IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 39, NO.

8, AUGUST 1991 1307

Evanescent-Mode Coupling of Dual-Mode

Rectangular Waveguide Filters
Hsin-Chin Chang and Kawthar A. Zaki, Fellow, IEEE

Abscract -A novel coupling method for dual-mode rectangular

waveguide filters is presented and analyzed. Unequal coupling 4
between dual-mode pairs of rectangular cavities is achieved
without the need of an iris. This method replaces the iris
completely while offering a practical, flexible, and wide range of
couplings. Mode matching method is used in the analysis and
its accuracy is verified by experiments. A four-pole dual-mode
elliptic function filter using this new coupling method is built
and tested. Results show excellent agreement with the analysis.

I. INTRODUCTION

C ONVENTIONAL dual-mode waveguide filters re-

quire cross slot irises to provide coupling between
modes in adjacent resonators [ 11-[3]. The major drawback
Fig. 1. A symbolic description of a four-pole elliptic function filter.

of this coupling method is that the dimensions of the slot

are determined by a small-aperture approximation [71 that
does not provide the required accuracy for this type of
appkation. This means repeated experimental tuning
(machining) is needed, which makes irises expensive and
creates an engineering bottleneck. Efforts have been made
to design a waveguide filter without irises or with a
reduced number of irises [4]-[6]. One promising method
[61 is to replace the iris with a short waveguide of smaller
cross section. The advantage of this method is that an
accurate calculation of the coupling coefficient can be
made, and the resulting dimensions are reasonable.
The previous work 161 was done in a cylindrical wave- Fig. 2. One possible configuration for realizing the filter in Fig. 1.
guide filter. The coupling waveguide is circular in cross
section and hence gives equal coupling for the dual modes.
Except for the canonical form [4], unequal coupling is tion. One possible configuration is to use two rectangular
generally required between adjacent cavities. Therefore, cavities connected by a smaller rectangular waveguide.
additional coupling screws must be added and a tuning This is shown in Fig. 2. The addition of coupling screws
procedure must be performed. Furthermore, the amount for M , , and M3,, frequency fine-tuning screws, and in-
of coupling increase achievable by the additional tuning put/output connections provides the complete waveguide
screw is limited. Thus a large ratio of coupling between filter. Since the mode matching analysis provides precise
the two orthogonal dual modes cannot be realized. results of the resonant frequencies of the two dual or-
This paper introduces a configuration which overcomes thogonal modes, as well as the coupling between the
the above problems. Consider the four-pole dual-mode modes, it is possible to design single- or dual-mode filters
elliptic function filter shown in Fig. 1, where the arrows in this configuration which require no tuning screws. This
denote electric field polarization of the four resonant is particularly attractive at higher microwave and millime-
modes, and the Mi,'s are the couplings between them. ter-wave frequencies, where the additional losses and
Note that M , , Z MZ3.To realize couplings M,, and M,, tuning sensitivity may not be tolerated. This structure is
the coupling structure should be asymmetric to 90" rota- analyzed by the mode matching method. The results is
verified by measurements. An experimental four-pole
Manuscript received October 4, 1990; revised March 26, 1991. dual-mode elliptic function filter is designed, built, and
The authors are with the Electrical Engineering Department, Univer-
sity of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. tested. Measured results show excellent agreement with
I E E E Log Number 9101372. analysis.

0018-9480/91/0800-1307$01.00 01991 I E E E
1308 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 39, NO. 8, AUGUST 1991

The coupling coefficient is shown to be given by

- - -f2
k = - =M- - - -f," (1)
L f,"+f2.
(a) By placing a PEC or a PMC in the midway plane of the
coupling waveguide, only half the structure, shown in Fig.
PEC or PMC
3(b), together with the coordinates and definition of geo-
metric parameters, needs to be analyzed. The plane z =
- c can be either a PEC or a PMC. The mode matching
method can be used to analyze the structure in Fig. 3(b),
i.e., to calculate f, (with PEC at the center) and f, (with
PMC at the center). Then (1) is used to obtain the
coupling coefficient, k . The half-sections in Fig. 3(b) are
C+l, -4 divided into two regions:
Topview Sideview
(b) Region I: z 2 0, the cavity.
Fig. 3. (a) The conventional (left)and the new (right) coupling method. Region 11: z < 0, the coupling waveguide.
(b) the configuration under analysis.
Within each region, both T E modes and TM modes
(transverse to the z direction) are used to match the
boundary at z = 0. The H, fields for the TE modes are,
for region I,

m-1 PEC or PMC

I
lopen or Short
Circuit

Fig. 4. Two equivalent circuits of the coupling structure.

and for region 11,

sin y/;( z
sinh y(,:

+ c)
sinh y&,l,
1, - z)
(2)

