WEIF1-14

Distributed-Element Absorptive Bandpass Filter with A Broadband

Impedance Matching
Jongheun Lee#1 , Seunggoo Nam#2 , Juseop Lee#3
#
Microwave and Millimeter-Wave Lab, Korea University, South Korea
{ 1 jongheun2mml, 2 senggu3, 3 juseoplee } @gmail.com

Abstract — In this paper, we present a new method for

designing absorptive bandpass filters using coupled lines. The new
design method and filter structure allow an absorptive bandpass
filter to have good impedance matching performance over a
wider frequency range in comparison with distributed-element
absorptive filters reported in the literature. Closed form design
equations are provided so that a filter can be designed in a
way to produce a target frequency response. For verifying the
presented design approach, a second-order absorptive bandpass (a)
filter centered at 2 GHz having 10% fractional bandwidth has
been designed, fabricated, and measured. The measurement
shows that the return losses (S11 and S22 ) are overall larger
than 10 dB from DC to 3f0 .
Keywords — absorptive filters, distributed-element filters

I. I NTRODUCTION
As absorptive filters (i.e. reflectionless filters) do not
reflect the incident signals in the stopbands, they are capable
of improving the electrical performances of communication
systems by replacing conventional reflective filters. Hence,
they have been of a great interest and extensive researches
on the design methods are under way.
A number of works have presented distributed-element
absorptive bandpass filter structures that can operate at high
frequencies [1]–[4]. However, the filters presented in these
works have a good return loss performance over a small (b)
frequency range, as the impedance matching in the stopband Fig. 1. First-order absorptive lowpass filter prototype. (a) Circuit schematic.
deteriorates when the frequency moves away from the center (b) Frequency responses.
frequency. In other words, the reflectionless response can be
observed in a limited frequency range. This is mainly because
the elements used in the filter designs such as transmission element values producing a lowpass response with the cut-off
lines and inverters are frequency-variant ones. frequency at Ω = 1 (Ω : normalized frequency) and the return
In this work, we show a new distributed-element absorptive losses better than 15 dB can be derived, and they are
filter topology capable of having a wide reflectionless-response
g1 = 0.775
range. A detailed design procedure along with closed-form
design equations are also provided so that absorptive filters can g2 = 0.775 (1)
be designed in a way to produce a target frequency response. g3 = 1.000
II. D ESIGN Fig. 1(b) shows the frequency response of the filter prototype
In this section, we describe the design approach for a shown in Fig. 1(a) when having the element values in (1).
first-order absorptive bandpass filter. Then, the discussion on A bandpass filter can be designed by applying the
a second-order filter is given for describing that the presented impedance scaling and the lowpass-to-bandpass transformation
design approach can be applied to higher-order filter design. to the lowpass topology in Fig. 1(a). This process transforms
the inductor and two capacitors into a series LC resonator and
A. First-order filter design two parallel LC resonators, respectively. Using the fact that
Fig. 1(a) shows the first-order absorptive lowpass filter the series resonator and the parallel resonator are equivalent
prototype corresponding to the coupling diagram of the to an open-circuited series stub and a short-circuited series
first-order absorptive filter given in [3]. The normalized stub, respectively, we can formulate the distributed-element

