Design of Microstrip Low-Pass Filter Based on Six-Slit-Ring DGS

A novel six-slit-ring defected ground structure (DGS) is presented in this paper. The location of the slit can shift the resonant frequency without changing the overall size of the DGS and its adjustment range can reach 8.81 GHz. By cascading three identical six-slit-ring DGS unit cells, a microstrip low-pass filter (LPF) can be realized. Its 3dB cutoff frequency is 7.27 GHz. The in-band insertion loss is below 0.35 dB and the stop-band width with 20 dB attenuation is over 8.12 GHz. To improve the out-of-band rejection of the filter, shunt branches were added on both sides of the microstrip line. Its 3 dB cutoff frequency is 8.285 GHz. The insertion loss is less than 0.81dB in the pass-band. The stop-band rejection is better than -40 dB at 11.36-20 GHz and the size of the filter is only 28 mm by 11 mm. The simulation results show that the proposed novel six-slit-ring DGS microstrip LPF has the characteristics of compact size, flexible adjustment, flat pass-band, wide stop-band and high selectivity.