PEC
sinh yi'jlc '
11. ANALYSIS
(3)
The new coupling method introduces a short coupling cosh y:;( z + c)
waveguide of smaller cross section that replaces the cross
, PMC.
cosh y:;c
iris. The comparison is shown in Fig. 3(a). The small
coupling waveguide between the two dual-mode rectangu- The E, fields for the TM modes are, for region I,
lar cavities is beyond cutoff over the desired band of the 1
cosh yk,( I, - 2 )
filter such that only evanescent modes can exist. There
are three parameters (i.e., the height, width, and length of
E$, =
""(
sin - x
1, ';) (:
+- sin - y
'
+ -I) coshy~,l,
the coupling waveguide) that can be varied to achieve the (4)
two prescribed couplings (i.e., M I , and M 2 J . Therefore,
the choice of dimensions is very flexible. These dimen- and for region 11,
sions can be adjusted to meet geometric specifications.
For the purpose of the analysis, the dual orthogonal mode
pairs in each of the two cavities are assumed to be
uncoupled (i.e., no 45" coupling screws are present). With cosh y/j( z +c )
this assumption, only the modes of similar polarization in
, PEC
cosh y,"c
each cavity are coupled, and thus can be analyzed sepa- (5)
rately. Two equivalent circuits of the coupling structure sinh y!(,: z + e)
, PMC.
for one mode in each cavity are shown in Fig. 4, where M sinh y,:'c
is the mutual inductance. There are two resonant fre-
quencies for these circuits, namely f, and f,. They can Notice that for TE modes, m or n can be zero, while for
be derived from the symmetry of the structure by placing TM modes both m and n must be positive. The trans-
a perfect electric conductor (PEC) or a perfect magnetic verse fields can be derived from the axial field compo-
conductor (PMC) on the symmetry plane respectively. nents through Maxwell's equations. In all the equations
CHANG AND ZAKI: EVANESCENT-MODE COUPLING 1309

above = j w p and E^ = j w e , p and E being the perme- composed of all the mode coefficients in region 11. The
ability and permittivity of the medium within the struc- rank of the square matrix is the total number of modes
ture. taken (the sum of the number of T E and TM modes) in
On the plane z = 0, the boundary condition requires region 11. In order to be able to handle it numerically, the
both the transverse electric fields ( E , and E,) and the infinite matrix in (12) has to be truncated. For example, if
transverse magnetic fields ( H x and H,) to be continuous, the m and n in (2) take NzE and N;F" different values,
i.e., respectively, and the m and n in (4) take NEM and NzM
values, then the summation in (12) would be over NEEX
Ai,Zk= BZ@;q (6) NTE+ NEMX NLM terms. And if the i and j in (3) take
m,n,p 17J2q
N$F and Nzy" different values, respectively, and the i and
+
j in ( 5 ) take N z y and N,TMvalues, then the rank of the
m,n,p
AR,H~= B ; $ I ~ (7) matrix would be NzF X NI,; +
.t: N ; f y X NITy".
Equation (12) is a homogeneous linear system of equa-
where the superscripts p and q stand for the TE mode or tions. In order to have a nonzero solution for the coeffi-
the TM mode. The A's and B's are th_e mode Sefficients cients, the determinant of the matrix in (12) must be zero.
in regions I and I1 respectively. The E's and H's are the The frequencies that satisfy this condition are the reso-
vector transverse fields at z = 0. nant frequencies. Both cases for a PEC and a PMC wall
Define the cross product of two modes as at the symmetry plane are calculated. They are used to
( E'.X 2
1 )= 1cross section
(E,"Hi -Ey"H:)dA. (8)
obtain the coupling coefficients from (1). We can substi-
tute the frequency back into (12) to solve for the coeffi-
cients, and then the field distribution inside the cavity is
From the 2rthogo2ality of eigenmodes, it is known that if
obtained.
both the E and H fields in (8) are in the same region, all
the products vanish unless U and U are the same mode.
111. RESULTS
Taking the cross product of the H field of some mode in
region I on both sides of (6) and the cross product of the A program has been developed for the calculation of
E field of some mode in region I1 on both sides of (7) and the coupling coefficient and field distributions. The total
using the orthogonality relation (81, the following equa- fields existing in the resonator at resonance are a combi-
tions are obtained: nation of TE and TM modes. Therefore, these fields
cannot strictly be designated as pure TE or TM modes
ALn(ZLXG2)= BZ(E#';qXI?2) (9) and are designated as hybrid (HE) modes. However, for
i,J,q calculating the coupling between the two cavities using
the small-aperture approximation, the TE,, mode is as-
C X 22)= BZ(@,'q x @;Iq). (10) sumed to be the only mode existing in the cavities. The
m,n,p approximate coupling is computed from [7], [81
Substituting the A;, from (9) into (10) gives
I +

B,?,, ( E,!:?' X @;rq')

