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IEEE MICROWAVE AND GUIDED WAVE LETTERS, VOL. 9, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1999

Arbitrary Filter Design by Using Nonuniform Transmission Lines

Te-Wen Pan, Ching-Wen Hsue, Senior Member, IEEE, and Jhin-Fang Huang
Abstract We develop new formulations of reection and transmission coefcients of nonuniform transmission lines having unequal reference impedances. By using the ABCD transmission matrix of a transmission line, we express the reection and transmission coefcients of a nonuniform line as polynominal ratios in Z transforms. These formulations, in conjunction with digital signal processing (DSP) techniques and a reconstruction method, lead to the realization of nonuniform lines which satisfy prescribed scattering characteristics in frequency domain. Some examples are presented to illustrate the validity of this technique. Index Terms Filter, nonuniform line.

I. INTRODUCTION ONUNIFORM transmission lines (NTLs) have been studied by many authors for decades in both direct scattering and inverse scattering problems [1][5]. As far as the direct scattering is concerned, both computation efciency and computation accuracy become major issues. However, from the point of view of inverse scattering, the format of scattering parameters plays an important role in facilitating the inverse problem. Therefore, we may formulate the scattering parameters of nonuniform line in various forms to satisfy specic considerations. In this letter, we express the reection and transmission transcoefcients of an NTL as polynomial ratios in forms, which are called autoregressive moving average process and autoregressive process in digital signal processing (DSP) studies. These formulations, in conjunction with digital lter design technique [6] and a reconstruction method [4], allow us to design NTL lters having arbitrary-amplitude responses in frequency domain. II. SCATTERING PARAMETERS OF NONUNIFORM LINES Fig. 1(a) shows a two-port network having terminal voltages , and currents , at the respective ports. These phasor transmission quantities are interrelated through the matrix [5]. Each terminal voltage and current can be divided into two signal components traveling in opposite directions, represents as shown in Fig. 1(b), where the superscript and are the forward (backward) traveling wave, and reference characteristic impedances on the left and right sides of nonuniform line, respectively. The reection coefcient
Manuscript received August 27, 1998. This work was supported by the National Science Council, R.O.C., under Grant NSC88-2213-E011-053. The authors are with the Department of Electronic Engineering, National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C. (email: cwh@et.ntust.edu.tw). Publisher Item Identier S 1051-8207(99)02658-6.

(a)

(b) Fig. 1. (a) A two-port network and terminal voltagescurrents and (b) the traveling-wave representation at terminals.

and transmission coefcient parameters as follows:

are related to

(1a) and (1b)

where is the angular frequency. When both sides of transmis, sion line have the same reference impedance, i.e., , and reduce to those shown in [5]. If we set and , where is the propagation delay, is the physical length, and is the propagation constant of matrix [5] of a the signal line, we then obtain the

10518207/99$10.00 1999 IEEE

PAN et al.: FILTER DESIGN USING NONUNIFORM TRANSMISSION LINES

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uniform line in

transforms (2)

and are the characteristic impedance and admitwhere tance, respectively. Since a nonuniform transmission line can be treated as cascaded nite-number sections of a signal line, matrix of a nonuniform transmission line is then the represented by a sequential multiplication of the corresponding matrices of uniform transmission lines. We then have (3) is the number of nite lines, and , , , and where are the matrix elements that represent the th ( ) line. Upon the substitution of (3) and (2) into (1), we obtain the general forms of reection and transmission coefcients domain of NTL in

Fig. 2. The frequency responses of a low-pass lter for ZL = 50

.

Z0

= 30

(4a)

Fig. 3. The physical layout of a 18-section nonuniform line.

