Received: 13 May 2021
DOI: 10.1002/mop.33030
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Design of millimeter-wave
bandpass filters based on
improved asymmetric parallel-
coupled microstrip line
structure for direct detection
system of CubeSat radiometer
Yao Chen1,2 | Sheng-Wei Zhang1
1
Key Laboratory of Microwave Remote Sensing, National Space Science
Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
2
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China
Correspondence
Sheng-Wei Zhang, Key Laboratory of Microwave Remote Sensing,
National Space Science Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing
100190, China.
Email: zhangshengwei@mirslab.cn
Funding information
Space Science Advance Research Project, Grant/Award Number:
XDA15010000
Abstract
In this paper, two improved asymmetric parallel-coupled
microstrip bandpass filters with center frequencies of 89
GHz and 150 GHz were designed and implemented. The
improvement of the circuit structure is based on the rotation
of several asymmetric parallel-coupled microstrip line seg-
ments, which achieves a great area reduction compared to
the conventional structure. The improved bandpass filters
were designed and optimized based on the conventional
structure. The measured results show that the return loss of
the W-band bandpass filter is better than 16 dB and that of
the D-band bandpass filter is better than 15 dB within the
passband. The insertion loss is less than 2.3 dB and 2.5 dB
within the passband for W-band and D-band bandpass fil-
ters, respectively. These results verify the feasibility of the
improved asymmetric parallel-coupled microstrip line ban-
dpass filter as a broadband pre-filter for the direct detection
system of a CubeSat radiometer.
KEYWORDS
bandpass filter, cavity, millimeter-wave, parallel-coupled line, small dimension
Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2021;1–7. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mop
1 | INTRODUCTION
In recent years, as the demand for extreme weather observa-
tions has grown, the technology of millimeter-wave (MMW)
CubeSat radiometers has developed rapidly.1–4 In this work,
89 and 150 GHz are selected as the detection frequencies in
the window area. In addition, both channels adopt direct
detection mode to meet the requirements of radiometer
miniaturization.
At present, bandpass filters for MMW radiometer systems
usually adopt waveguide structures,5–8 which are easy to fabri-
cate and can achieve high performance, but are not convenient
to integrate with other circuit modules. Compared to the wave-
guide type, parallel-coupled microstrip line type bandpass fil-
ters have some natural advantages in circuit integration.
However, most of the reported microstrip line bandpass filters
were designed for low-frequency applications,9–20 and so far,
there are only few reports for MMW applications. In MMW
frequency range, the circuit structures need to be shielded
inside the rectangular cavity to prevent electromagnetic energy
leakage and external electromagnetic interference. Meanwhile,
to avoid high-order longitudinal section magnetic (LSM) mode
cavity resonance, the width of the shielding rectangular cavity
needs to be less than half of the working wavelength, which
makes the conventional parallel-coupled microstrip line ban-
dpass filter circuit unable to be packaged in.
In this work, two parallel-coupled microstrip line type
bandpass filters were designed with 10 GHz bandwidth and
a center frequency of 89 and 150 GHz, respectively, as pre-
filters for direct detection systems of the CubeSat radiome-
ter. The circuit structures of the two parallel-coupled
microstrip line bandpass filters were improved. Figure 1
gives the comparison between the conventional and
improved structure, each parallel-coupled line segment of
the improved circuit structure was rotated by an angle φ on
the basis of the conventional circuit structure. Compared to
the conventional one, this improvement provides an area
reduction without performance deterioration, and makes the
parallel-coupled microstrip line type bandpass filters enable
to be used in MMW radiometer systems which is beneficial
for circuit integration and system miniaturization.
2 | ANALYSIS AND DESIGN
The improved parallel-coupled microstrip line bandpass filters
consist of several parallel-coupled microstrip line segments
with a rotation of an angle φ. Meanwhile, in order to improve
© 2021 Wiley Periodicals LLC. 1
2 CHEN AND ZHANG

FIGURE 1 (A) Conventional parallel-coupled microstrip line bandpass filter; (B) Improved parallel-coupled microstrip line bandpass filter

FIGURE 2 (A) Asymmetric parallel-coupled line segment; (B) Equivalent circuit

the return loss characteristics of these two filters, asymmetric where kL and kc are the capacitive and inductive coupling
parallel-coupled line segment, as shown in Figure 2A, was coefficients of nonidentical microstrip coupled line and they
adopted in the design.21–23 The equivalent circuit of the asym- can be written as follows:

     pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi 
1 εr þ 1 1
kc ¼ 0:55exp  1 þ ln S=h þ εr þ 1 ðW 1 þ W 2 Þ=2h , ð5Þ
4 2 10
      
