STUDIES ON CROSSOVER AND

BROADSIDE-COUPLED MICROSTRIP
BANDSTOP FILTERS
Ning Yang,1,2 Zhi Ning Chen,1 Yun Yi Wang,2 and
M. Y. W. Chia2
1
Institute for Infocomm Research
20 Science Park Road
#02-34/37 TeleTech Park
Singapore 117674
2
Southeast University
2# Sipailou
Nanjing 210096, P. R. China
Received 10 January 2003
ABSTRACT: Two kinds of two-layer microstrip structures, including
crossover and broadside-coupled microstrip lines, and their equivalent
circuits, are studied based on a quasi-static analyzing method. The
shorting vias from the bottom strips to the ground planes are introduced
to achieve bandstop. Simulated and measured results show the validity
of the proposed structures and their CAD models for the design of
bandstop lters. 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Microwave Opt Technol
Lett 38: 228 231, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.
interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.11022
Key words: crossover; broadside-coupled; microstrip line; bandstop
1. INTRODUCTION

Figure 8 Comparison of the simulated and measured results

while is 90. In our experiment, continually changing the microstrip

connect angle is too expensive for determination of research propagation characteristics. In this paper, the propagation characteristics of
the via have been studied by Ensemble, so that the cost is decreased,
time is saved, and accurate results are derived. The obtained results
have important application value for the design of a similar multilayer
circuit.
REFERENCES
1. T.Y. Wang, R.F. Harrington, and J.R. Mautz, Quasi-static analysis of a
microstrip via through a hole in a ground plane, IEEE Trans Microwave
Theory Techn MTT-36 (1988), 1000 1013.
2. S.-G. Hsu and R.-B. Wu, Full wave characterization of a through hole
via using the matrix-penciled moment method, IEEE Trans Microwave
Theory Tech MTT-42 (1994), 1540 1547.
3. S. Maeda, T. Kashiwa, and I. Fukai, Full wave analysis of propagation characteristics of a through hole using the nite-difference time-domain method,
IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Techn MTT-39 (1991), 21542159.
4. C.-W. Lam, S.M. Ali, and P. Nuytkens, Three-dimensional modeling of
multichip module interconnects, IEEE Trans Components Hybrids
Manufact Technol CHMT-16 (1993), 699 704.
2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

228

Conventional microstrip bandstop lters utilize shunt-connected

stubs in microwave systems. However, using a stub resonator
always requires too high characteristic impedances that are difcult to realize in practice when microstrip technology is used [1].
Recently, with the development of integration technology and
rapid growth of the LTCC technique, multilayered structures have
become an efcient tool for microwave circuit designs and microelectronic packaging. Use of the multilayer microstrip line structure presents a compact and exible design to overcome the
limitation of the shunt-connected stub [2, 3]. The crossover and
broadside-coupled microstrip lines are both inhomogeneous structure which is guiding hybrid modes instead of TEM mode. However, at low frequency the longitudinal eld components are much
smaller than the transverse components which make quasi-static
approximation reasonable.
In this paper, the two-layer microstrip structures are analyzed
respectively for both orthogonally crossover and broadside-coupled microstrip lines. The equivalent circuits and L, C parameters
are extracted by using the quasi-static method. These two kinds of
structures with properly designed vias are modied to introduce
bandstop property. They are employed for the CAD of two kinds
of two-layer bandstop lter. The design procedure is veried by
comparing the simulated and experimental results.
2. ANALYSIS AND DESIGN

2.1 Cross-Over Microstrip Bandstop Structure

Figure 1 illustrates the geometry of the crossover microstrip line
structure. The under-crossing strip line with two open ends has a
characteristic admittance of Y 1 and is divided by the overlapping
region into lengths l a and l b. The main transmission line on the top
layer has a characteristic admittance of Y 0 .
The equivalent circuit of the structure is shown in Figure 2. The
overlapping region is modeled as a capacitive lumped -network,
which includes the self capacitances C s1, C s2, and mutual coupling
capacitance C 12 . These lumped capacitances are computed by

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 38, No. 3, August 5 2003

C s1 C 12
,
0 C12 Y1 tan0 le1 Y1 tan0 le2 0 Cs1

1
.
02 L

From the equivalent circuits, it can be easily found that the size of
the structure can be further reduced if we use only the half arm of
the bottom crossing strip. Suppose the value of C 12 does not
change and another arm entirely disappears (not so practically), the
equivalent L value will double, and, at the same time, the resonant
frequency will decrease, which satises 0 Y 1 [tan( l e1 )/
(C s1 C 12 )].
Now we add a via from the under-crossing strip to the ground.
For a straight conductor of length l and radius R, neglecting the
effect of nearby conductors, the via is modeled by a lumped self
inductance, given by
L

0l
2l
ln
0.75 .
2
R

Suppose the via is positioned where the under-crossing strip l b is

divided into l b1 and l b2, thus we obtain
BA Y1

Y 1tanle 2 B Y1 tanlb1
Y1 Y1 tanle 2 B tanlb1
Y1 tanle1 Bs1 ,

Figure 1

where B (1/ L ). When the via is at the end of the line, the
crossing strip is therefore an end-shorted microstrip line, therefore,
it is derived that

