High Performance Helical Resonator Filters

Ming Yu and Van Dokas COM DEV Ltd, 155 Sheldon Dr., Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, N1R 7H6 ming.yu@ieee.org
Abstract Complex filter functions are realized using cross-coupled helical resonators. Internal group delay equalization and multiple transmission zeros are implemented through the design, fabrication and test of a 7-1 and 8-2-2 filter. Excellent filter responses are achieved. Index Terms helical resonators, cross coupled band pass filters, helix, group delay equalization

optimization [6] and computer aided tuning [7], a 7-1 and 8-2-2 filter were designed to meet satellite industry specifications. The filters were manufactured, tuned and tested. Results are presented in this paper. To the best our knowledge, this is the first time that such complex filter functions have been realized using helical resonators. II. HELICAL RESONATOR The typical configuration of a helical resonator is shown in Figure 1 (inside a rectangular metal cavity). The resonator is mounted at 0.1inch above the floor of a 12x0.7inch cavity. Using quarter-wavelength (/4=8.57inch at 344MHz) as a starting point, it leads to a coil diameter of 0.65inch with 4.2 turns. The dimensions can be quickly verified using an EM eigen mode solver, as given in table 1. It is interesting to note that the manual calculation is as accurate as EM mainly because the frequency is relatively low. This also reveals that the effect of cavity loading on frequency is relatively small. The first spurious mode is projected to propagate just above 1GHz when the length of the wire reaches 3/4.

I. INTRODUCTION Helical resonator filters [1, 2] are widely used in ground based UHF mobile communication systems. They exhibit reasonable Q and excellent in-band performance over a wide temperature range with less volume and mass compared to conventional coaxial cavity filters operating in this band. Helical resonator filters are best suited in applications where conventional lumped-element filters are very small but are too lossy (lower Q) and coaxial resonator filters (higher Q) are too big and unpractical. Compared to SAW filters, although much bigger, the helical approach is much simpler and requires no costly fabrication setup. Small quantities can be produced economically with quicker delivery. This type of filter becomes particularly attractive for satellite applications where low volume and mass coupled with high reliability and electrical performance is a must. The most common filter functions realized with helical resonator technology are either Butterworth or Chebyshev without prescribed transmission zeros as extensively summarized in [1]. Low order (n=4) cross coupled filter, used in dual degenerate mode [3-5], gives further size and mass reduction with slightly lower Q and reduced spurious clean window. Further, cross-polarization stray couplings in dual-mode configurations prevents realizing complicated and high performance filter functions such as 8-pole with internal group delay equalization using many transmission zeros. Although a circulator coupled external equalizer can be used with a dual mode filter that often leads to unnecessary increase in mass and volume. In this paper, high order helical resonator filters are investigated to achieve very stringent performance required in communication satellites including sharp rejection response and group delay equalization. By utilizing the advances in the area of electromagnetic

Figure 1. EM model of a Helical Resonator The simulated Q is about 1250. A single copper cavity helical resonator has been measured. The measured Q is 1000 and first spurious response is around 1GHz.

Table 1. Resonator frequencies of a helical resonator # of Quarter Manual EM wavelength calculation calculation 1 344.2 345.1 3 1032.7 1035.3 5 1721.1 1704.9 Wire diameter: 0.075inch The similar simulation was performed for another resonator at about 600MHz. The cavity size is 0.852x0.6. A helical resonator with diameter of 0.65inch and 3 turns was selected. III. FILTER DESIGN The first filter designed is a 7-pole with one transmission zero at low side (7-1). The center frequency is 307MHz and the bandwidth is 35 MHz. The normalized coupling matrix with input and output termination is shown in Table 2. R1 and R7 are magnetically coupled using a wire connected directly from I/O connector to the corresponding resonators. The coupling m3,5 is realized using 0.04 inch cross coupling probes. The rest of intercavity couplings are realized using 0.75inch wide irises with various depths. Table 2. Normalized coupling matrix for 7-1 filter R1 = 1.1332 R7 = 1.1774 m1, 1 = 0.0123 m1 ,2 = 0.8896 m2, 2 = 0.0019 m2 ,3 = 0.6150 m3, 3 = -0.0607 m3 ,4 = 0.5678 m4, 4 = 0.1147 m4 ,5 = 0.5690 m5,5 = -0.1027 m5 ,6 = 0.6175 m6, 6 = -0.0503 m6 ,7 = 0.8985 m7, 7 = -0.0075 m3 ,5 = -0.1103 The second variant designed is a 8-pole filter with two transmission zeros and two real zeros used to equalize inband group delay. Within 60% of the pass band, the group delay and loss variation are designed to exhibit a very flat response. The center frequency (CF) is 598MHz and the bandwidth (BW) is 36MHz. The normalized coupling matrix is shown in Table 3. The inter-cavity couplings are realized using 0.58inch wide irises with various depths. The m1,8 iris width is 0.25inch. The m2,7 coupling is realized using a coupling wire (0.02inch) connecting the 2nd and 7th resonators. The tap point, which determines the coupling bandwidth (CBW) and Ri, is derived using a well-known S11 group delay (GD) technique [8]:

