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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
Compact Quad-Mode Bandpass Filter Using Modified
Coaxial Cavity Resonator With Improved -Factor
Xuguang Wang, Member, IEEE, Geonho Jang, Boram Lee, and Namshin Park
Abstract—This paper presents a novel quadruple-mode coaxial
cavity resonator and its application to bandpass filters with
compact size and improved quality factor ( -factor). Unlike the
conventional coaxial cavity resonator, the proposed resonator is
made up of four inner conductive posts within a single cavity,
which provides new quadruple resonant modes to realize band-
pass filter. No metallic walls inside the cavity are required, and
thus the utilization efficiency of the cavity space is improved. As
a result, the unloaded can be approximately 15% higher in
comparison to the conventional coaxial resonator, or 30%–35%
volume saving can be achieved while maintaining the similar
-factor value with the conventional designs. In addition, due to
the multiple cross-coupling occurring within the cavity, including
the source-to-load direct coupling, four flexible transmission zeros
can be created to realize different filtering functions. The complete
design methodology of filters based on the proposed resonator
is discussed, starting with the resonator characteristics and the
coupling scheme. Simulations as well as experimental results of
four- and eight-pole filters are presented to validate this attractive
design concept. Good agreement between measured and computed
results is obtained.
Index Terms—Bandpass filter, coaxial cavity resonator, multi-
mode resonator, transmission zero.
I. INTRODUCTION
I N MICROWAVE bandpass filter design, the requirements
of size reduction and performance improvement have
tended to become more and more severe in order to adapt to
the rapid evolution of mobile communication systems. Size
and performance demands can be achieved by using dielectric
loading [1]–[3] and dual-mode and multi-mode techniques
[4]–[6]. However, most of these methods based on waveguide
technologies cannot be directly applied to coaxial cavity filters,
which are preferable in base-station applications. In addition,
the cost reduction remains a critical limiting factor for the wide
spread of these kinds of filters, although they show very high
quality factor ( -factor) and high power capability.
The coaxial cavity filters based on a combline structure have
been extensively studied and applied in the telecommunication
industry for many decades [7], [8]. Especially in wireless
base-station applications, they are widely employed due to
their advantages of compact size, low production cost, and
Manuscript received July 07, 2014; revised November 18, 2014 and De-
cember 21, 2014; accepted December 24, 2014.
The authors are with the Research and Development Center, KMW Inc.,
Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do 445-813, Korea (e-mail: pns@kmw.co.kr).
Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online
at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMTT.2015.2389231
0018-9480 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
relatively high -factor [9], [10]. A large number of studies
in the area of analysis and design of coaxial cavity filters have
been conducted since the 1980s [11]–[15]. In recent years,
most of the research interests have been focusing on the filter
coupling topology to improve the stopband characteristics with
a minimum resonator number [16], [17]. In [18], an adjustable
blocking point at a certain frequency is realized by presetting
and/or preselecting a defined capacitive and inductive coupling
between two coaxial resonators, one immediately following
the other on a signal path. More recently, several research
studies regarding the compact inline coaxial cavity bandpass
filters have been presented. By exploring controllable mixed
electric and magnetic coupling, an inline coaxial cavity filter
with a reduced resonator number and filter size was introduced
in [19]. By changing the orientation of some of its coaxial
cavity resonators, the length of the filter can be reduced to a
certain extent, and multiple controllable transmission zeros can
be generated due to the presence of cross-coupling between
the nonadjacent resonators [20]. However, generally speaking,
the size-reduced bandpass filters based on the coaxial cavity
resonator and the common filter topology have rarely been
reported.
In this paper, a novel quad-mode bandpass filter using a modi-
fied coaxial cavity resonator, which has four coupled conductive
posts within a single cavity, is proposed. Instead of using cou-
pling windows, as required by the conventional designs, cou-
pling control between the inner posts is achieved by appropriate
selection of the post positions and dimensions. Not requiring
the metallic walls inside the cavity, the proposed filter maxi-
mizes the space utilization, thus achieving an optimal -factor
for a given volume. In this way, the proposed filter configuration
enables compact design with an improvement in the resonator
unloaded compared to the conventional coaxial filters. Ad-
ditionally, due to the controllable mixed electric and magnetic
coupling in the cavity, the dominant sequential (inline) coupling
and cross-coupling can be adjusted to inductive or capacitive ac-
cording to the requirement. Consequently, multiple controllable
transmission zeros, and thus, flexible stopband characteristics,
are easily realized.