(4b)

where , , and are real coefcients. Equations (4a) and (4b) are the general forms of reection and transmission coefcients of nonuniform lines in transforms. These equations have been widely used in DSP studies. This reveals that many application tools developed in DSP are actually applicable to the study of nonuniform transmission lines. For example, in order to obtain an NTL lter that has a , we may use digital prescribed transmission coefcient lter design techniques [6] or system identication techniques and in . In other words, to get the coefcients we may design an arbitrary lter by changing the coefcients and in (4b). The formulations in (4) also indicate that is given, we can obtain if the transmission coefcient by using DSP lter design the reection coefcient , we then obtain frequencytechnique [6]. Once we get by setting , domain reection coefcient where is the delay time of each subsection line. Furthermore, by taking we get the time-domain reection coefcient . We then employ the the inverse Fourier transform of reconstruction method [4] to synthesize the impedance prole . of NTL from the reection coefcient III. NUMERICAL AND EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS Fig. 2 shows the amplitude response of a postulated lowpass lter over the frequency range 08 GHz. The low-pass lter has three-level amplitude variation, namely, 2, 10, and 20 dB. To satisfy the 2 dB specication, we apparently

should choose a nonuniform transmission line conguration that has unequal characteristic impedances on both sides of the line. We assume that the terminal reference impedances are and . According to the conservation of is 1.29 power, the maximum transmission coefcient (or 2.21 dB), which is larger than any values shown in is equal to . As long as Fig. 2. Note that , such a the amplitude response of the lter is less than lter is feasible. As a result, the amplitude response of the lter . Of course, for could be greater than one if we set . Fig. 2 many practical applications, we usually set also shows the simulation result of the transmission coefcient of a nonuniform transmission line for . Note that is, the closer tting the simulation the larger the number result is. However, a large will lead to a longer nonuniform , we can obtain . Actually, line. After getting choices for the selection of . Once we can have is obtained, we then use the the reection coefcient reconstruction technique [4] to get the impedance proles of nonuniform lines. It is pertinent to point out that an impedance prole having extremely large or small values of characteristic impedances cannot be practically implemented. Fig. 3 shows the physical layout of a nonuniform line which is built on a Duroid substrate having relative dielectric constant 3.38 and thickness 60 mils. The impedance prole of this nonuniform line is . Note that each nite uniform line has the same propagation delay time, which is determined by the frequency range of interest. For the present consideration, the delay time of each section is 31.25 ps. In addition, the effect of junction discontinuity of transmission line on the lter response is

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IEEE MICROWAVE AND GUIDED WAVE LETTERS, VOL. 9, NO. 2, FEBRUARY 1999

not taken into account in the models of transmission and reection coefcients in (4). Generally, the discontinuity effect affects the lter response greatly. We can compensate the discontinuity effect by adjusting the physical length of each subsection line [7]. To verify the theoretical result, we show in Fig. 2 the measurement result of the nonuniform line, which is obtained by using HP8510C network analyzer. Because the reference , which is characteristic impedance of HP8510C is 50 different from our selected values, the measurement result reference system by should be transformed into a using the following relationship:

IV. CONCLUSION We have developed the formulations of reection and transmission coefcients of a nonuniform transmission line with unequal terminal reference impedances. These formulations, in conjunction with DSP techniques and a reconstruction technique, can be employed to design NTL lters having arbitrary-amplitude responses in frequency domain. REFERENCES
[1] Y. P. Tang, Z. Li, and S. Y. Tang, Transient analysis of tapered transmission lines used as transformers for short pulses, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 43, pp. 25732578, Nov. 1995. [2] P. P. Roberts and G. E. Town, Design of microwave lters by inverse scattering, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 43, pp. 739743, Apr. 1995. [3] V. P. Meschanov, I. A. Rasukova, and V. D. Tupikin, Stepped transformers on TEM-transmission lines, IEEE Trans. Microwave Theory Tech., vol. 44, pp. 793798, June 1996. [4] C.-W. Hsue and T.-W. Pan, Reconstruction of nonuniform transmission lines from time-domain reectometry, IEEE Trans. Micowave Theory Tech., vol. 45, pp. 3238, Jan. 1997. [5] D. M. Pozar, Microwave Engineering. New York: Addison-Wesley, 1990. [6] A. V. Oppenheim and R. W. Shafer, Discrete-Time Signal Processing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1989. [7] T. Edwards, Foundations For Microstrip Circuit Design. New York: Wiley, 1991.

(5)

where

, , , , and ( ) are the measured scattering parameters. Both numerical values and measurement results are in good agreement with the original postulated lter.