Received: 27 January 2021
DOI: 10.1002/mop.32939
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Dual-band bandpass to
bandstop switchable filter with
independently tunable center
frequency and bandwidth
Shriman Narayana | used. A reconfigurable BP to BS tunable microstrip filter
Yatendra Kumar Singh
Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Patna,
Bihta, India
Correspondence
Shriman Narayana, Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology Patna, Bihar 801106, India.
Email: shriman.mtee13@gmail.com
Abstract
This article presents a dual-band bandpass (BP) to bandstop
(BS) switchable filter with independently tunable center
frequency and bandwidth. Two different length half-
wavelength resonators are coupled with two separate cou-
pling lines. Each resonator consists of a varactor-loaded stub
at the center to tune the even mode frequencies, whereas
two identical varactors are connected at the ends to tune
odd and even mode frequencies simultaneously. The center
frequency of the first passband is tuned from 1.03 to
1.4 GHz with constant fractional bandwidth (CFBW) of
3.4%, and second passband from 1.35 to 1.74 GHz with
CFBW of 2%. BP to BS switching is achieved by con-
necting a p-i-n diode between input and output feedlines.
KEYWORDS
switchable filter, tunable BPF, varactor
1 | INTRODUCTION
Recent advancements in wireless communication systems
have lead to huge demands of microwave devices with
multifunctional abilities such as multiband operation. A tun-
able and reconfigurable filter is a crucial component that
efficiently fulfills multiband operation requirements; hence,
it is a popular research topic.
Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2021;1–6. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mop
Many research papers have been published on center fre-
quency tunability and bandpass (BP) to bandstop (BS)
switchability.1,2,3 In Reference 1, the resonators are tuned
with a piezoelectric actuator induced on the deformed copper
membrane resulting in the complex circuit. The switching
from BP to BS is achieved by introducing the p-i-n diodes
between source and load in Reference 2 whereas in Refer-
ence 3, inductive coupling between the two resonators is
with selectable 2- and 4-pole responses is presented in Refer-
ences 4 and 5. Two and four parallel λ=4 resonators are
employed to generate 2 and 4 poles, respectively. But the
bandwidth tuning has been achieved only in a 4-pole filter.
In Reference 6, BP to BS transformation is realized by
simultaneously reconfiguring the transmission zeros. Sub-
strate integrated waveguide-based BP to BS reconfigurable
filters is presented in References 7 and 8. In Reference 7, a
new type of mode control reconfigurable filter is reported
where series cascading of BP filter and BS filter is used. The
above-published BP to BS filters is only designed for a sin-
gle band. A RF-MEMS-based dual-band BP to BS switch-
able filter is presented in Reference 9, where only bandwidth
tunability is achieved. Whereas in Reference 10, the shunt
switches are used to select the BS and bandstop mode of the
filter. In References 9 and 10, center frequency tunability is
not present. In Reference 11, a BP to BS tunable filter
is designed where two pairs of λ=2 resonators are used to
form a dual-band filter. The above-published dual-band fil-
ters have either center frequency tuning or bandwidth tuning,
but not both.
In this article, a dual-band tunable BP to BS filter is
presented where the fractional bandwidth (FBW) of both
passbands is constant over the entire tuning range of the filter.
Bandwidth tuning for both passbands is also achieved. As per
the author’s knowledge, none of the published research article
has a dual-band BP to BS filter with tunable center frequency
and bandwidth tuning of both the passbands.
2 | F I L T E R A N A L Y S I S A N D D ESIG N
EQUATIONS
Figure 1(A) shows the layout of the proposed filter. Two dis-
tinct resonators have been used to form two passbands by
using their first odd and even modes simultaneously. Each
resonator, whose simplified model is shown in Figure 2(A),
consists of a varactor-loaded stub at the center and two
varactors at the ends (coupled with input–output ports in two
© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 1
2 NARAYANA AND SINGH

(A)

(B)

FIGURE 1 Proposed filter. (A) Layout. (B) Photograph of the fabricated filter [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

(A) (B) (C)

