A compact C-band bandpass filter with an adjustable dual-band suitable for satellite communication systems

A narrowband dual-band bandpass filter (BPF) with independently tunable passbands is presented through a systematic design approach. A size-efficient coupling system is proposed with the capability of being integrated with additional resonators without increasing the size of the circuit. Two flag-shaped resonators along with two stepped-impedance resonators are integrated with the coupling system to firstly enhance the quality response of the filter, and secondly to add an independent adjustability feature to the filter. The dual passband of the filter is centered at 4.42 GHz and 7.2 GHz, respectively, with narrow passbands of 2.12% and 1.15%. The lower and upper passbands can be swept independently over 600 MHz and 1000 MHz by changing only one parameter of the filter without any destructive effects on the frequency response. According to United States frequency allocations, the first passband is convenient for mobile communications and the second passband can be used for satellite communications. The filter has very good in-and out-of-band performance with very small passband insertion losses of 0.5 dB and 0.86 dB as well as a relatively strong stopband attenuation of 30 dB and 25 dB, respectively, for the case of lower and upper bands. To verify the proposed approach, a prototype of the filter is fabricated and measured showing a good agreement between numerically calculated and measured results.