNTHESIS E XAMPLES
Three cellular specifications were used to validate the
method. In each of the following examples, the distributed
variable t was used with an electrical length of π/4 radians at
the center frequency with a return loss of 20 dB across each
passband.
A. Synthesis Example
The dual-bandpass filter was synthesized with the following
specifications.
1) Passband 1: 1700–1770 MHz.
2) Passband 2: 1940–2000 MHz.
3) Stopband 1: 1800–1870 MHz.
4) Stopband 2: 2100–2160 MHz.
5) Stopband attenuation > 80 dB.
The iterative procedure was followed as outlined in
Section III-D.
 4768 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2019
Fig. 3. Simulated response of the synthesized 20th degree dual-bandpass
filter in example IV-A.
1) The critical points may easily be converted to the distrib-
uted domain as tc = [0.8801, 0.9343, 1.0795, 1.1362]T .
It was found that a characteristic function with
N = 10 (N1 = 5, N2 = 5) and five prescribed
transmission zeros at 1.801, 1.812, 1.839, 1.871,
and 2.108 GHz would meet the given specifications.
A linear system of equations is formed as described
in Section III-A. The initial turning points were
determined as described in Section III-B above and
thus the initial critical points vector was determined as
tcp = [0.8801, 0.8937, 0.9027, 0.9117, 0.9207, 0.9343,
1.0795, 1.0937, 1.1031, 1.1126, 1.1220, 1.1362]T . The
characteristic function value at the critical points
is imposed as T2N (tcp )expected = [−1, +1, −1, +1,
−1, +1, −1, +1, −1, +1, −1, +1]T and Prem (t),
is formed from the prescribed transmission zeros above.
The maximum allowable error α was set to 10−3 .
2) The linear system of equations is then solved for
the N reflection polynomial coefficients of F2N (t),
ε and the position of dependent transmission zero,
td1 (= tan(aωd1 )).
3) By forming T2N (t), and differentiating with respect to t,
the in-band turning points are obtained so that the new
values are used to form the new critical points column
matrix tcp .
4) The new tcp column matrix is used to compute
T2N (tcp )optimized . The above procedure was repeated,
and after five iterations, the system converged.
The final values were as follows.
F2N (t) = t 20 − 10.2708t 18 + 47.2670t 16 − 128.3454t 14
+ 227.7032t 12 − 275.7960t 10 + 230.9543t 8
− 132.0354t 6 + 49.3191t 4 − 10.8692t 2 + 1.0733
ε = −3.2039 × 10−6 and td = 1.0448 corresponding to
1.9016 GHz. The simulated response for the above example
is displayed in Fig. 3.
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B. Dual-Band Synthesis and Design Example
The following specifications were used for two closely
spaced bands in a dual-bandpass filter.
1) Passband 1: 1000–1010 MHz.
2) Passband 2: 1040–1050 MHz.
3) Stopband 1: 1020–1030 MHz.
4) Stopband 2: 1060–1070 MHz.
5) Stopband attenuation > 30 dB.
The iterative procedure was followed as outlined in
Section III-D.
1) The critical points may easily be converted to the distrib-
uted domain as tc = [0.9624, 0.9773, 1.0233, 1.0391]T .
It was found that a characteristic function with N = 7
(N1 = 3, N2 = 4) and four finite transmission
zeros with three prescribed at 1.0212, 1.0287, and
1.064 GHz would meet the given specifications.
A linear system of equations is formed as described in
Section III-A. The initial turning points were determined
as described in Section III-B, and thus the initial
critical points vector were determined as tcp = [0.9624,
0.9680, 0.9717, 0.9773, 1.0233, 1.0280, 1.0312, 1.0343,
1.0391]T . The characteristic function values at the
critical points are imposed as T2N (tcp )expected =
[−1, +1, −1, +1, +1, −1, +1, −1, +1]T and Prem (t)
is formed from the prescribed transmission zeros above.
The maximum allowable error α was set to 10−7 .
2) The linear system of equations is then solved for
the N reflection polynomial coefficients of F2N (t),
ε, and the position of dependent transmission zero,
td1 (= tan(aωd1 )).
3) By forming T2N (t), and differentiating with respect to t,
the in-band turning points are obtained so that the new
values are used to form the new critical points column
matrix tcp .
4) The new tcp column matrix is used to compute T2N (tcp )
optimized. The above procedure was repeated, and after
ten iterations, the system converged.
The final values were as follows.
F2N (t) = t 14 − 7.0814t 12 + 21.4780t 10 − 36.1677t 8
+ 36.5191t 6 − 22.1102t 4 + 7.4321t 2 − 1.0700
ε = 1.8104 × 10−6 and td = 1.0493 corresponding to
1.0564 GHz. With the polynomials F2N (t) and PN T Z (t)
known, it is trivial to compute the S-parameters and convert
them to Y-parameters, from where the coupling matrix is
derived. Note that it might be appropriate from this point
to carry out matrix rotation to find a convenient matrix for
practical implementation [10].
The Y-parameter matrix was computed as in (16)
Y B P = MT s + pMCs + M Ls / p (16)
where p = j tan(aω), a = T0 /ω0 , T0 = π/4, and ω0 is
the arithmetic center frequency calculated using the outermost
cutoff frequencies. MCs is an N × N identity matrix and
represents the normalized resonator capacitances. MT s is the
N × N termination matrix with all entries equal to zero except
 MUSONDA et al.: SYNTHESIS OF MULTIBAND FILTERS BY LINEAR OPTIMIZATION 4769