CBW = Ri BW =

2 GD

Table 3. Normalized coupling matrix for 8-2-2 filter R1 = 0.9622 R8 = 0.8262 m1, 1 = 0.0207 m1 ,2 = 0.8166 m2, 2 = 0.0196 m2 ,3 = 0.5849 m3, 3 = 0.0206 m3 ,4 = 0.5422 m4, 4 = 0.0275 m4 ,5 = 0.5817 m5,5 = 0.0026 m5 ,6 = 0.5333 m6, 6 = 0.0065 m6 ,7 = 0.5608 m7, 7 = 0.0163 m7 ,8 = 0.749 m8, 8 = 0.0204 m1,8 = 0.0166 m2,7 = -0.0679 The inter-cavity coupling can be determined by solving the eigen value problem of a 2-cavity coupled model [9]:

M i, j

2 CF f e2 f m = 2 BW f e2 + f m

Where fe and fm represent the resonant frequencies assuming symmetric plane to be perfect electric conductor (PEC) and magnetic conductor (PMC). Figure 2 and 3 show the construction of the 7-1 and 8-22 filters. The dimensions of the copper filters are about 4.4x2.3x1.4inch and 4.2x2.1x1.2inch respectively. IV. MEASURED AND SIMULTED DATA Figure 4 shows the measured/simulated return loss and insertion loss of the 7-1 filter. The noisy trace is the measured data (typical with all plots in this paper). The measured spurious response at 1GHz shown in figure 5 is caused by the 3/4 resonance. It implies that another higher order mode helical filter can also be realized at 1GHz (the EM simulation predicted a similar Q as /4 resonator at 307MHz). Figure 6 shows the in-band loss variation of the 7-1 filter. The measured insertion loss of the copper filter is about 0.5dB, which represents a Q of approximately 800. All measured data agrees very well with the simulations. Figure 7 shows the measured/simulated return loss and insertion loss of the 8-2-2 filter. Figure 8 shows the inband loss variation. The measured insertion loss from a copper filter is about 0.9dB, which represents a Q of 1100. The measured and simulated group delay performance is illustrated in Figure 9. Again all measured data agrees very well with the simulated data.

Both filters were later fabricated using silver plated aluminum cavities meeting satellite hardware standards. The frequency drift over a 75oC delta is about 4ppm using 8ppm coil material. VII. CONCLUSION High performance cross-coupled filters using helical resonators are presented in this paper. A 7-1 and 8-2-2 prototype was designed, built and tested using fullelectromagnetic simulation techniques. To the best our knowledge, this is the first time that such complex filter functions have been realized using helical resonators. Excellent in-band loss variation, group delay and out-ofband rejection have been demonstrated to meet the stringent specifications of satellite communication systems. Measured data correlates very well with simulated data. VII. AKNOWLEDGEMENT The authors wish to acknowledge the useful discussion with Mr. Peter Vizmuller during the concept design stage of one of the filters. REFERENCES [1] Peter Vizmuller, Filters with Helical and Folded Helical Resonators, Artech Hose, Inc. Norwood, MA, 1987, [2] Everard, J.K.A.; Cheng, K.K.M.; Dallas, P.A.; HighQ helical resonator for oscillators and filters in mobile