Four- and eight-pole bandpass filters using this proposed con-
cept with different filtering functions are designed, manufac-
tured, and tested. The measured results show that an excellent
-factor can be achieved with a compact size. In general, the
proposed design concept of coaxial cavity resonator can provide
an unloaded improvement of approximately 15% for a given
volume. It means that 30%–35% volume saving can be achieved
while maintaining the comparable -factor value with the con-
ventional coaxial designs. It should be mentioned that a similar
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

Fig. 1. (a) Cross-section view of the conventional coaxial resonator. (b) Per-
spective view of the cascaded coaxial quadruplet filter (port and possible cross-
coupling structures are removed for clarity).

resonator configuration has been reported based on the substrate

integrated waveguide (SIW) technique in [21]. However, only
the first three resonant modes are used to design the dual-band
filter, while the last mode is considered as spurious, without the
investigations of multiple transmission zeros.

II. QUADRUPLE-MODE RESONATOR

Fig. 1(a) illustrates the cross-section view of a conventional
coaxial resonator, which can be cascaded to implement the
higher order coaxial bandpass filter. The coupling between
adjacent resonators is realized through a coupling window and
adjusted by the window size and/or coupling screw penetrating
into the cavity from the top cover, as shown in Fig. 1(b). To
enhance the filter selectivity, transmission zeros are usually
introduced into the stopband using cross-coupling between
nonadjacent resonators. In contrast to the conventional design,
the proposed modified coaxial cavity resonator eliminates the
inside metallic walls within the cavity, and consequently shows
new characteristics of quadruple resonant modes, as detailed
below.
A. Configurations and Characteristics
Fig. 2 depicts the physical configuration of the introduced
quadruple-mode resonator, which consists of four -shaped
inner conductive posts within a single cavity. All four of the
inner posts are short-circuited on the bottom of the metallic
housing, and open-circuited at the other end. The important
Fig. 2. Proposed quadruple-mode resonator with dimensional parameters.
(a) Perspective view. (b) Top view. (c) Side view.
dimensional parameters are also illustrated in these figures. The
size of the square cavity is described by its side length and
height . The cavity corner is filleted with round . denotes
the distance between the post center and cavity center. and
are the radius and height of each post, respectively. Instead of
the caps used in the conventional coaxial resonator, the inner
posts are bended 90 , and extended toward the cavity center to
strengthen the electric coupling between them. The length and
thickness of the bended part (hereinafter referred to as head)
are and , respectively. At the open end, the two side edges
of each post are chamfered with to fine control the electric
coupling. The distance between the open edge of head and
cavity center is denoted as , and hence, the spacing between
two diagonal posts is 2 .
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WANG et al.: COMPACT QUAD-MODE BANDPASS FILTER USING MODIFIED COAXIAL CAVITY RESONATOR WITH IMPROVED
Fig. 3. Vector plot of simulated electric field (left) and magnetic field (right)
distribution of the proposed resonator. (a) Fundamental mode. (b) Differential
mode. (c) and (d) Pair of orthogonal degenerate modes.
This novel post configuration reveals new resonant modes.
Fig. 3 gives the simulated vector plot of the electric field
(left) and magnetic field (right) distribution of the resulting
resonances. Simulation is conducted with the electromagnetic
(EM) full-wave simulator ANSYS HFSS (eigenmode) [22]. It
-FACTOR 3
can be obviously seen that four different resonant modes: (a)
fundamental mode, (b) differential mode, and (c and d) a pair
of orthogonal degenerate modes are generated in the proposed
coaxial resonator. In the following explanation, the resonant
modes are analyzed by simple considerations on the orientation
of their magnetic fields, as the same conclusions can be derived
by considering the electric fields as well. For the fundamental
mode (called mode 1), the magnetic field circulating around
all of the four posts has an identical orientation. As a result,
it forms a large magnetic field loop in the cavity and looks
like only one conductive post in the cavity center. Oppositely,
as to the differential mode (called mode 2), the orientations
of the magnetic field circulating around the four inner posts
are different from each other. Therefore, it looks like four
small independently resonated cavities, which is similar to the
conventional coaxial resonator with inside metallic walls. The
two degenerate modes (called mode 3 and 4, respectively) are
orthogonal to each other in space. For each one, the magnetic
field only concentrates in the volume around two diagonal posts
accounting for the fulfillment of the boundary condition.
