Miniaturized Folded Ridged Quarter-Mode Substrate Integrated Waveguide RF MEMS Tunable Bandpass Filter

This paper presents a miniaturized RF MEMS tunable bandpass filter design developed by application of folded ridged quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide cavity. Using packaged RF MEMS SP4T chips, a switchable reactive loading is applied to the folded ridged quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide cavity, tuning the resonance frequency. Overall miniaturizations of 70.3% and 78.8% are achieved for inductively- and capacitively-loaded filters compared to an RF MEMS tunable filter using half-mode substrate integrated waveguide. Here, an analysis of inductive or capacitive loading along with their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. Two different two-pole folded ridged quarter-mode substrate integrated RF MEMS tunable bandpass filters are designed and measured. The first prototype employing inductive loading achieves 4.4% tuning range at a center frequency of 1.713 GHz, insertion loss of 3.10-3.92 dB, and return loss greater than 15 dB for all tuning modes. The second prototype employing capacitive loading is measured with a 35.2% tuning range at a center frequency of 865 MHz, insertion loss of 1.6-4.3 dB, and return loss greater than 10 dB for all tuning modes. The reported performance and extreme miniaturization of folded ridged quarter-mode substrate integrated waveguide cavities shows great promise for their application in tunable filter design.