An implementation of harmonic-suppression microstrip filters with periodic grooves

In this paper, a new parallel-coupled-line microstrip band pass filter (BPF) improving the harmonic suppression performance of the second harmonic signal (2f_o, twice the passband frequency) is described. It is found that the desired passband performance is improved and the harmonic passband signal is diminished by enforcing the consecutive patterns in coupled-line and increasing the number of grooves to the optimum values. The recalculation of design parameters such as space-gap between lines, line widths and lengths is not required due to the simple modification of the conventional filter by inserting periodic patterns. To evaluate the validity of this novel technique, order-3 Butterworth BPF centered at 2.5 GHz with a 10% fractional bandwidth (FBW) and order-5 Chebyshev BPF centered at 10 GHz with a 15% FBW were used. When five and three square grooves are used, over 30-dB suppression at second harmonic signal is achieved in simulation and experiment. Finally, the comparison between the characteristics of filters with square and semicircular periodic grooves has been carried out by using the simulated results.