Channel Selectivity of Satellite Transponders with the Antenna Combined with a Size-Reduced Metallic Waveguide Bandpass Filter Having Thin Metamaterial Resonators

Abstract

Global and intercontinental networking relies on satellite communication. Its wireless communication system always has antennas and their feed assembly comprising waveguides. This makes the satellite payload heavy and costly. In this paper, a novel method is proposed to effectively reduce the size of a waveguide bandpass filter (BPF). Because the metallic cavities make the conventional waveguide end up with a large geometry, especially for high-order BPFs, very compact waveguide-type resonators having metamaterial zeroth-order resonance (WG-ZOR) are designed on the cross-section of the waveguide and substituted for the cavities. While the cavities are half-wavelength resonators, the WG-ZOR is shorter than one eighth of a wavelength. A substantial reduction in size and weight of the waveguide filter is observed as the resonators are cascaded in series through coupling elements in the X-band much longer than K- or Ka-band. An X-band of 7.25~7.75 GHz is chosen to verify the method as the passband with attenuation of 40 dB at 7.00 GHz and 8.00 GHz as the roll-off in the stopband. The BPF is manufactured using the CNC milling technique. The design is carried out with geometrical parameters, not of the level of 10 μm, but the level of 100 μm, which is good for manufacturers but a big challenge for component designers. The measurement of the manufactured metal waveguide filter reveals that the passband has about ≤1 dB and ≤−15 dB as insertion loss and reflection coefficient and the stopband has ≤−40 dB as attenuation, which are in good agreement with the results of the circuit and simulation. The proposed filter has a length of 3.5 λg as the eighth-order BPF, but the conventional waveguide is 5 λg as the seventh-order BPF for the same area of the cross-section. This metamaterial BPF is combined with a horn antenna. The filter enables the wide-band antenna to distinguish the band of transmission from that of noise suppression. This channel selectivity is obviously observed by the filter integrated antenna test.