In the case of the conventional coaxial resonator, the field is
mainly confined within each cavity due to the inside metallic
walls. Nevertheless, the proposed resonator shows different fea-
tures. Since four inner posts are located within a single cavity,
the equivalent resonant space of each post will vary according
to the resonant mode and post position as long as the boundary
condition can be satisfied. Therefore, the resonant frequency of
each mode is determined not only by the post and cavity di-
mensions, but also by the post position, specifically mainly re-
lated to the parameter . Let us consider as an example a square
cavity with mm, mm, and mm. The
cavity dimensions given above remain unchanged for all pre-
sented quadruple-mode resonators and the subsequent four-pole
filters. The other dimensions regarding the inner post are as fol-
lows: mm, mm, mm, mm,
mm, and mm. Fig. 4(a) shows the simulated
resonant frequency variation of four resonant modes versus the
distance while the other parameters are kept constant. It can
be seen that the value will significantly affect the resonant
frequencies of the four modes. The resonant frequency of mode
1 shifts to high frequency with the increase of . This is be-
cause the equivalent resonant space of mode 1 is shrunk when
the inner post moves towards the exterior of the cavity. Simul-
taneously, the resonant frequencies of the other three modes de-
crease. Note that the two degenerate modes always have almost
identical resonant frequency when the value varies. Therefore,
by properly adjusting the dimensional parameters, the desired
resonant frequencies and mode separation can be achieved.
B. Unloaded Quality Factor
As mentioned above, the proposed resonator has a unique fea-
ture, which is that the quadruple resonant modes have different
equivalent resonant space due to the boundary condition, which
can be considered as virtual inside walls. Therefore, the stored
energy of each mode is also different from the others, resulting
in different unloaded values. As is well known, the unloaded
of a given cavity can be estimated through the following ap-
proximate equation:
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
Fig. 4. (a) Resonant frequency and (b) unloaded of the four resonant modes
with the change of the distance between the post center and cavity center.
(1)
where is the cavity volume, is the surface area of cavity,
and represents the skin depth. The same field orientation of
mode 1 offers the possibility that the magnetic field circulating
around each post can permeate through the adjacent space. Con-
sequently, the conclusion that mode 1 has the largest equiva-
lent space to resonate, and then the largest unloaded , can
be drawn. In contrast, because of the mutual exclusive effect,
mode 2 has the smallest equivalent resonant space, and thus
the smallest unloaded . Since the equivalent resonant space
mainly depends on the dimension , the unloaded also varies
when changes. This assumption is verified by the simulation
using eigenmode solver of HFSS. Fig. 4(b) plots the variation
of unloaded versus the distance . The closer the inner posts,
the larger the unloaded of mode 1. For the other three modes,
the optimum unloaded is achieved when has a proper value,
around 9.3 mm in this simulation. This is because a too large or
too small value will result in the reduction of equivalent reso-
nant space for these three modes. It is worth mentioning that the
average -factor of the quadruple resonant modes nearly coin-
cides with the -factor of degenerate modes.
TABLE I
COMPARISON OF THE CONVENTIONAL AND PROPOSED RESONATORS
C. Comparison With a Conventional Coaxial Resonator
To demonstrate the superiorities of the proposed resonator in
terms of the -factor and volume, Table I gives a brief compar-
ison with a conventional coaxial resonator, which is illustrated
in Fig. 1(a). The simulated results are obtained in HFSS, and
the metal conductivity S/m is set to imitate the
silver-plated imperfect cavity in the -factor analysis. It is ob-
vious that the unloaded of the proposed resonator rises from
2711 of the conventional one to 3116, which is approximately a
15% improvement. On the other hand, if the similar unloaded
value of 3110 is kept, the needed volume for the conventional
resonator should be 27 096 (6774 4) mm , while the proposed
one only needs the volume of 18 513 mm , nearly 31.7% size
reduction is expected.
Moreover, since the proposed resonator eliminates the need
of inside metallic walls, the space utilization can be further
improved and the volume of implemented filters based on this
resonator, especially the base-station filters/duplexers, will
be significantly miniaturized, thus reducing the equipment
weight. Additionally, the smaller surface area resulting from
the removal of the inside metallic walls also contributes to
the improvement of the unloaded . Therefore, the proposed
resonator demonstrates superior behavior of the performance
and is very attractive for designing low insertion loss and
miniaturized filters for wireless communication systems.
