THlB-4

Low Loss Coupled Line Filters With Transmission Zeros in

Multi-Layer Thin Film MCM-D Technology
G. Posada, G. Carchon, B. Nauwelaers', W. De Raedt

IMEC-div. MCP-MaRS, Kapeldreef 75, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium

+ K.U.L.euven, div. ESAT-TELEMIC, Kard. Mercierlaan 94, B-3001 Leuven, Belgium
e-mail: posadag@imec.be; Tel: ++32/(0)16/288703; Fax: ++32/(0) 16/28 1501

Abstract - This paper presents the design and
characterization of high-performance bandpass filters with
transmission zeros, integrated in a multi-layer thin-film
MCM-D technology on high-resistivity Si. A mixed thin-film
microstrip/coplanar waveguide transmission line has been
used for the realization of the filters, as it presents lower loss
than thin-film microstrip lines. The coupled line filters
achieve an insertion loss of 2.3dB at 25GHz and I.7dB at
43GHz with 3dB bandwidths of 14% and 18% respectively.
The use of transmission zeros provides a close in-band
attenuation of more than 30dB. The used topology allows
changing the center frequency and position of the
transmission zeros more or less independently facilitating the
design.
lndex Terms - Filter, transmission Sne, transmission
zeros, MCM-D.
I. INTRODUCTION
Filters play a critical role in telecommunication systems
as they affect their performance and can even set the
overall size of the system. Applications can be found in
any type of communication, radar or measurement system.
Consequently, the design of low loss, small size and low
weight filters is an important part of system design.
Different technologies and approaches have been used to
design high performance filters. Atia [ I ] has implemented
narrow band-pass waveguide cavity filters in the form of
multiple coupled cavities. Waveguide components are
widely used and offer a very good performance. However,
their cost is high and they are heavy, therefore planar filter
configurations have received a lot of attention to reduce
size, weight and cost.
The limitations of planar filter configurations are the
conductive losses of the resonator sections and the
relatively wide bandwidth that they provide. Hence, low-
loss transmission lines are of primary importance to
achieve a good filter performance.
Micromachining technology [2] has been employed to
produce membrane supported transmission lines and
micropackaging with shielding caps, hereby reducing
ohmic, dielectric and radiation loss. Blondy [3] has used
this technology to implement high performance planar
filters in both CPW and microstrip configurations.
However, as compared to a fully planar solution, the
realization of these micromachined filters becomes
complex and expensive.
This paper presents planar coupled line filters with
transmission zeros realized in a low-cost multi-layer thin-
film MCM-D technology with Cu interconnects. High
performance is obtained by using a novel transmission line
and including transmission zeros in the filter response. It is
also shown that the topology presented in this work is
suited to implement tunable filters.
II.THINFILMMCM-D TECHNOLOGY
Thin-film technology offers the advantage of high preci-
sion, low temperature processing and low cost, in this way,
thick-Cu interconnects and benzo-cyclobutene (BCB)
dielectrics have been used successfully in the past for the
realization of high-Q passives off-chip and Sip based RF
up to mm-wave circuits [4-51.
IMEC's MCM-D Technology (build-up given in Fig. I)
consists of 3 metal layers separated by thin layers of BCB
dielectric deposited on a HRSi (p = 4000 Qcm) carrier
substrate. The BCB dielectric has very low loss (tan 6 =
= 2.7).
8.10"') and a low dielectric constant (ET
Fig. 1: MCM-D technology layer build-up.
As depicted in Fig. I, this technology has 3 metal layers:
metal-1 (bottom), metal-2 (middle) and metal-3 (top). The
distance between metal-I and metal-2 is 1 6 p , while
metal-2 and metal-3 are separated by 9pm. High quality
dielectrics and copper metallizations are used, and
therefore, high quality integrated passives can be realized,
such as TaN resistors, BCB and Ta205-capacitors,low loss
transmission lines and high-Q inductors (integrated in

