A broad stopband common-mode suppression defected ground structure filter with complementary structure

Abstract

A low-cost defected ground structure (DGS) wideband stopband filter adopting complementary structure is proposed, which is designed for common-mode noise suppression in high-speed differential signals. The filter is etched below the low cost FR4 printed circuit board. To avoid stimulating the common-mode noise, the DGS cells on ground planes are kept symmetrical to the central line of the two differential signal lines. Both sides of the filter adopt a symmetric cup-shape DGS structure and the middle of the filter adopts a symmetric umbrella-type structure. All of the DGS structures are complementary, which makes the filter compact and miniaturized. What is more, because the spaces among the three DGS are closer, there exist the mutual inductances among them, which are utilized to achieve a wide stopband filter. The simulated result demonstrates the proposed filter has a wideband bandwidth of 6.8 GHz over 20 dB. In order to analyze the effect of compact structure of the filter, a filter having the same DGS patterns but large spaces among them is compared with it. The simulated result demonstrates that the stopband bandwidth of the compared filter has a wideband bandwidth of 4.4 GHz over 20 dB, of which the bandwidth is about 2.4 GHz less than that of the proposed filter. It is obvious that there exists a mutual inductance in the compact DGS structure common-mode filter, which plays an important role in broadening the bandwidth of the proposed filter. In order to facilitate analysis, an equivalent model of LC circuit is also given. The equivalent parameters of LC can be deduced from the definition of 3 dB cut-off frequency and resonant frequency, of which the values can be obtained by the HFSS simulation. The simulated and measured results show that the differential signal under the DGS filter is nearly intact, and the common-mode noise can be reduced over 20 dB from 4.6 GHz to 11.4 GHz and over 15 dB from 4.3 GHz to 12 GHz, while the area of the filter is only 10 mm by 10 mm. Compared with the periodic DGS at the same suppression depth of common-mode noise over 20 dB, the method has the advantages that surface area is reduced to no more than 30%, and the stopband width is increased by over 50%.