Novel compact low-loss millimeter-wave filters using micromachined overlay and inverted overlay coplanar waveguide transmission lines with defected ground structures

This paper describes two types of novel compact low-loss millimeter-wave filters using an overlay coplanar waveguide (OCPW) line for lowpass filters and an inverted overlay coplanar waveguide (IOCPW) line for bandpass filters with periodic defected ground structures (DGSs). The OCPW and IOCPW lines are utilized to reduce the conductor and the substrate dielectric loss of the transmission lines. Also, these lines can provide a wide impedance range by controlling the overlapped area. The DGSs implemented on the transmission line have the role of size reduction and harmonic suppression of the filters. The combination of transmission lines having suspended structures and DGSs can provide great potential in terms of compact size, band rejection property and low-loss characteristics. The proposed filters are fabricated by using a micromachining technology and their RF performances are measured and analyzed. One of the proposed filters is a lowpass filter with a five-section stepped impedance topology having a periodic high-low impedance section. In this filter, the low impedance section is composed of the OCPW line with dumbbell-shaped DGSs and its length can be reduced by 52.7% compared to the OCPW line without DGSs. The measured insertion loss of this filter is lower than 0.2 dB up to 9 GHz, and significant spurious bands are not observed up to 40 GHz, resulting in a wide stop band. The other work that is presented here deals with a pi-shaped bandpass filter. This filter consists of three high impedance sections and two low impedance sections, and the line length of the high impedance section can be reduced by using the IOCPW line with spiral-shaped DGSs. The measured center frequency of the fabricated filter is 19 GHz, and the passband loss is 2.3 dB at the measured center frequency. The use of DGSs on the transmission line also enables us to suppress effectively the third-order harmonic component at 57 GHz.