# Distributed element filter

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 Low-noise block converter The circuit depicted in figure 1 is a low-noise block converter and is intended to be attached to a satellite television receiving dish antenna. It is called a block converter because it converts a large number of satellite channels as a block with no attempt to extract to a particular channel. Even though the transmission has travelled 22,000 miles from the satellite orbit, there is a problem getting the signal the last few feet from the dish to the point where it will be used inside the property. The difficulty is that the signal is brought inside the property by a cable (called a downlead) and the high satellite signal frequencies are greatly attenuated when in a cable rather than free space. The purpose of the block converter is to convert the satellite signal to a much lower frequency band that can be handled by the downlead and the user's set-top box. Frequencies depend on satellite system and geographical region, but this particular device converts a block of frequencies in the band 10.7 GHz to 11.8 GHz. The output going to the downlead is in the band 950 MHz to 1950 MHz. The two F connectors at the bottom of the device are for connection to downleads. Two are provided on this particular model (block converters can have any number of outputs from one upwards) so that two televisions or a television and VCR can be tuned to two different channels at the same time. The receiving horn would normally be fitted to the circular hole in the centre of the board, the two probes protruding into this space are for receiving horizontally and vertically polarized signals respectively and the device can be switched between these two. Many filter structures can be seen in the circuit: there are two examples of band-pass parallel-coupled lines filters which are there to restrict the incoming signal to the band of interest. The relatively large width of the resonators (compare to the microstrip example in figure 2, or the local oscillator filters below and to the right of the central metal oblong) reflect the wide bandwidth the filter is required to pass. There are also numerous examples of stub filters supplying DC bias to transistors and other devices, the filter being required to prevent the signal from travelling towards the power source. The rows of holes in some tracks, called via fences, are not filtering structures but form part of the enclosure. [1] [2] [3]

A distributed element filter is an electronic filter in which capacitance, inductance and resistance (the elements of the circuit) are not localised in discrete capacitors, inductors and resistors as they are in conventional filters. Its purpose is to allow a range of signal frequencies to pass, but to block others. Conventional filters are constructed from inductors and capacitors, and the circuits so built are described by the lumped element model, which considers each element to be "lumped together" at one place. That model is conceptually simple, but it becomes increasingly unreliable as the frequency of the signal increases, or equivalently as the wavelength decreases. The distributed element model applies at all frequencies, and is used in transmission line theory; many distributed element components are made of short lengths of transmission line. In the distributed view of circuits, the elements are distributed along the length of conductors and are inextricably mixed together. The filter design is usually concerned only with inductance and capacitance, but because of this mixing of elements they cannot be treated as separate "lumped" capacitors and inductors. There is no precise frequency above which distributed element filters must be used but they are especially associated with the microwave band (wavelength less than one metre).

Electronic filters are circuits which perform signal processing functions, specifically to remove unwanted frequency components from the signal, to enhance wanted ones, or both. Electronic filters can be:

Capacitance is the ratio of the change in an electric charge in a system to the corresponding change in its electric potential. There are two closely related notions of capacitance: self capacitance and mutual capacitance. Any object that can be electrically charged exhibits self capacitance. A material with a large self capacitance holds more electric charge at a given voltage than one with low capacitance. The notion of mutual capacitance is particularly important for understanding the operations of the capacitor, one of the three elementary linear electronic components.

In electromagnetism and electronics, inductance describes the tendency of an electrical conductor, such as coil, to oppose a change in the electric current through it. The change in current induces a reverse electromotive force (voltage). When an electric current flows through a conductor, it creates a magnetic field around that conductor. A changing current, in turn, creates a changing magnetic field, the surface integral of which is known as magnetic flux. From Faraday's law of induction, any change in magnetic flux through a circuit induces an electromotive force (voltage) across that circuit, a phenomenon known as electromagnetic induction. Inductance is specifically defined as the ratio between this induced voltage and the rate of change of the current in the circuit

## Contents

Distributed element filters are used in many of the same applications as lumped element filters, such as selectivity of radio channel, bandlimiting of noise and multiplexing of many signals into one channel. Distributed element filters may be constructed to have any of the bandforms possible with lumped elements (low-pass, band-pass, etc.) with the exception of high-pass, which is usually only approximated. All filter classes used in lumped element designs (Butterworth, Chebyshev, etc.) can be implemented using a distributed element approach.

Selectivity is a measure of the performance of a radio receiver to respond only to the radio signal it is tuned to and reject other signals nearby in frequency, such as another broadcast on an adjacent channel.

