IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 32, NO.

2, JUNE 2009

273

Microwave Bandstop Filters Using Novel Artificial

Periodic Substrate Electromagnetic
Band Gap Structures
Felix D. Mbairi, Member, IEEE, and Hjalmar Hesselbom

AbstractNovel microwave and millimeterwave (mm-wave)

bandstop
filters
using
artificial
periodic
substrate
electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) are investigated in this paper.
Three types of microstrip structures using periodically modified
trace width, patterned dielectric substrate, and periodically
modified ground plane are treated, respectively. By periodically
modifying either the width of the conductor trace, the substrate
height, or the dielectric constant of a standard microstrip
transmission line, it has been possible to design microwave
bandstop filter functions with wide stopband characteristics and
reduced size, compared to conventional microwave/RF filter
structures. Commercial electronic design automation (EDA) and
computational electro- magnetic tools such as Agilents advanced
design system (ADS) and CST Microwave Studio are used in the
design and simulations of these filter structures. The effects of
the physical parameters of the structures on the filter
characteristic are studied. The design procedure and simulation
results are described and possible applications of these filter
structures are discussed in this paper. A particularly wide
stopband is achieved by the circuits presented in this paper,
which use only a few cell elements. A significant performance
improvement of microstrip patch antenna has been observed by
implementing one of the presented EBG periodic substrate
structures.
Index TermsBandstop filter (BSF), electromagnetic bandgap
(EBG), microstrip, microwave, millimeterwave (mm-wave), photonic bandgap (PBG), -parameters.

I.

INTRODUCTION

ITH the increasing trend towards miniaturization and

the perpetual quest for higher performance circuits, new
methods and techniques of making smaller size electronics devices with better performance are of great importance.
The interest in periodic substrate electromagnetic bandgap
(EBG) and defected ground structures (DGS) for microwave
and millimeterwave (mm-wave) applications has much inManuscript received November 29, 2006; revised February 06, 2009. Current version published July 22, 2009. This work was supported in part by Mid
Sweden University, ITM. This work was recommended for publication by Associate Editor L.-T. Hwang upon evaluation of the reviewers comments.
F. D. Mbairi was with the Department of Microelectronics and Information Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Electrum 229, SE164 40 Sweden. He is now with UMG/PHEE/Mobile Internet Plat- form
Engineering, Intel Corporation, Hillsboro, OR 97124 USA (e-mail:
felix.d.mbairi@intel.com).
H. Hesselbom was with the Department of Electronic Production, Mid
Sweden University, ITM, Campus stersund, SE 831 25, Sweden. He is now
with the Hesselbom Innovation & Development HB, 141 38 Huddinge,
Sweden (e-mail: hjalmar@ hesselbom-id.com).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available
online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCAPT.2009.2018833

creased these recent years, due to the unique properties and

advantages of improved performance, slow-wave property,
size reduction, etc., related to these concepts. EBG Bragg
grating and DGS structures have been successfully applied
to many microwave components and devices such as planar
transmission lines, filters, couplers, antennas, mixers, power
amplifiers, etc., showing attractive features (e.g., slow-wave
effects, harmonics suppression, wideband characteristics,
circuit size reduction, performance enhancement). Various
sorts of periodic structures exhibiting these characteristics
have been investigated and developed by several authors [1]
[12].
Microwave/RF filters play a major role in communication
systems where they are widely used to eliminate unwanted
signal frequencies while permitting good transmission of the
desired frequencies.
In this paper, another concept of EBG structures based on
pe- riodical modification of the microstrip line impedance is
pre- sented which preserves the uniformity of the conductor
backing and thus does not suffer enclosure or packaging
problems. Three types of BSF using simple microstrip
periodic structures and providing small size, large bandwidth,
and great stopband re- jection characteristics are described.
The three structures are formed by periodically modifying the
signal trace width, the thickness of the ground/reference plane
(or the substrate height), and by periodically varying the
substrate dielectric constant, re- spectively. A microstrip patch
antenna using the patterned di- electric substrate
configuration has been shown to suppress har- monic
components and enhance bandwidth.
Agilents commercial software package advanced design
system (ADS) is used to design and simulate these structures.
The frequency characteristics of the proposed EBG microstrip
structures are investigated by full-wave electromagnetic simulations using microwave studio (MWS), a finite-difference
time-domain (FDTD) software from CST Corporation. The effects of the physical parameters on the filter characteristics are
studied for the structure with periodically modified substrate
heights, showing the possibilities of optimizing its frequency
response.
In the next paragraphs, an overview of the EBG concept
is presented, followed by the design theory and analysis of
the three filter structures, as well as the simulation results and
discussions.
II.

