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Published in IET Microwaves, Antennas & Propagation Received on 14th September 2010 Revised on 1st April 2011 doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2010.0461

ISSN 1751-8725

Tunable ferroelectric microwave bandpass lters optimised for system-level integration

V. Haridasan1 P.G. Lam2 Z. Feng1 W.M. Fathelbab3 J.-P. Maria2 A.I. Kingon4 M.B. Steer1
1 2

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC 27695, USA 3 RS Microwave Company, Inc., Butler, NJ 07405, USA 4 School of Engineering, Brown University, Providence, RI 02912, USA E-mail: vharida@ncsu.edu

Abstract: Tunable bandpass lters are critical components in emerging radio frequency front-ends. A system-aware design guideline and gure of merit (FOM) are developed for optimum system-level performance. The optimisation metric discussed here deviates from earlier guidelines as the lter bandwidth is allowed to vary in the tunable range, constrained only by the downstream system analogue to digital converter. The system-aware FOM uses worst-case lter design parameters and a tuning sensitivity term that captures the frequency tunability relative to material tunability. A 6.74 8.23 GHz tunable barium strontium titanate-based lter is presented as an example to illustrate the design methodology.

Introduction

Consumer and military markets are driving the development of multi-functional and multi-band wireless devices capable of supporting communications over multi-octave bandwidths although instantaneous broadband coverage is rarely required. Frequency coverage by a radio frequency (RF) front-end can be achieved in different ways: digitising data immediately after the antenna and moving all further processing to the digital domain; using wideband analogue circuitry with subsampling architectures; using discrete xed narrowband circuitry for different frequency bands; or using a single, or a few, tunable narrowband circuits. Moving all the processing to the digital domain by digitising data immediately after the antenna is often stated as the ultimate goal of softwaredened radios (SDRs). Although this would provide complete exibility in being able to handle current and future wireless standards, the full SDR concept places currently unachievable demands on the performance and power consumption of analogue to digital converters (ADCs). Wideband analogue circuitry is an achievable option, but the transceiver performance could be compromised due to the limited linearity of front-end components [1]. In all modern radio architectures the signal is eventually digitised with an almost inverse relationship between the number of digitiser bits (that relates to the dynamic range of conversion) and the number of samples per second (that determines the instantaneous input bandwidth). The often signicant power consumed by the ADC is a function of both the number of bits and the sampling rate. Consequently, when the instantaneous desired RF coverage is narrow band, and the particular desired channel is
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known, it is typical to use xed and perhaps channellised narrowband ltering and a low-frequency ADC. This architecture is common in consumer radios. It is also possible to use sub-sampling ADCs to achieve the same functionality but the instantaneous (or effective) bandwidth of the ADC is quite narrow. In emerging emergency and military radios, it is often necessary to look at quite wide spectra, the instantaneous bandwidth being constrained by the available performance of high bit-count ADCs. This type of system is the focus of the current work. Currently this architecture must be implemented using a large number of channels each with its own dedicated RF front-end and ADC. Tunable narrowband circuitry circumvents channellisation and so reduces the size, weight and power consumption of emergency and military radios. Microelectromechanical (MEMS) systems, varactor diodes and tunable capacitors using ferroelectric lms such as barium strontium titanate (BST) are technologies that can enable tunable RF front-end circuits. The adoption of MEMS is hampered by its slow response time and longterm reliability concerns however. Varactor diodes have low quality factor (Q) values at microwave frequencies resulting in poor lter performance [2]. BST-based lter designs typically have higher insertion loss (IL) than MEMS-based designs. However, being solid-state devices, they have predictable reliability, have no special packaging requirements and exhibit a reasonably high Q at RF and microwave frequencies [2]. In RF systems, the network blocks before the ADC signicantly inuence the system performance as most of the signal processing (correlation) is performed by lters in
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the analogue domain. Traditionally, a tunable bandpass lter (BPF) is designed to maintain a constant bandwidth across the tuning range. Various design guidelines have been developed to support this [3 5]. However, this in fact is often not the system-level objective, particularly if this procedure increases insertion loss. A better system-aware objective is that the maximum bandwidth of the tunable lter does not exceed the bandwidth of the ADC. In this paper, a new guideline for the design of a tunable BPF is developed using this system-level objective. Section 2 describes the RF front-end architecture that use BST-based tunable BPFs mandates. Section 3 presents the design and fabrication details of the tunable BPF used as an example to elaborate the design methodology. Earlier design guidelines and gure of merit (FOM) are discussed in Section 4.1. A system-aware design guideline and FOM for tunable BPFs is developed in Section 4.2 that yields the optimum starting point in design. Section 5 presents a tunable BPF with an edge-to-edge band coverage of 6.28 8.59 GHz and a maximum 3 dB instantaneous bandwidth of 930 MHz compatible with available 12-bit ADCs. This lter was designed using the design methodology developed in Section 4.2. Section 6 highlights the key differences between the earlier guidelines and the systemaware design methodology. Similar lters have been documented by us in the past [6, 7]. Here, for the rst time, we document the design philosophy. BPFs in receiver front-ends are used for frequency selectivity, managing the dynamic range of signals presented to the ADCs and rejecting the image signal. In the architecture shown in Fig. 1b, the rst (tunable) BPF is used to ensure that the bandwidth of the ltered analogue signal does not exceed the bandwidth of the ADC(s). The lter must also block out-of-band interferers and typically 40 dB of out-of-band rejection is required to meet system requirements. Image rejection is of paramount importance and this translates to requiring greater out-of-band rejection on one side of the tunable lter than the other. In the lter considered in this paper, the image signal is above the passband and so the most rapid transition from passband to stopband is required on the high side of the lter. This characteristic is achieved through appropriate choice of lter topology.