TABLE I
P HYSICAL D IMENSIONS FOR THE D UAL -BANDPASS F ILTER P ROTOTYPE

Fig. 4. Fabricated dual-bandpass filter hardware for example IV-B (N = 7).

MT s (1, 1) and MT s (N, N), which provide the terminating

conductance values. M Ls is the remnant N × N inductive
coupling matrix. The inductive coupling matrix (M Ls ) and
the terminating conductances are given in (18) and (19), as
shown at the bottom of this page, respectively. Note that the
coupling matrix is in distributed domain and is realized with
open and short circuited stubs. This is a good approximation to
a coaxial resonator realization. The coupling matrix above was
used to compute the coupling coefficients using the classical
method described in [13]. The initial dimensions were obtained
by mapping the measurement from the EM simulation to the
theoretical coupling values. The filter was tuned with the aid
of an EM simulator. The final physical dimensions of the
fabricated prototype are given in Table I.
The fabricated dual-bandpass filter without the lid and the
tuning screws is shown in Fig. 4. The cylindrical coaxial
resonators are approximately λ0 /8 in length, i.e., 36.6 mm, Fig. 5. Ideal and measured responses for the synthesis and design
example IV-B.
and 10 mm in diameter. The capacitance on the open-circuited
end of the resonators was achieved by the aid of tuning
screws. From the computed coupling matrix, it can be observed The measured Q-factor of the filter is about 1350 at the
that all the mainline couplings and the cross-couplings are center frequencies of both passbands. The measured passband
inductive. These were realized by varying the rib heights insertion loss ranges between 0.9 and 1.5 dB. This can
between the two resonators. An exception to this was the be attributed to the filter hardware being unplated and the
weak cross-coupling between resonators 3 and 6, which inaccuracies arising due to the fabrication process.
was realized by varying the thickness of the gap between
them. Transformers were implemented to realize the external
couplings. C. Triple Band Synthesis and Design Example
Fig. 5 demonstrates a close agreement between the ideal The following specifications were used for a triple band
circuit simulation and the measured response of the filter. filter.

⎡ ⎤
+1.0007 −0.0654 0 0 0 0 0
⎢−0.0654 +1.0021 −0.0264 0 0 −0.0092 −0.0040⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 −0.0264 +1.0100 −0.0487 −0.0249 −0.0094 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
M Ls =⎢
⎢ 0 0 −0.0487 +1.0331 −0.0312 0 0 ⎥
⎥ (18)
⎢ 0 0 −0.0249 −0.0312 +1.0328 −0.0240 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ 0 −0.0092 −0.0094 0 −0.0240 +1.0032 −0.0653⎦
0 −0.0040 0 0 0 −0.0653 +1.0007

MT s (1, 1) = MT s (N, N) = 0.0341 (19)

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 4770 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2019

1) Passband 1: 1700–1750 MHz.

