Compact Electronically Switchable Parallel-Coupled Microstrip Bandpass Filter With Wide Stopband

In this letter, a compact electronically switchable parallel-coupled microstrip bandpass filter (BPF) based on quarter- wavelength resonators and p-i-n diode switch is proposed. The proposed filter occupies only half the circuit size of the conventional parallel-coupled filter. In addition, the type and length of each coupled-line section is suitably chosen such that the inherent transmission zeros associated with the coupled-lines can be used to reject the spurious passbands effectively. By adding only one p-i-n diode along with a simple bias control circuitry, the proposed filter becomes electronically switchable with no current consumption when the filter is turned off. Specifically, a switchable fourth-order microstrip BPF with a center frequency f₀ of 2 GHz, passband insertion loss less than 3 dB, and wide stopband up to 7.7 f₀ in the ON state is demonstrated. The isolation of the filter is better than 30 dB from dc up to 7.7 f₀ in the OFF state.