3
3.1

Tunable BPF design

Tunable distributed resonator

BPFs in RF front-end subsystems

Fig. 2a shows a resonator structure used in tunable distributed microwave lters [9, 10]. Although the BST varactor is lossy, the varactor in this discussion in considered lossless to explain the basic concept of a tunable resonator. The varactor has a normalised impedance zc(VB) where VB is the tuning or varactor bias voltage. In Fig. 2a, G(x) is the reection coefcient at position x looking from the left towards the right. At position B (x xB), G(xB) is

A traditional RF front-end is a cascade of an antenna, a narrow BPF, an amplier and stages that implement inphase/quadrature (I/Q) demodulation for a receiver, for example, see Fig. 1a, or modulation for a transmitter. Multiple bands can be accommodated by switching among a number of lter/amplier blocks. An alternative receiver architecture is to follow the antenna with a wideband highdynamic range amplier incorporating wide bandgap semiconductors followed by a tunable lter, see Fig. 1b. This architecture tolerates the relatively high insertion loss of electronically tunable lters. The maximum bandwidth of the lter is then determined by the available bandwidth of ADCs with sufcient dynamic range [8].

Fig. 2 Tunable resonator Fig. 1 Architecture of superheterodyne receivers

a Fixed bandpass lter is placed immediately after the antenna b LNA is placed immediately after the antenna followed by a tunable bandpass lter IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 10, pp. 1234 1241 doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2010.0461 a Cascade of a transmission line segment having an electrical length, u, and a BST varactor with impedance zc(VB) normalised to the characteristic impedance of the resonators transmission line at bias voltage VB b Representation of a lossless tunable resonator on a Smith chart 1235