In telecommunications, frequency-division multiplexing (FDM) is a technique by which the total bandwidth available in a communication medium is divided into a series of non-overlapping frequency bands, each of which is used to carry a separate signal. This allows a single transmission medium such as a cable or optical fiber to be shared by multiple independent signals. Another use is to carry separate serial bits or segments of a higher rate signal in parallel.

The Butterworth filter is a type of signal processing filter designed to have a frequency response as flat as possible in the passband. It is also referred to as a maximally flat magnitude filter. It was first described in 1930 by the British engineer and physicist Stephen Butterworth in his paper entitled "On the Theory of Filter Amplifiers".

There are many component forms used to construct distributed element filters, but all have the common property of causing a discontinuity on the transmission line. These discontinuities present a reactive impedance to a wavefront travelling down the line, and these reactances can be chosen by design to serve as approximations for lumped inductors, capacitors or resonators, as required by the filter. [4]

In electrical and electronic systems, reactance is the opposition of a circuit element to a change in current or voltage, due to that element's inductance or capacitance. The notion of reactance is similar to electrical resistance, but it differs in several respects.

An inductor, also called a coil, choke, or reactor, is a passive two-terminal electrical component that stores energy in a magnetic field when electric current flows through it. An inductor typically consists of an insulated wire wound into a coil around a core.

A capacitor is a passive two-terminal electronic component that stores electrical energy in an electric field. The effect of a capacitor is known as capacitance. While some capacitance exists between any two electrical conductors in proximity in a circuit, a capacitor is a component designed to add capacitance to a circuit. The capacitor was originally known as a condenser or condensator. The original name is still widely used in many languages, but not commonly in English.

The development of distributed element filters was spurred on by the military need for radar and electronic counter measures during World War II. Lumped element analogue filters had long before been developed but these new military systems operated at microwave frequencies and new filter designs were required. When the war ended, the technology found applications in the microwave links used by telephone companies and other organisations with large fixed-communication networks, such as television broadcasters. Nowadays the technology can be found in several mass-produced consumer items, such as the converters (figure 1 shows an example) used with satellite television dishes.

Radar is a detection system that uses radio waves to determine the range, angle, or velocity of objects. It can be used to detect aircraft, ships, spacecraft, guided missiles, motor vehicles, weather formations, and terrain. A radar system consists of a transmitter producing electromagnetic waves in the radio or microwaves domain, a transmitting antenna, a receiving antenna and a receiver and processor to determine properties of the object(s). Radio waves from the transmitter reflect off the object and return to the receiver, giving information about the object's location and speed.

Analogue filters are a basic building block of signal processing much used in electronics. Amongst their many applications are the separation of an audio signal before application to bass, mid-range and tweeter loudspeakers; the combining and later separation of multiple telephone conversations onto a single channel; the selection of a chosen radio station in a radio receiver and rejection of others.

A satellite dish is a dish-shaped type of parabolic antenna designed to receive or transmit information by radio waves to or from a communication satellite. The term most commonly means a dish used by consumers to receive direct-broadcast satellite television from a direct broadcast satellite in geostationary orbit.

The symbol λ is used to mean the wavelength of the signal being transmitted on the line or a section of line of that electrical length.

Distributed element filters are mostly used at frequencies above the VHF (Very High Frequency) band (30 to 300 MHz). At these frequencies, the physical length of passive components is a significant fraction of the wavelength of the operating frequency, and it becomes difficult to use the conventional lumped element model. The exact point at which distributed element modelling becomes necessary depends on the particular design under consideration. A common rule of thumb is to apply distributed element modelling when component dimensions are larger than 0.1λ. The increasing miniaturisation of electronics has meant that circuit designs are becoming ever smaller compared to λ. The frequencies beyond which a distributed element approach to filter design becomes necessary are becoming ever higher as a result of these advances. On the other hand, antenna structure dimensions are usually comparable to λ in all frequency bands and require the distributed element model. [5]

The lumped element model simplifies the description of the behaviour of spatially distributed physical systems into a topology consisting of discrete entities that approximate the behaviour of the distributed system under certain assumptions. It is useful in electrical systems, mechanical multibody systems, heat transfer, acoustics, etc.

In radio engineering, an antenna is the interface between radio waves propagating through space and electric currents moving in metal conductors, used with a transmitter or receiver. In transmission, a radio transmitter supplies an electric current to the antenna's terminals, and the antenna radiates the energy from the current as electromagnetic waves. In reception, an antenna intercepts some of the power of a radio wave in order to produce an electric current at its terminals, that is applied to a receiver to be amplified. Antennas are essential components of all radio equipment.

