Design of Low Pass Filter using Sun-Shaped Resonator

Malika Jain1, Ramesh Bharti2, Priyanka Jain3

1
Ph.D student, JIMS University, Jaipur 2 HOD, Engineering and Technology Deptt., JIMS
University, Jaipur 3 Deptt. of Electronics and Communication Engineering,
Delhi Technological University
1
jainmalika@gmail.com, 2 ramesh.bharti@jagannathuniversity.org,
3
priyajain2000@rediffmail.com

Abstract. A novel low pass filter using sun-shaped resonator is designed in this
paper. The filter is designed by etching the sun shaped resonator on the ground
plane and the stub loaded micro strip line on top of the surface. The new sun-
shaped resonator is used for reduction in size of filter and to improve electrical
performance. The design and simulation has been done using CST microwave
studio. Also, the extraction of effective material parameters from the reflection
and transmission coefficients is done using Nicolson Ross Weir (NRW) meth-
od. The designed filter is also fabricated on the FR-4 substrate with dielectric
constant (∈r) = 4.3, height h =1.6mm and thick-ness of the micro strip conduc-
tor t = 0.035mm.The whole area of the proposed filter is 40x48mm2. The low
pass filter has a cut off frequency = 1.69 GHz with the insertion loss = -0.3dB.
A low pass filter having low pass band insertion loss is proposed. Fabricated
and simulated design results shows good agreement.

Keywords: Low pass filter, resonator, CST, metamaterial, NRW

I. INTRODUCTION

In the present scenario there is need for wireless communication and compact micro-
wave devices in the communication and defense industries. For the wireless commu-
nication we require a microwave filter, which is a network having two port, used in a
microwave system to control the frequency at a point. It provides frequency in the
pass band of the filter and attenuates frequency in the stop band range. Depending
upon the filter frequency response, the classification of the filter is as Low pass filter,
High pass filter, Band pass filter and Band stop filter. Low pass filter is an important
part in the RF circuit and microwave communication system as it avoids noise or
interference of the surroundings. An ideal low pass filter should be compact and
should have high electrical performance. To achieve this goal various methods were
proposed in different papers [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. These methods include Stepped-
impedance resonators; Deflected Ground Structures (DGS) and
Metamaterials [7][8][9].

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Conventional stepped impedance method has either gradual cut off response which is
not sharp or increase device area and losses that degrade its performance in stop band
range and rejection characteristics limit its performance. To overcome this disad-
vantage, DGS structures were introduced. Metamaterial is a substance which doesn’t
existing nature and is made artificially to provide good frequency selective property
of filter. V.G.Veselago introduced this material in 1968. According to him this mate-
rial exhibit the characteristics of negative permittivity (∈ and negative permeability
(µ) which leads to a negative phase velocity.

Later Pendry characterizes this feature of double negative index material in RF re-
sponse of a wire and ring which was confirmed experimentally by Smith. There are
many metamaterial based low pass filters reported in the literature such as Hilbert
shaped complementary ring resonator (H-CRR) [15] ,CSRRs [10-12], Complemen-
tary hexagonal-omega structures [13], Open complementary split ring resonator [14]
and double defected ground structures (DGSs) [16]. All of these were proposed for
reduction in size, to provide low insertion loss with high selectivity, sharp cut off
performance and flattest pass band response.

On the similar lines we propose a sun shaped resonator based low pass filter which
provides cut off frequency = 1.69 GHz and insertion loss = -0.3dB.

The paper is organized as follows: Section II deals with filter designing through soft-
ware. In section III equivalent circuit parameter has been extracted. Section IV de-
scribes the fabrication of the designed filter. In section V results of measurement and
testing are shown. In the end summary of proposed work is summarized in conclu-
sions.

II. Filter design through software

On FR-4 substrate the filter is designed with the microstrip transmission line having a
stub on top of substrate and a single circular ring resonator with eight arms (termed as
sun shaped resonator) etched on the ground plane at bottom side of the substrate. A
design is framed on low cost RF-4 substrate with effective dielectric constant ∈r = 4.3
and loss tangent and copper conductor thickness = 0.035mm. For the de-
signing we have selected this substrate as it is easily available in different thickness.
For the design and the simulation of the structure, we have used CST microwave stu-
dio software. The top view and the back view are shown in fig. 1 and 2. Dimensions
of the design are shown in the figures below.