2) Passband 2: 1830–1850 MHz.
3) Passband 3: 1910–1935 MHz.
4) Stopband 1: 1770–1790 MHz.
5) Stopband 2: 1860–1880 MHz.
6) Stopband attenuation > 30 dB.
1) The critical points may easily be converted to the
distributed domain as tc = [0.9033, 0.9433, 1.0109,
1.0285, 1.0833, 1.1071]T . It was found that a
characteristic function with N = 10 (N1 = 4,
N2 = 3, N3 = 3) and four finite transmission zeros
with two prescribed at 1.78 and 1.8735 GHz would
meet the given specifications. A linear system of
equations is formed as described in Section III-A with
the inclusion of two dependent transmission zero pairs.
The initial turning points were determined as described
in Section III-B above and thus the initial critical
points vector was determined as tcp = [0.9033, 0.9153,
Fig. 6. Fabricated triple-bandpass filter hardware for example IV-C (N = 10).
0.9233, 0.9313, 0.9433, 1.0109, 1.0175, 1.0219, 1.0285,
1.0833, 1.0922, 1.0982, 1.1071]T . The characteristic
function values at the critical points are imposed as The final values were as follows.
T2N (tcp )expected = [+1, −1, +1, −1, +1, +1, −1, +1,
−1, −1, +1, −1, +1]T and Prem (t), is formed from the F2N (t) = t 20 + 10.1443t 18 + 46.2020t 16 + 124.4109t 14
prescribed transmission zeros above. The maximum + 219.3431t 12 + 264.5627t 10 + 221.0878t 8
allowable error α was set to 0.02.
+ 126.3972t 6 + 47.3122t 4 + 10.4703t 2 + 1.0403
2) The linear system of equations is then solved for
the N reflection polynomial coefficients of F2N (t), ε = 2.4893 ∗ 10−6 , td1 = 0.9590 corresponding to
ε and the position of the dependent transmission zeros, 1.7691 GHz and td2 = 1.0376 corresponding to 1.8602 GHz.
td1 (= tan(aωd1)) and td2 (= tan(aωd2 )). The coupling matrix of the form (12) was derived as
3) By forming T2N (t), and differentiating with respect to t, explained in Section IV-B. The negative interresonator cou-
the in-band turning points are obtained so that the new plings were converted to capacitive couplings. The induc-
values are used to form the new critical points column tive coupling matrix (M Ls ), the capacitive couplings and the
matrix tcp . terminating conductances are given in (20)–(22), as shown
4) The new tcp column matrix is used to compute T2N (tcp ) at the bottom of this page, respectively. The initial phys-
optimized. The above procedure was repeated, and after ical dimensions for the prototype were obtained by using
three iterations, the system converged. the same method as that for dual band. The coaxial triple

⎡ ⎤
1.0024 −0.1033 −0.1185 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
⎢−0.1033 0.9586 ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢−0.1185 0 1.0058 −0.1312 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ −0.1312 1.0002 −0.0021 −0.0743 ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 −0.0021 0.9402 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢
M Ls = ⎢ ⎥ (20)
−0.0743 1.0401 −0.1036 ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 0 −0.1036 1.0180 −0.0474 −0.0215 −0.1081⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ −0.0474 1.0667 −0.0447 ⎥
⎢ 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎣ 0 0 0 0 0 0 −0.0215 −0.0447 1.0877 −0.1195⎦
0 0 0 0 0 0 −0.1081 0 −0.1195 1.0025

MT s (1, 1) = MT s (N, N) = 0.0906 (21)

MCs (2, 3) = MCs (3, 2) = −0.0486; MCs (5, 6) = MCs (6, 5) = −0.1131; MCs (i, i ) = 1 for i = 1 : N (22)

