Miniaturized electronically controlled notched band filter based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons

Abstract

In this paper, a novel miniaturized electronical controlled notch band filter based on spoof surface plasmon polaritons (SSPPs) with inverted “山”-shaped unit is designed and experimentally demonstrated. The notch band filter is mainly composed of four parts: microstrip transmission line, transition structure, inverted “山”-shaped SSPPs, and split ring resonator (SRR) structure, and a varactor diode is embedded in the slit notch of the SRR structure to realize electronic control. Comparing with the traditional SSPP unit with the same lateral size, the dispersion curve of the proposed inverted “山”-shaped unit shows better slow wave characteristics, and the asymptotic frequency is reduced to 55%. The frequency of the notch band can be dynamically controlled by adjusting the external bias voltage at both ends of the varactor diode. As the external bias voltage increases from 0.5 V to 30 V, the notch band frequency can be changed from 2.1 GHz to 2.3 GHz and achieve easily electronic regulation. The simulation results show that the notched band filter achieves low insertion loss (<i>S</i>₂₁ < –1 dB) and great return loss (<i>S</i>₁₁ > –10 dB) in the pass band, which has the advantage of miniaturization with the size only 0.78<i>λ</i>_g × 0.35<i>λ</i>_g. It is worth noting that when the equivalent capacitance of the slit notch is changed, the transmission coefficient of the notched band is always less than –15 dB, showing superior band-stop performance. At the same time, by comparing and analyzing the electric field distribution of notch band filter, the transmission mechanism of microwave signal is further verified. In order to verify the its effectiveness, the traditional printed circuit board technology is used to fabricate notch band filter. The measurement results are in good agreement with the simulation ones, verifying the feasibility of the design. The electronically controlled notch band filter has higher integration and can effectively suppress the interference frequency band.