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Analysis of Coupled Microstrip Lines with DGS UWB Printed Filter

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 Analysis of Coupled Microstrip Lines with DGS
UWB Printed Filter
Athar Shahzad Fazal1, Shabana Hafeez2, Mushtaq
Ahmed3
1,2,3
Department of Telecommunication Engineering
Foundation University of Engineering & Management
Sciences Rawalpindi, Pakistan
aati_134@yahoo.com, shabanahafeez@yahoo.com,
mushtaq_col@yahoo.com
Abstract—This paper will present a microstrip bandpass filter
design with controllable cutoff frequencies. The proposed design
of filter is simulated, fabricated, measured and analyzed for
UWB system application. The expected of filtering range is about
3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz. This filter also expected to produce low
insertion loss. A bandpass filter, based on microstrip structure
provides the advantage of easy design, lower fabrication cost and
compact size and has been widely used. This filter is simulated by
HFSS and result show reasonable performances over entire
UWB and the averaged insertion loss for UWB of this filter is
about 0.2 dB with constant group delay.
Index Terms—Bandpass, filter design, DGS, UWB,
I. INTRODUCTION
Recent research in microwave filters shows that many
efforts have been focused on designing ultra wide band
(UWB) band pass filter (BPFs) due to its increasing
demand for ultra wide band applications because ultra wide
band technology provides high data rates which results low
interference, low cost, resistance to jamming and providing
high data rates in multipath channel, compared with narrow
wide band which provides low channel capacity, providing
more interference signal in radio systems. The ultra wide
band (UWB) radio system has been receiving great
attention among both academic and industrial aspects,
because of its attractive features in high speed wireless
applications; the ultra wide band (UWB) communication
has been authorized by the Federal Communication
Commission (FCC) in USA released the unlicensed
frequency limits from 3.1GHz to 10.6GHz for the indoor
and hand held UWB systems in February 2002 [1],
extensive instant bandwidth of 3.1-10.6GHz with constant
group delay is required to operate in UWB filter.
A key passive component in UWB system is the front-end
filter required to meet some stringent specifications
including compactness, low insertion loss, flat group delay,
in-band frequency rejection notch, high selectivity, and
wideband rejection. These all are requirements for UWB
filters and by considering these, an increasing interest has
K.S.Alimgeer4, Y.wani5
4
Center for Advance Studies in Telecommunication (CAST)
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
5
SIT, The University of Lahore, Islamabad, Pakistan
khurram_saleem@comsats.edu.pk, yaqoobwani@gmail.com
been aroused among both academic and industrial aspects
on exploring various UWB components and systems [2].
Researchers have developed many UWB filters using
different techniques and designs. In the recent studies there
was a technique developed for designing a composite
microstrip bandpass filter suitable for ultra wide band (UWB)
wireless communications with the 3-dB fractional band width
of more than 100%. The design is made of a highpass and a
lowpass filter embedding individually into each other. The
impedance of lowpass filter attenuate the upper stop band and
quarter wave short circuited stubs are used to realize the lower
stop band [3], the main challenge about the bandpass filter is
to maintain wide stop-band and sharp passband. An UWB
filter was designed in [3] that absorb high frequency signals
by using a lossy composite substrate, the insertion loss of this
filter was 6dB and at high frequency the impedance matching
was poor and also lacking the sharpness at the lower
frequency. Lumped element filter design is very difficult to
design in microwave frequencies; due to limitations of
lumped-element values these designs are generally unpopular.
The design of filters on microstrip lines being a popular choice
[4]. Another technique for the design of ultra wide band filter
is the highpass filter (HPF) model in which short circuited
stubs are cascaded [5]. Another simplest structure of filter
consists of cascaded short circuited stubs which are separated
by identical connecting lines. At the lower cut off frequencies
the electrical length of these connecting lines is two times of
the length of short circuited stubs [6]. In [7] the UWB filter
was developed by cascading of many different ring filters. In
this technique there are some disadvantages i-e these types of
UWB filters have sharp band rejection and their response
would degrade out-of -band response and number of sections
are increased producing large insertion loss and the group
delay was very poor.
Because of low loss, small size and compactness, light
weight and high selectivity the microstrip open loop filters
have been extensively used for wireless communications
systems. Many authors have suggested the microstrip square
open loop resonators but the arrangement of elements will
occupy a large circuit area which is not appropriate for
Athar Shahzad | Introduction 21
wireless communication system where the miniaturization is
an important factor. Therefore it is necessary to upgrade new
types of square open-loop micro-strip resonators which are not
only an alternative designs but they also have the
miniaturization factor [8]. Therefore a good filter which is
suitable for ultra-wide band microstrip filter must have
effective out-of-band spurious rejection and which is very
good in band performance.
Dielectric resonators are also used to design the ultra wide
band band-pass filter. Dielectric resonators (DR) have a lot of
