A Frequency Independently Tunable Dual-Band Bandpass Filter With Large Frequency Ratio and Ultra-Wide Stopband

To meet the demand for simultaneously supporting the microwave and millimeter-wave technologies in emerging industrial wireless systems, research on dual-band components with a large frequency ratio has been conducted recently. However, it is challenging to implement independent frequency tunability on bandpass filters with both compactness and high performance. This article presents a dual-band bandpass filter with a large frequency ratio, independently tunable frequencies, and an ultrawide stopband. This is achieved by artfully incorporating a harmonic-controllable varactor-loaded microstrip BPF and a wide-stopband dielectric-loaded cavity BPF with the bandgap-embedded aperture coupling mechanism. Extremely compact size can be achieved without additional filtering elements. Two pairs of transmission zeros can be allocated beside two passbands for good selectivity due to the separate path and cross-coupling in the resonators. For validation, a prototype is designed, fabricated and measured. It can provide two independent tunable frequency ranges (3.22–3.52 GHz and 25–27.06 GHz), exhibiting a large frequency ratio up to 8.3. Mid-band suppression better than 20 dB and ultra-wide stopband up to 32.5 GHz with 20 dB suppression level are achieved. Low insertion loss and good selectivity can also be observed.