Triple-Conductor Combline Resonators for Dual-Band Filters With Enhanced Guard-Band Selectivity

Novel combline resonators and filters with enhanced dual-band characteristics are introduced in this paper. The proposed resonator is made up of three metallic conductors: an inner post, an intermediate conductor, and an enclosure. This structure provides two asynchronous resonant modes that can be used for realizing compact microwave dual-band filters. Such dual-band filters offer the low cost, compact size, and ease of manufacturing features of traditional combline resonator filters, with additional size reduction due to the fact that a single physical cavity provides two electrical resonators. In addition, the new cavity introduces a transmission zero in the guard-bands enhancing the filter selectivity, while keeping a simple and compact inline topology. The design of filters based on this novel resonator is discussed, starting with the resonator circuit model, the coupling scheme, and the complete filter design methodology. Simulations as well as experimental results of a tenth-order (2 × 5) dual-band filter with a measured rejection level in excess of 100 dB in the guard-band are presented to show the concept.