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

communications systems, Electronics Letters , Volume: 25 , Issue: 24 , 23 Nov. 1989 Pages:1648 1650 Fiedziuszko, S.J.; Kwok, R.S.; Novel helical resonator filter structures, Microwave Symposium Digest, 1998 IEEE MTT-S International , Volume: 3 , 7-12 June 1998, Pages:1323 - 1326 vol.3 Kwok, R.S.; Fiedziuszko, S.J.; Dual-mode helical resonators, Microwave Theory and Techniques, IEEE Transactions on , Volume: 48 , Issue: 3 , March 2000 Pages:474 - 477 R. Levy and K. Andersen An optimal low loss HF diplexer using helical resonators, Microwave Symposium Digest, 1992., IEEE MTT-S International, 1-5 June 1992, Pages:1187 - 1190 vol.3 M. A. Ismail, D. Smith, A. Panariello, Y. Wang and M. Yu, EM Based Design Of Large-Scale Dielectric Resonator Filters And Multiplexers By Space Mapping, IEEE Transactions On Microwave Theory And Techniques Special Issue on ElectromagneticsBased Optimization of Microwave Components and Circuits, Vol.52, Jan. 2004, pp386-392 Ming Yu, (Invited) Simulation/Design Techniques for Microwave Filters - An Engineering Perspective, Workshop WSA: State-of-the-Art Filter Design using EM and Circuit Simulation Techniques, International Symposium of IEEE Microwave Theory and Tech, May 2001, Phoenix AZ J.B. Ness,"A unified approach to the design, measurement, and tuning of coupled-resonator filters", IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol.46, Apr 1998. pp. 343-351 M. E. Sabbagh, K. Zaki, and Ming Yu,Full-Wave Analysis of Coupling between Combline Resonators and its Application to Combline Filters with Canonical Configurations" IEEE Transactions on Microwave Theory and Techniques, Vol. 49, No.12, December, 2001, pp2384-2393.

Figure 2. Photo of a 7-1 helical filter

Figure 3. Photo of a 8-2-2 helical filter

|S11| & |S21| Simulation & Measurement

-10 -20 -30 -40 IL & RL (dB) -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100 -110 -120 -130 0.22 0.24 0.26 0.28 0.3 0.32 Frequency (GHz) 0.34 0.36 0.38 0.4
IL (dB) -10 -20 -30 -40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90 -100 0.3 0.35 0.4 0.45 0.5 0.55

|S21| Measurement

0.6

0.65 0.7 0.75 Frequency (GHz)

0.8

0.85

0.9

0.95

1.05

1.1

Figure 4. Measured and Simulated Response of a 7-1 helical filter

|S21| Simulation & Measurement
-0.5 -1 -1.5 -2 -2.5 -3 -3.5 IL (dB) -4.5 -5 -6 -6.5 -7 -7.5 -8 0.285 0.29 0.295 0.3 0.305 0.31 Frequency (GHz) 0.315 0.32 0.325 0.33 -5.5 -4

Figure 5. Out-of-band Response of a 7-1 helical filter

|S11| & |S21| Simulation & Measurement

0 -5 -10 -15 -20 -25 IL & RL (dB) -30 -35 -40 -45 -50 -55 -60 -65 -70 -75 0.53 0.54 0.55

Figure 6. Measured and Simulated insertion loss of a 7-1 filter

0.56

0.57

0.58

0.59 0.6 Frequency (GHz)

0.61

0.62

0.63

0.64

0.65

0.66

Figure 7. Measured and Simulated Response of a 8-2-2 filter

|S21| Simulation & Measurement
-1

Group Delay Simulation & Measurement

0 -10 -20

-1.5

-2

-30 Group Delay (nS)

0.58 0.585 0.59 0.595 0.6 Frequency (GHz) 0.605 0.61 0.615

-40 -50 -60 -70 -80 -90

IL (dB)

-2.5

-3

-3.5

-4

-100 -110 0.58 0.585 0.59 0.595 0.6 Frequency (GHz) 0.605 0.61 0.615

Figure 8. Measured and simulated insertion loss of a 8-2-2 filter

Figure 9. Measured and simulated group delay of a 8-2-2 filter