FIGURE 2 (A) Basic structure of resonator. (B) Odd-mode. (C) Even-mode circuit

different paths). A p-i-n diode is connected between the
input and output feed line in both paths to switch the filter
from BP to BS.
The odd and even mode resonating frequencies, f o and
f e , of the resonator can be calculated by equating their
respective input admittances, Y ino from Figure 2(B) and Y ine
from Figure 2(C) to zero as follows:
 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 
πf o εeff l1 Y co
f o
tan ¼ ,
c 2πC 1
   pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi  f e1 almost reaches to f o1 . Hence, the connection of varactor
fe Y ce πf e εeff ðl1 þ l2 Þ 2C1 þ C 2
 2 tan ¼ ,
Y ce 2π f e C 1 C 2 c 2πC 1 C 2
ð2Þ
where Y co and Y ce are the characteristics admittances of odd
and even mode circuit. The above equations convey that the
odd mode frequencies can be controlled using C 1 whereas
even mode frequencies are controllable using both the
varactors C 1 , C 2 and the stub l2 .
Figure 3(A) shows the first even mode voltage wave, P1 ,
of the resonator decreases at the center for increasing C 2
(or stub length l2 ) due to finite impedance path created
between the resonator center point and ground, resulting in
wavelength increment (as marked by the curve P2 , P3 , P4 ,
and P5 ). For C2 ! ∞, the center point gets grounded, mak-
ing voltage zero (curve P3 ). For this case, the voltage
wavelength has increased to λe = 2 l (from λe = l for
C 2 = 0 pF case), so the resonance frequency reduces to that
of the first odd mode as shown in Figure 3(B). This is the
maximum change in the frequency possible using C 2 . The
stub, however, further increases the wavelength as its length
can be increased even more. As shown in Figure 3(A), as the
length of the stub increases, the voltage starts to increase but
negatively. As seen clearly from the Figure 3(B), the first
even mode frequency, f e1 decreases continuously for
ð1Þ
increasing value of l2 , whereas for a very high value of C 2 ,
loaded stub at the resonator center provides the more flexi-
ble tunability of the even mode frequencies. As all the odd
modes have zero voltage at the resonator center hence their
wavelengths (or frequencies) cannot be affected by center
stub or C 2 . However, both the modes have non-zero voltage
at resonator ends, therefore varactor C 1 will affect the fre-
quencies of both odd and even modes.
Effect of the stub length, l2 , and varactors, C1 and C 2 , on
mode frequencies is studied using S21 of half of the proposed
filter shown in Figure 2(A), whose S-matrix is derived in
two steps. First, its Y-matrix, given below by Equation (3), is
derived:9
    
IA Y 11 Y 12 V A
¼ , ð3Þ
IE Y 21 Y 22 V E
NARAYANA AND SINGH 3

(A) (B)

(C) (D)

F I G U R E 3 (A) Variation in first even mode voltage waveform, and it is (B) mode frequency according to stub length, l2 or C2 . Mode
frequencies of a dual-mode resonator with capacitances and length for (C) first passband and (D) second passband [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

2 3
where I A =I E and V A =V E are currents and voltage at the ports 0 0:7 0:8 0
A and E. The current equations of the individual section of 6 0:7 1:3 0 0:7 7
6 7
the circuit λ such as coupled section ABCD (or EFGH) and m1 ¼ 6 7,
4 0:8 0 1:3 0:8 5
section CG – are calculated as done in Equation (6) to obtain
0 0:7 0:8 0
the Y-parameters of Equation (3). In step two, the derived
Y-matrix is converted into S-matrix. Figure 3(C),(D) shows 2 3
0 0:8 0:6 0
the magnitude plot of S21 obtained after following the above 6 0:8 1:1 0 0:8 7
6 7
steps for the loosely coupled resonator. The odd and even mode m2 ¼ 6 7, ð4Þ
4 0:6 0 1:1 0:6 5
frequencies can be tuned simultaneously with varactors C 1 and
C 2 resulting in the center frequency tuning of the filter. How- 0 0:8 0:6 0
ever, varactor C 2 can only tune the even mode frequency for
1
the fixed value of C 1 resulting leading to bandwidth tunability. Qex ¼ , ð5Þ
m21i FBW
The RT/Duriod 5880 substrate with dielectric constant of (εr )
3.38 and substrate thickness of (h) 0.508 mm has been used  
mii FBW
for theoretical analysis, simulation, and filter fabrication. fn ¼fc 1 , ð6Þ
2
The design steps of the proposed filter are as follows: (i) Select
the specifications of the filter, for example, filter order = 2, center where, m1i and mii (for i = 2, 3) are the elements of the cou-
frequency at f c1 = 1.12 GHz and f c2 = 1.5 GHz, FBW of pling matrix, and f c is the center frequency. (iii) The pro-
3.2% and 2%, and return loss 16 and 14 dB respectively for posed filter resonator length and stub length are calculated
the first and second band respectively. (ii) The generalized using Equations (1) and (2) for mode frequencies obtained
coupling matrices m1 and m2 for the first and second band are from Equation (6) by keeping the capacitance values in the
determined for the given filter specifications,12 and based on middle of their tuning range. (iv) Finally, if required, the fil-
that, the external quality factor (Qex ) and associated mode fre- ter dimensions are optimized in a simulator (Keaysight
quency (f n ) are calculated as:13 ADS) to achieve the needed results.
4 NARAYANA AND SINGH