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 MUSONDA et al.: SYNTHESIS OF MULTIBAND FILTERS BY LINEAR OPTIMIZATION
Fig. 7. Ideal and measured responses for the synthesis and design
example IV-C.
TABLE II
P HYSICAL D IMENSIONS FOR THE T RIPLE -BANDPASS F ILTER P ROTOTYPE
band prototype with lid and tuning screws is displayed in
Fig. 6.
The cylindrical combline resonators were approximately
λ0 /8 in length, i.e., 20.7 mm, and 10 mm in diameter.
The distance between each resonator pair was kept constant
throughout. The capacitance on the open-circuited end of the
resonators was achieved using tuning screws. The inductive
(positive) couplings were realized by varying the height
of ribs between two resonators. The capacitive (negative)
cross-couplings were realized using suspended copper strips.
The height and the distance of these copper strips from
the corresponding resonator surfaces determined the coupling
achieved between two resonators. Both coupling mechanisms
were designed with tuning screws on the lid to aid fine-tuning
postfabrication. Brass transformers were utilized to realize
the external coupling. Final physical dimensions are given
in Table II.
A comparison between the ideal circuit simulation and
the measured response of the triple-band filter can be seen
in Fig. 7. The filter was designed for a return loss of >20 dB
in all three passbands. From the measured response, it can
be seen that the passband return loss levels are >25 dB in
all passbands, thus, satisfying the corresponding specification.
The measured passband insertion loss was in the range of
about 0.5–0.85 dB. On average, the measured Q-factor at
the center of each passband is about 1090. The bandwidth
of the first and second passbands is slightly wider than the
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4771
required specifications. A small frequency shift in the position
of finite transmission zeros is also observed. This frequency
shift in the transmission zero positions can be attributed to
the errors arising due to the partial manual fabrication of the
suspended copper strips and due to the filter hardware not
being completely optimized on the electromagnetic software
pre-fabrication. The bandwidth expansion could be a result of
the frequency shift in the position of transmission zeros. These
issues can be easily rectified by the complete optimization of
the hardware on the electromagnetic software pre-fabrication.
Overall, the measured response achieved was satisfactory and
is in a reasonably good agreement with the circuit simulation
response.
V. C ONCLUSION
A novel method for the synthesis of multibandpass gen-
eralized Chebyshev polynomials has been presented. The
suggested algorithm is general and allows full control over the
stopband rejection by the placement of arbitrary transmission
zeros. Two prototypes, a dual-band filter and a triple-band
filter, have been designed and fabricated to validate the prac-
ticality of the proposed method. The measured responses for
both prototypes demonstrate good agreement with the ideal
circuit simulations.
R EFERENCES
[1] L.-C. Tsai and C.-W. Hsue, “Dual-band bandpass filters using equal-
length coupled-serial-shunted lines and Z -transform technique,” IEEE
Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 52, no. 4, pp. 1111–1117, Apr. 2004.
[2] M. Mokhtaari, J. Bornemann, K. Rambabu, and S. Amari, “Coupling-
matrix design of dual and triple passband filters,” IEEE Trans. Microw.
Theory Techn., vol. 54, no. 11, pp. 3940–3946, Nov. 2006.
[3] S. Bila, R. J. Cameron, P. Lenoir, V. Lunot, and F. Seyfert, “Chebyshev
synthesis for multi-band microwave filters,” in IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw.
Symp. Dig., Jun. 2006, pp. 1221–1224.
[4] V. Lunot, S. Bila, and F. Seyfert, “Optimal synthesis for multi-band
microwave filters,” in IEEE MTT-S Int. Microw. Symp. Dig., Jun. 2007,
pp. 115–118.
[5] V. Lunot, F. Seyfert, S. Bila, and A. Nasser, “Certified computation
of optimal multiband filtering functions,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory
Techn., vol. 56, no. 1, pp. 105–112, Jan. 2008.
[6] G. Macchiarella and S. Tamiazzo, “Design techniques for dual-
passband filters,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 53, no. 11,
pp. 3265–3271, Nov. 2005.
[7] X. Guan, Z. Ma, P. Cai, Y. Kobayashi, T. Anada, and G. Hagiwara,
“Synthesis of dual-band bandpass filters using successive frequency
transformations and circuit conversions,” IEEE Microw. Wireless
Compon. Lett., vol. 16, no. 3, pp. 110–112, Mar. 2006.
[8] J. Lee and K. Sarabandi, “A synthesis method for dual-passband
microwave filters,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn., vol. 55, no. 6,
pp. 1163–1170, Jun. 2007.
[9] J. Lee and K. Sarabandi, “Design of triple-passband microwave filters
using frequency transformations,” IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Techn.,
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[10] R. J. Cameron, C. M. Kudsia, and R. R. Mansour, Microwave Filters
for Communication Systems. Hoboken, NJ, USA: Wiley, 2015.
[11] F. Xiao, “Direct synthesis technique for dual-passband filters: Super-
position approach,” IEEE Trans. Circuits Syst. II, Exp. Briefs, vol. 60,
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 4772 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 67, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2019
Evaristo Musonda received the B.Eng. degree (Hons.) from the University of
Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia, in 2007, the M.Sc. degree (Hons.) in communication
engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K.,
in 2012 and 2015, respectively.
He was a Customer Support Engineer with Necor Zambia, Lusaka, Zambia.
He was with Airtel Zambia, Zambia, where he was involved in core network
planning, optimization, and support roles. Since 2016, he has been with the
University of Zambia, where he is currently involved in the research for new
microwave filters synthesis techniques for digital wireless communication
systems. His current research interests include microwave filters, network
synthesis, and general engineering education.
Rucha A. Paradkar received the M.Eng. degree (Hons.) in electronics and
communications engineering from the University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K.,
in 2016, where she is currently pursuing the Ph.D. degree.
Her current research interests include microwave filters and filter synthesis.
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Ian C. Hunter (M’82–SM’94–F’07) received the B.Sc. (Hons.) and Ph.D.
degrees from the University of Leeds, Leeds, U.K., in 1978 and 1981,
respectively.
He was with Aercom, Sunnyvale, CA, USA; KW Engineering, San Diego,
CA, USA; and Filtronic, Shipley, U.K., where he was involved with the
development of broadband microwave filters for electronic warfare (EW)
applications. From 1995 to 2001, he was with Filtronic Comtek, where he
was involved with advanced filters for cellular radio. He is currently the Royal
Academy of Engineering/Radio Design Ltd. Research Chair in microwave
signal processing with the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering,
University of Leeds. He has authored Theory and Design of Microwave Filters
(IEE, 2001).
Prof. Hunter is a Fellow of the IET and the U.K. Royal Academy of
Engineering. He was the General Chair of 2011 European Microwave Week,
Manchester, U.K. and the Chair of the 2016 European Microwave Conference,
London, U.K.
Richard Parry, photograph and biography not available at the time of
publication.