A 26-GHz Band Dielectric Waveguide Diplexer with Flange Interfaces

Kazuhisa Sano and Kazuhiro Ito TOKO, INC., 828 Tamagawa, Saitama, 355-0342, JAPAN

Abstract The new dielectric waveguide diplexer as an alternative to the conventional waveguide diplexer is presented. Crystalline quartz is employed as the dielectric material because of its ultra low loss. The quality factor of the dielectric waveguide resonator becomes 2,000 at 26GHz with that. Furthermore, a transition structure between a hollow waveguide and a dielectricfilled waveguide is developed and used for the flange interfaces that make the diplexer connectable with hollow waveguide circuits. The fabricated diplexer exhibits the practical performance with the miniature size and the cost-effective construction at 26-GHz band. Index Terms Dielectric waveguides, diplexers, dielectric resonator filters, quartz, waveguide transitions, waveguide filters.

Thereat the crystalline quartz is used as the dielectric material in this paper. The crystalline quartz has appropriate permittivity. In addition, its ultra low loss improves the characteristics of the dielectric waveguide filter. The diplexer consisting of the two filters made of crystalline quartz is fabricated as the demonstration. In this fabrication, newly developed transition structure is applied to the flange interfaces of the diplexer to make it connectable with hollow waveguide circuits. The fabricated diplexer shows excellent performances. II. DIELECTRIC MATERIAL

I. INTRODUCTION Waveguide filters have been being used as fundamental components for microwave communications from the age when the vacuum tubes were main constituents. However, it is disproportionate the waveguide filters have remained being heavy and bulky whereas the other components, e.g., an amplifier and a mixer have been miniaturized with advanced semiconductor technologies. Moreover, the three-dimensional processing of a metallic block by the milling machine that the construction of the waveguide filter needs is unfavorable for mass production, and so it raises production cost. Such problems of bulk and cost influence popularization of the wireless equipment, especially in the frequency region above K-band that is using the waveguide filter or diplexer frequently. This paper proposes the alternative dielectric waveguide diplexer of the hollow waveguide diplexer having such drawbacks. Although dielectric waveguide filters have been so far studied as a miniaturized waveguide filter [1]-[3], their characteristics are insufficient as an alternate of the conventional hollow waveguide filter. A common problem in the past studies is ceramics with high permittivity were used as dielectric materials. High permittivity of the ceramic miniaturizes the dielectric waveguide filter excessively. Consequently, the current density on the surface of the filter becomes high, and so the loss of the filter is increased. It becomes remarkable in the frequency region above K-band. The realization of the dielectric waveguide filter applicable as an alternative to the conventional waveguide filter needs the dielectric material having low loss and low permittivity.

Dielectric ceramics are very useful for resonator structures formed by loading a disc shape ceramic into a metal wall cavity that are represented by TE01 mode resonator [4]. However their high relative permittivities generally over 20 are unfavorable for the dielectric waveguide resonator of TE10 mode. Table I shows comparisons of quality factor (Q) between typical ceramic and quartz. Although crystalline quartz has the anisotropy that the permittivity depends on the direction of the electric field to the crystal axis, only the perpendicular direction is treated in the table. TABLE I Ceramic Ba(Mg,Ta)O3 23.8 60.1GHz -4 1.6410 1.67mm 14,096 1,037 966 Quartz Crystal () Glass 4.5 3.8 55.9GHz 50.1GHz -4 -4 0.2210 1.1910 3.84mm 4.18mm 97,728 16,192 2,385 2,595 2,328 2,236

r f tan size a Qd Qc Qu

Here, following conditions are set. As for the size of the resonator, the width and the length are a and the height is a/2. The surface conductivity is 6107[s/m]. The relative permittivity (r), the dissipation factor (tan) and the measurement frequency (f) are based on the references [5]-[7]. Then, the dielectric Q (Qd), the conductive Q (Qc) and the total unloaded Q (Qu) are calculated at the frequency of 26GHz with an assumption that f tan is constant.

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It is noticeable that Qc is much lower than Qd at any material in Table I. This contrast becomes clearer at the ceramic with high permittivity because Qd is independent of the size of the resonator whereas Qc is degraded with miniaturizing. In case of the materials with such high-Q, Qu is almost dominated only by Qc. Since quartz miniaturizes the resonator moderately and does not degrade Qc so much, it is more suitable as the material of the dielectric waveguide resonator than the ceramic. Although both crystalline quartz and fused quartz exhibit high quality factors, the lowness of the dielectric loss of the former is specifically outstanding. Moreover, the crystalline quartz has desirable property in the thermal expansion coefficient. It has also anisotropy to the crystal axis that is 13.2ppm/C in the perpendicular direction and 7.1ppm/C in the parallel direction. These coefficients are close to that of common materials of print circuit boards. For example, the most popular printed circuit board material, FR-4 has the thermal expansion coefficient of approximately 15ppm/C in the direction of surface expansion. On the other hand, fused quartz has the coefficient of approximately 0.6ppm/C much different from the printed circuit board material. The similarity of the thermal expansion coefficient is important when they are used together. The crystalline quartz combined with the printed circuit board can be assured the stability of operation under the severe environment. III. HOLLOW / DIELECTRIC-FILLED WAVEGUIDE TRANSITION The dielectric-filled rectangular waveguide has difference in size and characteristic impedance from the hollow waveguide. Therefore, the transition between the two waveguides is necessary to make the dielectric waveguide component connectable with the conventional waveguide circuits. Fig.1 shows the schematic view of newly developed transition structure for this purpose. Two conductive plates are inserted between the hollow and the dielectric-filled waveguides. A slot is made on the bottom surface of the dielectric-filled waveguide by removing a part of conductive film and exposing the dielectric. Then, the dielectric-filled waveguide is coupled with the hollow waveguide via through holes made on two plates. The through hole of lower thick plate, indicated as Transformer Plate, has wider width than the hollow waveguide, and is considered as the waveguide with low characteristic impedance. Therefore, it can be served as a quarter-wavelength impedance transformer by making the thickness of the conductive plate reasonable. Fig.2 is the example of the calculated characteristics of the transition by HFSS at 26-GHz band. It exhibits the excellent performance that has the return loss better than 20dB in the frequency region from 25GHz to 30GHz. Here, making the slot of the dielectric-filled waveguide at the position of approximately a half-wavelength from the short plane introduces the good result.