B; ( @,'q x 22)
where A is the free-space wavelength and A, is the cutoff
wavelength inside the coupling waveguide. M is the mag-
netic polarizability of the aperture. Figs. 5 and 6 show the
variation of the coupling coefficient between two cavities
as a function of half the coupling section length (c). In
addition to the measured and computed results using the
or, in matrix form, mode matching method, the figures also show the approx-
imated small-aperture coupling coefficient. Conventional
coupling measurement methods carry measurement error,
inherent in these methods and hardware limitations. We
have essentially eliminated these errors by using the re-
flection coefficient phase measurement method [lo]. In
this method the frequencies of the zeros and poles of the
one-port network (i.e., the 180" and 0" phases of the
reflection coefficient) are accurately measured. The cou-
where unprimed indices i, j , and q are for the columns pling coefficient is determined only from frequency mea-
and the primed ones are for the rows. The 8's are the surements. Since a synthesizer is used as the source,
Kronecker delta function. The ( B e ) is a column vector frequency measurement errors are essentially eliminated,
 1310
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 39, NO. 8, AUGUST 1991

E:
3
X
7.i
8.5

I
p1

0
3
- a=.5"
X
3

50 -
L I

0 0
.05 .15 .2
2 4 8 8
c (inch)
Fig. 5. b/lz
Comparison of measured coupling coefficient with calculated
from different approaches (HEol mode). Fig. 7. Variation of resonant frequencies (f, and f,,, mode) and
coupling coefficients with coupling waveguide length a .

8.4 q , , , , , , , , , , , , I ,
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 ,

70 -
>\

- calculation
---- small aperture approx. -
60 - -
0 experiment

50 - - 7.8

50 , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
~ b=.5"
b=.4"
.___.
..
b=.3"
b=.2"
D

1,=1.0" i,=l.O" 1,=1.0"

___---
__-- - __._____._------
-
_____.____-------- -
{ o 05 .15 .2
2 4 8 8 I

c (inch)
Fig. 6. Comparison of measured coupling coefficient with calculated Fig. 8. Variation of resonant frequencies (f, and f, mode) and
from different approaches (HE,, mode). coupling coefficients with coupling waveguide length b.
CHANG AND ZAKI: EVANESCENT-MODE COUPLING 131 1

Region I

1
l o0o086[ ;ooo2[

i
9999 1

1/n

Fig. 9. Convergence behavior of resonant frequencies and coupling

coefficient with number of modes used.

thus yielding very accurate coupling measurement. The

calculated results using mode matching agree extremely
well with the measured results, with an error of less than
1.0%. Figs. 7 and 8 show the variation of the coupling
with the height and width ( a and b ) of the coupling -4 -2 0 2
X-axis
section respectively. y =o
It can be seen that the coupling between the two modes Fig. 10. Matching of H , field at the boundary z =0
behaves differently with the height and width of the
coupling waveguide. In all the figures above, 1, is fixed.
These figures show that the proposed coupling method
can realize couplings of very wide range and ratio.
The convergences of resonant frequencies and coupling
coefficients with the number of modes used in the mode
matching are shown in Fig. 9. Assuming I, = I, = I , = 1
in., a = b = 0.5 in., and c = 0.1 in., the numbers of modes
in regions 1 and 2 are chosen to be NF = NAE = N 1.k
TM =
N:y" = 2n and N:: = N:: = N$Y = NIT: = n , respec-
tively. Fig. 9 shows that at least n = 4 is needed to
be within 0.1%. In general, the number of modes used in
the two regions should be proportional to their sizes [91.
For example, if I, / a = 2 and I, / b = 1, then ( N F +
NL')/(NZF +
N Z Y ) = 2 and (N;fE + N,TM)/(NZF+
N $ y ) = 1.
The H , and E, fields on the boundary as obtained
from both regions I and I1 are shown in Fig. 10 and Fig.
11 respectively. These fields indicate how well the bound- WN

ary conditions are satisfied.

Finally, a dual-mode four-pole elliptic function filter
has been designed, built, and tuned. The normalized
coupling matrix and 1 / 0 impedance are given in (14).
The filter is designed to have a center frequency of 7.83
GHz and a bandwidth of 160 MHz. The dimensions of the
cavities and coupling section were determined from the
mode matching analysis to be I , = 0.993 in., 1, = 1.005 in.,
4 -2 0 2 4
I , = 1.05 in., a = 0.528 in., b = 0.418 in., and c = 0.15 in. Y-axis
The input and output ports were realized by coaxial x=o
probes. The measured responses of the experimental fil- Fig. 11. Matching of EL field at the boundary z = 0.
1312 IEEE TRANSACTIONS O N MICROWAVE THEORY AND TECHNIQUES, VOL. 39, NO. 8, AUGUST 1991

