A New Compact Wideband Filter Based on a Coupled Stepped Impedance Resonator

A new compact wideband filter is introduced to address the requirements of recent communication and radar systems. The filter is based on a quarter-wavelength short-circuit coupled stepped impedance resonator (SIR). The analytical solution shows that the suggested SIR resonator provides a compact size and a wide stopband response, which are essential features in many wireless communication systems. The analytical results also reveal that increasing the impedance ratio of the SIR extends the stopband by increasing the first spurious response and reducing its total length. A compact two-coupled short-circuit SIR filter is designed at 1.23 GHz. The design approach is validated using an ideal transmission line modeling analysis and electromagnetic simulation using CST Microwave Studio 2021. The proposed structure is shown to be flexible, allowing the achievement of a relative bandwidth as low as 5% and as high as 50%. A four-resonator filter is designed by cascading two stages of the designed two-coupled short-circuit SIR filter, which are coupled through a quarter-wavelength line. The simulation results illustrate that the suggested structure can be used to design a filter with any number of resonators. The filter is implemented using a high-resolution LPKF laser machine on Rogers RT/duroid 6010.2LM material with a thickness of 0.635 mm. From the measurements, the bandwidth is found to be 390 MHz and centered at 1325 MHz (29.4% relative bandwidth) and the insertion loss is 1.3 dB. The simulation and experimental results verify the proposed approach and indicate the potential of this component in meeting the design requirements of next-generation microwave circuits related to flexibility and size-compactness.