Abstract

Emerging applications such as wireless communications continue to challenge

RF/microwave filters with ever more stringent requirements.

The conventional stepped-impedance and Kuroda-identity-stubs low-pass filters only

provide Butterworth and Chebyshev characteristics with a gradual cutoff frequency
response. In order to have a sharp cutoff frequency response, these filters require
more sections. Unfortunately, increasing the number of sections also increases the
size of the filter and insertion loss. Elliptical function filters gives infinite attenuation
poles at finite frequency which has the advantages of sharper rate of cut-off
frequency for the least number of reactive elements, easy fabrication, low cost and
high performance.

Defected Ground Structures (DGSs) has been chosen to implement elliptic function
filters because of its advantages of compactness, excellent frequency selective
characteristics, good power handling capability, improved slow wave factor (SWF)
and a revelation of deeper stop-band response than a conventional low-pass filter.
Also, it increases the degree of freedom for implementation of circuits.

DGS is still an evolving technology that can be explored vastly. But their arbitrary
structure hinders us from modeling them properly but simultaneously poses a
potential problem. Using this motivation, we have used empirical modeling of DGSs
which is useful in designing quasi-elliptic-function filters.

advances in the communication especially in the wireless communication systems

continue to challenge microwave circuits with ever more stringent requirements
such as sharp cutoff, low insertion loss, wide stop band, compact size, low cost et al.
Elliptic function filters provide equi-ripple in-band amplitude, together with the
sharp cutoffs at the edge of the pass-band and high selectivity, which give an
acceptable compromise between lowest signal degradation and highest
noise/interference rejection. Besides, the ability to build in prescribed transmission
zeros for improving the close-to-band rejection slopes has enhanced its usefulness.

Defected Ground Structures (DGSs) are resonators where the ground of a planar
transmission line is etched, achieving band-rejection characteristics. DGSs can
provide a variety of advantages such as compact size, low insertion loss, higher
power handling, wide and deeper stop-band rejection, suppression of harmonics,
improved slow wave characteristics and sharp selectivity at cutoff frequency.
Transmission zeros can be easily implemented to improve the selectivity of the
implemented filters. Nowadays, DGSs are used in radar, satellite, microwave areas
and mobile communication systems. As such, DGSs are an attractive solution for
filters that need stringent requirements.
Microstrip that incorporates an EBG and experience periodic perturbations from the
substrate, ground plane or the signal line itself [loss]. It has recently shown great
potential for a great variety of applications in microwave electronics and antenna
development. Thus, EBG structures exhibit a significant increase in the SWF without
increase in losses for a microstrip on an electromagnetic band-gap (EBG) ground
plane.

Although EBG structures have been used by many researchers in a wide variety of
applications whether filters, antennas, amplifiers, waveguides and others, in the
late 1990's; it was recognized that they have one basic disadvantage which is the
difficulty in its modeling due to the too many parameters that should be considered,
such as the lattice period, shape, size and location. Also, they result in high
radiation loss. These disadvantages helped in the evolution of Defected Ground
Structures (DGSs) [A novel 1-D periodic defected ground structure for planar
circuits], [Design of 10 dB 90 branch line coupler using microstrip line with
defected ground structure].

A DGS unit cell is a defect in the ground plane of a physical transmission line be it
microstrip, coplanar waveguide or whatever structure where a reference ground
plane conductor exists. Liu et al., has presented a novel DGS based meander
microstrip line providing a broad stop-band [Liu novel meander]. A novel defected
ground structure with islands (DGSI) is proposed by T. Itoh. The DGS is realized on
the bottom plane with two islands placed at both sides of the microstrip line on the
upper plane [Itoh dgs island]. Such defects have all the advantages of the EBG
structures except that only one or two cells are needed instead of a periodic
structure to produce the same performance. The advantage in DGS over EBG
structures makes them easy to model, and therefore, to involve in more
complicated structures and applications.

Nowadays, new EBG structures and DGSs are being exploited everyday to reach
maximum miniaturization and minimum losses. Also the trend towards
reconfigurable EBG and DGS has started about 6 years ago, showing promising
results. For all these reasons, we have chosen DGSs to achieve our targets.

Miniaturized hairpin resonators have some similarity with square open-loop

resonators, which are used to obtain capacitive and inductive coupling by only
proximity coupling through fringing fields. This type of resonators can be used to
build microstrip cascaded quadruplet and other types of cross-coupled band-pass
filters.

Defected Ground Structures (DGSs) are periodic or non-periodic cascaded defects

on the ground of any planar structure which perturbs the current distribution on the
ground and increases the effective capacitance and inductance of the line. DGS
components are todays dominant technology which can provide size reduction and
harmonic suppression. DGS can be applied to various kinds of components such as
low-pass filters and band-pass filters as well as RF Phase-shifters. Hence, it is not
surprising to find their use in radar, satellite, microwave areas and mobile
communication systems

DGS band-pass filters can be implemented based on the concept of coupled

microstrip resonators which are dual of the latter. These new band-pass filters are
compact, can be designed easily, achieve transmission zeros effortlessly and can
have very wide stop-band. They can easily be converted from a LPF to a BPF by the
use of capacitive gaps. Compared to coupled microstrip resonators, DGS resonators
can achieve low insertion loss at narrow bandwidth and can suppress spurious pass-
bands. The DGS resonators have several advantages such as compact size, low
cost, low radiation loss. Therefore, the DGS-Filters are widely used in the design of
filters, oscillators and antennas

DGSs are the present and future of microwave circuits.