Design of compact multiband bandpass filter with suppression of second harmonic spurious by coupling gap reduction

In this paper, we describe a method to implement compact multiband bandpass filters with suppression of second harmonic frequency. This filter design approach is based on decreasing the coupling gap between adjacent resonators of a parallel-coupled-line bandpass filter in order to achieve both the desired multiband frequency response and the spurious suppression. We present the theoretical analysis of the proposed structure that consists of modeling the frequency dependence of the even- and odd-mode characteristic impedances as well as due to the different phase velocities of the parallel-coupled microstrip lines. As an example, a compact tri-band parallel-coupled-line bandpass filter with suppression of second harmonic frequency was implemented operating at 1.9/3.2/4.6 GHz to cover PCS1900, WiMAX, and C-band applications. A three-pole Chebyshev parallel-coupled microstrip bandpass filter was designed at a center frequency of 3.2 GHz and used as the basis to validate the gapping effect on the filter response which also achieves a narrower bandwidth for the second harmonic. Finally, the filter performance with minimized coupling gap is compared to a filter enhanced by the insertion of apertures in the ground plane. Generally speaking, good agreement was accomplished between simulated, calculated, and measured results.