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(a)
(b)
(c)
Fig. 2. Proposed first-order distributed-element absorptive bandpass filter. (a)
Circuit schematic using series transmission line stubs. (b) Circuit simulated
results of (a) and (c), when Z0 = 50Ω, Z1e = 67.59Ω, Z1o = 37.4Ω, Z2e
= 67.29Ω, Z2o = 39.78Ω, and R = 50Ω. (c) Circuit schematic using coupled
transmission lines.
bandpass filter shown in Fig. 2. The lengths of all stubs
are quarter-wavelength at the center frequency, and their
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characteristic impedances are given by
4Z0 g1
Z1 =
π∆
πZ0 ∆ (2)
Z2 =
4g2
R = Z0 g3 ,
where Z0 and ∆ denote the port impedance and the 3
dB fractional bandwidth respectively. Fig. 2(b) shows the
frequency responses of the topology shown in Fig. 2(a) when
Z0 , f0 and ∆ are set to 50 Ω, 2 GHz, and 0.1, respectively.
It is shown that the return losses at both ports are higher than
15 dB in theory.
It is widely recognized that it is challenging to implement
the series stubs in Fig. 2(a) in practice. Replacing the series
stubs by feasible elements can be carried out by adding
transmission lines that do not change the power transmission
and reflection ratios (|S21 |2 , |S12 |2 , |S11 |2 and |S22 |2 ). For
example, transmission lines whose characteristic impedances
are identical to the port impedance can be added to the ports,
and this leads to no change in the power ratios [5]. Fig. 2(c)
shows the bandpass filter topology containing coupled lines
rather than the series stubs. The design parameters for the
coupled lines are given by
r
2Z0
Z1e = Z0 (1 + )
Z1 + 2Z0
r
2Z0
Z1o = Z0 (1 − ) (3)
Z1 + 2Z0
p
Z2e = Z2 + R + Z2 (Z2 + R)
p
Z2o = Z2 + R − Z2 (Z2 + R).
where Ze and Zo are even- and odd-mode characteristic
impedances, respectively. The frequency responses of the filter
topology shown in Fig. 2(c) are shown in Fig. 2(b), and they
are indistinguishable from the ones of the circuit shown in Fig.
2(a).
B. higher-order filter designs
In the previous section, we have shown the topology
and design equations for designing a first-order absorptive
bandpass filter with a wide reflectionless range. The approach
for formulating the first-order filter can also be employed
in building higher-order topologies. For example, Fig. 3(a)
shows the second-order absorptive bandpass filter topology,
and Fig. 3(b) shows the frequency responses of a case where
the center frequency, fractional bandwidth, and the minimum
return losses are set to 2 GHz, 0.1, and 15 dB, respectively.
The even- and odd-mode characteristic impedances are given
in the caption of Fig. 3(b). As is the case with the first-order
filter, the second-order has the return loss larger than 15 dB
over the entire frequency range in theory.
Unlike the design approach in [6], our design approach
allows us to derive the design parameters from the given center
frequency, bandwidth, and the normalized lowpass parameters
analytically without using an optimization process. In addition,

(a)
(b)
Fig. 3. Proposed second-order distributed-element absorptive bandpass filter.
(a) Circuit schematic using coupled transmission lines. (b) Circuit simulated
results of (a), when Z0 = 50Ω, Z1e = 65.81Ω, Z1o = 34.18Ω, Z2e = 57.89Ω,
Z2o = 47.89Ω, Z3e = Z4e = 73.5Ω, Z3o = Z4o = 34.18Ω, and R = 50Ω.
the passband flatness of the filter structure presented in this
paper improves as the filter order increases.
III. V ERIFICATION
In order to verify the presented filter topologies and
design approaches, a second-order absorptive bandpass filter
centered at 2 GHz with the 3 dB bandwidth of 0.2 GHz has
been designed, fabricated, and measured. It utilizes the filter
topology shown in Fig. 3(a) and the design parameters given
in the caption of Fig. 3(b). The filter has been implemented by
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(a)
(b)
Fig. 4. (a) Top-view of the designed filter along with the dimensions (w0 =
0.72, w1 = 0.66, w2 = 0.62, w3 = w4 = 0.52, l0 = 3, l1 = 14.6, l2 = 14.6,
l3 = l4 = 14.7, s1 = 0.28, s2 = 1.2, s3 = s4 = 0.3. The circuit is symmetric
with respect to its center point. All dimensions are in mm). (b) Top-view of
the fabricated filter.
microstrip lines on a 0.76mm-thick Rogers TMM10i substrate
(r = 9.8 and tanδ = 0.002). Its top-view of the microstrip
filter structure along with the dimensions are shown in Fig.
4(a). The fabricated filter is shown in Fig. 4(b).
Fig. 5 shows the power transmission and reflection ratios.
A good agreement between theory, full-wave simulation,
and the measurement of the filter can be observed. The
discrepancies at the frequency around 4 GHz (2f0 ) can be
attributed to the undesired resonance which in turn is due to the
unequal even- and odd-mode phase velocities of the microstrip
coupled lines in an inhomogeneous medium. Despite of the
existence of the undesired resonance, the measured return
 Table 1. Comparison of this work with existing distributed element absorptive bandpass filters

