Miniaturized Bandpass Filter for Ku-band Applications

This paper presents a low cost and low insertion loss Ku-band bandpass filter (BPF) based on inexpensive commercial FR4 (epsiv_r.= 4.3) substrate. The filter is designed on 0.6 mm-thik substrate using microstrip technology by following the design procedure based on even- and odd-mode impedances of the coupled lines. Microstrip technology is used for simplicity and ease of fabrication. The design and simulation are performed using 3D full wave electromagnetic simulator IE3D. The simulated filter occupies a chip area of 12 times 3 mm² and achieved an insertion loss of less than 1.0 dB in the passband and maximum return loss of 12.0 dB throughout the operation frequency of Ku-band. The filter has a center fiequency of 16.0 GHz with a 3 dB bandwidth of about 5.8 GHz covering the frequency ranges from 13.2 GHz to 19.0 GHz. This filter is widely used today for the telecommunication satellite in the Ku-band transceivers.