1 μr þ 1 1 pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
kL ¼ 0:55exp  1 þ ln S=h þ μr þ 1 ðW 1 þ W 2 Þ=2h , ð6Þ
4 2 10

metric parallel-coupled line segment is shown in Figure 2B. where W 1 and W 2 are the width of the two microstrip lines,
The mode impedances of the two lines and the ratio of S is the gap spacing between the two lines, and h is the sub-
wave voltages for the C-mode and π-mode can be calculated strate thickness.
as follows23: In this article, a three-order Chebyshev model was selected to
be the fundamental model. The structural diagram of the three-
βc,π ðβ2 k L  β1 k c Þ
Z c1,π1 ¼ Z 01
 , ð1Þ order conventional and improved asymmetric parallel-coupled
k L β1 β2 1  k 2c  β2c,π kc microstrip line bandpass filters are shown in Figure 3A,B.
βc,π ðβ1 k L  β2 k c Þ In order to minimize the area of the bandpass filter and make
Z c2,π2 ¼ Z 02
 , ð2Þ
k L β1 β2 1  k 2c  β2c,π kc it more convenient to connect with the front and rear stage circuits,
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi the Stotal was restricted to zero. The Stotal can be expressed as:
Z 02 β1 β2 ðβ1 k L  β2 k c Þ
Rc,π ¼
, ð3Þ Stotal ¼ W þ ðW 2 þ W 3 þ W 4 þ S1 þ S2 þ S3 þ S4 Þcos φ
Z 01 β2c,π  β22  k L k c β1 β2
 ðL1 þ L2 þ L3 þ L4 Þsin φ, ð7Þ
where Z 01 and Z 02 are the uncoupled characteristic imped-
where W is the width of the 50 Ω transmission line.
ances while β1 and β2 are the phase constants of Line 1 and
When Stotal ¼ 0, the angle φ can be calculated as follow:
Line 2, respectively. In addition, the phase constants of the
!  
C- and π-mode can be defined by: W A
vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi φ ¼ arcsin pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi þ arctan , ð8Þ
u 
0 vffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
u pffiffiffi 2 2

ffi1 A þB
2 2 B
u 2 u
u β þ β2 2
2β β 1  k c 1  k L A 2 2
βc,π ¼ t 1  k L k c β 1 β 2 @ 1  t1 
1 2 2 ,
2 β21 þ β22  2k L kc β1 β2 where A ¼ W 2 þ W 3 þ W 4 þ S1 þ S2 þ S3 þ S4 and B¼
ð4Þ L1 þL2 þ L3 þ L4 .
CHEN AND ZHANG 3

F I G U R E 3 (A) Conventional structure of the three-order bandpass filter; (B) Improved structure of the three-order bandpass filter; (C) Short
bend line structure; (D) Equivalent circuit of improved bandpass filter

F I G U R E 4 (A) W-band bandpass filter circuit; (B) D-band bandpass filter circuit; (C) Simulated S-parameters of W-band bandpass filter;
(D) Simulated S-parameters of D-band bandpass filter [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

The rotation changed the connection structure between
the parallel-coupled line segment and the transmission line
at the first and last stages of the filter. A short bend line,
which can be equivalent to a parasitic reactance, was added
between the rotated parallel-coupled microstrip line segment
and the transmission line to connect these two
structures,24,25 as shown in Figure 3C. The equivalent circuit
of the completely improved bandpass filter can be seen as
the conventional bandpass filter with added parasitic
reactance at both first and last stages, as shown in
Figure 3D. Two improved asymmetric parallel-coupled
microstrip line bandpass filters were finally modeled and
optimized in high frequency structure simulator. The opti-
mized models of the two bandpass filters are shown in
Figure 4A,B.
To avoid the high-order LSM mode cavity resonance, the
width of the rectangular cavity was designed to be 1.2 and
0.65 mm for W- and D-band bandpass filter, respectively. In
4 CHEN AND ZHANG

F I G U R E 5 (A) Simulated results of W-band bandpass filter with tuned W 3 ; (B) Simulated results of D-band bandpass filter with tuned W 3 ;
(C) Simulated results of W-band bandpass filter with tuned L2 ; (D) Simulated results of D-band bandpass filter with tuned L2 ; (E) Simulated results
of W-band bandpass filter with tuned S2 ; (F) Simulated results of D-band bandpass filter with tuned S2 [Color figure can be viewed at
wileyonlinelibrary.com]

addition, the E-plane waveguide-to-microstrip line transition
structure was adopted to couple the energy to microstrip line
from rectangular waveguide. The simulated S-parameters of
the two modules are shown in Figure 4C,D. The simulated
S-parameter results show that the return loss of the W- and
D-band bandpass filters are better than 20 and 18 dB within
10 GHz passband, respectively. In addition, the insertion loss
of both of the filters is less than 1.1 dB within the passband.
The effects of W, S, and L on passband were also simu-
lated and analyzed in this work, and W 3 , L2 , L3 , S2 , and S3
were found to be the most influential parameters. Figure 5
shows the frequency responses of the filters with different
W 3 , L2 , and S2 , respectively. As seen in Figure 5A,B, by
increasing W 3 , the passband will shift to the lower fre-
quency. In addition, L2 and L3 have the similar influence on
passband, Figure 5C,D show the influence of L2 . Compared
CHEN AND ZHANG 5