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Fig. 1. Back view of proposed filter

Fig. 2. Top view of proposed filter

A major challenge while designing was to get symmetricity of the design. Then the
design was simulated to check its metamaterial behavior. There are different tech-
niques for the extraction of effective permittivity and permeability. In this design
Nicolson Ross Weir (NRW) strategy has been utilized to calculate the effective mate-
rial properties from transmission and reflection coefficients. The layout of the de-
signed unit cell with the applied boundary conditions is shown in figure 3 and 4. The
NRW [3] approach starts by establishing the composite terms:

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V1 = S11+S21 (1)
V2 = S21-S11 (2)

Then using the above equations, permittivity and permeability are calculated:

r = (3)

εr = (4)

The simulated results of the permittivity and the permeability of the designed filter are
illustrated below in figure 5 and 6.

Fig.3 Boundary conditions Fig.5 Permeability of the designed filter

Fig.4 Boundary conditions Fig.6 Permittivity of the designed filter

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As shown in fig. 5 and 6 the design shows negative permittivity and negative permeability
behavior in the desired frequency range. Further simulation was done to verify its low pass
filter characteristics by measuring its S parameters. Thus S parameters are as follows in fig.7

Fig. 7 Simulated result of the designed low-pass filter.

As observed from the result the passband region is at an average of 0dB while rejec-
tion band starts at cut off frequency of 1.69GHz with the stop band characteristics of
less than 10dB.

III. Extraction of equivalent circuit parameter of designed low

pass filter

In order to study the electrical behavior of the filter with the external circuit it is im-
portant to extract the equivalent circuit of the designed filter. A micro strip line can be
represented as a combination of inductor and capacitor. The sun shaped resonator is
formed by Lc and Cc as shown in fig 9. There are 8 slots in the design and Cc is multi-
plied by 8. Each resonator forms a parallel resonator. So etching resonator with 8 slots
of same size at equal distance from each other in the ground plane will add parallel
right handed transmission line.

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Fig. 8 Layout of designed filter

Fig.9 Equivalent circuit of filter Fig.10 Filter (Top view)

Fig.11 Filter (Back view)

IV. Fabrication of the filter

The sun shaped low pass filter is designed on the printed circuit board with copper as
a perfect electric conductor (PEC) on RF-4 substrate having dielectric constant 4.3

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and thickness of 0.035mm. The layout of the transmission line and sun shaped resona-
tor is designed in schematic and PCB design software and then printed on butter paper
for final fabrication. The fabrication is done using conventional photolithography
process. SMA connectors are connected through soldering for providing input, output
ports to the design. The front and back view of sun shaped resonator based low pass
filter is shown in fig.10 and 11.

V. Measurement and testing of the design

Measurement and testing of the sun shaped resonator based low pass filter was done
by using Vector Network Analyzer (VNA). The fabricated filter experimental set up
is as shown in fig.12. The testing result shows low pass characteristics as well as band
stop characteristics with the cut off frequency of 1.56GHz. The tested result of the
low pass filter using sun shaped resonator is shown in fig.13. The difference in the
simulated and fabricated results is due to some error which is encountered during the
fabrication of the components.

Fig.13 Experimental set-up of fabricated filter.

Fig.13 Tested result of the filter

VI. CONCLUSIONS

A novel compact, low cost new sun shaped resonator low pass filter is proposed in
this paper. The sun shaped resonator with eight slots of equal size is designed to ex-
hibit metamaterial behavior by providing negative value of effective material parame-
ter at the common range of frequencies. The low pass filter with low pass band inser-

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tion loss which is compact in size with 3dB cut off frequency of 1.69GHz. By chang-
ing the parameters of the designed structure, the cut off frequency can be controlled.
The filter was fabricated and tested for performance evaluation. The simulated result
shows good agreement with the fabricated one.

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