Design of Compact Tri-Band Bandpass Filters Using Assembled Resonators

A novel approach for designing tri-band bandpass filters with independently controllable center frequencies and improved stopband rejection characteristic is presented in this paper. The assembled resonator constructed by a stepped impedance resonator and a common half-wavelength resonator is employed to obtain tri-band response. The stepped impedance resonator is designed to operate at the first and third passbands and the other resonator is designed to operate at the second passband. Two kinds of filter configurations with cascaded and pseudointerdigital formats are proposed. Based on lossless lumped-element equivalent circuit, it is found that both filter structures can introduce transmission zeros between passbands. To verify the proposed approach, two filters are designed and fabricated, the measured results exhibit tri-band bandpass responses with high selectivity.