Demonstration of Reconfigurable BPFs with Wide Tuning Bandwidth Range Using 3λ/4 Open- and λ/2 Short- Ended Stubs †.

In this paper, two implementations of reconfigurable bandwidth bandpass filters (BPFs) are demonstrated both operating at a fixed center frequency of 2.4 GHz. The proposed reconfigurable bandwidth filters are based on a square ring resonator loaded with λ_g/4 open-ended stubs that are permanently connected to the ring and converted to either 3λ_g/4 open-ended stubs or λ_g/2 short-ended stubs by means of positive-intrinsic-negative(PIN) diodes to implement two reconfigurable bandwidth states for each case. Due to the symmetrical nature of the design, even- and odd-mode analysis is used to derive the closed-form to describe the reconfigurable filters' behavior. The switching between narrowband and wideband is achieved using PIN diodes. In the first implementation (λ_g/4 open-ended stubs to 3λ_g/4 open-ended stubs), a reconfigurable bandwidth bandpass filter is proposed where additional out-of-band transmission zeros are generated by integrating a λ_g/2 open-ended stub at the input port. In the second implementation (λ_g/4 open-ended stubs to λ_g/2 short-ended stubs), further improvement in the upper stopband is achieved by utilizing a pair of parallel coupled lines (PCLs) as feeding lines and a pair of λ_g/4 high impedance short-ended stubs implemented at the input and output ports. To verify the validity of the simulated results, the prototypes of the proposed reconfigurable filters were fabricated. For the first case, measured insertion loss is less than 1.8 dB with a switchable 3-dB fractional bandwidth (FBW) range from 28% to 54%. The measured results for the second case exhibit a low insertion loss of less than 1 dB and a 3-dB fractional bandwidth that can be switched from 34% to 75%, while the center frequency is kept constant at 2.4 GHz in both cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]