1004
2, JUNE 2005
HTS Narrow Band Filters at UHF Band
for Radio Astronomy Applications
Jiafeng Zhou, Michael J. Lancaster, Frederick Huang, Neil Roddis, and Dave Glynn
Abstract—High performance narrow-band High-Temperature
Superconductor (HTS) filters at 610 MHz with very sharp cut-off
response and low loss are needed for improving the observation
of pulsars at the Jodrell Bank Observatory, UK. An eight-pole
quasi-elliptic HTS filter using compact resonators has been de-
signed for this purpose. The measured response of filter has an
insertion loss of 0.3 dB (including a 0.2 dB ripple), and a return
loss of 15 dB in the passband. Two transmission zeroes are realized
to improve the steepness of the cut-off. The lowest harmonic is
designed to appear at 1.79 GHz, about three times the center
frequency. The out-of-band rejection is better than 85 dB up to
this harmonic. The filter has been tested in the observatory with
excellent results.
Index Terms—Astronomy, high-temperature superconductors,
microwave filters, superconducting filters.
I. INTRODUCTION
B ECAUSE of the low intrinsic loss of superconductors at
microwave frequencies, many microwave applications of
the high-temperature superconductors (HTS) have been pro-
posed and developed in recent years. The HTS devices, such as
microwave resonators and filters, have very high performance
compared to those circuit using traditional metals. They are
therefore of great interests for many microwave and RF systems.
The Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO), UK has recently been in-
vestigating HTS filters for astronomy observations [1], [2]. Of
particular interest is a narrowband bandpass filter at UHF band,
which is needed to remove interference from television chan-
nels for the observation of pulsars [2].
One of the major factors limiting the applications of HTS
devices is that the circuit needs to work at a low temperature,
typically lower than 77 K. A cryogenic cooler is usually needed
to cool the device. Because of the very low power of the pulsar
signals, the receivers of radio telescopes usually work at a low
temperature, cooling the amplifiers to obtain the very best noise
performance. The receivers at the JBO, where the HTS filters
will be installed, work at a temperature of about 20 K. So no
extra cryogenic cooler will be needed for the HTS filters.
A novel HTS resonator composed of double-spiral inductors
and interdigital capacitors is proposed in [2]. The resonator is
very compact, and very suitable for narrowband bandpass filter
Manuscript received October 3, 2004. This work was supported by the U.K.
Defence Evaluation Research Agency and the U.K. Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council.
J. Zhou, M. J. Lancaster, and F. Huang are with the Department of Electronic,
Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham
B15 2TT, U.K. (e-mail: zhouj@iee.org.).
N. Roddis and D. Glynn are with the Jodrell Bank Observatory, Department
of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Cheshire SK11 9DL, U.K.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TASC.2005.850170
1051-8223/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 15, NO.
design. However, the seven-pole Chebyshev filter described in
[2] had a center frequency slightly lower than the specification.
This problem is solved by a redesign described in this paper.
This new design will also include a quasi-elliptic response. A
novel way of realizing cross coupling for highly miniaturized
resonators is proposed. The new filter meets the specification
very well and was tested at the JBO with excellent results.
II. FILTER DESIGN
A. Specifications
The specified filter centered at 610 MHz should have a min-
imum return loss of 15 dB and a maximum insertion loss of 0.5
dB in the passband. The 0.5-dB passband should be as wide as
possible, while the out-of-band rejection should be better than
40 dB at 606 MHz and 614 MHz. The design of an eight-pole
quasi-elliptic filter is discussed in the following sections to meet
these specifications.
The filter is fabricated on a 0.5 mm thick MgO substrate with
600 nm thick YBCO HTS thin film on both sides. The signal
lines are patterned on one side, and the ground is on the other.