The most noticeable difference in behaviour between a distributed element filter and its lumped-element approximation is that the former will have multiple passband replicas of the lumped-element prototype passband, because transmission line transfer characteristics repeat at harmonic intervals. These spurious passbands are undesirable in most cases. [6]

A passband is the range of frequencies or wavelengths that can pass through a filter. For example, a radio receiver contains a bandpass filter to select the frequency of the desired radio signal out of all the radio waves picked up by its antenna. The passband of a receiver is the range of frequencies it can receive.

Prototype filters are electronic filter designs that are used as a template to produce a modified filter design for a particular application. They are an example of a nondimensionalised design from which the desired filter can be scaled or transformed. They are most often seen in regard to electronic filters and especially linear analogue passive filters. However, in principle, the method can be applied to any kind of linear filter or signal processing, including mechanical, acoustic and optical filters.

For clarity of presentation, the diagrams in this article are drawn with the components implemented in stripline format. This does not imply an industry preference, although planar transmission line formats (that is, formats where conductors consist of flat strips) are popular because they can be implemented using established printed circuit board manufacturing techniques. The structures shown can also be implemented using microstrip or buried stripline techniques (with suitable adjustments to dimensions) and can be adapted to coaxial cables, twin leads and waveguides, although some structures are more suitable for some implementations than others. The open wire implementations, for instance, of a number of structures are shown in the second column of figure 3 and open wire equivalents can be found for most other stripline structures. Planar transmission lines are also used in integrated circuit designs. [7]

## History

Development of distributed element filters began in the years before World War II. Warren P. Mason founded the field of distributed element circuits. [8] A major paper on the subject was published by Mason and Sykes in 1937. [9] Mason had filed a patent [10] much earlier, in 1927, and that patent may contain the first published electrical design which moves away from a lumped element analysis. [11] Mason and Sykes' work was focused on the formats of coaxial cable and balanced pairs of wires – the planar technologies were not yet in use. Much development was carried out during the war years driven by the filtering needs of radar and electronic counter-measures. A good deal of this was at the MIT Radiation Laboratory, [12] but other laboratories in the US and the UK were also involved. [13] [14]

Some important advances in network theory were needed before filters could be advanced beyond wartime designs. One of these was the commensurate line theory of Paul Richards. [15] Commensurate lines are networks in which all the elements are the same length (or in some cases multiples of the unit length), although they may differ in other dimensions to give different characteristic impedances. Richards' transformation allows a lumped element design to be taken "as is" and transformed directly into a distributed element design using a very simple transform equation. [16]

The difficulty with Richards' transformation from the point of view of building practical filters was that the resulting distributed element design invariably included series connected elements. This was not possible to implement in planar technologies and was often inconvenient in other technologies. This problem was solved by K. Kuroda who used impedance transformers to eliminate the series elements. He published a set of transformations known as Kuroda's identities in 1955, but his work was written in Japanese and it was several years before his ideas were incorporated into the English-language literature. [17]

Following the war, one important research avenue was trying to increase the design bandwidth of wide-band filters. The approach used at the time (and still in use today) was to start with a lumped element prototype filter and through various transformations arrive at the desired filter in a distributed element form. This approach appeared to be stuck at a minimum Q of five (see Band-pass filters below for an explanation of Q). In 1957, Leo Young at Stanford Research Institute published a method for designing filters which started with a distributed element prototype. [18] This prototype was based on quarter wave impedance transformers and was able to produce designs with bandwidths up to an octave, corresponding to a Q of about 1.3. Some of Young's procedures in that paper were empirical, but later, [19] exact solutions were published. Young's paper specifically addresses directly coupled cavity resonators, but the procedure can equally be applied to other directly coupled resonator types, such as those found in modern planar technologies and illustrated in this article. The capacitive gap filter (figure 8) and the parallel-coupled lines filter (figure 9) are examples of directly coupled resonators. [16]

The introduction of printed planar technologies greatly simplified the manufacture of many microwave components including filters, and microwave integrated circuits then became possible. It is not known when planar transmission lines originated, but experiments using them were recorded as early as 1936. [20] The inventor of printed stripline, however, is known; this was Robert M. Barrett who published the idea in 1951. [21] This caught on rapidly, and Barrett's stripline soon had fierce commercial competition from rival planar formats, especially triplate and microstrip. The generic term stripline in modern usage usually refers to the form then known as triplate. [22]

