A 3-D Printed Lightweight X-Band Waveguide Filter Based on Spherical Resonators

Author

Cheng Guo ; Xiaobang Shang ; Lancaster, Michael J. ; Jun Xu

Author_Institution

Sch. of Phys. Electron., Univ. of Electron. Sci. & Technol. of China, Chengdu, China

Volume

25

Issue

7

fYear

2015

fDate

7/1/2015 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

442

Lastpage

444

Abstract

A fifth order X-band waveguide bandpass filter, based on spherical resonators, has been designed, and fabricated by 3-D printing. In comparison with rectangular waveguide, spherical resonators have a higher unloaded quality factor, but at the same time suffer from closer higher order modes. In this letter, a special topology has been proposed to relieve the impact of the first three higher order modes in the resonator and ultimately to achieve a good out-of-band rejection. Stereolithography based 3-D printing is used to build the filter structure from polymer and a 25 μm thick copper layer is deposited to the filter. The measurement result of the filter has an excellent agreement with the simulations. The filter is also considerably lighter than a similar metal filter.

Keywords

Q-factor; band-pass filters; microwave filters; polymers; resonator filters; stereolithography; three-dimensional printing; waveguide filters; 3D printed lightweight X-band waveguide filter; fifth order X-band waveguide bandpass filter; filter structure; higher order modes; metal filter; out-of-band rejection; polymer; rectangular waveguide; size 25 mum; spherical resonators; stereolithography; thick copper layer; unloaded quality factor; Copper; Microwave filters; Printing; Q-factor; Resonator filters; Topology; 3-D printing; Filter; spherical resonators; stereolithography; waveguide;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Microwave and Wireless Components Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

1531-1309

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/LMWC.2015.2427653

Filename

7115191