F I G U R E 6 (A) photo of W-band bandpass filter; (B) Photo of D-band bandpass filter; (C) Measured and simulated S-parameters of W-band
bandpass filter; (D) Measured and simulated S-parameters of D-band bandpass filter [Color figure can be viewed at wileyonlinelibrary.com]

TABLE 1 A comparison between the asymmetric parallel-coupled microstrip line bandpass filters and some previously published designs

Reference Frequency (GHz) Return loss (dB) Insertion loss (dB) Type Dimension (λg2)
5 80.2–85.2 >8 <1 Waveguide —
7 131.1–152.3 — <0.5 Waveguide —
134.65–149.15 — <0.7 Waveguide —
8 134–146 >15 Avg 0.5 Waveguide —
12 2.38–2.42 >27 <0.22 Microstrip line 0.162  0.075
5.68–5.72 >23.8 <0.56
13 2.42–2.54 >20 <1.92 Microstrip line 0.41  0.197
14 2.3–2.7 >20 <1 Microstrip line —
3.6–4 >20 <2
15 2.365–2.435 >22 <0.64 Microstrip line 0.126  0.132
5.65–5.75 >21.3 <0.76
16 2.3–2.7 >18 <0.24 Microstrip line 0.31  0.32
3.43–3.93 >17 <0.33
4.71–5.37 >22 <0.4
This work 83.7–95.4 >15 <2.3 Microstrip line 1.031  0.206
147.1–157.6 >15 <2.5 Microstrip line 1.053  0.321

to W 3 , increasing L2 or L3 will also cause the shifting of the similar influence as S2 on bandwidth. By increasing S2 or S3 ,
passband, but the effect is much more significant. More- the bandwidth of the filters will correspondingly become
over, Figure 5E,F show the influence of S2 , S3 has the narrower.
6 CHEN AND ZHANG
3 | FABR ICA TIO N AND
MEASURMENT
The fabricated circuit was installed in a rectangular cavity.
The substrate of the circuit was made of quartz glass with a
relative dielectric constant of 3.78 and a thickness of
100 μm. The quartz glass circuit was connected with the
cavity through 15 μm thick conductive adhesive. The photos
of the two bandpass filter modules and their circuits are
shown in Figure 6A,B.
The S-parameters of the two bandpass filters were mea-
sured by the vector network analyzer with two extension
modules. The simulated and measured S-parameters of the
two bandpass filters are shown in Figure 6C,D. The test
results show that the return loss of the W-band bandpass fil-
ter is better than 15 dB in the range of 83.7–95.4 GHz and
the return loss of the D-band bandpass filter is better than
15 dB in the range of 147.1–157.6 GHz. Meanwhile, the
insertion loss is less than 2.3 and 2.5 dB within the passband
for W- and D-band bandpass filters, respectively. The gray
curves show the sweep results with assumed tolerance of
10 μm of each bandpass filter parameter. The differences
between the test results and the simulated results of the two
bandpass filters are basically within the assumed tolerance.
These differences can be known as the consequences of the
fabrication deviation of the quartz circuit, and the assembly
deviation of the module packaging, which will have a
greater impact on the module performance with increasing
application frequency.
Furthermore, a comparison between this work and the
referenced designs is illustrated in Table 1. It is obvious in
Table 1 that all of the bandpass filters used in MMW
frequency adopted waveguide structures, and all of the
microstrip line type bandpass filters were designed for low-
frequency applications. Compared with other bandpass
filters, the filters proposed in this article show acceptable
performances with small enough dimensions, which make
the filters enable to be used in MMW frequency.
4 | CONCLUSION
In this article, two improved asymmetric parallel-coupled
microstrip line bandpass filters with a center frequency of
89 and 150 GHz, respectively, were designed and
implemented as the prefilters for the CubeSat radiometer
direct detection systems. The improved circuit structure,
which consists of several rotated asymmetric parallel-
coupled microstrip line segments, achieved a great area
reduction compared to the conventional one. The area reduc-
tion of the circuit allows the parallel-coupled microstrip line
type bandpass filters to be packaged in the rectangular cavity
with a restricted width and used in MMW applications.
Measured results show that the return loss of the W-band
bandpass filter is better than 15 dB in the range of 83.7–
95.4 GHz and the return loss of the D-band bandpass filter is
better than 15 dB in the range of 147.1–157.6 GHz. The
insertion loss is less than 2.3 and 2.5 dB within the passband
for W- and D-band bandpass filters, respectively. These
results verify that the improved asymmetric parallel-coupled
microstrip line bandpass filters can completely meet the
technical requirements as the broadband prefilters of
the CubeSat radiometer direct detection systems.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work is supported by the Space Science Advance
Research Project (XDA15010000).
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
The data that support the findings of this study are available
from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
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How to cite this article: Chen Y, Zhang S-W.
Design of millimeter-wave bandpass filters based on
improved asymmetric parallel-coupled microstrip line
structure for direct detection system of CubeSat radi-
ometer. Microw Opt Technol Lett. 2021;1–7. https://
doi.org/10.1002/mop.33030