[3] S. J. Fiedziusko, “Dual-mode dielectric resonator loaded cavity

h
2 -0.000 dB
5 . 0 dB/
log MAG

1
511
REF -10.0 dB
5 . 0 dB/
log M m
filters,” IEEE Trans. Microwaue Theory Tech., vol. MTT-30, pp.
1311-1316, Sept. 1982.
[4] K. A. Zaki, C. Chen, and A. E . Atia, “Canonical and longitudinal
dual mode dielectric resonator filters without iris,” IEEE Trans.
Microwaue Theory Tech., vol. MTT-35, pp. 1130-1135, Dec. 1987.
s2 I [5] S. W. Chen, K. A. Zaki, and A. E. Atia, “ A single iris 8-pole dual
mode dielectric resonator filter,” in Proc. 19th European Microware
OdB S I 1
Conf.,Sept. 1989, pp. 513-518.
-5dB [61 S. W. Chen and K. A. Zaki, “ A novel coupling method for dual
mode dielectric resonators or waveguide filters,” IEEE Trans. Mi-
-10dB crowace Theory Tech., vol. 38, pp. 1885-1893, Dec. 1990.
[7] H . A. Bethe, “Theory of diffraction by small holes,” Phys. Ret.., vol.
-15dB
66, pp. 163-182, 1944.
-2OdB [81 G. L. Matthaei, L. Young, and E. M. T. Jones, Microwai,e Filters,
Impedance-Matching Networks, and Coupling Structures. New
York: McGraw-Hill, 1964, ch. 8, pp. 229-243.
[91 P. H. Masterman and P. J. B. Clarricoats, “Computer field-match-
ing of waveguide transverse discontinuities,” Proc. Inst. Elrc. Eng.,
vol. 118, no. 1, pp. 51-63, Jan. 1971.
1.63 7.67 7.71 7.75 7.79 7.83 7.87 7.91 7.95 7.99 8.03GHz [lo] A. E. Atia and A. E. Williams, “Measurements of intercavity
couplings,” IEEE Trans. Microwar’e Theory Tech., vol. MTT-23, pp.
Fig. 12. Measured response for the experimental filter: Si, and S2i. 519-522, June 1975.

ter is shown in Fig. 12:

I o 0.81418 0 - 0.30145 \
Hsin-Chin Chang wd5 born in Taiwan, R 0 . C ,
0 0.81108 /~=1.0048. on June 13, 1963. H e received the B.S. degree in
0.81108 0 0.81418
electrical engineering from National Taiwdn
\ -0.30145 0 0.81418 0 1 University in 1985 and the M S. degree in elec-
( 14) trical engineering from the University of Mary-
land, College Park, in 1989. Since 1987, he has
been working as a research assistdnt in the
Microwave Lab, Department of Electrical Engi-
IV. CONCLUSIONS neering, University of Maryland. Currently,
A novel coupling method for dual-mode rectangular he is working toward the Ph.D degree. His
research interests include dielectric-loaded res-
waveguide filters has been introduced. Mode matching onator filters, block filter designs, accurate waveguide filter characteri-
method has been used to analyze the structure and has zation, MIC and M M l C designs, and numerical methods in electromag-
proved to be extremely accurate, as verified by experi- netism.
ments. Extensive results have been presented to explore
the nature of this new coupling method. An experimental
dual-mode four-pole elliptic function filter using this new
coupling method has been built and its measured perfor- Kawthar A. Zaki (SM’85-F’91) received the B.S.
mance shows excellent results. This new coupling method degree (with honors) from Ain Shams Univer-
has a wide range of practical and potential applications, sity, Cairo, Egypt, in 1962 and the M.S. and
Ph.D. degrees from the University of California,
particularly for high microwave and millimeter-wave fre- Berkeley, in 1966 and 1969, respectively, all in
quencies, where tuning screws can be completely elimi- electrical engineering.
nated. From 1962 to 1964, she was a Lecturer in the
Department of Electrical Engineering, Ain
Shams University. From 1965 to 1969, she held
REFERENCES the position of Research Assistant in the Elec-
tronic Research Laboratory, University of Cali-
[ l ] A. E. Atia and A. E. Williams, “New types of bandpass filters for fornia, Berkeley. She joined the Electrical Engineering Department,
satellite transponders,” COMSAT Tech. Reu., vol. 1, no. 1, pp. University of Maryland, College Park, in 1970, where she is presently
21-43, Fall 1971. Professor of Electrical Engineering. Her research interests encompass
[2] A. E. Atia and A. E. Williams, “Narrow bandpass waveguide electromagnetics, microwave circuits, optimization, computer-aided de-
filters,” IEEE Trans. Microwace Theory Tech., vol. MTT-20, pp. sign, and optically controlled microwave and millimeter-wave devices.
258-265, Apr. 1972. Dr. Zaki is a member of Tau Beta Pi.