SIWTUNE · Efficient Synthesis and Design of Reconfigurable MEMS-based Band-Pass Filters in SIW Technology

Efficient Synthesis and Design of Reconfigurable MEMS-based Band-Pass Filters in SIW Technology

The main objective of the SIWTUNE project was to obtain the capability for the synthesis design and reconfiguration of novel tunable combline filters in SIW (substrate integrated waveguide) technology. During the first half of the project, a novel and advanced design strategy for waveguide combline filter was successfully developed. In the second half of the project, this technique was enhanced to accomplish the design of combline filters in SIW technology. The main results of the project are: R1) A generalized combline filter design methodology, based on a mixed space mapping approach using coupling matrices and structure segmentation. This technique can be used for filters in several technologies (coaxial or SIW, for instance) R2) An study of SIW tunable filters with MEMS varactors was completed. R3) Advances on the synthesis of filter coupling matrix - An original coupling matrix reconfiguration technique employing new similarity transformations, reflections and hyperbolic reflections for lossless and lossy bandpass filters, was successfully developed. - An original coupling matrix filter technique based on the Desnanot Jacoby identity was successfully developed for (any) high-order passband filters, enabling flexible synthesis and coupling matrix extraction. The application decreases the computational complexity of coupling matrix filter synthesis and reconfiguration techniques and is applicable to lossy and asymmetrical filters too. The application plays a decisive role in the SIW lossy filter synthesis and design-optimization stages (when it is used as a coupling matrix extraction tool at each iteration of the optimization process – in order to get the provisional filter response). R4) Further advances to extend the capabilities on the 3D Smith Chart, and its application to filter design (for instance, by allowing the simultaneous optimization of group delay, quality factor and S parameters using differential geometry). R5) New theoretical advancements in general network theory, such as mathematical properties of Foster/Non-Foster networks, as well as of positive/negative group delay networks. The research activities of the project has resulted in 7 journal publications (6 of them with the fellow as first author) and 4 IEEE-rated international conferences (all of them with the fellow as first author). Dr. Andrei Muller undertook the necessary work to implement the research and lead activities with co-authors from UPV-iTEAM (host institution), UPV- Applied Maths Group, Imperial College of London, Technical University of Bucharest, and CNRS Brest. Moreover, the fellow has carried out some dissemination actions to promote this project and the Marie Curie program. The socio-economic impact of the project can be twofold. From one side, the practical results of the project (the novel design methodology for combline filters in different technologies) can attract the interest of industry. In fact, an European company has shown interest on developing a new efficient technique for the accurate design of combline filters, and another one asked us for the design of several combline filters which allowed the validation of the novel design strategies developed with several prototypes. From the other side, the theoretical advances obtained during this project can be useful to other researchers for expanding the state-of-the-art on network theory and extending the capabilities of traditional techniques to other scenarios (lossy filters, non-foster networks, etc..)

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