Geometry of crossover microstrip lines

using a quasi-static technique, which solves excess charge densities on the strips using the electrostatic 3D Greens function and
the Galerkin method in the spectral domain [4, 5]. This approach
has proved valid for various microstrip discontinuity problems. L t
is the effective inductance introduced in the longitudinal direction
when the width of under-crossing strip is not neglectable.
In the equivalent circuit, the admittance at point B is given by
Y B jB B j

B A B 12
B s2 ,
B A B 12

(1)

where B 12 C 12 , B s2 C s2 , and B A is the susceptance at

point A, dened by
B A Y 1tanle1 Y1 tanle2 Bs1
Y1

sine1 e2
Bs1 ,
cos e1 cos e2

(3)

BA Y1

B Y 1tanlb
Y1 tanle1 Bs1 .
Y1 B tanlb

2.2 Broadside-Coupled Microstrip Bandstop Structure

A broadside coupling structure has been used for obtaining tight
coupling between microstrips in microwave circuits. Figure 3(a) is
the cross section of the broadside-coupled microstrip line. Usually,
a quasi-static equivalent circuit, as shown in Figure 3(b), is applied
to a unit length of this kind of transmission line [3]. In this paper
the per-unit-length capacitances are determined by utilizing the
commercial software Zeland IE3D. To obtain the bandstop, the
bottom coupled strip line is kept open at the two ends, with a via
shorting to the ground at the center [Fig. 4(a)]. Malherbe gave the
network model of TEM-coupled lines in a homogeneous medium
[6]. Suppose the under-crossing line is in 1/4 wavelengths, an
equivalent circuit in Figure 4(b) could be derived. However, this is

(2)

where ei l ei (i 1, 2), l e1 l a l ea , l e2 l b l eb , l b
l b1 l b2 , B s1 C s1 . l e1 and l e2 are the equivalent lengths
of the transmission line, when considering the fringing elds at the
open end discontinuities in the edges of the under-crossing strip
line.
To achieve serial resonance at point B, it must be satised that
B A B 12 0, that is, / 2 ei , and the resonant
frequency is 0 Y 1 [tan( l e1 ) tan( l e2 )]/[C s1 C 12 ]. If
the upper substrate thickness h 1 is chosen to be small as compared
to microstrip line width and h 2 , C 12 is large in comparison with
C s1 and C s2. For a relatively narrow bandwidth ( 0), this
structure can be approximated by a series LC block at the resonant
frequency and we will obtain

Figure 2 Equivalent circuit of crossover microstrip lines

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 38, No. 3, August 5 2003

229

Figure 3 Cross section of broadside-coupled microstrip lines and the

per-unit-length equivalent circuit

not accurately suitable for the coupled line in an inhomogeneous

medium where the phase velocities of the two modes are not equal.
For the broadside coupled microstrip line, there exists c and
modes related to in-phase and out-of-phase excitations, respectively.
In this paper the coupling structure was modeled with several
serially cascaded per-unit-length cells [each cell is around 0.025
wavelengths, as shown in Fig. 3(b)] and inserted with a shorting
via among them [Fig. 4(c)]. Unit length capacitances and inductances were multiplied by the cell length. The via is modeled by an
inductance, and the value is also given by
L

0l
2

ln

2l
0.75 .
R

The two open-ended fringing eld effects of the under-crossing

strip are modeled by microstrip open end effect. Finally, this
network is analyzed and optimized with microwave CAD software
to obtain the estimated coupled structure parameters which could
result in a bandstop in the required frequency.

Figure 4 (a) Proposed broadside-coupled microstrip lines bandstop lter, (b) and (c) its equivalent circuits in the CAD programme

230

Figure 5 Measured S 21 for three types of crossover microstrip bandstop lters

3. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The two kinds of bandstop structure are fabricated on two-layer

Roger4003 substrates. The upper and bottom layer have the same
dielectric constant of 3.38, and with thickness of 31 mil and 62 mil,
respectively.
For the crossover microstrip structure, the width of the upper
strip is 5.4 mm, which corresponds to a 50 transmission line, and
the width of under crossing strip is 4 mm. Figure 5 shows measured S 21 for three instances: (i) a commonly crossing line, as
shown in Figure 1, with l a l b 13 mm and the center frequency
is 5.68 GHz; (ii) only the half arm of the under-crossing line,
which is supposed to decrease the resonant frequency (at 4.4 GHz)
and save the lateral size; (iii) the cross-coupling microstrip structure with a via near the open end of the bottom-coupling strip line,
which may further decrease the resonant frequency (at 1.72 GHz).
The broadside-coupled microstrip bandstop lter operating at
3.3 GHz is also designed and fabricated. The width of both the
upper and bottom strip is 3.6 mm, and the upper strip is connected
to the SMA by two matching circuits. The per-unit-length LC
parameters are obtained for the circuit in Figure 3(b): L 11 0.335
nH/mm, L 22 0.264 nH/mm, M 12 0.194 nH/mm, C 11
0.025 pf/mm, C 22 0.105 pg/mm, and C 12 0.143 pf/mm.
The inductance model value for the via with radius of 0.15 mm is
L v 0.43 nH. The designed length of the bottom strip with the
CAD programme is 14.2 mm. The measured S parameters are

