International conference on Advanced Computing, Communication and Networks’11 806

Design of Stepped-Impedance Microstrip Line

Low Pass Filter for Wireless Communication
Navita Singh, Saurabh Dhiman, Prerna Jain, Tanmay Bhardwaj

single circuit board. Conventional filter structures like equal

Abstract— Filters play an important role in microwave ripple and butterworth low pass filters are requirement of
applications.Microwave systems have an enormous impact on special fabrication methods. Conventional low frequency
modern society. Applications are diverse, from entertainment via techniques for fabrication does not fit at these frequencies due
satellite television, to civil and military radar system. In to the very high losses associated. Although microstrip is not
particular, the recent trend of multi-frequency bands and multi-
the highest performance filter technology, still it is the
function operations in wireless communication systems along with
the explosion in wireless portable devices are imposing more preferred choice in many thin-film on ceramic and printed
stringent requirements such as size reduction tunability or circuit board applications. RF pre-selector filters, image
reconfigurability enhancement and multiband operations for rejection filters, local oscillator (LO) filters and intermediate
microwave circuits. This paper describes about the design of frequency (IF) filters can all be realized in microstrip. The
stepped-impedance microwave low pass filter by using Microstrip recent advance of novel materials and fabrication technologies,
layout which works at 3.7 GHz for permittivity 4.4 value with a including monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC),
substrate thickness 1.6 mm for order n=3. The stepped-impedance microelectromechanic system (MEMS), micromachining,
low pass filter have a pass band ripple 0.1 dB. The development high-temperature Superconductor (HTS), and low-temperature
of the Microstrip filters are simulated by using IE3D simulator
co fired ceramics (LTCC), has simulated the rapid
software.
development of new microstrip and other filters.
In this paper, filter is optimized for high performance and an
Index Terms— Low pass Filter, Dielectric Constant, efficient. Microstrip technology is used for simplicity and ease
Microstrip filter, Millimeter wave filter. of fabrication. The design and simulation are performed using
3D full wave electromagnetic simulator IE3D. This filter is
widely used today in radar, satellite and terrestrial
I. INTRODUCTION communication applications.

I n a microstrip filters that we are trying to achieve are to have

an exact center frequency, good bandwidth and low return
loss level. There are no active devices to add uncertainty to II. MICROSTRIP FILTER DESIGN
the fabricated results. The filters are one of the primary and The design of low pass filter involves two main steps. The first
necessary components of a microwave system. one is to select an appropriate low pass prototype. The choice
of the type of response, including Pass band ripple and the
number of reactive elements will depend on the required
Manuscript received March 4,2011. This work was supported in part by
the Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, Krishna specifications. The element values of the low pass prototype
Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ghaziabad. filters, which are usually normalized to make a source
Navita Singh is Sr. lecturer with Department of Electronics & impedance go = 1 and a normalized frequency Ωc = 1.0, are
Communication, Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ghaziabad, then transformed to the L-C elements for the desired cutoff
INDIA. Phone: 9999227633; e-mail: singh.navita@ rediffmail.com.
Saurabh Dhiman is Student with Department of Electronics & frequency and the desired source impedance, which is
Communication, Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ghaziabad, normally 50 ohms for microstrip filters. The next main step in
INDIA. Phone:9953480681;e-mail:[email protected]. the design of microstrip low pass filters [3] is to find an
Prerna Jain is Student with Department of Electronics & Communication, appropriate micro strip realization that approximates the
Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ghaziabad, INDIA.
Phone:08860898015 ;e-mail: [email protected]. lumped element filter. The element values for the low pass
Tanmay Bhardwaj is Student with Department of Electronics &
Communication, Krishna Institute of Engineering & Technology, Ghaziabad,
INDIA. Phone: 9899249500 ; e-mail: [email protected]. prototype with Chebyshev response at pass band ripple factor
LAR = 0.1 dB, characteristic impedance source/load Zo = 50
Microstrip line is a good candidate for filter design due to its
ohms, are taken from normalized values gi i.e. g1, g2, g3, g4......,
advantages of low cost, compact size, light weight, planar
gn. The filter is assumed to be fabricated on a substrate of
structure and easy integration with other components on a
dielectric constant r and of thickness h mm. for Angular
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 International conference on Advanced Computing, Communication and Networks’11 807

(normalized) cutoff frequency Ωc, using the element S.No. Dimension Value
transformation[1].
1. Microstrip line width WC=7.027,WO=3.059,
The filter design steps are as follows: in mm WL= 1.707

1.Determine the number of sections from the specification

characteristics for microstrip parameters. 2. Characteristic impedance ZOC = 20,ZO = 50, ZOL = 60
in ohm
Filter Specifications:

