Mode Control of Slotline Resonator and Its Application to the Design of Balanced BPF with Ultra-Wide Stopband.

In this paper, a mode control technology of a slotline resonator is proposed and utilized to guide the design of the slotline resonator. With this method, characteristic modes generated by the slotline resonator are more controllable. With characteristic mode analysis, which is the core of this technology, the desired and unwanted modes of the slotline resonator are easy to be analyzed, controlled, and further used to expand the stopband bandwidth. By applying this technology, a multi-mode slotline resonator with a T-shaped coupling structure (MMSR-T) is proposed by modifying a multi-mode slotline resonator (MMSR), and its unwanted modes out of the passband are more controllable without influencing the expected modes in the passband. Based on the proposed MMSR-T, a balanced bandpass filter (BPF) is proposed, which consists of a U-shaped microstrip/slotline transition as the input/output structure, a T-shaped slotline feeding structure as a feeding terminal, and MMSR-T as the filtering unit. Through the mode analysis and design of MMSR-T, ultra-wide differential-mode (DM) stopband, high common-mode (CM) suppression, and high DM selectivity are obtained in this design. The measured results agree well with the theoretical predictions and simulated results. The effects of mode control technology on stopband extension are proven. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]