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determined by zc(VB). The locus of G rotates clockwise as we move to the left until at position A (x xA), G(xA) 21 (a short-circuit) for resonance. The electrical length of the line at resonance is u degrees. The resonant frequency of the resonator establishes the centre frequency of the BPF. Thus, as illustrated on the SmithTM chart in Fig. 2b, an increase in bias voltage causes a reduction of the varactor capacitance and zc(VB) moves from location B to B. This requires an increase in the electrical length, u, of the transmission line for the resonator to remain at resonance. Since the physical length of the line is xed, the resonance frequency increases. Note that the angular difference between GA and GB is 2u. 3.3 Fabrication An alumina substrate with a thickness of 381 mm, dielectric permittivity (1r) of 9.9 and a loss tangent (tan d) of 0.0002 was used. The lter was fabricated using an alumina substrate chosen for its low cost, the close match of its thermal coefcient of expansion to that of BST and its low loss tangent [6, 12]. The thermal expansion match prevents the BST from cracking when subjected to high heat in the annealing step. The alumina substrates were polished on both sides. Via holes (150 300 mm in diameter) were laser drilled and then lled with a gold-based frit. RF magnetron sputtering was used to deposit 0.5 0.6 mm thick BST lm across the wafer and subsequently etched to leave BST only where required. The substrate with the patterned BST was then annealed at 9008C for 20 h to fully crystallize the BST lm. A hysteresis test was used to conrm the paraelectric (non-hysteresis) phase of the thin lm. The crystalline perovskite structure of BST was veried using a diffractometer with a Cu Ka radiation source. A two-step metallisation process to reduce the insertion loss of the lter was used. The two-step lithography involved depositing 1.2 mm of silver for the transmission lines followed by a deposition of 0.42 mm of chromium gold to dene the BST gap capacitors. This was followed by 3 mm of copper (Cu) metallisation up to 50 mm away from the gap. The two-step process enabled ne feature resolution in the vicinity of the gap capacitor while reducing metallic losses elsewhere.

3.2 Circuit design using tunable distributed resonators Microstrip BPFs based on a Chebyshev low-pass lter prototype response are used to achieve high-frequency selectivity and low-insertion loss. The topology of the microstrip lter used here is shown in Fig. 3. This is a third-order combline lter where each of the three tunable resonators is shorted to ground on one end and connected to a variable BST capacitor on the other end. Each variable capacitor comprises two series BST gap capacitors. The two ferroelectric capacitors share a centre bias line as shown in the inset in Fig. 3. Nominally the transmission line is l/8 long (i.e. has an electrical length of 458) and the BST capacitor with one terminal shorted to ground provides another 458 electrical rotation, for a total resonator electrical length of 908. Tuning the BST capacitor changes the electrical rotation contribution from the capacitor and thus the electrical length of the transmission line section required for resonance. Fig. 2b shows the locus of the reection coefcient of the resonator looking into the capacitor and then moving from the capacitor to the short end of the transmission line. The bandwidth of lter is determined by the coupling between the three resonators. A traditional combline lter design approach was followed with the requirement that the capacitors to be tuned were of equal value [8]. Final design optimisation used electromagnetic (EM) modelling [11] to account for additional coupling from parasitics not incorporated in synthesis.

4 Design guidelines and FOM of tunable BPFs

Most electronic system design proceeds by optimising FOM. For a particular subsystem such as a lter, it is sometimes possible to develop a functional FOM and a design guideline that ensures operation of the subsystem close to the optimum FOM. Fixed frequency BPF design requires that lter performance be met at a specic desired frequency. Tunable lter design, however, necessitates meeting lter performance across the entire tunable frequency range. Design guidelines and FOM are thus required, in addition to the synthesis procedures. A major challenge in tunable lter design is achieving high percentage tuning of the lter while managing loss, bandwidth and out-of-band rejection. 4.1 Early design guidelines and FOM

Fig. 3 Layout representation of an integrated third-order tunable combline bandpass lter with BST gap capacitors covering 6.28 to 8.59 GHz
Zoomed in view of the capacitor is also shown. The outer two resonators of the combline lter are 305 mm wide and the center resonator is 330 mm wide designed so that all the BST capacitors have the same value 1236 & The Institution of Engineering and Technology 2011

Generally lter performance has been specied in terms of frequency tunability and the geometric mean of bandwidth and loss. However, in reality it is the worst-case characteristics that determine system performance. Pleskachev and Vendik [13, 14] developed an FOM, FOM1 , for a tunable BPF based on the tuning frequency range (from lower centre frequency, f1 , to upper centre frequency, f2), the geometric means of the lter bandwidths (Df1 and Df2 are bandwidths corresponding to the lower and upper centre frequencies, respectively) and insertion losses (IL1 and IL2 in decibels corresponding to the lower and upper centre frequencies, respectively) FOM1 = (f2 f1 ) Df1 Df2 1 IL1 IL2 (1)