Reflectionless response Frequency range of Analytic design equations

Filter order Center frequency Fractional bandwidth
at both ports good impedance matching (10dB) for given specifications
[1] Third-order 1.5 GHz 0.07 No 0.67f0 - 1.33f0 Provided
[2] Third-order 3 GHz 0.11 No 0.67f0 - 1.33f0 Provided
[3] Second-order 2 GHz 0.18 Yes 0.6f0 - 1.4f0 Provided
[4] Two-stage 1 GHz 0.12 No 0.5f0 - 1.5f0 Provided
[6] Third-order 2.5 GHz 0.23 Yes 0.4f0 - 3f0 Not provided
This work Second-order 2 GHz 0.1 Yes DC - 3f0 Provided

reflectionless bandpass filters have been derived, and we

have demonstrated that the presented design approach can be
employed in designing higher-order filters. A second-order
microstrip absorptive bandpass filter has been designed,
fabricated, and measured for verifying the design methodology.
The fabricated filter has the measured return losses overall
larger than 10 dB from DC to 3f0 .
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This work was supported by the National Research
Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea
government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2018R1A2B6006095).

(a)
R EFERENCES
[1] S.-W. Jeong, T.-H. Lee, and J. Lee, “Frequency- and bandwidth-tunable
absorptive bandpass filter,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and
Techniques, vol. 67, no. 6, pp. 2172–2180, Jun. 2019.
[2] ——, “Absorptive filter prototype and distributed-element absorptive
bandpass filter,” in IEEE MTT-S International Conference on Numerical
Electromagnetic and Multiphysics Modeling and Optimization, Reykjavik,
Island, Aug. 2018.
[3] R. Gomez-Garcia, J. Munoz-Ferreras, and D. Psychogiou, “Symmetrical
quasi-absorptive RF bandpass filters,” IEEE Transactions on Microwave
Theory and Techniques, vol. 67, no. 4, pp. 1472–1482, Apr. 2019.
[4] D. Psychogiou and R. Gomez-Garcia, “Reflectionless adaptive RF filters
: Bandpass, bandstop, and cascade designs,” IEEE Transactions on
Microwave Theory and Techniques, vol. 65, no. 11, pp. 4593–4605, Nov.
2017.
[5] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering. Hoboken, NJ, USA: WILEY,
2011.
[6] X. Wu, Y. Li, and X. Liu, “High-order dual-port quasi-absorptive
(b)
microstrip coupled-line bandpass filters,” IEEE Transactions on
Microwave Theory and Techniques, 2019.
Fig. 5. Measured frequency responses of the absorptive bandpass filter with
simulated results. (a) Power transmission ratio. (b) Power reflection ratio.

losses at both ports are overall larger than 10 dB in the

frequency range from DC to 3f0 where f0 is the center
frequency of the filter. Table 1 shows the comparison between
this work with the ones in the literature highlighting the
frequency range with a good return loss. It can be concluded
that our design method and filter structure produce a good
return loss over a wide frequency range.
IV. C ONCLUSION
In this paper, we have presented new distributed-element
circuit structures of absorptive bandpass filters. The filters
feature excellent impedance matching over the entire
frequency. Closed-form design equations for implementing

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