The relative dielectric constant of the substrate is 9.65 at low
temperature. The circuit is bonded onto a titanium carrier by a
thin layer of silver conducted film, and the carrier is fixed into a
titanium box by screws. Both the carrier and the box are plated
with 6 gold. The feed lines of the filter, covered with gold
for good electrical contact, are connected to K-connectors in the
box through sliding contacts. Silver epoxy is used to bond the
pins of the sliding contacts to the feed lines.
The inaccuracy of the center frequency is a major concern for
narrowband filter design. The measured center frequency of the
resonator and filter reported in [2] is lower than the simulated re-
sult. In this new design, as the same type of resonator is used, the
filter is deliberately designed to have a higher simulated center
frequency. Each resonator in the filter is tuned by two types of
tuning screws. A metal (brass) tuning screw is placed above the
double-spiral lines of the resonators, which can effectively in-
crease the resonant frequency when moved toward the resonator.
A dielectric (sapphire) tuning screw is placed above the interdig-
ital lines of the resonators, which can effectively decrease the
resonant frequency. The above arrangement gives a good flexi-
bility in tuning the filter. It has been found in the experiment that
the tuning range of the center frequency of the filter is better than
1 MHz.
B. Coupling Matrix and Filter Layout
The filter is designed to have a fractional bandwidth of 1%,
a minimum return loss of 20 dB (corresponding to a passband
ZHOU et al.: HTS NARROW BAND FILTERS AT UHF BAND FOR RADIO ASTRONOMY APPLICATIONS
Fig. 1. Layout of the eight-pole quasi-elliptic filter (not to scale).
Fig. 2. The strength of the cross coupling (with the connecting line) and
direct coupling (without the connecting line) against the distance between the
resonators, by fixing h = 1:05 mm and t = 1:75 mm.
ripple of 0.043 dB), and a pair of attenuation poles at 606 MHz
and 614 MHz respectively. Following the synthesis procedure
described in [3], the coupling coefficients of the filter can be
calculated:
(1)
where the M’s are coupling coefficients between resonators and
Qe’s are external quality factors. The coupling coefficients
and are of opposite signs as required by the design of quasi-
elliptic filters to provide attenuation poles [3]. More detail on the
signs of couplings will be discussed in part C of this section.
The layout of an eight-pole quasi-elliptic filter is shown in
Fig. 1. The resonators are placed in one row. The external cou-
pling between the terminal resonator and the exterior port is
realized by a tapped line. The length of the signal line be-
tween the middle point of the terminal resonator and the tapped
line controls the strength of the external coupling. Simulation
[4] found that, after the optimization described in part D of this
section, gave the required external quality factor.
The coupling between adjacent resonators mainly depends on
the distance between them. The strength of the coupling can be
obtained by simulating a pair of identical resonators as shown in
Fig. 2. The relationship between the coupling coefficient and the
distance between the resonators extracted from simulation is
also shown in Fig. 2. The distance to provide coupling between
adjacent resonators can be found in this figure. It is useful for
the later discussion to point out that direct coupling between
resonators is mainly magnetic. This is because the electric field
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1005
Fig. 3. The relationship between the cross coupling coefficient and the height
h, by fixing t = 1:75 mm; and that between the cross coupling coefficient and
the distance t, by fixing h = 1:05 mm. In both cases d = 6:55 mm.
of these resonators is mainly concentrated in the vicinity of the
interdigital capacitors [2], and also the electric field usually de-
cays faster with distance than does the magnetic field [3].
C. Cross Coupling
As is seen in (1), a cross coupling is needed between the third
and sixth resonators. One solution is to align the resonators into
two rows, so that the third and sixth resonators become closer
to provide this required cross coupling. But the size of circuit
will increase significantly with this arrangement, and unwanted
couplings could be introduced [5]. It is also possible to add a ca-
pacitive coupled microstrip line [6] between the third and sixth
resonators. The strength of cross coupling is determined by the
length of the microstrip, the gap between the microstrip and the
resonators, and the linewidth of the microstrip. However, it was
found by simulation that it is hard to realize strong enough cou-
plings by using such a microstrip. Instead, the cross coupling
is provided by a line connecting line as shown in Fig. 1. Al-
though this method has been proposed in [7], its application is
very limited in [7] because the length of the connecting line is
comparable to the length of the resonator. Changing the dimen-
sions of the line will considerably affect the filter performance
including the center frequency.
