High-$Q$ Fully Reconfigurable Tunable Bandpass Filters

In this paper, the authors present a design technique that enables inter-resonator and external coupling control for high-quality-factor (
Q
) tunable bandpass filters. The design incorporates low-
Q
varactors as part of the inter-resonator and external coupling mechanisms without degrading the overall high
Q
of the original filter. Detailed design methodology and equations are presented to illustrate the concepts. A first-time demonstration of these concepts is presented for a widely tunable high-
Q
evanescent-mode cavity bandpass filter. The cavities are integrated in a low-loss substrate with commercially available piezoelectric actuators and solid-state varactors for frequency and bandwidth tuning. This technique allows for reduced bandwidth variation over large tuning ranges. As one example, a constant 25-MHz absolute-bandwidth filter in the 0.8-1.43-GHz tuning range with loss that is as low as 1.6 dB is presented as an example. The filter third-order intercept point is between 32.8 and 35.9 dBm over this tuning range. To further show the impact of the technique on high-
Q
filters, a filter
Q
that is as high as 750 is demonstrated in the range of 3-5.6 GHz, while using low-
Q
varactors (Q < 30 at 5 GHz for a 0.4-pF capacitance) to achieve more than 50% reduction in bandwidth variation over the tuning range.