Early stripline directly coupled resonator filters were end-coupled, but the length was reduced and the compactness successively increased with the introduction of parallel-coupled line filters, [23] interdigital filters, [24] and comb-line filters. [25] Much of this work was published by the group at Stanford led by George Matthaei, and also including Leo Young mentioned above, in a landmark book which still today serves as a reference for circuit designers. [26] [27] The hairpin filter was first described in 1972. [28] [29] By the 1970s, most of the filter topologies in common use today had been described. [30] More recent research has concentrated on new or variant mathematical classes of the filters, such as pseudo-elliptic, while still using the same basic topologies, or with alternative implementation technologies such as suspended stripline and finline. [31]

The initial non-military application of distributed element filters was in the microwave links used by telecommunications companies to provide the backbone of their networks. These links were also used by other industries with large, fixed networks, notably television broadcasters. [32] Such applications were part of large capital investment programs. However, mass-production manufacturing made the technology cheap enough to incorporate in domestic satellite television systems. [33] An emerging application is in superconducting filters for use in the cellular base stations operated by mobile phone companies. [34]

## Basic components

The simplest structure that can be implemented is a step in the characteristic impedance of the line, which introduces a discontinuity in the transmission characteristics. This is done in planar technologies by a change in the width of the transmission line. Figure 4(a) shows a step up in impedance (narrower lines have higher impedance). A step down in impedance would be the mirror image of figure 4(a). The discontinuity can be represented approximately as a series inductor, or more exactly, as a low-pass T circuit as shown in figure 4(a). [35] Multiple discontinuities are often coupled together with impedance transformers to produce a filter of higher order. These impedance transformers can be just a short (often λ/4) length of transmission line. These composite structures can implement any of the filter families (Butterworth, Chebyshev, etc.) by approximating the rational transfer function of the corresponding lumped element filter. This correspondence is not exact since distributed element circuits cannot be rational and is the root reason for the divergence of lumped element and distributed element behaviour. Impedance transformers are also used in hybrid mixtures of lumped and distributed element filters (the so-called semi-lumped structures). [36]

Another very common component of distributed element filters is the stub. Over a narrow range of frequencies, a stub can be used as a capacitor or an inductor (its impedance is determined by its length) but over a wide band it behaves as a resonator. Short-circuit, nominally quarter-wavelength stubs (figure 3(a)) behave as shunt LC antiresonators, and an open-circuit nominally quarter-wavelength stub (figure 3(b)) behaves as a series LC resonator. Stubs can also be used in conjunction with impedance transformers to build more complex filters and, as would be expected from their resonant nature, are most useful in band-pass applications. [39] While open-circuit stubs are easier to manufacture in planar technologies, they have the drawback that the termination deviates significantly from an ideal open circuit (see figure 4(b)), often leading to a preference for short-circuit stubs (one can always be used in place of the other by adding or subtracting λ/4 to or from the length). [35]

A helical resonator is similar to a stub, in that it requires a distributed element model to represent it, but is actually built using lumped elements. They are built in a non-planar format and consist of a coil of wire, on a former and core, and connected only at one end. The device is usually in a shielded can with a hole in the top for adjusting the core. It will often look physically very similar to the lumped LC resonators used for a similar purpose. They are most useful in the upper VHF and lower UHF bands whereas stubs are more often applied in the higher UHF and SHF bands. [40]

Coupled lines (figures 3(c-e)) can also be used as filter elements; like stubs, they can act as resonators and likewise be terminated short-circuit or open-circuit. Coupled lines tend to be preferred in planar technologies, where they are easy to implement, whereas stubs tend to be preferred elsewhere. Implementing a true open circuit in planar technology is not feasible because of the dielectric effect of the substrate which will always ensure that the equivalent circuit contains a shunt capacitance. Despite this, open circuits are often used in planar formats in preference to short circuits because they are easier to implement. Numerous element types can be classified as coupled lines and a selection of the more common ones is shown in the figures. [41]