3. Effective dielectric (εre)C = 3.5799, (εre)O = 3. 381,

constant (εre)L = 2.9846

Relative Dielectric Constant, єr = 4.4

Cut-off frequency, fc = 3.7 GHz
Height of substrate, h = 1.6 mm
The substrate used –
The loss tangent tanδ = 0.02
Zo= 50 Ω
Ωc = 1
Fig.1. Layout of a 3-pole, stepped- impedance Microstrip low
2. Determine the values of the prototype elements to realize pass filter on a substrate with εr= 4.4and h = 1.6 mm at 3.7
the specifications. Also we have taken the element value for GHz frequency.
low pass from table 3.2[1] for n=3.
Li = (Zo/go) (Ωc/2πfc) gi ......................... (1)
III.SIMULATION RESULTS
Ci = (go/Zo) (Ωc/2πfc) gi ...................... (2)
In order to verify the validity of the above expressions in
lL = λgl /2π Sin-1 (ωc Li / ZOL)…………… (3) millimeter wave regime, a simulation study was performed
lC = λgc /2π Sin-1 (ωc Ci Zoc).................... (4) using IE3D. To get the exact response for our purpose, an
optimization was performed using software. The design of the
3.To calculate the width of capacitor and inductor we use the filter is completed, the layout of the filter is given in figure 1
following formula with all the determined dimensions. Figure 2 shows the EM
W/h = 8 exp (A)/(exp(2A)-2) …………… (5) simulated performance of the filter.

Where A=Zc/60 {(εr+1)/2}^0.5+(εr+1)/( εr-1){0.23+0.11/ εr}

................... (6)
Where Zc = η / 2 π √ εre [ln (8h/w+ 0.25 w/h)]
................... (7)
Where η = 120 π ohms is the wave impedance in free space.

4. The effective dielectric constant can be found by the

following formula

εre = (εr+1)/2+(εr-1)/2 [(1+12h/W)-0.5]...... (8)

5. Effective wavelength is also found as

Fig.2. Full-wave EM simulated performance of the stepped-
λge=300/(6√εree) ................................. (9) impedance low pass filter for n = 3 at 3.7 GHz.
IV. RESULTS & ANALYSIS
The Simulated filter as shown in Figure 1 and 2 shows the
geometry & response of low pass filters for n=3.The graph is
plotted by taking gain (dB) on the Y-axis and frequency in
GHz on the X-axis. From the graph it is clear that the cut-off
frequency is found to be 2.3 GHz for stepped-impedance low
TABLE I pass filter. Hence the stepped-impedance low pass filter is
DIMENSIONS FOR A STEPPED-IMPEDANCE LOW PASS FILTERS (FOR N=3) capable of passing the frequency less than 3.7 GHz & rejects

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 International conference on Advanced Computing, Communication and Networks’11 808

the frequency after 3.7GHz for the thickness of the substrate [11] Z.M. Hejazi and A. Omar, “Modeling and simulation of
1.6mm and also has the return loss performance up to -38 dB. novel ultra narrow band miniature microstrip filters for
mobile and wireless critical applications,” Microw.
Opt. Technol. Lett., vol. 45, no. 1, pp. 35–39, 2005.
V. CONCLUSION [12] Ozaki, H.,and J.Ishii, “Synthesis of a Class of Stripline
The filters are one of the primary and necessary components of Filters,” IRE Trans., Vol. CT-5, 1958, pp. 104 – 109.
a microwave system and they are the very essential part of the
microwave system, not only in microwave are they very
important in communication field. Any communication system
cannot be design without filters. Low pass filter must be
included at the transmitting end and the receiving end of the
system to get desired spectrum. In conclusion, the authors
believe that the design can be archived compact filter design.
The measured characteristics of the filter agree with the
theoretical simulations. The conventional geometry of the
stepped-impedance low pass filter, shown in figure 1 and the
simulated response of the conventional geometry shown in
figure 2.The symmetrical approach tends to produce a more
compact filter with less coupling effect in its realization. Its
compact nature minimizes required space for realization and is
suitable for integration within Wireless system. The most
efficient way in order to obtain a filter with maximum size
reduction is by using the microstrip technique in which each
filter’s lumped component is realized as microstrip
transmission line.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank authorities of Krishna
Institute of Engineering & Technology for all the support
provided.

VI. REFERENCES
[1] Jia-Shen G. Hong & M.J. Lancaster, “ Microstrip Filters
for RF/ Microwave Applications” John Wiley & Sons
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[2] D.M.Pozar, “Microwave Engineering, “John Wiley,2000.
[3] Jia-Sheng Hong, Lancaster M .J, “ Recent progress in
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[5] IEEE Trans.vol.CT-5, January 1964.
[6] IE3D Software Release – 8, Developed by M/S Zeland
Software Inc.
[7] Tae - Yeoul Yun and Kai Chang, “Transaction on
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[8] M. Makimoto and S.Yamoshita, “Microwave Resonators
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[9] H. Ozalki and J. Ishii, “Synthesis of transmission -line
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