208 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.18 No.

12, December 2018

Improved Stopband Performance in Ceramic Waveguide filters

using Step impedance and Step Width Resonators
Sharjeel Afridi, Syed Bilal Tirmizi, Asif Khan, Gulsher Lund, Ahmad Waqas, Abdul Qadir

Department of Electrical Engineering, Sukkur IBA University

Abstract
the main idea of this paper is to demonstrate the harmonic
suppression for the integrated monolithic ceramic waveguide 2. Ceramic Waveguide Resonators
filters. The improved stop band harmonic suppression allows us
to integrate the performance of bandpass and stop band filters. Ceramic waveguide resonator harmonics are the function
Two novel designs of monolithic ceramic waveguide filters of its physical dimensions, i.e. its height, width and length.
using step impedance and step width resonators have been
In order to increase the separation between fundamental
presented. A good agreement between the idea and simulated
performance verify the validity of this design methodology.
frequency and its spurious modes, the geometry of the
Keywords resonators needs to be altered. The idea of different width
step impedance, step width, harmonic suppression, stop band resonators and different impedance resonators already
been implemented and validated in [4, 5, 8]. Here we
design a ceramic waveguide resonator with a two different
1. Introduction width, and two different half ridges with in a resonator
shown in figure 1. The difference in width of single
Coaxial filters are widely used component in today’s resonator makes the spurious well apart that they will not
cellular base station transceivers due to their high Q, low contributed as strongly as they did in uniform width
cost and excellent stop band performance. Dielectric ceramic waveguide filters. In second filter we use different
combline filters provides very good stop band rejection size ridge in ceramic waveguide resonators to spread the
but a large size; whereas monolithic ceramic waveguide spurious resonances of a ceramic waveguide filter. The
filters offers a 50% size reduction with same Q factor but single width ceramic waveguide filter only has the
with crowded spurious near the pass band[1, 2]. This leverage to change the length, whereas, the difference in
proximity of harmonics can be suppressed by employing width and height provides extra degree freedom to spread
different techniques in monolithic ceramic waveguide out the spurious resonances resulting in better stop band
filters. Many techniques like ceramic TEM and ceramic attenuation of ceramic waveguide filter.
step impedance resonators can be used to suppress the
harmonics as well as provides the miniaturization for
ceramic filled waveguide filters[3]. Non-uniform width
resonators were also used to improve the stop band
rejection of air-filled and ceramic filled waveguide
filters[4, 5]. There have been other practical approached to
enhance the spurious performance of waveguide filters by
employing ridge ceramic resonators and mixed combline
approach[6, 7].
This paper presents two new design techniques by
employing step width and step impedance in a ceramic
waveguide resonator to improve the overall stop band
rejection without degrading the overall selectivity of a
uniform width ceramic filter[1]. Two six order filters with
step width resonators and different step impedances
resonators have been designed. Fig 1 shows the ceramic Fig. 1 Resonators with Step Width and Step impedance (a) Top view (b)
waveguide resonator with step width and step impedance. Side view

Manuscript received December 5, 2018

Manuscript revised December 20, 2018
IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.18 No.12, December 2018 209

3. Design Methodology
Two six orders integrated ceramic waveguide filters are
designed with the following specification;
Fundamental frequency : 1842 MHz
Bandwidth : 75 MHz
Filter order :6
Permittivity : 45
The input/output coupling and inter-resonator coupling are
realized via metal plated through holes and coaxial probes
respectively, as described in [3]. The input/output probes
are placed at the center of the first and last resonators, Fig. 2 Ceramic waveguide filter with step width resonators (a) Top view
where the E-field is maximum in both filters. The whole (b) Side view
filter structure is metallized with silver paint except for the
i/o probe positions. The probe position, diameter and
depth inside the filter determine the bandwidth, center
frequency and amount of coupling. Other practical issues
of ceramic fabrication for the uniform width ceramic
waveguide filter is already presented in [1].

a. first filter
The filter is designed with ceramic waveguide resonator,
have lower width in the center and greater width in the
corners as shown in figure 1. The simulated design of the
filter is shown in figure 2 and the broadband response of
the filter is provided in figure 3. This response shows the
22 dB stop band rejection upto 3.15 GHz which is 1.75 x Fig. 3 Simulated broadband response of ceramic waveguide filter with
fo. In comparison of ceramic uniform width filter[1], the step width resonator
idea of step-width resonator improve the stop band
attenuation around 40 Ghz.

b. Second filter
This filter is designed with monolithic ceramic waveguide
resonators of uniform width and with half ridge. The first
and last resonators are of same uniform width and all
remaining resonators are used two different size ridges.
The combination of uniform width resonators and
different size ridge resonators further spread the harmonic
resonances that they will not contributing strongly to make
a pass band near fundamental frequency. The simulated
design of ceramic waveguide ridge resonator filter is Fig. 4 Ceramic waveguide filters with step width and uniform width
shown in figure 4 and the broadband response of the filter resonator
is shown in figure 5.
210 IJCSNS International Journal of Computer Science and Network Security, VOL.18 No.12, December 2018

like tuning, manufacturing tolerances, temperature and

power handling.

Acknowledgment

The authors would like to thank Sukkur IBA University

for sponsoring this work.

References
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work can be extended to fabricate these two filter in
monolithic ceramic form.

4. Conclusion
Two new design approaches using step width resonator
and combination of uniform width and half ridge
resonators is proposed to improve the stop band of
uniform width monolithic ceramic waveguide filters. The
simulated results are in good agreement with the
theoretical concepts. This work can be extended to include
the measurement results and deal with other design details