In this design, the resonators are highly miniaturized, and the
length of the connecting is much shorter than the wavelength
of interest. The problem in [7] does not apply to this filter. The
cross coupling structure is singled out from the filter and shown
in Fig. 2. The connecting line has a width of 50 , the same
as the line width of the resonators. The strength of the cross
coupling is controlled by three dimensions: the distance from
the center point of each resonator to the tapped point of the
connecting line, the distance between the resonators, and the
“height” of the connecting line above the resonators.
Firstly, the height , the length , or the width of the con-
necting line of the line has little effect on the coupling. This is
because the coupling provided by the connecting line is elec-
tric, and the strength is mainly controlled by the potentials at
the tapped points in both resonators. The total length of the con-
necting line, which is 9.65 mm in this case, is only about one
twentieth of the wavelength at the center frequency. The relation-
ship between the strength of the cross coupling and the height of
the connecting line is shown in Fig. 3, by fixing
1006 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON APPLIED SUPERCONDUCTIVITY, VOL. 15, NO. 2, JUNE 2005

and . It indicates that the cross coupling is not

changed significantly when varies from 1.25 mm to 2.25 mm. It
also confirms that the length of the connecting line does not affect
the cross coupling significantly since the length also changes as
varies. However, the value of cannot be too small. Otherwise,
there will be unwanted coupling between the connecting line and
the fourth and fifth resonators. In the design, is
chosen. More details regarding the effects of the length of the
connecting line will be given below as well.
Secondly, the distance between resonators will obviously
affect the strength of the cross coupling. By fixing
and , the relationship between the coupling coeffi-
cient of the cross coupling structure and the distance between
the resonators is shown in Fig. 2. It should be noticed that the
coupling coefficient becomes negative when the distance is
greater than 1.45 mm. This is because two types of couplings
co-exist in the cross coupling structure. These are the electrical
coupling contributed by the connecting line and the mainly mag-
netic “direct coupling” between the two resonators as discussed
above. When the resonators are close , the mag-
netic direct coupling is dominant, and determines the sign of the
coupling. As the distance between the resonators increases, the
strength of the magnetic direct coupling decreases, while the
electric coupling provided by the connecting line remains al-
most constant as will be discussed below. When ,
the electric coupling becomes dominant, and the coupling coef-
ficient changes its sign. It should be pointed out that the signs
of the electric and magnetic coupling coefficients are relative to
each other. In this case, the magnetic coupling could be defined
as negative, while the electric coupling would be positive.
It is notable in Fig. 2 that the two curves are in the same shape,
and they are actually almost identical to each other (error 1%)
if one curve is vertically moved a distance to-
ward the other. The only difference between the direct coupling
and the cross coupling structures is the connecting line. It sug- Fig. 4. The measured and lossless simulated response of the HTS filter
(a) near the passband, (b) in the passband, and (c) in a wide range. The
gests that the connecting line is responsible for the coupling simulated response is shifted down 3.0 MHz for easier comparison.
strength of a value of , and this value is nearly independent to
the distance between resonators. The strength of the cross cou-
pling therefore can be simply obtained by subtracting from down 0.49 MHz (0.08% of the center frequency) by the con-
the direct coupling. When the resonators are not close to each necting line. This was corrected by adjusting the geometry
other, say , the strength of the direct coupling between dimensions of the associated resonators.
resonators is close to zero. The strength of the cross coupling From the above discussion, it is obvious that the cross cou-
therefore has a constant value of , which is totally contributed pling can be adjusted independently by choosing the value of t,
by the connecting line. without changing other couplings or generating new unwanted
Also, the length of the connecting line changes according to cross couplings. This offers a great flexibility for the quasi-el-
the distance between the resonators. Since is independent to liptic filter design.