1471
0-7803-8331-1/04/$20.000 2004 IEEE 2004 IEEE MIT-S Digest
metal-2). Flip-chip and wirebond interconnections are used 0.000
I
to incorporate active components in the design, allowing
high performance wireless front-ends systems to be
-5 0 005

0.010
integrated in a single package. E
0, 0 . y 5
9
HI.TRANSMISSION
LINES
Various transmission lines can be realized in the 0 0.030
MCM-D technology: low loss CPW-lies as well as thin- 0
film rrucrostrip lines for high-density low-loss interconnec- A 0.035

tions. In order to implement a coupled line filter, thin-film 0.040 - L J

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 A5
microstrip lines can be used, however, the distance
between the ground and the signal line is only 16pm and Freq (GHz)
therefore, 50a microstrip lines present a fairly low width Fig. 3: HFSS simulated loss of thin-film microstrip (A) and
hybrid line (H) in the MCM-D technology in dBA.
(35pi). By opening the ground below the strip, and here-
by changing to a mixed thin-film microstrip/CPW trans-
mission line (further referred to as hybrid line), it is possi- Iv. FILTER DESIGN
ble to increase the line width reducing the conductive In order to improve the rejection performance,
losses maintaining the characteristic impedance and at the transmission zeros were included in the filter response.
same time achieving a higher mutual coupling between This technique increases the rejection close to the
neighboring lines. The cross section of the line is given in passband without increasing the loss because the number
Fig. 2a together with the thin-film microstrip cross section of sections in the structure remains the same. PL
(Fig. ;!b). comparison beween a coupled line fiter with and without
transmission zeros is shown in Fig. 4. It is clear how the
slope in the transition band is increased. The filters were
designed using HP Momentum.
0
5

=
a) Hybrid line b) Microsrip -10

Fig. 2: Cross sections of 2 transmission line topologies in MCM- -15

D technology. 8 -20
I
In Fig. 3 the simulated (Ansoft HFSS) loss of a thin-film C .25
.-E
microstrip and hybrid line expressed in d e b as a function -30
of frequency are compared. The comparison is made in
dB/h as the center frequency of the filter is set by the
-g -35

electrical length of the l i e s , not by the physical length. For

the cases shown, the hybrid line has ~ ~ 3 . 1and 5 ,the thin-
-45
-40 3
25 30 35 40 45 50 55 63

film microstrip line has %ftc2.4,which means that to have
the same center frequency in the fiter, the hybrid lines are
shorter. In this way, by expressing the loss in dB/mm, we
woulcl underestimate the real loss improvement of using
hybrid l i e s within the filter.
As in the case of CPW, hybrid lines have 2 different
ground planes, and this can cause undesired modes to
propagate after asymmetries in the line. Nevertheless, the
signal. line and the ground are in different metal layers, and
it is easy to connect the grounds at bends, T- and X-
junctions to overcome this problem.
Freq (GHz)
Fig. 4: Comparison between the response of a coupled line filter
without transmission zeros (w) and the response of a coupled
line filter with transmission zeros (A).
A. 25 GHz Filter
The topology selected to implement a second order
coupled line filter with transmission zeros is shown in Fig.
5 where a picture of the filter can be observed. It is a
coupled line filter in which the coupling between lines 5
and 6 provides transmission zeros in the filter response.
The whole filter is smaller than 3.3x1.3mm2.

1472
 The out of band rejection in the low rejection band is
better than 19dB showing also a 35dB transmission zero
that improves the out of band rejection.

