IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO.
7, JULY 2012
Compact UWB Bandpass Filter With a Notched
Band Using Radial Stub Loaded Resonator
Jin Xu, Wen Wu, Senior Member, IEEE, Wei Kang, and Chen Miao
Abstract—In this letter, a novel compact ultra-wideband (UWB)
microstrip bandpass filter (BPF) with a notched band is presented
by using the proposed radial stub loaded resonator (RSLR). The
RSLR, on the one hand, is able to control two tunable transmission
zeros separately and on the other hand, has the ability to provide a
notched band. In addition, the vertical dimension of the UWB BPF
can be significantly reduced by using RSLR, as compared with
the UWB BPF based on the conventional stub-loaded resonator
(SISLR). For validation, two UWB BPFs, one without the notched
band and the other with a notched band at 8.0 GHz for rejecting
satellite-communication signal, are developed and fabricated.
Measured results show two fabricated filters have the merits
of low insertion losses, sharp rejections and flat group delays.
Moreover, two filters exhibit the simple topologies and compact
sizes.
Index Terms—Bandpass filter (BPF), multiple-mode resonator
(MMR), notched band, radial stub, stub-loaded resonator (SLR),
ultra-wideband (UWB).
I. INTRODUCTION
A S an essential component in ultra-wideband (UWB) sys-
tems, UWB bandpass filter (BPF) is required to be low
cost, compact size and high performance to integrate it with
other components as a low cost and compact system. To this
end, several UWB structures, such as multiple-mode resonator
[1], stub loaded resonator (SLR) [2], [3], ring resonator [4], have
been studied to meet these requirements. The SLR, which has
multiple-mode resonant characteristic and two tunable trans-
mission zeros (TZs), has gathered much attention. However, the
physical length of the conventional SLR is relatively large. In
[2], uniform-impedance SLR is folded for the sake of size re-
duction. In [3], open stubs at the symmetrical side locations
of stepped-impedance SLR (SISLR) can decrease its vertical
dimension. In addition, single or multiple notched bands are
needed inside the passband to avoid interference from existing
radio signals. Thus, many notched band designing techniques,
such as asymmetric interdigital coupled feed line [4], embedded
open stub [5], have been reported.
In this letter, a radial stub loaded resonator (RSLR) is pro-
posed to develop UWB BPFs with and without a notched band.
By utilizing radial stubs to modify the conventional SLR, the
circuit size of the whole filter can be significantly reduced.
Moreover, due to the employment of RSLR, two tunable TZs
Manuscript received March 11, 2012; revised April 25, 2012; accepted May
21, 2012. Date of publication June 06, 2012; date of current version June 30,
2012.
The authors are with the Ministerial Key Laboratory of JGMT, Nanjing
University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China (e-mail:
xujin2njust@126.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this letter are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/LMWC.2012.2201930
1531-1309/$31.00 © 2012 IEEE
351
Fig. 1. (a) Proposed RSLR UWB BPF. (b) Lossless lumped equivalent circuit
of the radial stub given in [6]. (c) Equivalent circuit of RSLR UWB BPF.
can be controlled separately. By using Y-shaped radial stub, a
notched band can be excited to reject the interfered signal inside
the UWB passband. As examples, two UWB BPFs with and
without a notched band are designed, simulated and fabricated.
Two filters are fabricated on the substrate Arlon DiClad 880
( , , ) and simulated
by the full-wave EM simulator HFSS. The simulations and
measurements agree well with each other.
II. CHARACTERISTIC AND DESIGN OF THE RSLR UWB BPF
Fig. 1(a) depicts the topology of the proposed microstrip
RSLR UWB BPF. It consists of one RSLR at the center and two
quarter-wavelength high-impedance interdigital coupled-line
sections with tight coupling on both sides. Fig. 1(b) gives a
broadband lossless lumped equivalent circuit of the radial stub
[6]. When the radii and angle of the radial stub are relatively
small in its electrical size, it can be known from the [6] that
, and is much smaller than , and this lumped
equivalent circuit can be equivalent to a capacitor as done in
[7]. Thus, the equivalent circuit of the proposed RSLR UWB
BPF can be described as shown in Fig. 1(c). The radial stubs
RS1 corresponds to and while RS2 corresponds to .
Fig. 2 gives an ideal frequency response of RSLR UWB BPF
(black solid line) under the parameters chosen as ,
, , , , ,
, . Fig. 2 also plots the ideal fre-
quency response of RSLR without coupled-line (black dashed
line) and the structure given in Fig. 1(c) without (black solid
line with symbol), under the same designing parameters as the
above RSLR UWB BPF. Compared with these three ideal fre-
quency responses, it can be observed that the coupled-line on
both sides of the RSLR excites the multiple-mode resonant char-
acteristic leading to the UWB performance, and two tunable TZs
are independent on the coupled-line. Moreover, generates
the upper TZ and has almost no effect on the lower TZ .
The analytical equations for and are difficult to be
given directly because a high-order transcendental function will
be derived from Fig. 1(c). Fortunately, has almost no effect
on and thus, can be derived from Fig. 1(c) but without
. Then, a first-order transcendental equation, (1a) is derived,
where is in radian unit. The tangent function in (1a) can be
352 IEEE MICROWAVE AND WIRELESS COMPONENTS LETTERS, VOL. 22, NO. 7, JULY 2012

Fig. 5. Simulated of the RSLR UWB BPF with varied and .

Fig. 2. Ideal frequency responses of the RSLR without the coupled-line, RSLR
UWB BPF and the structure of Fig. 1(c) but without the components .

Fig. 6. (a) Configuration of the proposed Y-shaped RSLR UWB BPF with a
notched band. (b) Its equivalent circuit.