III. DESIGN OF BANDPASS FILTER
The resonance characteristics of the proposed resonator allow
the design of a compact quad-mode coaxial filter with a high
-factor. By choosing the appropriate dimensions, the filter can
be realized with a given specification. This section will discuss
the complete design methodology.
A. Filter Coupling Model
As demonstrated in Fig. 4(a), when the four posts are close
(relatively smaller distance ), the resonant frequencies of fun-
damental mode, differential mode, and two degenerate modes
are considerably separated, which causes difficulties in imple-
mentation of a single passband quad-mode filter. However, it
is suitable for realization of a multi-band filter, as presented in
[21]. In this case, the transversal array coupling model including
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WANG et al.: COMPACT QUAD-MODE BANDPASS FILTER USING MODIFIED COAXIAL CAVITY RESONATOR WITH IMPROVED
Fig. 5. Coupling scheme with interlaced cross-coupling.
source-to-load direct coupling introduced in [16] and [21] can
be used to describe the filter operation mechanism, in which
each resonant node representing the fundamental, differential,
and degenerate modes will contain two or four conductive posts.
All of the resonant modes are coupled to the filter input/output.
With the increase of distance , the four posts are getting far
from each other. Meanwhile, the resonant frequencies of four
modes are gradually gathered so as to facilitate the implemen-
tation of the single passband filter whose coupling scheme in-
dicates the conventional features according to our simulations
and experiments. In other words, the operation of the proposed
filter resembles the conventional coaxial filter in the scope of
design focused upon in this paper, but still with the benefit of an
improved -factor.
Based on these considerations, we adopt the canonical series
coupling model to explain the proposed quad-mode filter, as il-
lustrated in Fig. 5. This model is effective enough to provide an
understanding of the operation of proposed filter. Here, each res-
onant node represents an individual conductive post. Four inner
conductive posts share a single cavity, as a result, besides the se-
quential (inline) coupling, there are interlaced cross-couplings,
as described in the coupling scheme. Three transmission zeros
are attributed to the multiple cross-couplings among the posts
( and ), together with the coupling from source
to last post and coupling from load to first post . to the coupling between individual posts inside a single cavity.
Moreover, the source-to-load direct coupling generates
one more transmission zero. Hence, a total of four transmission
zeros occurs in this structure.
B. External Coupling
Since the above-mentioned coupling model is considered, the
direct tapping type input/output structure used in the conven-
tional coaxial cavity filter could also be used here, as illustrated
in Fig. 6(a). The tapping position (height) can be adjusted to
fulfill the desired external coupling.
Fig. 6(b) shows the simulated external quality factor with
respect to the different tapping height from 1.5 to 10.5 mm
using the approach described in [23]. Effective control over the
external coupling strength is observed and higher tapping point
gives lower . coupling dominantly.
C. Inter-Post Coupling
The inter-resonator coupling in the conventional coaxial
cavity filter is realized by opening a window between two
-FACTOR 5
Fig. 6. (a) Cross-section view of the tap feeder. (b) Simulated versus the
height of tapping point.
adjacent resonators, which has been shown in Fig. 1(b). The
coupling coefficient is dependent on a few parameters such as
the window width and the penetration depth of the coupling
screw inserted from the top cover. A wider window opening
and larger penetration depth of coupling screw usually give a
higher coupling coefficient. This kind of coupling is inductive
in general.
However, in the proposed resonator, the coupling control
scheme is more flexible. Here, the “inter-post coupling” refers
Since the total coupling strength is the sum of magnetic cou-
pling and electric coupling, the operation principle of this
design is the adjustment of their relative strength. The magnetic
coupling can be controlled by the distance between posts, as
well as the post radius, while the strength of electric coupling
mainly depends on the spacing between the post open ends
and the chamfer of each post. If the length of post head is
small enough (large ), the coupling between adjacent posts is
dominantly inductive, and the total coupling is the magnetic
coupling less electric coupling, which is very similar to the
conventional configuration [7], [8]. Increasing makes the
electric coupling stronger, thus resulting in a smaller total
coupling (still inductive). Note that if the length becomes
much longer (very small ), the total coupling will be electric
In order to demonstrate how the coupling is affected by the
post distance and head length, EM simulation is carried out in
HFSS. The following equation is then used to calculate the cou-
pling coefficient :
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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
Fig. 7. Coupling coefficient variation as a function of: (a) parameter
(b) parameter .
where and are the frequencies of two peaks seen in the
transmission responses when only a pair of adjacent posts in
Fig. 2 are coupled to the measurement ports using weak external
coupling.
