Design of the combline filters:

Fig. 1
Fig. 1 shows a combline bandpass filter in strip line form. It consists of
any array of coupled TEM lines with couplings constrained tube between
nearest neighbours. The lines are all short circuited at the samed end.
The opposite ends of the lines are loaded with capacitors which are
connected to ground.
- With the lumped capacitors, the resonator lines is less than /4
long at resonance.
- The coupling between resonators is predominantly magnetic in
nature.
- It is usually desirable to make the capacitances CSJ in this type of
filter sufficiently large that the resonator lines will be /8 or less,
long at resonance.
- In this type of filter, the second pass band will be centered at
somewhat over three times the frequency of the center of the first
pass band. If th the resonator line elements ard made to be less
than

/8 long at the primary pass band, the second pass band

will be even further removed.

The combline filter design equations were derived by use of the
approximate, open-wire-line representation in Fig. 3.

Fig. 2. An array of coupled short circuited stubs

Fig. 3. Equivalent circuit of an array of coupled short circuited lines

The equivalent circuit of the coupled-line arra is thus an array shunt
short circuited stubs coupled via series short circuited stubs as shown in
Fig. 3. The admittance matrix equation is

(1)

cot
(2)
cot

Fig. 4. Equivalent circuit of the combline filter between the rth and
(r+1)th nodes
he equivalent circuit between the rth and (r+1)th nodes is given in Fig.
4.

Fig. 5. Formulation of inverters in the combline filter

Inspection of the equivalent circuit shows that an inverter can be formed
from a pi section of the short circuited stubs, as in Fig. 5. The pi

network of stubs between the dotted lines has a transfer matrix fiven by

tan
tan

cot
cot

tan

(3)

Hence

cot

(4)

The admittance of the rth resonator is given by

cot

(5)

Fig. 6. Equivalent circuit of the combline filter

The equivalent circuit of the filter is shown in Fig. 6 where Yrr is given
by

(6)

For comparing with lowpass prototype element values, to scale the entire
network

by

factor

tan/tan0( ,

because

of

narrow

band)

convenient. This removes the frequency dependence from the inverters;

Hence

is

 cot and tan cot

(7)

We can now derive a frequency transformation from the lowpass

prototype

network

to

the

combline

resonators.

gr is the lowpass

prototype element values.

tan cot

(8)

tan cot
tan

cot

Where and . (9)

Since w'=0 in the lowpass prototype maps to w0 in the combline filter,

(10)
tan
So,

tan

(11)

tan
From the equation (11), the values of Yrrs can be derived.
The band edge at w'=1 in the lowpass prototype map into the band
edges at w1 and w2 in the combline filter.

 tan

(12)

tan

where is the passband bandwidth. Hence

tan

(13)

tan

and for narrow bandwidths

Hence

tan

tan

tan

tan tan

tan tan

tan

(14)

From (13) and (14), we obtain

tan
tan

tan
tan

(15)

From (15), we obtain

tan

tan tan

(16)

From eq (16), we see that for narrow bandwidth, will be large and the

shunt admittances in eq (9) would be unrealisabley high values. We cand

solve this by scaling the internal nodal admittances of the filter.
The admittance level of the filter is now scaled at each internal node in
order

to

achieve

realizable

element

values

for

narrow

passband

bandwidths. After scaling the rth internal node by a factor nr we obtain

the typical coupling network between nodes r and r + 1 shown in Fig. 6
with the following transfer matrix:

The transfer matrix of the phase shifter is

cos sin

sin cos
Remembering that the source and load admittaces have been scaled in
order to remove the frequency variation of the load, then the effective
source admittance after introducing the phase shifter is

cos tan sin tan

sin tan

Transforming elements at the input and output of the filter are

cos
cos
cos

Design procedure
We choose 0,w0, w, and Yrr.
Then calculate from
tan

tan tan
and Cr can be derived from

tan .
Next, nr is calculated.
cot

Hence,
tan

cos

cos

cos