Synthesis and design of asymmetrical dual-band bandpass filters based on equivalent network simplification

Although the synthesis of symmetrical dual-band bandpass filters has been studied, little seems to be known about the general asymmetrical case. In this paper, a procedure for the synthesis of general asymmetrical dual-band bandpass filters implemented with inline dual-mode cavities is proposed. The inline architecture, as well as the asymmetrical nature of the response, lead naturally to the choice of an extended box topology or generalizations of the latter. It was recently shown that these topologies possess the property of multiple solutions, meaning that the related coupling matrix synthesis problem admits several solutions. On one hand, this multiplicity offers some flexibility to the designer, but on the other hand, working with multiple solutions may lead to ambiguities during the tuning process. Our procedure takes the best of both worlds: using the list of equivalent coupling matrices, simplifications of the original topology can be obtained by canceling some particular couplings. The locations of cancelled couplings are chosen so as to preserve the electrical response and to provide some hardware simplifications. It is also shown that the resulting simplified topology no longer has the multiple solution property, therefore solving ambiguity problems. The procedure is detailed and demonstrated on two examples.