A 2% Bandwidth C-Band Filter Using Cascaded Split Ring Resonators

A 2% bandpass filter with an out-of-band rejection in excess of 30 dB was demonstrated experimentally for operation in the C-band (central frequency at 4.5 GHz). Narrow bandwidth and high rejection were achieved by cascading three double split-ring resonators (SRRs) magnetically coupled to a coplanar waveguide (CPW) and three pairs of shunt wires between the central strip and the ground metal layers. This configuration, directly inspired from the so-called metamaterial technology, takes advantage of the high dispersion of the loaded transmission line, induced by a negative magnetic response via the resonators, and of a negative permittivity effect via the shunt wires. The optimization of: 1) the symmetry; 2) the out-of-band rejection; and 3) the fractional bandwidth was carried out in two stages, i.e., by engineering the plasma frequencies of the electrical and magnetic systems and by tapering the tightly coupled cascaded unit cells in order to achieve an overlap of their individual responses.