(A) (B) (C)

(D) (E) (F)

F I G U R E 4 Bandpass filter response: First band fixed, second band center frequency tuning (A) S21 and (B) S11 . Second band fixed, first band
center frequency tuning (C) S21 and (D) S11 . Bandwidth tuning of (E) first and (F) second band [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

(A) (B) (C)

(D) (E) (F)

F I G U R E 5 Bandstop filter response: First band fixed, second band center frequency tuning (A) S21 and (B) S11 . Second band fixed, first band
center frequency tuning (C) S21 and (D) S11 . Bandwidth tuning of (E) first and (F) second band [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]
NARAYANA AND SINGH
TABLE 1 Comparison of measured results with published dual-band BP to BS switchable filters
First/second passband
Reference % FTR IL (dB) BWT (MHz)
9 F/F 2.4/4.7 32–180/49–143
10 F/F 2.57/2.46 F/F
11 25.6/20.4 5/5.6 F/F
Figure 1 30.4/25.2 2.6/3.1 24–50/20–40
Abbreviations: BWT, bandwidth tuning; F, fix; FBW, fractional bandwidth; FTR, frequency tuning range; NA, not available.
3 | FABR ICA TIO N AND
MEASUREMENT OF FILTER
The proposed filter is fabricated (Figure 1(B)) with physical
dimensions as (in mm): L1 = 20.75, L2 = 17.42, L3 = 14,
L4 = 10.85, L5 = 4, W 1 = 0.3, W 2 = 0.6, and g = 0.12. The
varactors and p-i-n diodes used in the fabricated filter are
from Skyworks as: SMV1232 for C 1f 1 and C 2f 1 ,
SMV1236 for C 1f 2 , SMV1235 for C 2f 2 , and SMP1345
for Sw1 and Sw2. Figure 4(A),(B) shows results of tunable
dual-band BPF with the first passband fixed at 1.12 GHz
while the second passband is tuned from 1.35 to 1.74 GHz
with a constant fractional bandwidth (CFBW) of 2%.
Figure 4(C),(D) shows the tunability of the first passband
from 1.03 to 1.4 GHz with CFBW of 3.4% for a fixed sec-
ond passband at 1.7 GHz. The return loss of both the pass-
bands are better than 10 dB. Bandwidth tuning of the first
and second passband for the fixed center frequency at 1.12
and 1.51 GHz is shown in Figure 4(E),(F) where the first
passband is tuned between 24 and 50 MHz (Figure 4(E)) and
second passband is tuned between 20 and 40 MHz (Figure 4
(F)). Figure 5(A),(B) shows results of tunable dual-band
BSF with fixed first stopband at 1.1 GHz while the second
stopband is tuned from 1.4 to 1.75 GHz with rejection more
11 dB. Figure 5(C),(D) shows the tunability of first stopband
from 1 to 1.5 GHz (rejection more than 11 dB) for fixed sec-
ond band at 1.75 GHz. The 10 dB bandwidth tuning of both
stopbands is shown in Figure 5(E),(F). The first stopband is
tuned from 9 to 21 MHz and second stopband from 18 to
33 MHz. A comparison of the filter with similar published
filters is presented in Table 1.
4 | CONCLUSION
In this article, a dual-band BP to BS switchable and tunable
filter has been presented. Two distinct resonators centrally
loaded with stubs have been used to form the dual-band fil-
ter. Also, p-i-n diodes have been utilized to switch from BS
response to bandstop response. Each band has independent
center frequency and bandwidth tunability. The S-parameter
analysis has been carried out to analyze the tuning behavior
of mode frequencies. Finally, the filter is fabricated, and
5
First/second stopband
% FBW % FTR Rej.(dB) BWT (MHz) % FBW
4.5–24.0/4.5–13.0 F/F ≥14/14 48–91/16–39 6.5–13.2/1.5–3.6
NA F/F ≥30/40 F/F NA
NA 30/23.1 16.4/20 F/F NA
3.4/2.0 40/22 ≥11/11 9–21/18–33 0.9–1.4/1.3–1.9
measured results are presented. The percentage of the
frequency tuning range of the first and second passband is
observed as 30.4% and 25.2% whereas stopband center
frequency tuning is measured as 40% and 22%.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data sharing not applicable - no new data generated
OR C ID
Shriman Narayana https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7882-4697
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