Fig. 5 : Picture of the 25GHz coupled line filter. Coupling

between lines 5 and 6 provides the transmission zeros. The
filter is smaller than 3.3 x 1.3 m d .
Measurements and simulations of the filter are shown in
Fig. 6. The measurements have been performed using Fig. 7. Picture of the 43GHz coupled line filter. The filter I\
s&ller than 2 x 0.7 mm'.
Cascade probes, LRM calibration and an HP8510 VNA.
The de-embedding was performed using the techniques
from [6].
0 0
--if-
-10 4 A A I I\
tL i I -1 0
a
m
??
W
A

-20
-30
" V
-30
. .
i : 20 30 40 50 60
-401 I I I I I I , I I I I I I I , -30
15 20 25 30 35 40 freq, GHz
Fig. 8 : Simulations (dotted line) and measurements (solid line) of
freq, GHz the 43GHz filter.
Fig. 6: Simulation (dotted line) and measurement (solid line) of
the 25GHz fdter.
V. FILTERTUNING
It can be seen that the agreement between simulations
and measurements is good. The measured insertion loss is It is essential for filter responses with transmission zeros
2.3dB at 25GHz and the return loss is 18dB. The return to locate the zeros at the right position to increase the
loss remains better than 15dB from 25GHz to 26.2GHz
rejection performance as much as possible. As explained in
[7] the position of the different zeros is not independent
providing an insertion loss lower than 2.7dB for this
and in this case it is only possible to either bring them
frequency range. The out of band rejection is better than
closer to the center frequency or further apart. In the filter
20dB showing a 30dB transmission zero that improves the
topology presented in this paper, it is only the coupling
slope of the transition band and brings the rejection band
between lines 5 and 6 (Fig. 5) that changes the position of
closer to the pass band.
the zeros. In Fig. 9 three cases are shown, changing the
B . 43GHz Filter length of lines 5 and 6 (ll=50pm, 12=140pm, 1,=22Opm).
The longer these lines are, the closer the zeros come to the
A picture of the filter is shown in Fig. 7. This filter is
center frequency and the steeper the slope of the fiter
smaller than 2~0.7"~. The simulations and measure-
becomes. On the other hand, the attenuation of the zeros
ments agree very well as can be seen in Fig. 8. A very low
and the out of band attenuation decrease. Note that the
insertion loss was measured at 43GHz (1.7dB) and the
position of the zeros can be changed more or less
retum loss is 25dB. The return loss remains better than
independently from the other parameters of the filter,
17dB from 41.9GHz to 45GHz, being the insertion loss
hereby facilitating design.
better than 2.2dB for this frequency range.

1473
 01 1
i
v
-1 0 /I
-20H
-30
10 15 20 25 30 35 40
freq, GHz
Fig. 9: measurements of 3 filters changing the lengths of lines 5
and 6 (Fig. 5). 11 =50pni (A), lz=140pm (m), 13=220pm(e).
Another interesting property of this topology is that the
center frequency can be changed by changing the lengths
of lines 1 and 2 (see Fig. 5). The electrical length of the
lines can be changed by loading the lines with bridges
causing the filter to shift to lower frequencies. In order to
test this concept, 2 versions of the filter were fabricated.In
both of them 17 bridges over lines 1 and 2 were included.
All the bridges are 3 0 p wide and they are separated by
5 0 p ~ In Fig.10 we can see the measurements of three
filters, the standard fiiter without bridges, one with bridges
in metal-1 (16pm high) and one with bridges in metal-3
(9pm high). The closer the bridges come to the lines, the
more the filter shifts to lower frequencies, as expected.
This topology is therefore suited to implement tunable
filters using MEMS having the possibility to tune the
center frequency and position of the zeros independently.
VI.CONCLUSION
High performance coupled line filters with transmission
zeros have been fabricated and measured in a multi-layer
thin-film MCM-D technology on HR-Si. A mixed thin-film
microstrip/coplanar waveguide transmission line has been
used in .the filters, hereby achieving high performance. It
has been shown that the position of the transmission zeros
can be easily changed independently from the other
parameters of the fiiter.
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10 15 20
Freq (GHz)
25 30
Fig. 10: Measurements of the standdrd 25GHz filter withoul
35
bridges (U), a filter with 16pm high bridges (A) and a filter with
9pm high bridges (m).
VII. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was in part funded by the EC project MIPA
(contract number IST-2000-28231). The authors also
thank the ACOSTE processing team for the realization of
the thin-film MCM technology.
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