Fig. 7 illustrates the magnitude of the coupling coefficient as
a function of parameters and . In Fig. 7(a), the distance
is swept from 7 to 17 mm with of 11.5, 11.9, and 12.3 mm,
respectively. For example, when mm, the coupling
coefficient changes from 0.32 to 0 with the increase of from
7 to 14.5 mm. When exceeds the null point, the electric cou-
pling becomes dominant and the resulting coupling coefficient
increases with the increase of . A similar trend can be found in
the other two cases.
The distance between the post center and cavity center is
then fixed to 14.4, 15.8, and 17.2 mm, respectively, and the
coupling coefficient is examined as the head length varies.
Fig. 7(b) demonstrates the magnitude of the coupling coeffi-
cient. It can be observed that below the null point, coupling co-
efficients decrease with the increase of (decrease of ). This
and
Fig. 8. EM simulation model of the proposed quad-mode bandpass filter in-
cluding tap feeders. (a) Perspective view. (b) Top view.
(2) is because the electric coupling contribution increases with the
increase of , thus reducing the total coupling. The head size,
which causes a coupling null, depends on the dimensions of the
resonator. As the post distance gets far from each other, a cou-
pling null occurs quickly when is increasing. After the in-
creases beyond this point, the coupling changes from inductive
to capacitive and starts to increase.
The controlling mechanism of the coupling property also
holds for the cross-coupling between the diagonal posts. A
similar phenomenon can be found if the examination is done in
the same way.
D. Filter Realization
Based on the proposed resonator, quad-mode bandpass filters
are designed for verification. Fig. 8 sketches the EM simulation
model in a perspective view and top view. The filter is sym-
metric with respect to the input and output ports ( plane). A
small coupling iris is added along the cavity wall for fine con-
trol of coupling between posts. Tuning screws on the top of posts
for frequency tuning and between posts for adjustment of cou-
pling values are also shown in the figures. The contribution from
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WANG et al.: COMPACT QUAD-MODE BANDPASS FILTER USING MODIFIED COAXIAL CAVITY RESONATOR WITH IMPROVED -FACTOR 7

the coupling iris and coupling screw may add up or cancel de-
pending on their dimensions. It should be noted that although
the tuning range of these tuning elements is shrunk due to the
interaction of four posts, the conventional tuning method is still
available and the tuning range is also sufficient to compensate
the fabrication tolerances.
In order to enhance the filter selectivity, cross-coupling
between nonadjacent resonators is commonly used to generate
transmission zeros in the stopband. A transmission zero will
occur at the lower side of passband when electric cross-coupling
dominants, and vice versa at the upper side when magnetic
cross-coupling dominants. In the proposed filter, a tap feeder
is adopted for external coupling, thus making
and always inductive. However, the properties of
other couplings (inductive or capacitive) can be arbitrarily
designed by proper sizing of the posts. This feature offers ex-
tended design flexibility for the realization of various filtering
functions. For example, if the spacing between the post open
ends is large enough, all inline couplings and cross-couplings
within the cavity are inductive. Therefore, all of the four
transmission zeros will appear at the upper stopband. With
the decrease of , sequential coupling between adjacent posts
changes to capacitive, leading to the shift of a transmission zero
towards the lower stopband. Furthermore, the second transmis-
sion zero (from left) can be located either below or above the
passband by inverting the sign of . As shown in Fig. 9,
is tuned to be mainly inductive or capacitive, depending on the
penetration depth of the coupling screw. Consequently, the
filter is capable of generating an equal number of transmission
zeros located below and above the passband.
In designing a proposed quad-mode filter, the quadruple res-
Fig. 9. Control the sign of coupling . (a) Coupling screw between posts 2
onant modes should be firstly adjusted to resonate at similar fre- and 3. (b) Simulated transmission responses dependent on the penetration depth
quencies following the mode analysis, yielding the desired op- of coupling screw.
erating point and passband. The cavity dimension is chosen by
trading off the resonator size and the unloaded value. The
appropriate external then needs to be found by properly set-
ting the tapping point with the help of EM simulation, as intro- To demonstrate the applications of the design theory, three
duced above. The next step is to achieve the required coupling proof-of-concept design examples centered at 2550 MHz with
between inner posts. Depending on the desired locations of the 100-MHz bandwidth and different filtering functions are pre-
transmission zeros, the dominant coupling (inductive or capac- sented. The normalized coupling matrix describing the filtering
itive) can be determined accordingly, and realized by choosing function with different locations of the transmission zeros can
the proper dimensions of the conductive posts. Note that the be obtained by using standard techniques [9], [24], [25], as
unwanted coupling can be cancelled by making the magnetic shown in (3)–(5) at the bottom of the following page.
