Tunable Quasi-Reflectionless Bandpass Filters Using Substrate Integrated Coaxial Resonators

This brief reports on the electromagnetic (EM) design and the practical development of frequency-reconfigurable quasi-reflectionless bandpass filters (BPFs) using substrate integrated coaxial (SIC) resonators. The filter concept is based on in-series-cascaded quasi-reflectionless stages that are shaped by a first-order bandpass section and two resistively-terminated first-order bandstop sections. For the first time, we explore the realization of these filters using tunable SIC resonators that exhibit high quality factor (Q) and can be widely tuned with commercially-available linear piezoelectric actuators. Synthesized examples alongside various EM design and practical integration aspects are discussed in detail. The concept is experimentally validated at S-band through the manufacturing and testing of two reconfigurable (one-stage and two-stage) prototypes.