Miniaturization of wide-band VHF filters by using spiral resonators

The miniaturization of a wide-band VHF filter composed of distributed resonators has been studied. The miniaturized filter was realized with spiral resonant lines and lumped capacitors. The filter was designed using a prototype filter circuit composed of only series-resonant lumped-constant circuits. Each resonant circuit is transformed to another resonant circuit consisting of a spiral resonant line and two capacitors. One capacitor is connected to each end of the spiral resonant line. With this technique, the line length becomes very short, e.g., one-twentieth wavelength, in comparison with the line length in conventional resonant lines of one-half or one-quarter wavelength. A filter which has a 160-185 MHz passband and a volume of 3 × 4 × 10 cm³was realized with 10 spiral resonators. The filter exhibits superior characteristics with very little volume.