this distance, it confirms that the length of the connecting line
does not affect the coupling strength significantly, as mentioned D. Simulated Response After Optimization
above. After obtaining the required couplings as discussed above,
Thus, for , the strength of the cross coupling the dimensions of the filter can be obtained in Fig. 2 and Fig. 3
is mainly a function of , the distance between the center of The dimensions are further optimized by using the optimization
the resonator and the tapped point of the connecting line. The function integrated in the simulator [4]. The final dimensions of
relationship between the strength of the cross coupling and is the filter after optimization are given in Fig. 1, with ,
shown in Fig. 3, by fixing and . and shown in Fig. 2. The simulated response after
It was also found by simulation that the connecting line optimization is shown in Fig. 4, which has a return loss of 15 dB,
slightly affects the resonant frequency of the resonators con- and a bandwidth of 6.1 MHz, matching the theoretical response
nected to this connecting line. In the design of this filter, the described in part B of this section very well, and has met the
resonant frequency of the third and sixth resonators is shifted specification indicated in part A.

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ZHOU et al.: HTS NARROW BAND FILTERS AT UHF BAND FOR RADIO ASTRONOMY APPLICATIONS
Fig. 5. The comparison of the receiver performance using the HTS filter and
that using the original non-HTS filter. The conventionally filtered channel is
severely affected by the TV interference, while the HTS filtered channel is
near-perfect for radio astronomy purposes.
III. EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
The eight-pole quasi-elliptic filter is cooled down to 22 K
in a cryostat and measured using a network analyzer with an
input power of 10 dBm. The filter is tuned with two rows of
screws as discussed in Section II. The tuned experimental result
is shown in Fig. 4, together with the lossless simulated result.
The simulated response is shifted down 3.0 MHz for easier com-
parison. In the passband of the measured response the ripple is
about 0.1 dB, the maximum passband insertion loss is less than
0.3 dB, and the minimum return loss is 15 dB. The 0.5-dB-in-
sertion-loss passband is 6.25 MHz. Being consistent with the
design [2], the first spurious frequency appears at 1.79 GHz,
about three times of the fundamental passband frequency. The
out-of-band rejection is better than 85 dB up to this spurious
harmonic.
The two designed attenuation poles are found to be at 605.9
MHz and 614.5 MHz, slightly wider than the simulated value
of 606.2 MHz and 614.1 MHz respectively. The 40 dB band
rejection points are found to be at 606.18 and 614.06 MHz, very
close to the specified values of 606 MHz and 614 MHz. This
filter has successfully met all of the specifications.
A few such filters have been made and tested in the receiver
at the Observatory. Fig. 5 shows the output spectra from two
pulsar receiver front-ends, one with conventional filtering, and
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1007
the other with the new HTS filter fitted between the antenna
feed and the low noise amplifier. The conventionally filtered
channel is severely affected by TV interference break-through,
which could cause gain modulation and possibly inter-modula-
tion problems. However, the HTS filtered channel is near-per-
fect for radio astronomy purposes, and the TV signals at 605.25
MHz and 615.25 MHz are effectively suppressed.
IV. SUMMARY
Design and measurement of an eight-pole quasi-elliptic filter
have been described. The filter has excellent out-of-band re-
jection and sharp selectivity. A novel way is proposed to pro-
vide cross coupling for highly miniaturized resonators. With
this method, the topology of the filter is very compact, and the
strength of the cross coupling can be independently adjusted.
The experimental response of the filters meets the specification
very well. The experimental results obtained in the lab and on
site have verified the success of the design. The performance of
the receivers in the Observatory will be significantly improved
by the use of such HTS filters, and their small physical size
makes them ideal for integration into existing receiver dewars.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank D. Holdom for fabricating
the HTS circuit, and Mr. C. Ansell for his technical support.
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