Compact reconfigurable triple notch ultra-wideband bandpass filter for cognitive radio system

Abstract

This paper introduces a compact ultra-wideband (UWB) bandpass filter (BPF) with two switchable external notch structures which avoids the interference between the UWB communication with worldwide interoperability for microwave access (WiMAX) and wireless local area network (WLAN) systems, suitable for cognitive radio (CR) applications. The first external notch structure is modified C-shaped structure which generates a sharp rejection at 3.5 GHz to avoid interference with WiMAX system and second external notch structure is back to back T-shaped structure which creates sharp rejection notch bands at 5.2 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequencies for WLAN systems. The filter reconfiguration is achieved by varying the conductance of microstrip line. The response of the proposed structure shows sharp rejections at one WiMAX and two WLAN bands. The bandpass filter covers frequency of UWB system from 3.1 to 10.7 GHz having very low passband insertion loss. The proposed UWB BPF is designed, simulated, fabricated and tested to validate the results. A good agreement is achieved between simulation and experimental results.