coupling and electric coupling equal. The most important pa- Example I is designed with four transmission zeros above its
rameter to control the magnetic coupling is distance and the passband, example II shifts one transmission zero to the lower
post radius , and spacing is the main parameter to control the side of the passband by changing the magnetic inline coupling
electric coupling between posts. It should be pointed out that al- to electric coupling, and the last one has an equal number of
though control over the sequential coupling and cross-coupling transmission zeros located below and above the passband. It is
is not completely independent, an initial dimensioning of the worth mentioning that the coupling matrix is symmetric with
structure can be carried out by first selecting the distance and respect to both the main diagonal and the anti-diagonal due to
then adjusting the head length and chamfer . The spacing of the symmetry of filter structure. Tables II– IV illustrate the sign
input/output feed lines has an effect on the coupling amount of of coupling in each example.
and . The tuning screws are then included The designed filter responses from the full-wave EM analysis
for fine tuning. In practice, a few iterations may be needed to re- are compared with those from a circuit model of the coupling
fine and optimize the whole structure using a full-wave solver. matrix and are shown in Fig. 10. Good agreement validates the
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES
TABLE II
SIGN OF COUPLINGS IN EXAMPLE I
TABLE III
SIGN OF COUPLINGS IN EXAMPLE II
TABLE IV
SIGN OF COUPLINGS IN EXAMPLE III
feasibility of the proposed design concept. The filters presented
here are a four-pole filter with a single cavity having four reso-
nant modes. An additional attractive attribute of such a resonator
is that it can be considered as a basic building block for the im-
plementation of higher order filter by cascading, such as eight or
four pole filters ( integer). This resonator may also be com-
bined with other types of resonators, for example, to design a
six-pole filter with one single cavity quadruple-mode resonator
and two conventional single-mode cavities for input/output cou-
pling.
IV. EXPERIMENT AND RESULTS
To verify the proposed design, two four-pole single-cavity fil-
ters using the concepts of Examples II and III in Section III were
fabricated and tested. Fig. 11 shows a photograph of the fab-
ricated filter. The square cavity housing is made of aluminum
with a side length of mm and a height of mm.
The four posts are machined from brass with silver plating. The
tuning screws are also made of brass. These tuning screws are
used for minor adjustments to compensate for fabrication toler-
ances.
A comparison of the measured responses of the properly
tuned filters and the result of the EM simulation are shown
in Fig. 12. The measurement and simulation agree very well,
demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed filter configura-
tion.
The measured center frequency of Filter 1 is 2580 MHz, and
the bandwidth is 98 MHz, which is slightly less than that of EM
simulation (100 MHz). The measured insertion loss is around
0.25 dB (0.19 dB in simulation) at the band edge and return
loss is greater than 18 dB. Filter 2 shows a measured inser-
tion loss less than 0.3 dB in the passband (0.24 dB in simula-
tion) and a center frequency of 2550 MHz with a bandwidth of
100 MHz. The extracted unloaded of the Filters 1 and 2 from
the measured data are approximately 2900 and 2800, respec-
tively. The -factor value for Filter 2 is slightly lower since the
tuning screws are penetrated deeper into the housing, which in-
creases the ohmic losses. For Filter 2, the large penetration depth
of the coupling screw is required to push the second transmis-
sion zero to lower stopband. The locations of transmission zeros
of the fabricated samples are almost identical to the simulated
results.
As was previously mentioned, the proposed quad-mode filter
can be used as a basic building block for constructing higher
order filters with various stopband responses. An eight-pole
bandpass filter by cascading two quad-mode filters is also
designed and fabricated, as shown in Fig. 13(a). Observe that
(3)
(4)
(5)
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WANG et al.: COMPACT QUAD-MODE BANDPASS FILTER USING MODIFIED COAXIAL CAVITY RESONATOR WITH IMPROVED -FACTOR 9

Fig. 11. Photograph of the fabricated four-pole bandpass filter.

Fig. 10. Coupling matrix and EM simulated responses of the designed filters.