Figure 6 Simulated and measured S parameters for broadside-coupled

microstrip bandstop lters

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 38, No. 3, August 5 2003

compared with CAD simulated results in Figure 6. The measured

bandstop center frequency is 3.24 GHz.
4. CONCLUSION

In this paper two kinds of multi-layer microstrip line structures are

studied: orthogonally cross-over and broadside-coupled microstrip
lines. The equivalent circuit for each two-layer element is derived
using an efcient quasi-static analysis method. Combined with
vias from the bottom strip to ground, these structures are employed
to design bandstop lters. The numerical simulation and measurement of the fabricated lter prove the validity of the analysis and
design. The proposed structures may nd applications in multilayer lter designs.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT

This work was supported by the NSF of P. R. China and the

Institute for Infocomm Research of Singapore.
Figure 1 Microstrip interdigital capacitor geometry

REFERENCES
nd

1. D.M. Pozar, Microwave engineering 2 ed., Wiley, New York, 1998.

2. J. Martel, F. Medina, and M. Horno, Microstrip bandstop lters using
cross-over capacitive coupling, IEE Electron Lett 34 (1998), 867 868.
3. D. Jaisson, A multilayer microstrip bandstop lter for DCS, Appl
Microwave Wireless 10 (1998), 64 70.
4. M.B. Bazdar, A.R. Djordjevic, R.F. Harrington, and T.K. Sarkar, Evaluation of quasi-stic matrix parameters for multiconductor transmission
lines using Galerkins method, IEEE Trans Microwave Theory Techn
MTT-42 (1994), 12231228.
5. J. Martel, R.R. Boix, and M. Horno, Analysis of a microstrip crossover
embedded in a multilayered anisotropic and lossy media, IEEE Trans
Microwave Theory Techn 42 (1994), 424 431.
6. J.A.G. Malherbe, Microwave transmission line lters, Artech House,
Dedham, MA, 1979, pp 25 47.
2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

MODELING AND DESIGN OF

INTERDIGITAL CAPACITOR BASED ON
NEURAL NETWORKS AND GENETIC
ALGORITHM
R. S. Chen, X. Zhang, K. F. Tsang, and K. N. Yung
Department of Communication Engineering
Nanjing University of Science & Technology
Nanjing 210094, P. R. China
Department of Electronic Engineering
City University of Hong Kong
Hong Kong
Received 5 February 2003
ABSTRACT: In this paper, a novel approach is described to design an
interdigital capacitor (IDC) using articial neural networks (ANNs) and
genetic algorithm (GA). The scattering parameters of the training samples are computed by the nite-difference time-domain (FDTD) and
ANN is applied to describe the models of IDC. According to the engineering requirement, the dimensions of IDC can be designed with GA
using the trained ANN models. This design procedure is proved to be
time saving and of high accuracy. 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Microwave Opt Technol Lett 38: 231235, 2003; Published online in
Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/mop.
11023
Key words: articial neural networks; genetic algorithm; interdigital
capacitor; FDTD

1. INTRODUCTION

With the development of microelectronics and telecommunications, a fast and effective computer-aided design (CAD) method
has become increasingly more important in microwave design.
Microstrip interdigital capacitors (IDCs) are a kind of passive
lumped elements, which are widely used in microwave integrated
circuit (MIC) [1 8]. For CAD, the electrical characteristic of a
device is interested over a frequency band. Although the full-wave
EM-simulation tools are very accurate, tremendous CPU cost and
computer memory are required [9]. This issue not only slows down
the analysis process, but also impairs denitely any iterative optimization technique that is based on such analysis. Table look-up
technique, although very fast, proves difcult for including every
needed value and requires large computer memory [10]. Therefore,
it is high time to improve the existing CAD techniques.
Neurocomputing technologies have emerged as powerful modeling techniques. The neural network architecture used in this
modeling effort is multilayer feedforward ANN, which can, in
theory, perform any complex linear or nonlinear mappings. Neural
networks are information processing systems inspired by the ability of the human brain to learn from observations and to generalize
by abstraction. This ability makes the neural approach a natural
choice in building a fast algorithm to mimic the transfer function
of a given complex microwave device. So far, ANN has widely
been used in microwave engineering [1114]. In this paper, the
multilayer feed-forward neural network models are presented for
the fast design of IDC. The training and testing samples are rst
calculated by FDTD. The physical dimensions of the IDC and the
desired frequency are input to the neural network model. The
scattering S parameters of designed IDC over the respective frequency band are as output. Once the neural network models are
trained, the CPU time of the S parameters calculated from ANN is
negligible. This characteristic makes the ANN models very suit-

Figure 2 MLPNN model

MICROWAVE AND OPTICAL TECHNOLOGY LETTERS / Vol. 38, No. 3, August 5 2003

231