Compact quintplexer module with meshed ground plane for US-CDMA handset applications

Compact quintplexer module with PCB embedded passive triplexer circuit has been designed and fabricated for US-CDMA handset applications. Meshed ground technology was newly applied to improve the quality factor of the embedded inductors for reducing the insertion loss of the quintplexer module. The proposed quintplexer module was comprised of passive triplexer, SAW duplexer for DCN band, and FBAR duplexer for US-PCS band. The passive triplexer circuit with 8 passive elements was comprised of a diplexer, parallel resonator, and matching network. A fabricated quintplexer module with meshed ground plane exhibited insertion losses of -2.2 dB/-2.8 dB at DCN Tx/Rx band, -2.8 dB/-3.2 dB at US-PCS Tx/Rx band, and -1.2 dB at GPS Rx band, respectively. In addition, the stop-band attenuation performances are -50 dB/-50 dB at DCN Tx/Rx band, -52 dB/-42 dB at PCS Tx/Rx band, and -35 dB at GPS Rx band, respectively. The applied meshed ground plane was confirmed to be effective for improving the quality factors of the embedded inductors resulting in low insertion loss and high isolation characteristics of the embedded triplexer circuit.