(a) Example I. (b) Example II. (c) Example III. (Coupling matrix: CM; electro- Fig. 12. Measured and simulated frequency responses. (a) Filter 1. (b) Filter 2.
magnetic: EM.)

follows: mm, mm, mm, mm,

the coupling between two cavities is realized by the coupling
window as the conventional design. To show the potential of
size reduction, this filter is designed in extremely small volume
with dimensions of mm and mm for each
cavity. The other dimensions regarding the inner post are as
mm, and mm. The measured insertion loss is
0.77 dB at the center frequency of 2550 MHz, and 1.24 dB
at the band edge, corresponding to an experimental -factor
of around 1700. The measured return loss is below 18 dB
and bandwidth is 100 MHz. Note that the highest frequency
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10 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES

V. CONCLUSION
Novel quad-mode bandpass filters have been proposed, ex-
ploiting the modified coaxial cavity resonator in this paper. This
kind of resonator has four conductive posts within one single
cavity and no metallic walls inside the cavity are required, ex-
hibiting new resonant characteristics and high unloaded com-
pared to the conventional widely used coaxial resonator. More-
over, the proposed resonator can offer four flexibly controllable
transmission zeros by means of the multiple cross-coupling ex-
isting within the cavity. Four- and eight-pole filters have been
designed, fabricated, and measured in 2.6-GHz band applica-
tions to validate the feasibility of the proposed resonator con-
cept. Measured results confirmed the predicted performance.
The proposed concept is attractive and ensures the achievement
of low-cost, low insertion-loss, and considerably miniaturized
filters for wireless base-station applications.

Fig. 13. Design of the eight-pole bandpass filter by cascading two quad-mode
resonators. (a) Photograph. (b) Measured frequency responses.
transmission zero in the four-pole filter disappears in this case,
as the input and output ports are in separate quadruple-mode
cavities. In addition, because the two quad-mode filters are
exactly the same, their transmission zeros are also overlapped
(located at same frequency for each pair). Therefore, only three
transmission zeros are observed in the measurement. If the
two quad-mode filters that are used for cascading are slightly
differently designed and/or tuned, up to six transmission zeros
will appear.
The spurious of the proposed filter is determined by the elec-
trical length of the post, in accordance with the characteristic of
the conventional coaxial cavity filter. Note that the head of the
post (bending part) also contributes to the post electrical length,
up to 85 in the fabricated four-pole filter. Therefore, the first
spurious appears at nearly three times the filter center frequency.
The power capability, temperature compensation, and passive
intermodulation distortion are also investigated, which shows a
similar performance with the conventional coaxial cavity filter.
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Xuguang Wang (M'13) was born in Shanxi
Province, China. He received the M.S. degree in
radio science and engineering from Korea Maritime
University, Busan, Korea, in 2008, and the Ph.D.
degree in electronic engineering from Sogang
University, Seoul, Korea, in 2013.
Since 2013, he has been a Research Engineer with
the Research and Development Center, KMW Inc.,
Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do, Korea. His research in-
terests include RF/microwave filters and associated
passive and active circuits.
-FACTOR 11
Geonho Jang received the B.S. and M.S. degrees
in information communication engineering from the
University of Incheon (now Incheon National Uni-
versity), Incheon, Korea, in 2009 and 2011, respec-
tively.
In 2011, he joined the Research and Develpment
Center, KMW Inc., Hwaseong-si, Gyeonggi-do,
Korea, as a Research Engineer. His research interests
include microwave passive components, antennas,
and metamaterials.
Boram Lee received the M.S. degree in information
and telecommunication engineering from the Univer-
sity of Incheon (now Incheon National University),
Incheon, Korea, in 2013.
Since 2013, she has been with the Research and
Development Center, KMW Inc., Hwaseong-si,
Gyeonggi-do, Korea, as a Research Assistant. Her
research interests include RF/microwave compo-
nents and wireless communication systems.
Namshin Park received the B.S. degree in electronic
engineering from Soonchunhyang University, Asan,
Korea, in 1994, and the M.S. degree in management
of technology from Sogang University, Seoul, Korea,
in 2013.
Since 1993, he has been with the Research and
Development Center, KMW Inc., Hwaseong-si,
Gyeonggi-do, Korea, where he is currently the
Managing Director of RF UNIT Business Group. His
research interests include microwave filters, dielec-
tric resonators, high- and multi-mode resonators,
and filter miniaturization.