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Here FOM1 has the units of dB21. Vendik and Kollberg [15] dened the commutation quality factor (CQF) for a tunable ferroelectric capacitor based on the material tunability (t) and loss factors (t 1) CQF = t tan d1 tan d2
2

relationship between bandwidth and insertion loss [7]. QU is the overall unloaded Q of a resonator, that is, the Q of the transmission line terminated by the varactor [20, 21]. Thus IL|dB k QU FBW (5)

(2)

where t C1/C2 , tan d1 vC1r1 and tan d2 vC2r2 . Here C1 , r1 , tan d1 and C2 , r2 , tan d2 are the capacitances, equivalent series resistances and the corresponding loss tangents at the lower and upper extremes of the tunable frequency range, respectively. CQF is independent of the device geometry and is invariant to lossless reciprocal impedance transformation. Vendik and Pleskachev dened a theoretical upper limit for FOM1 limited by the CQF of the tunable BST capacitor [13, 16] FOM1,limit (dB ) =
1

where k is a lter implementation factor. For example, a thirdorder Chebyshev lter with a ripple factor 1 0.1 (a 0.043 dB ripple), has g1 0.852 g3 , g2 1.104 and so k 12.2 (within the low loss assumption made in developing (4)). In general, k, and thus insertion loss, increases for higher order lters and higher ripple. Also, low-ripple Chebyshev designs are preferred over Butterworth lter designs. The trade-off in using lower-order Chebyshev design is that the lter skirts will not be as steep. It is convenient to introduce a worst-case effective lter Q dened as QR,w = min(QR,1 , QR,2 ) (6)

CQF 8.68n

(3)

where n is the lter order. Design guidelines for tunable BPF have previously been developed based on FOMs [13, 14] and focused on minimising variation in bandwidth as the lter is tuned [3 5, 17]. These guidelines were based on the geometric means of the loss and bandwidth at the extremes of the lter tuning. The design condition developed for combline lters (that have a basic resonator of the form shown in Fig. 1) is that at the centre (i.e. the geometric mean) of the tuning range, the electrical length of the line u should be 538 to minimise the variation in bandwidth [3, 4]. The results were based on detailed analysis of combline lters and determining the stationary point in the expressions for lter bandwidth. This is an appropriate choice if the lter is to be used in many existing front-end architectures. However, with the increase in ADC performance (e.g. a 12-bit ADC with 1 GHz analogue bandwidth is readily available), maintaining near constant bandwidth is not required. In an actual system, it is the worst-case bandwidth that limits system performance. In the next section an FOM and a design guideline are developed from consideration of the worst-case (largest) insertion loss and bandwidth across the lters tuning range. 4.2 System-aware design guidelines and FOM

where QR,1 1/(IL1FBW,1) and QR,2 1/(IL2FBW,2). Here, IL1 , FBW,1 and IL2 , FBW,2 are insertion losses and fractional bandwidths at the lower and upper extremes of the tunable frequency range, respectively. From examination of (5) and (6), it is seen that QR,w represents a term proportional to the worst-case unloaded resonator Q (QU,w) QR,w = QU,w /k Filter tunability can be dened as Tf = 2 f2 f1 f2 + f1 (8) (7)

where f1 and f2 are the lower and upper centre frequencies of the tuning range; and A capacitance tunability parameter can be dened as [22] TC = 2 C1 C1 + C2 C2 =2 C1 /C2 1 C1 /C2 + 1 (9)

It is the worst case conditions that determine system performance. In particular, the maximum instantaneous bandwidth of a tunable lter is determined by the analogue bandwidth of available ADCs. Three of the most important lter design parameters will be discussed in this section leading to the development of the proposed FOM. The insertion loss (IL in dB) is inversely proportional to the product of the unloaded Q of the lter resonators, QU , and fractional bandwidth (FBW) [9, 10, 18, 19] IL|dB = 4.34 QU FBW
n

where C1 and C2 are capacitor values at zero bias (corresponding to f1) and at a maximum bias voltage (corresponding to f2) below the breakdown voltage, respectively. C1/C2 is the capacitance tuning ratio. This leads to the tuning sensitivity Ts = Tf TC (10)

gi
i=1

(4)

