Miniaturized and reconfigurable filters for advanced communication systems

New concepts are presented for both miniaturized and MEMS-based reconfigurable waveguide filters. The ultimate goal is to reduce size of telecommunication systems without compromising the high unloaded Q required in such applications. One class of miniaturized filters is based on ridges arbitrarily located and oriented within a waveguide allowing for pseudo-elliptic filter responses; the other one is based on cavities employing TM modes as building blocks to obtain N^th order filters with N transmission zeros. Three new concepts have then been developed for high-Q (>;1000) bandpass waveguide filters with tunable central frequency or bandwidth using RF MEMS switches.