Some common structures are shown in figures 3 and 4, along with their lumped-element counterparts. These lumped-element approximations are not to be taken as equivalent circuits but rather as a guide to the behaviour of the distributed elements over a certain frequency range. Figures 3(a) and 3(b) show a short-circuit and open-circuit stub, respectively. When the stub length is λ/4, these behave, respectively, as anti-resonators and resonators and are therefore useful, respectively, as elements in band-pass and band-stop filters. Figure 3(c) shows a short-circuited line coupled to the main line. This also behaves as a resonator, but is commonly used in low-pass filter applications with the resonant frequency well outside the band of interest. Figures 3(d) and 3(e) show coupled line structures which are both useful in band-pass filters. The structures of figures 3(c) and 3(e) have equivalent circuits involving stubs placed in series with the line. Such a topology is straightforward to implement in open-wire circuits but not with a planar technology. These two structures are therefore useful for implementing an equivalent series element. [42]

## Low-pass filters

A low-pass filter can be implemented quite directly from a ladder topology lumped-element prototype with the stepped impedance filter shown in figure 5. This is also called a cascaded lines design. The filter consists of alternating sections of high-impedance and low-impedance lines which correspond to the series inductors and shunt capacitors in the lumped-element implementation. Low-pass filters are commonly used to feed direct current (DC) bias to active components. Filters intended for this application are sometimes referred to as chokes. In such cases, each element of the filter is λ/4 in length (where λ is the wavelength of the main-line signal to be blocked from transmission into the DC source) and the high-impedance sections of the line are made as narrow as the manufacturing technology will allow in order to maximise the inductance. [43] Additional sections may be added as required for the performance of the filter just as they would for the lumped-element counterpart. As well as the planar form shown, this structure is particularly well suited for coaxial implementations with alternating discs of metal and insulator being threaded on to the central conductor. [44] [45] [46]

A more complex example of stepped impedance design is presented in figure 6. Again, narrow lines are used to implement inductors and wide lines correspond to capacitors, but in this case, the lumped-element counterpart has resonators connected in shunt across the main line. This topology can be used to design elliptical filters or Chebyshev filters with poles of attenuation in the stopband. However, calculating component values for these structures is an involved process and has led to designers often choosing to implement them as m-derived filters instead, which perform well and are much easier to calculate. The purpose of incorporating resonators is to improve the stopband rejection. However, beyond the resonant frequency of the highest frequency resonator, the stopband rejection starts to deteriorate as the resonators are moving towards open-circuit. For this reason, filters built to this design often have an additional single stepped-impedance capacitor as the final element of the filter. [47] This also ensures good rejection at high frequency. [48] [49] [50]

Another common low-pass design technique is to implement the shunt capacitors as stubs with the resonant frequency set above the operating frequency so that the stub impedance is capacitive in the passband. This implementation has a lumped-element counterpart of a general form similar to the filter of figure 6. Where space allows, the stubs may be set on alternate sides of the main line as shown in figure 7(a). The purpose of this is to prevent coupling between adjacent stubs which detracts from the filter performance by altering the frequency response. However, a structure with all the stubs on the same side is still a valid design. If the stub is required to be a very low impedance line, the stub may be inconveniently wide. In these cases, a possible solution is to connect two narrower stubs in parallel. That is, each stub position has a stub on both sides of the line. A drawback of this topology is that additional transverse resonant modes are possible along the λ/2 length of line formed by the two stubs together. For a choke design, the requirement is simply to make the capacitance as large as possible, for which the maximum stub width of λ/4 may be used with stubs in parallel on both sides of the main line. The resulting filter looks rather similar to the stepped impedance filter of figure 5, but has been designed on completely different principles. [43] A difficulty with using stubs this wide is that the point at which they are connected to the main line is ill-defined. A stub that is narrow in comparison to λ can be taken as being connected on its centre-line and calculations based on that assumption will accurately predict filter response. For a wide stub, however, calculations that assume the side branch is connected at a definite point on the main line leads to inaccuracies as this is no longer a good model of the transmission pattern. One solution to this difficulty is to use radial stubs instead of linear stubs. A pair of radial stubs in parallel (one on either side of the main line) is called a butterfly stub (see figure 7(b)). A group of three radial stubs in parallel, which can be achieved at the end of a line, is called a clover-leaf stub. [51] [52]

## Band-pass filters

A band-pass filter can be constructed using any elements that can resonate. Filters using stubs can clearly be made band-pass; numerous other structures are possible and some are presented below.