Here n gi is the sum of the reactive g-values in the lowi=1 pass lter prototype and n is the order of the lter. While (4) is derived using a low-loss (high QU) approximation, it does indicate trends. Simulations also indicate an inverse
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which is thep ratio of the lter tunability for a given capacitance tunability. T C is based on tuning of the centre frequency of a p lumped element BPF being proportional to 1/ C. Thus, Ts of a lumped element lter with parallel LC resonators (xed inductor and tunable capacitor) is 1. Ts of a distributed lter is generally between 0 and 1 depending on the proportion of resonant energy stored on the variable capacitors relative to the energy stored on the distributed elements. Maximising resonant energy storage on the variable capacitor results in high tuning sensitivity but also high loss as the variable capacitor is almost always the lowest Q element in a resonator. With the RF receiver architecture shown in Fig. 1b, lter loss is compensated by the leading amplier. Then
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maximising Ts subject to the maximum bandwidth constraint is a key objective in tunable lter design. Tuning sensitivity (Ts), insertion loss (IL) and fractional bandwidth (FBW Df/f0 where Df is the bandwidth and f0 is the centre frequency) are used in developing an FOM that is used to optimise lter performance. The relation between Ts and unloaded resonator Q for a tunable distributed resonator is discussed before dening the system-based FOM. When an LC resonator is in resonance the resonant energy is at one time stored entirely on the capacitor and then half a cycle later all of the energy is stored on the inductor. With the transmission line resonator of Fig. 1 the proportion of energy stored on the varactor at resonance can be changed. The transmission line stores energy in both electric and magnetic forms and when the varactor-loaded transmission line is in resonance, the proportion of energy stored on the varactor is less than in the lumped element resonator case. The greater the fraction of resonant energy stored on the varactor, the greater the impact that varying the varactor capacitance has on the resonant frequency of the resonator. The unloaded Q of the resonator shown in Fig. 2a, QU , is a function of the unloaded Q of the transmission line, QU,tline , and the unloaded Q of the BST varactor, QU,cap [20]. That is, QU is a measure of loss and is dependent on the reactive energy stored on the line and the reactive energy stored on the capacitor. QU is greater when the proportion of the resonant energy stored on the capacitor is lower. However, as the proportion of the energy stored on the capacitor reduces, the tuning sensitivity reduces. The relationship is approximately captured as follows 1 (1 Ts ) Ts = + QU,cap QU QU,tline (11) |Im{zc(0)}| which is lossless and independent of bias voltage because it is fundamental in determining the initial design location for the tunable lter design. For each unique |Im{zc(0)}| value a zero-bias capacitance value (C1) and the corresponding physical length of the resonator is determined. The capacitance value is then varied by changing the bias voltage which changes the resonance frequency and the centre frequency of the lter. The performance of the tunable lter for the entire tuning range is dened by (12) for each discrete |Im{zc(0)}| value. Note that the losses due to the BST varactors and the transmission lines are accounted for in the insertion loss values used in computing FOM2 . A higher value of FOM2 indicates a higher performance lter resulting from a better design or better varactor. That is the tunable BPF design is optimised by selecting the |Im{zc(0)}| value that maximises FOM2 (subject to the maximum bandwidth and minimum rejection constraints).

Simulation and experimental results

Noting that QU,tline QU,cap at microwave frequencies, the tuning sensitivity, Ts , is a surrogate for the proportion of the energy stored on the capacitor. When varactor impedance is chosen so that Ts is close to 1, the maximum resonant energy is stored on the capacitor and the unloaded Q of the resonator, QU , is equal to the unloaded Q of the capacitor, thus loss will be high. When the capacitor impedance is high, so that Ts is small, the unloaded Q of the resonator, QU , will be much higher than the Q of the varactor and losses will be low. For reasonable tuning sensitivity of 0.3 , Ts , 1, QU QU,cap since QU,tline QU,cap . This leads to a new FOM, FOM2 with units of dB21, that represents a trade-off between loss and the tuning sensitivity, Ts FOM2 = Ts QR,w (12)