Fig. 7. Simulated of the RSLR UWB BPF with a notched band. (a) Varied
with fixed . (b) Varied with fixed .

a good approximation is achieved. Therefore, these equations

meet the simulated results shown in Fig. 2

(1a)

(1b)
Fig. 3. Simulated of the RSLR UWB BPF equivalent circuit with varied
(a) , (b) , (c) , (d) and (e) .
(1c)
and (1d), as shown at the bottom of the page.
In order to quantitatively investigate the parameters , ,
, and affecting on the behaviors of two tunable TZs,
a designing parameters study is done as plotted in Fig. 3. It is
noted that should be selected as small as possible to achieve
a short vertical dimension in the filter design, though it has effect
on two tunable TZs as shown in Fig. 3(b). Moreover, the lower
TZ can be firstly tuned by , and while the upper
Fig. 4. Fabricated RSLR UWB BPF. Simulated and measured (a) -parame- TZ can then be controlled by separately, to achieve the
ters, (b) group delay. (c) Photograph. desired frequencies position in a rational range.
Considering the tight coupling required and the PCB design
substituted by the first two terms of its Taylor series given in rules specified, the strip and slot widths in the interdigital cou-
(1b) and rewrite (1a) as (1c). It can be verified that (1c) has only pled lines are chosen as and , re-
an effective real root as given (1d). The simulated in Fig. 2 spectively. The remaining physical dimensions are slightly ad-
is 2.08 GHz while the calculated using (1d) is 2.1 GHz, and justed as , , ,

(1d)
XU et al.: COMPACT UWB BPF WITH A NOTCHED BAND USING RSLR
Fig. 8. Fabricated RSLR UWB BPF with a notched band. Simulated and mea-
sured (a) -parameters, (b) group delay. (c) Photograph.
TABLE I
COMPARISON WITH THE REPORTED UWB BPFS
, , , ,
. The simulated/measured -parameters and group delay
of the designed UWB BPF are plotted in Fig. 4(a) and (b), re-
spectively. Good agreement can be observed between the simu-
lated and measured results, and the slightly discrepancies are at-
tributed to the fabrication tolerance as well as SMA connectors
which are not considered in the simulation. The fabricated UWB
BPF has a measured bandwidth from 3.19 to 10.64 GHz.
A return loss better than 12 dB, insertion loss less than 0.8 dB
and flat group delay are measured throughout the UWB pass-
band. The filter has a rejection upper stopband from
11.33 to 16.56 GHz. Fig. 4(c) shows the photograph of the fab-
ricated filter, where is the free space wavelength of the oper-
ating frequency at the center of the passband.
III. RSLR UWB BPF WITH A NOTCHED BAND
As shown in Fig. 5, when increases from 8 mm to 13 mm,
a notched band is excited inside UWB passband. This is because
that when increases to a certain degree, a full model of radial
stub given in Fig. 1(b) should be employed in the RSLR UWB
BPF equivalent circuit. The radial stub RS1 will have an infinite
reactance at around [6], which will block the signal
at this frequency range transferring from the input port to output
port and thus, a notched band is generated. However, it results in
a relatively large circuit size if directly increasing to design
the desired notched band. It is found that an extra RS3 as shown
in Fig. 6(a) can be introduced in RSLR UWB BPF structure to
design the notched band. If treating the high impedance trans-
mission line in Fig. 6(b) as an inductor , it is known that a
hybrid series- - shunt in the circuit has the ability to generate a
transmission zero, and that is the notched band. The RS3 acts as a
capacitor , which makes the new Y-shaped RSLR have enough
capacitance to generate a transmission zero inside the frequency
range 3.1 to 10.6 GHz, rather than merging in the stopband. Fig. 7
353
plots the simulated of the Y-shaped RSLR UWB BPF with
varied and under the same physical dimensions to the above
RSLR UWB BPF except RS3. It can be observed that as and
increase, the central frequency of the notched band moves
towards lower frequency while the notched bandwidth becomes
narrower. Moreover, only the upper TZ moves towards lower
frequency as varying. Thus, and the notched bandwidth can
be easily tuned by and of RS3.
The physical sizes of the above RSLR UWB BPF are selected
as the initial dimensions in the RSLR UWB BPF with a notched
band design. The notched band can be tuned by and , and
RS2 can then be tuned to achieve the desired upper TZ . The
remaining dimensions can be slightly tuned to achieve a good
return loss and the optimized dimensions are ,
, , , ,
, , , ,
, , . Compared
with the above RSLR UWB BPF, the physical dimensions of
the RSLR UWB BPF with a notched band do not change dra-
matically, which indicates a simple notched band design proce-
dure. Fig. 8(a) and (b) plots the simulated/measured -param-
eters and group delay of the designed RSLR UWB BPF with
a notched band, respectively. Single notched band is measured
at 8.05 GHz with the notched fractional bandwidth of
1.9%. The measured bandwidth of the filter is from 3.09
to 10.63 GHz. Insertion loss less than 0.8 dB, return loss better
than 11 dB and flat group delay can be observed over the whole
passband except the notched band. Fig. 8(c) gives the photo-
graph of the fabricated UWB BPF with a notched band.
Table I gives the comparison of designed RSLR UWB BPF
with a notched band with the reported ones. As it can be seen, the
designed one exhibits the merit of compacter size. In addition,
a novel notched band technique is presented.
IV. CONCLUSION
Two compact UWB BPFs with and without a notched band
are proposed and fabricated by using the proposed RSLR. The
measured results show that the fabricated filters have sharp
and deep rejections, low insertion losses and flat group delays.
Owing to its simple topology, planar implementation and high
performance, it is very attractive in the practical applications.
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