An important parameter when discussing band-pass filters is the fractional bandwidth. This is defined as the ratio of the bandwidth to the geometric centre frequency. The inverse of this quantity is called the Q-factor, Q. If ω1 and ω2 are the frequencies of the passband edges, then: [53]

bandwidth ${\displaystyle \Delta \omega =\omega _{2}-\omega _{1}\,}$,
geometric centre frequency ${\displaystyle \omega _{0}={\sqrt {\omega _{1}\omega _{2}}}}$ and
${\displaystyle Q={\frac {\omega _{0}}{\Delta \omega }}}$

### Capacitive gap filter

The capacitive gap structure consists of sections of line about λ/2 in length which act as resonators and are coupled "end-on" by gaps in the transmission line. It is particularly suitable for planar formats, is easily implemented with printed circuit technology and has the advantage of taking up no more space than a plain transmission line would. The limitation of this topology is that performance (particularly insertion loss) deteriorates with increasing fractional bandwidth, and acceptable results are not obtained with a Q less than about 5. A further difficulty with producing low-Q designs is that the gap width is required to be smaller for wider fractional bandwidths. The minimum width of gaps, like the minimum width of tracks, is limited by the resolution of the printing technology. [46] [54]

### Parallel-coupled lines filter

Parallel-coupled lines is another popular topology for printed boards, for which open-circuit lines are the simplest to implement since the manufacturing consists of nothing more than the printed track. The design consists of a row of parallel λ/2 resonators, but coupling over only λ/4 to each of the neighbouring resonators, so forming a staggered line as shown in figure 9. Wider fractional bandwidths are possible with this filter than with the capacitive gap filter, but a similar problem arises on printed boards as dielectric loss reduces the Q. Lower-Q lines require tighter coupling and smaller gaps between them which is limited by the accuracy of the printing process. One solution to this problem is to print the track on multiple layers with adjacent lines overlapping but not in contact because they are on different layers. In this way, the lines can be coupled across their width, which results in much stronger coupling than when they are edge-to-edge, and a larger gap becomes possible for the same performance. [55] For other (non-printed) technologies, short-circuit lines may be preferred since the short-circuit provides a mechanical attachment point for the line and Q-reducing dielectric insulators are not required for mechanical support. Other than for mechanical and assembly reasons, there is little preference for open-circuit over short-circuit coupled lines. Both structures can realize the same range of filter implementations with the same electrical performance. Both types of parallel-coupled filters, in theory, do not have spurious passbands at twice the centre frequency as seen in many other filter topologies (e.g., stubs). However, suppression of this spurious passband requires perfect tuning of the coupled lines which is not realized in practice, so there is inevitably some residual spurious passband at this frequency. [46] [56] [57]

The hairpin filter is another structure that uses parallel-coupled lines. In this case, each pair of parallel-coupled lines is connected to the next pair by a short link. The "U" shapes so formed give rise to the name hairpin filter. In some designs the link can be longer, giving a wide hairpin with λ/4 impedance transformer action between sections. [58] [59] The angled bends seen in figure 10 are common to stripline designs and represent a compromise between a sharp right angle, which produces a large discontinuity, and a smooth bend, which takes up more board area which can be severely limited in some products. Such bends are often seen in long stubs where they could not otherwise be fitted into the space available. The lumped-element equivalent circuit of this kind of discontinuity is similar to a stepped-impedance discontinuity. [38] Examples of such stubs can be seen on the bias inputs to several components in the photograph at the top of the article. [46] [60]

### Interdigital filter

Interdigital filters are another form of coupled-line filter. Each section of line is about λ/4 in length and is terminated in a short-circuit at one end only, the other end being left open-circuit. The end which is short-circuited alternates on each line section. This topology is straightforward to implement in planar technologies, but also particularly lends itself to a mechanical assembly of lines fixed inside a metal case. The lines can be either circular rods or rectangular bars, and interfacing to a coaxial format line is easy. As with the parallel-coupled line filter, the advantage of a mechanical arrangement that does not require insulators for support is that dielectric losses are eliminated. The spacing requirement between lines is not as stringent as in the parallel line structure; as such, higher fractional bandwidths can be achieved, and Q values as low as 1.4 are possible. [61] [62]

The comb-line filter is similar to the interdigital filter in that it lends itself to mechanical assembly in a metal case without dielectric support. In the case of the comb-line, all the lines are short-circuited at the same end rather than alternate ends. The other ends are terminated in capacitors to ground, and the design is consequently classified as semi-lumped. The chief advantage of this design is that the upper stopband can be made very wide, that is, free of spurious passbands at all frequencies of interest. [63]