Several lters operating in bands from 6 to 18 GHz were designed using the procedure described in Section 4.2 yielding lters with up to half-octave tunable bandwidths. Fig. 4 shows two tunable bandpass combline lters with BST capacitors fabricated on an alumina substrate that are based on the system-aware design guidelines and FOM. A plot of tuning sensitivity, Ts , and QR,w as a function of |Im{zc(0)}| is shown in Fig. 5. QR,w is proportional to the overall unloaded Q of the resonator and thus inversely proportional to insertion loss. Fig. 5 indicates the expected trade-off between loss and tunability. Fig. 6 indicates that to optimise the system performance, it is best to operate the lter such that |Im{zc(0)}| 1.55 which corresponds to u 578 at 0 V DC bias at the bottom end of the tuning range. Note that |Im{zc(0)}| does not vary with bias voltage. The optimum initial (corresponding to lowest centre frequency) transmission line length of u 578 is dependent on the capacitance tuning ratio of 2 (i.e. C1/C2 2) and optimises FOM2 subject to the maximum bandwidth constraint. For other values the optimum transmission line length needs to be re-derived. The design guideline of u 578 can be contrasted to the earlier guideline developed using minimum variation of bandwidth across the tuning range [4]. The earlier guideline was for a transmission line

Here, QR,w represents a term proportional to the worst-case unloaded resonator Q (QU,w), see (7). FOM1 and FOM2 are compared in Section 6. A convenient metric for identifying a design is the lossless zero-bias normalised impedance of the tunable capacitor |Im{zc (0)}| = 1 vr C1 Z0 (13)

where C1 is the initial unbiased value of the BST capacitor, vr is the resonant frequency and Z0 is the characteristic impedance of the transmission line. QR,w , Ts , FOM2 and optimum design range are all plotted with respect to
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Fig. 4 Two fabricated third-order tunable combline bandpass lters with BST gap capacitors on an alumina substrate along with two through lengths that can be used for calibration
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Fig. 5 Trade-off between tuning sensitivity (Ts) and the QR,w as a function of |Im{zc(0)}|

Fig. 7 Simulated S-parameter results

a Simulated S21 of a tunable BST lter covering 6.45 8.61 GHz. The simulated response indicates a centre frequency that can be tuned from 6.78 to 8.28 GHz. An insertion loss of 7.95 dB and a bandwidth of 0.63 GHz corresponds to the centre frequency of 6.78 GHz. An insertion loss of 5.08 dB and a bandwidth of 0.71 GHz corresponds to the centre frequency of 8.28 GHz b Simulated S11 of a tunable BST lter covering 6.458.61 GHz

Fig. 6 Simulated and measured FOM2 as a function of |Im{zc(0)}|

length of 538 at the centre of the tuning range derived for minimum bandwidth variation. For the same capacitance ratio as used here (i.e. C1/C2 2), this implies an initial transmission line length, u 468. That is, from (5), the insertion loss (in decibels) would be multiplied by 1.27 for the same fractional bandwidth. The FOM2 computed from measured results for two fabricated lters are also included in Fig. 6. One of the measured results is slightly higher than the results obtained from simulations. This is because the particular lter measured had a BST capacitor with a higher Q (QU,cap) compared to the average value used in the simulations. A design location lower than |Im{zc(0)}| 1.55 was chosen to fabricate the lters as the tuning specication required higher tunability than that indicated by the optimum FOM. A typical lter transmission response is shown in the simulated response in Fig. 7a and measured response in Fig. 8a for a lter designed at |Im{zc(0)}| 1.07. A tunable transmission zero due to the cross-coupling between the rst and the last resonator is responsible for a higher upper out-of-band rejection compared to the rejection on the lower side of the bandpass response. The measured lter response indicates a centre frequency that can be tuned from 6.74 to
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8.23 GHz and a maximum 3-dB bandwidth of 930 MHz, within the ADC-derived limitation of 1 GHz. Thus, the BPF provides a variable passband from 6.28 to 8.59 GHz. As expected, the insertion loss (IL 1/|S21|, or in decibels IL|dB 2S21|dB) reduces and the bandwidth increases as the bias voltage sweeps from 0 to 65 V. The worst-case insertion loss (or transmission loss) and bandwidth, used to compute the worst-case Q, are derived from the lter insertion loss and bandwidth at different bias voltages within the required tuning range. Worst-case Q is used in computing FOM2 and it thereby also inuences the optimum design range derived from it as indicated in Fig. 9. The return loss (RL) of the lter, shown in the simulated response in Fig. 7b and measured response in Fig. 8b, indicates that the RL is consistently higher than 10 dB in this tuning range. Figs. 5, 6 and 9 appear jagged due to the nite resolution in extracting the 3 dB bandwidth of the lter from simulations.