PBG/EBG CONCEPT

The concept of photonic bandgap was originally

developed in the optical domain [13] and describes the
selective propagation
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPONENTS AND PACKAGING TECHNOLOGIES, VOL. 32, NO. 2, JUNE 2009

(2)

Fig. 1. Schematics of a type of Bragg grating, where a shallow corrugation is

created on the top surface of a structure. is the Bragg grating period.

of electromagnetic waves (light) in a periodic structure. Such

a structure presents some allowed frequency regions (bands)
where the electromagnetic (EM) waves can propagate, and
some forbidden band or bandgap in which no wave
propagation is permitted. The term bandgap is borrowed
from solid-state physics and refers to a forbidden region in a
crystal structure, where wave propagation is not allowed. The
terminology is in- herited from the theory of electron and hole
propagation in crys- tals. In the forbidden frequency band,
incident waves at var- ious directions interfere destructively
and thus are unable to propagate.
The PBG concept has been widely used in the optical area
to create periodically modified structures (e.g., optical
waveguide, filter, and coupler structures, with periodic array
of grating pat- terns atop a dielectric or semiconductor layer),
where the elec- tromagnetic waves propagation is frequency
selective, creating additional features in the characteristics of
the structures other than their conventional functions.
Recently, the PBG concept has been extended to microwave
and mm-wave applications, under the terminology EBG. PBG
or EBG structures are based on Bragg grating condition. The
term Bragg grating refers to an optical device created by
periodically modulating the refrac- tive index (structural
corrugation) in an optical waveguide (see Fig. 1), thereby
reflecting light in multiples of narrow wave- length ranges
while transmitting all other wavelengths. This ability to
selectively reflect certain wavelength is attractive for a wide
range of filtering applications in optical telecommunica- tions
(optical filters, fiber Bragg gratings applications, etc.).
For the Bragg-grating-based filters, the operating frequency
is determined by the spatial grating period (or Bragg period)
, according to the Bragg condition given by (1) and (3) for
optical waveguide devices, and (2) and (4) for electromagnetic
devices

(1)
where is the free space wavelength,
is the effective
index of refraction of the guiding dielectric structure, and is
an in- teger representing the order of the Bragg grating. The
refractive index
is related to the dielectric constant
by
, where
is the permittivity of free space.
is
the wave- length of light inside the dielectric material.
The Bragg condition can also be expressed in terms of the
propagation constant as

where is the phase constant in the length direction of periodicity .

The Bragg grating acts as a 1-D diffraction grating which
re- flects electromagnetic waves from the forward-travelling
mode into the backward travelling mode.
According to the Bragg condition, in order for
constructive interference to occur between reflected light
(waves), the path difference between reflected light (waves)
from subsequent grating periods must be an integral number
of wavelength. Equations (1) and (2) represent the Bragg
condition for a th-order Bragg grating.
For
, (1) and (2) become

Many conventional microwave devices, for example, filters,

transformers, couplers, etc., use alternating sections of
different characteristic impedances (known as stepped
impedance) to easily implement their functions. In this paper,
a periodic imple- mentation of this feature is used to create
distinctive bandstop filter characteristics. Three configurations
of microstrip EBG bandstop filters are presented. The three
structures are based on periodic modification of the
characteristic impedance of the microstrip transmission line,
using Bragg grating conditions.
The characteristic impedance of a standard microstrip transmission line is given in [14] by

(3)

(5)

(4)
which are the conditions for a first-order Bragg grating.
The path difference is precisely one wavelength, and the
grating period is one half of the wavelength. This
corresponds to the strongest reflection or diffraction
efficiency. Only a first-order
and 1-D Bragg
grating is considered in this work. Higher order Bragg
gratings provide a substantially larger grating pitch, which
simplifies the fabrication process.
By changing the pitch, the number of cells, or the
modulation depth of the grating across the length of the
device, it is possible to shape its spectral or frequency
response.
III. DESIGN THEORY/CONCEPT

where is the relative dielectric constant of the substrate material used, is the substrate height, is the thickness of the
conductor trace, and is the trace width. As there are four
variable parameters in this relation, four options are possible
for changing
using only one of these parameters (for
simplicity).
A. By Changing the Conductor Trace Width ( ),
and Maintaining the Other Parameters Constant
This results in a stepped impedance like structure shown in
Fig. 2(a), often used in the literature for nonperiodic filter
struc- tures (e.g., stepped impedance low-pass filter) [15]. In
combina- tion with an EBG Bragg grating, this type of
structure can pro- duce a very wide stopband characteristic, as
illustrated in Fig. 6.

As estruturas da fig. 2 foram implementadas usando Agilent ADS. Os circuitos so modelados por repetir periodicamente (quatro vezes)
uma ligao em cascata de duas linhas de transmisso e TL_2 Tl_1, de diferentes impedncias caractersticas Z01 e Z02 respectivamente.
Por razes de simetria e na outra para coincidir com as portas de entrada e de sada, um outro elemento Z01 foi adicionada no final das
estruturas.
A condio de Bragg (4) sugere que o perodo deve ser igual a um meio comprimento de onda para a frequncia de criao, isto ,

Onde lambida0 o comprimento de onda na faixa de rejeio f_0 frequncia central

Com Epsolon_reff sendo constante dielctrica efetiva da microfita, dada pelas expresses de forma fechada:

Onde F

Os passos de grade delta_l_1 e delta_l_2 podem ser escolhidos para ser igual em comprimentos fsicos ou em comprimentos eltricos
(atrasos iguais), ou de comprimentos diferentes (por um perodo constante) em todos os casos. Um comprimento eltrico igual entre as duas
seces TL_1 (delta_l_1 de comprimento fsico) e TL_2 (delta_l_2 de comprimento fsico) implica.