### Stub band-pass filters

As mentioned above, stubs lend themselves to band-pass designs. General forms of these are similar to stub low-pass filters except that the main line is no longer a narrow high impedance line. Designers have many different topologies of stub filters to choose from, some of which produce identical responses. An example stub filter is shown in figure 12; it consists of a row of λ/4 short-circuit stubs coupled together by λ/4 impedance transformers. The stubs in the body of the filter are double paralleled stubs while the stubs on the end sections are only singles, an arrangement that has impedance matching advantages. The impedance transformers have the effect of transforming the row of shunt anti-resonators into a ladder of series resonators and shunt anti-resonators. A filter with similar properties can be constructed with λ/4 open-circuit stubs placed in series with the line and coupled together with λ/4 impedance transformers, although this structure is not possible in planar technologies. [64]

Yet another structure available is λ/2 open-circuit stubs across the line coupled with λ/4 impedance transformers. This topology has both low-pass and band-pass characteristics. Because it will pass DC, it is possible to transmit biasing voltages to active components without the need for blocking capacitors. Also, since short-circuit links are not required, no assembly operations other than the board printing are required when implemented as stripline. The disadvantages are (i) the filter will take up more board real estate than the corresponding λ/4 stub filter, since the stubs are all twice as long; (ii) the first spurious passband is at 2ω0, as opposed to 3ω0 for the λ/4 stub filter. [65]

Konishi describes a wideband 12 GHz band-pass filter, which uses 60° butterfly stubs and also has a low-pass response (short-circuit stubs are required to prevent such a response). As is often the case with distributed element filters, the bandform into which the filter is classified largely depends on which bands are desired and which are considered to be spurious. [66]

## High-pass filters

Genuine high-pass filters are difficult, if not impossible, to implement with distributed elements. The usual design approach is to start with a band-pass design, but make the upper stopband occur at a frequency that is so high as to be of no interest. Such filters are described as pseudo-high-pass and the upper stopband is described as a vestigial stopband. Even structures that seem to have an "obvious" high-pass topology, such as the capacitive gap filter of figure 8, turn out to be band-pass when their behaviour for very short wavelengths is considered. [67]

## Related Research Articles

A resonator is a device or system that exhibits resonance or resonant behavior, that is, it naturally oscillates at some frequencies, called its resonant frequencies, with greater amplitude than at others. The oscillations in a resonator can be either electromagnetic or mechanical. Resonators are used to either generate waves of specific frequencies or to select specific frequencies from a signal. Musical instruments use acoustic resonators that produce sound waves of specific tones. Another example is quartz crystals used in electronic devices such as radio transmitters and quartz watches to produce oscillations of very precise frequency.

In microwave and radio-frequency engineering, a stub or resonant stub is a length of transmission line or waveguide that is connected at one end only. The free end of the stub is either left open-circuit or short-circuited. Neglecting transmission line losses, the input impedance of the stub is purely reactive; either capacitive or inductive, depending on the electrical length of the stub, and on whether it is open or short circuit. Stubs may thus function as capacitors, inductors and resonant circuits at radio frequencies.

The spurline is a type of radio-frequency and microwave distributed element filter with band-stop (notch) characteristics, most commonly used with microstrip transmission lines. Spurlines usually exhibit moderate to narrow-band rejection, at about 10% around the central frequency.

Stripline is a transverse electromagnetic (TEM) transmission line medium invented by Robert M. Barrett of the Air Force Cambridge Research Centre in the 1950s. Stripline is the earliest form of planar transmission line.

Power dividers and directional couplers are passive devices used mostly in the field of radio technology. They couple a defined amount of the electromagnetic power in a transmission line to a port enabling the signal to be used in another circuit. An essential feature of directional couplers is that they only couple power flowing in one direction. Power entering the output port is coupled to the isolated port but not to the coupled port. A directional coupler designed to split power equally between two ports is called a hybrid coupler.

Radio frequency (RF) and microwave filters represent a class of electronic filter, designed to operate on signals in the megahertz to gigahertz frequency ranges. This frequency range is the range used by most broadcast radio, television, wireless communication, and thus most RF and microwave devices will include some kind of filtering on the signals transmitted or received. Such filters are commonly used as building blocks for duplexers and diplexers to combine or separate multiple frequency bands.

Network synthesis is a method of designing signal processing filters. It has produced several important classes of filter including the Butterworth filter, the Chebyshev filter and the Elliptic filter. It was originally intended to be applied to the design of passive linear analogue filters but its results can also be applied to implementations in active filters and digital filters. The essence of the method is to obtain the component values of the filter from a given rational function representing the desired transfer function.