` 6 System-aware vis-a-vis early design guidelines and FOM

The traditional tunable lter design methodology involves maintaining a constant absolute pass bandwidth across the entire tuning frequency range. The system-aware approach discussed in this paper does not maintain constant lter bandwidth across the tuning range and instead the maximum
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system-level performance of a tunable lter and enables the trade-off of loss and lter tunability for given material properties. It also supports material design by allowing varactor tunability and Q trade-offs, thereby enabling their impact on system performance to be determined. Ideally a FOM has a constant region at its maximum value and this is observed for both FOM1 and FOM2 in Fig. 9 but the optimum design range is greater for FOM2 . It is this larger optimum design space which enables the tradeoffs described above to be readily examined. So while the peaks FOM1 and FOM2 are comparable, FOM2 is more suited to design BPFs that are part of a bigger system. In short, system-aware FOM2 ensures that lter optimisation does not constrain the sub-system design parameters unless it affects the system performance, uses worst-case lter design parameters and relates frequency tunability with an associated material tunability term.

Conclusion

Fig. 8 Measured S-parameter results

a Measured S21 of a tunable BST lter covering 6.288.59 GHz at bias voltages of 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 and 65 V. Marker m1 indicates a centre frequency of 6.74 GHz, an insertion loss of 7.43 dB and a bandwidth of 0.71 GHz. Marker m2 indicates a centre frequency of 8.23 GHz, an insertion loss of 4.82 dB and a bandwidth of 0.93 GHz b Measured S11 of a tunable BST lter covering 6.288.59 GHz at bias voltages of 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 60 and 65 V

A FOM for tunable microwave BPF based on tuning sensitivity and worst-case insertion loss and fractional bandwidth was developed to optimise lter design for system-level integration. The system-based design methodology to design tunable ferroelectric lters was compared and contrasted with the earlier methodology used. Reasons as to why the system-based guideline and FOM developed here are more suited to designing tunable BPFs that are part of a bigger system were highlighted. Simulation and measurement results for a lter designed based on the proposed design guideline are presented. While the discussion in this paper was focused on BSTbased frequency agile BPF design, the design concepts can be extended to other tunable BPF designs.