advantages in increasing the performance of radio frequency
(RF) and microwave devices such as filters and oscillators and
it is also widely used in the wireless applications, because it
contains low design profile having wide band width [9]. But
the performance of most the distributed resonators are limited
because of the use of effective constant dielectric and there is
some discontinuity in transmission lines. Strip line structures
are widely used now days due to the advantages such as easy
implementation of both series and shunt stubs and there is no
need of holes [10]. The more famous structures of filters are
more widely used because the fabrication of these filters can
be done by using the printed circuit technology which is
suitable for commercial applications because of their small
size and lower fabrication cost. Therefore the design of a filter
at low cost with high performance is of great concern. Many
authors have proposed different shapes of bandpass filters
such as fractal shaped microstrip coupled line, dumbbell
shaped, T shaped, C shaped, E shaped etc.
Defected ground shaped (DGS) is another technique for the
designing of ultra wide band bandpass filter. Basically DGS is
the technique where the ground plane is transform
intentionally to improve the performance of the filter. With the
help of DGS technique, improvement of the steepness of the
roll off, gain is observed with ease of impedance matching.
Improvement in the selectivity of the filter by using DGS
technique is also observed. DGS is the systematic procedure to
improve the performance of the filter and it exhibits that the
DGS can enhance the battenuation of stop band and
completely removes the parasitical passband in stopband.
DGS technique can be understood clearly by etching a
defected pattern in the ground plane. The limitation on gap
size may be relaxed for a particular coupling, so that the space
of the entire circuit area can be greatly saved [11]. Another
new compact structure for the ultra-wide band (UWB)
bandpass filter is the steeped impedance resonator (SIR) and
rectangle slot-defected ground structure DGS which has the
advantages of small size and it produces good filtering
characteristics [12]. The utilization of high dielectric constant
substrate, stepped-impedance resonator (SIR) structure and the
slow wave effect are highly successful techniques to achieve
compact size. In [13] a compact coupled micro-strip line filter
design with enhanced performance qualifications by making
use of symmetrical filter configuration printed on DGS was
discussed. An unsophisticated design method for the coupled
microstrip line bandpass filter can be found in [14]. The
design methodology used in [14] is further improved to realize
the compact symmetrical parallel coupled bandpass
configuration by using the impression of lower portion
diagonal section of the coupled lines in the upper right section
to constitute a symmetrical compact band pass filters.
structure [15]. Ultimately the characteristics of the compact
structure are more improved by realizing the I/O portions of
the microstrip feed lines in DGS. In [16] another Z
transformation technique is used to combine UWB filter in
which the open circuited stubs are engaged to produce
transmission zeroes in the upper and lower stop band to
receive the sharp attenuations. Newly ultra wide band filters
consists of coupling from microstrip line to coplanar wave
guide which can be implemented on the basis of simple
broad side coupling structure [17]. The proposed filters in
[17] matched nearly all the demands of FCC‟s spectrum
mask. Another structure for the implementation of ultra
wide band (UWB) band pass filter is suggested by using the
coupled microstrip line and U-shaped ground defected
ground (DGS). These filters can be combined with any
UWB antenna to have better performance of overall system
[18, 19]. The main advantage of UWB filter is that it can
minimize the signal processing cost when combined with
UWB filters in order to mitigate out-band interference.
II. THE PROPOSED FILTER CONFIGURATION
The proposed filter configuration is shown in Figure 1,
where Figure 1(a) and Figure 1(b) are top and bottom views of
the designed structure. The filter has been designed using
duroid6010 and FR4 materials with dielectric constants of 10.8
and 4.4 respectively both having thickness of 0.508mm. The
design of proposed filter is by using coupled microstrip lines
and a defected ground plane separated by the substrate. The
mutual inductance and capacitance can explain the coupling
between each microstrip line conductor and the ground plane.
In most general structures the input and output lines are
connected to the ends of opposite sides of the coupled lines but
here these are connected to the ends in the same sides. Without
DGS this structure naturally shows a band stop property so
DGS is important to consider.
A E
L G
H
F
B C
D
S
(a) Top view (b) Bottom view
Figure 1: Geometry of the filter with proposed parameters
TABLE I. Parameters of Proposed Filter Design
Variable A B C D E F G H L S
Duroid
1 2.5 1.5 0.5 1.4 0.5 1.4 4.1 4 0.2
(mm)
FR4
(mm) 1 2.5 1.5 0.5 1.4 0.5 1.4 5.6 6 0.2
Athar Shahzad | the proposed filter configuration 22
 Parametric analysis has been carried out to demonstrate the
effect of varying lengths (L) of the coupled lines. Results of
insertion loss have been shown in Fig. 1. These results show
that by varying the length there is great effect on the operating
bandwidth of the filter, by increasing the length, the band
become congested and by decreasing length, it expands. At
L=4 it almost fulfils the requirement of bandwidth passed by
FCC for UWB.
Port 1
Figure 5: Improving the isolation of UWB from adjecent bands by varying „S‟
Graphs shows that by varying „S‟ the gain of the filter can
be controlled.