A quarter-wave impedance transformer, often written as λ/4 impedance transformer, is a transmission line or waveguide used in electrical engineering of length one-quarter wavelength (λ), terminated with some known impedance. It presents at its input the dual of the impedance with which it is terminated.

In signal processing, a filter is a device or process that removes some unwanted components or features from a signal. Filtering is a class of signal processing, the defining feature of filters being the complete or partial suppression of some aspect of the signal. Most often, this means removing some frequencies or frequency bands. However, filters do not exclusively act in the frequency domain; especially in the field of image processing many other targets for filtering exist. Correlations can be removed for certain frequency components and not for others without having to act in the frequency domain. Filters are widely used in electronics and telecommunication, in radio, television, audio recording, radar, control systems, music synthesis, image processing, and computer graphics.

A waveguide filter is an electronic filter that is constructed with waveguide technology. Waveguides are hollow metal tubes inside which an electromagnetic wave may be transmitted. Filters are devices used to allow signals at some frequencies to pass, while others are rejected. Filters are a basic component of electronic engineering designs and have numerous applications. These include selection of signals and limitation of noise. Waveguide filters are most useful in the microwave band of frequencies, where they are a convenient size and have low loss. Examples of microwave filter use are found in satellite communications, telephone networks, and television broadcasting.

A mechanical filter is a signal processing filter usually used in place of an electronic filter at radio frequencies. Its purpose is the same as that of a normal electronic filter: to pass a range of signal frequencies, but to block others. The filter acts on mechanical vibrations which are the analogue of the electrical signal. At the input and output of the filter, transducers convert the electrical signal into, and then back from, these mechanical vibrations.

A via fence, also called a picket fence, is a structure used in planar electronic circuit technologies to improve isolation between components which would otherwise be coupled by electromagnetic fields. It consists of a row of via holes which, if spaced close enough together, form a barrier to electromagnetic wave propagation of slab modes in the substrate. Additionally if radiation in the air above the board is also to be suppressed, then a strip pad with via fence allows a shielding can to be electrically attached to the top side, but electrically behave as if it continued through the PCB.

Commensurate line circuits are electrical circuits composed of transmission lines that are all the same length; commonly one-eighth of a wavelength. Lumped element circuits can be directly converted to distributed element circuits of this form by the use of Richards' transformation. This transformation has a particularly simple result; inductors are replaced with transmission lines terminated in short-circuits and capacitors are replaced with lines terminated in open-circuits. Commensurate line theory is particularly useful for designing distributed element filters for use at microwave frequencies.

A waffle-iron filter is a type of waveguide filter used at microwave frequencies for signal filtering. It is a variation of the corrugated-waveguide filter but with longitudinal slots cut through the corrugations resulting in an internal structure that has the appearance of a waffle-iron.

Planar transmission lines are transmission lines with conductors, or in some cases dielectric (insulating) strips, that are flat, ribbon-shaped lines. They are used to interconnect components on printed circuits and integrated circuits working at microwave frequencies because the planar type fits in well with the manufacturing methods for these components. Transmission lines are more than simply interconnections. With simple interconnections the propagation of the electromagnetic wave along the wire is fast enough to be considered instantaneous, and the voltages at each end of the wire can be considered identical. If the wire is longer than a large fraction of a wavelength these assumptions are no longer true and transmission line theory must be used instead. With transmission lines, the geometry of the line is precisely controlled so that its electrical behaviour is highly predictable. At lower frequencies, these considerations are only necessary for the cables connecting different pieces of equipment, but at microwave frequencies the distance at which transmission line theory becomes necessary is measured in millimetres. Hence, transmission lines are needed within circuits.

An inverted-F antenna is a type of antenna used in wireless communication. It consists of a monopole antenna running parallel to a ground plane and grounded at one end. The antenna is fed from an intermediate point a distance from the grounded end. The design has two advantages over a simple monopole: the antenna is shorter and more compact, and the impedance matching can be controlled by the designer without the need for extraneous matching components.

Air stripline is a form of electrical planar transmission line whereby a conductor in the form of a thin metal strip is suspended between two ground planes. The idea is to make the dielectric essentially air. Mechanical support of the line may be a thin substrate, periodical insulated supports, or the device connectors and other electrical items.

Distributed element circuits are electrical circuits composed of lengths of transmission lines or other distributed components. These circuits perform the same functions as conventional circuits composed of passive components, such as capacitors, inductors, and transformers. They are used mostly at microwave frequencies, where conventional components are difficult to implement.

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