High-Selectivity Low-Pass Filters With Ultrawide Stopband Based on Defected Ground Structures

Compact microstrip low-pass filters (LPFs) with ultrawide stopband based on a defected ground structure (DGS) and their design procedures are presented in this paper. A key merit of the filter configuration is that the selectivity of the LPFs can be conveniently controlled, whereas the bandwidth is fixed. The LPFs are realized using open-circuited uniform impedance stubs and stepped-impedance stubs (SISs). The position of the transmission zeros can be freely controlled by tuning the impedance ratio of the SISs. To expand the stopband, the dumbbell DGS is used to suppress the spurious passbands of the LPFs. Two demonstration filters with a cutoff frequency at 1 GHz have been designed, fabricated, and measured. The measured results indicate good performance: broad stopband (>15 f_c or 20 f_c) low passband insertion loss (<;0.3 dB), compact size, and sharp skirt characteristic.