Port 2

Figure 2: Complete geometry of the filter

III. CASCADING OF BANDPASS FILTER

Tentative improvement in the results of the above structure
can be assumed by mirroring the filter. The scheme of the
mirrored structure is shown in fig. 2, where Fig. 2(a) and Fig. Figure 6: Phase response of the filter for transmssion and reflection
2(b) are top and bottom views of the mirrored structure It is coffiecient.
observed that mirroring deteriorates the flat behaviour of A good filter‟s response doesn‟t varry rather it remains
transmission coefficient however with some slight constant through out the band. Above graph of phase shows a
improvements in cut-off slopes. The insertion loss is increasing good linear property throughout the band.
with the increase in frequency due to bad matching conditions
at higher frequencies. Figure 7 shows the graph of insertion
loss after mirroring the original structure.

(a) Top view

Figure 7: group delay

Figure 7, as shown above, signifies that the group delay is
almost constant.

(b) Bottomview
Figure 3: Geometry of higher order band pass filter

IV. SIMULATED RESULTS

Following are results of insertion loss of proposed filter
after simulation.

Figure 8: Comparison of transmission coefficient for mirrored strcuture

Figure 4: Effect of length at controllable higher cutoff
with un-mirrored.
Figure 8 shows the comparison of the mirrored structure with
un-mirrored structure. Graph shows that cascading of the band
pass filter doesn‟t lead to better performance. This is due to the
matching of input to filter, because the input feed of the filter is
divided, due to which there is matching disturbance and
interference is also produced due to cascading. From the graph

Athar Shahzad | Cascading of bandpass filter 23

it is clear that the mirrored graph is more attenuated as
compared to the un-mirrored graph.
Figure 9: Graph of S21 using FR4 and duroid6010
Fig.9 shows the insertion loss of filter using both substrates.
The comparison is explained in following table. TABLE II
shows the result comparison of duroid6010 and FR4. Both
gives approximate bandwidth of UWB but by using FR4 with
maximum attenuation becomes 8 to 9 times greater than from
duroid6010 in passband. It is because FR4 have lower
dielectric constant. FR4 is more cost-effective but duroid6010
have better results and brings compactness in design.
TABLE II. Results comparison of substrates
parameters Duroid6010 FR4
Cut-off frequency 2.88 and 10.62 GHz 3.4 and 10.6 GHz
Bandwidth Cover 2.88-10.62 GHz 3.4-10.6
Pass-band Ripple 0.2dB 0.2dB
Max Attenuation 0.6dB 1.7dB
V. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A band pass filter is designed to have UWB characteristics
with reasonable averaged insertion loss. Cascading of the
structure is studied for improving the slope of cutoff
frequency. It is observed that slope is not improved, rather
cascading devastate flat behavior in the mid band range of
UWB. Upper and lower cutoff frequencies are controllable in
wide range through different parameters. However, cutoff
frequencies are mutually inclusive. Presented filter has linear
phase and hence constant group delay for transmission
coefficient. The filter is good candidate for any UWB
antenna to filter out undesired frequency interference and it
can minimize signal processing computation.
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Athar Shahzad | Results and discussion 24