References

Fig. 9 Simulated FOM1 and FOM2 as a function of |im{zc(0)}|

bandwidth, which is determined by the downstream system ADC, is constrained. An earlier metric, FOM1 , is a FOM of a lter based on the geometric mean of bandwidth and insertion loss. It does not capture the quality of a varactorbased design given the material (or capacitance) tunabilty, and does not facilitate the tradeoff between design and material parameters. The metric introduced in this paper, FOM2 , incorporates material tunability as well as worst-case bandwidth and loss. Maximising FOM2 optimises the
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1 Carey-Smith, B.E., Warr, P.A., Rogers, P.R., Beach, M.A., Hilton, G.S.: Flexible frequency discrimination subsystems for recongurable radio front ends, EURASIP J. Wirel. Commun. Netw., 2005, 2005, pp. 354363 2 Noren, B.: Thin lm barium strontium titanate (BST) for a new class of tunable RF components, Microw. J., 2004, 47, (5), pp. 210220 3 Jones, W.L.: Design of tunable combline lters of near-constant bandwidth, Electron. Lett., 1965, 1, (6), pp. 156 158 4 Hunter, I.C., Rhodes, J.D.: Electronically tunable microwave bandpass lters, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 1982, 30, (9), pp. 1354 1360 5 Vendik, I., Vendik, O., Pleskachev, V., Svishchev, A., Wordenweber, R.: Design of tunable ferroelectric lters with a constant fractional bandwidth. 2001 IEEE MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Digest, Phoenix, AZ, USA, May 2001, pp. 14611464 6 Feng, Z., Fathelbab, W.M., Lam, P.G., et al.: A 6.27.5 GHz tunable bandpass lter with integrated barium strontium titanate (BST) interdigitated varactors utilizing silver/copper metallization. Radio and Wireless Symp., San Diego, CA, USA, January 2009, pp. 638 641 7 Feng, Z., Fathelbab, W.M., Lam, P.G., et al.: Narrowband barium strontium titanate (BST) tunable bandpass lters at X-band. 2009 IEEE MTT-S Int. Microwave Symp. Digest, Boston, MA, USA, June 2009, pp. 10611064 8 Steer, M.B.: Microwave and RF design: a systems approach (SciTech Publishing, Inc., Raleigh, NC, 2010) 9 Hunter, I.: Theory and design of microwave lters (The Institution of Electrical Engineers, London, UK, 2001) 10 Matthaei, G.L., Young, L., Jones, E.M.T.: Microwave lters, impedance-matching networks, and coupling structures (McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., New York, 1964) 11 Sonnet software, version 11.52. www.sonnetsoftware.com, accessed September 2010 12 Lam, P.G., Feng, Z., Haridasan, V., Kingon, A.I., Steer, M.B., Maria, J.-P.: The impact of metallization thickness and geometry for X-Band IET Microw. Antennas Propag., 2011, Vol. 5, Iss. 10, pp. 12341241 doi: 10.1049/iet-map.2010.0461

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13 14 tunable microwave lters, IEEE Trans. Ultrason., Ferroelectr. Freq. Control, 2009, 56, (5), pp. 906 911 Pleskachev, V., Vendik, I.: Figure of merit of tunable ferroelectric planar lters. Proc. 33rd European Microwave Conf., Munich, Germany, October 2003, pp. 191 194 Vendik, I., Pleskachev, V., Vendik, O.: Figure of merit and limiting characteristics of tunable ferroelectric microwave devices. Progress in Electromagnetics Research Symp., Hangzhou, China, August 2005, pp. 327330 Vendik, I.B., Vendik, O.G., Kollberg, E.L.: Commutation quality factor of two-state switching devices, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 2000, 48, (5), pp. 802808 Pleskachev, V., Vendik, I.: Tunable microwave lters based on ferroelectric capacitors. 15th Int. Conf. on Microwaves, Radar and Wireless Communications, Warsaw, Poland, May 2004, pp. 1039 1043 17 Courreges, S., Li, Y., Zhao, Z., Choi, K., Hunt, A.T., Papapolymerou, J.: ` Two-pole X-band-tunable ferroelectric lters with tunable center frequency, fractional bandwidth and return loss, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 2009, 57, (12), pp. 2872 2881 18 Cohn, S.B.: Dissipation loss in multiple-coupled-resonator lters. Proc. Institute of Radio Engineers, August 1959, vol. 47, (8), pp. 1342 1348 19 Gevorgian, S.: Ferroelectrics in microwave devices, circuits and systems (Springer, 2009) 20 Brown, A.R., Rebeiz, G.M.: A varactor-tuned RF lter, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 2000, 48, (7), pp. 1157 1160 21 Kozyrev, A., Buslov, O., Keis, V., et al.: 14 GHz tunable lters base on ferroelectric lms, Integr. Ferroelectr., 2003, 55, (1), pp. 905 913 22 Norling, M., Vorobiev, A., Jacobsson, H., Gevorgian, S.: A low-noise K-band VCO based on room-temperature ferroelectric varactors, IEEE Trans. Microw. Theory Tech., 2007, 55, (2), pp. 361 369

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