Dielectric-filled Waveguide Slot Plate

Transformer Plate

Waveguide Flange

Fig. 1. Structure of the hollow / dielectric-filled waveguide transition.

0 -5 -10

Magnitude (dB)

-15 -20 -25 -30 -35 -40 -45 -50 20 21

S21

S11

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 2.

Calculated characteristics of the transition.

IV. STRUCTURE The prototype of the diplexer has the structure shown in Fig.3. It is assembled by sandwiching two dielectric waveguide filters and reinforcements by four plates from upper and lower both sides. The filters have monolithic structures made of crystalline quartz. The through holes made in the thick conductive plates serve as the impedance transformers as mentioned in the prior section, and so the connection of the diplexer with the hollow waveguide by flange interfaces becomes possible. At this time, although the flange interface of the common port is in the upward direction and the two flange interfaces of the other ports are in the downward direction, all three ports may be made in the same direction, too. The branch circuit is an essential constituent of the diplexer; it is realized by expanding the waveguide transition structure. Since the width of the dielectric-filled waveguide is less than a half of the hollow waveguide, two dielectric-filled waveguides can be coupled to one hollow waveguide in the construction similar to the basic hollow/dielectric-filled waveguides transition. The concrete structure is as follows: at the common

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port, two through holes are made on the slot plate, combined with the each slot of the two filters, and connected with the through hole of the transformer plate. This structure consists of only two-dimensional components and needs no costly package. Therefore, the mass production can be easy.
Waveguide Flange Transformer Plate

Slot Plate Dielectric Waveguide Filters Reinforcement Slot Plate

Fig. 4. Filters before and after metallization. In the actual fabrication, two slots are formed on the different upper and bottom surfaces.

Transformer Plate

Waveguide Flanges

Fig. 5.
0

Fabricated diplexer. Common flange interface is upward.

0 S11 5 S21 S31 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 24 24.5 25 25.5 26 26.5 27 27.5 28

Fig. 3.

Structure of the diplexer

10

V. FABRICATION AND MEASUREMENT In the fabrication, FR-4 printed circuit boards are used as the conductive plates. However, more cost-effective material may replace them in the mass production. The printed circuit boards have thickness of 0.4mm as for the slot plates and 2.4mm as for the transformer plates. The crystalline quartz is cut and used in the direction where an electric field becomes perpendicular to the crystal axis. The size of the cross section of the each dielectric waveguide filter is 4mm in width and 2.5mm in thickness. Besides, the lengths of the two filters are 33mm and 34mm. A thick film process is employed to form silver electrodes on the surfaces of the filters. Then the filters are fixed on the FR-4 printed circuit boards by soldering. As the reinforcements to improve mechanical strength, aluminum plates are used. Fig.4 shows the photograph of the filters before and after the metallization. Each filter is designed to have five-stage response with one attenuation pole, so that it has six inductive irises. At this time, it is confirmed the quality factors of the resonators become approximately 2,000 with an estimated surface conductivity of 3.5107(S/m). The dimensions of the filters including the irises are decided by numerical analyses, then the filters are processed according to those dimensions with tolerance of less than 10m, and completed without any tuning.
Attenuation (dB)

20 30 40 50 60 70 80

Frequency (GHz)

Fig. 6.

Measured response of the diplexer.

Fig.5 shows the fabricated diplexer. The whole size becomes 72289mm3. Standard waveguide (WR34) can be connected by flange interfaces. Fig.6 shows the result of the measurement. In this design, the center frequency of the filters is 25.5GHz as for the lower channel filter and 26.4GHz as for the higher channel filter, and the each passband width is 180MHz. The maximum insertion loss in the passband becomes 1.3dB and 1.4dB in the lower channel and higher channel, respectively. The minimum isolation becomes 62dB and 58dB in each channel.

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Return Loss (dB)

VI. CONCLUSION A 26-GHz band dielectric waveguide diplexer was presented. It consists of two dielectric waveguide filters with monolithic structures, and the quality factors of the resonators became 2,000 by employing crystalline quartz as the material. A transition structure between a hollow waveguide and a dielectric-filled waveguide was newly developed and used for the flange interfaces that make the diplexer connectable with the conventional waveguide circuits. Consequently, miniaturization of the waveguide diplexer was realized while maintaining the practical characteristics. The structure that proposed in this paper is favorable for cost-effective mass production because it consists of twodimensional components. It is expected that the diplexer of this type will become an alternative to the conventional bulky waveguide diplexer and contribute to the miniaturization and the cost reduction of the wireless communication equipment.

REFERENCES
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