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Abstract The increasing development of wireless applications turns out to new requirements for transceiver architectures that have to feature excellent microwave performances (linearity, spurious rejection, noise figure and bandwidth) and enhanced integration density that are achieved through the miniaturization of the modules as well as the introduction of multi standard functionalities. All these requirements translate to the need of filter circuits as miniaturized as possible and featuring the highest performances in term of insertion loss and rejection. Microwave filters possessing various forms are essential components in radar, satellite and mobile communication systems. Increased demands for low-loss, miniature filters that can be mass produced at low cost have provided a significant challenge reinforcing the need for improving or even replacing the conventional microwave filters. This thesis introduces the investigation and development of design methodologies for the creation of multi-functional bandpass filters and lowpass filters at microwave frequencies. These filters are capable of tuning to different frequency bands as well as varying their fractional bandwidth. The work presented here relates to the evolving multifunction philosophy of RF systems. This thesis presents a comprehensive study of RF reconfigurable planar microwave filters, which generate reliable and scalable filter topologies with tunable properties. The study includes viii the analysis of single, dual -mode filters together with an investigation of the coupling behavior of synchronously and asynchronously tuned resonators. This study identified the main properties responsible for frequency and bandwidth control in a filter, and consequently systematically created innovative design techniques. The research also proposes novel planar microstrip filters employing DGS structures in the form of slots etched on the ground plane. Such filters are not only miniaturized, but also have improved RF performance in both the passband and the stopband. This proposed concept is further extended to implement low-loss tunable bandpass filters, by integrating switching elements directly into the slots. Transmission line circuit models are developed to design the proposed microstrip filters and switchable filters. To verify the concept and the validity of the developed circuit models, theoretical and experimental results are presented and carefully compared. The main goal of this effort is the creation of planar reconfigurable filters with arbitrary assigned transmission zeros. These advanced realizations require meeting complex design specifications of advanced systems in both commercial and military applications. Over the work introduced, tremendous progress has been made to reduce the size, and enhance the in-band and out-of-band performance of microstrip filters. The experimental measurement results confirm the validity of the theoretical designs of the new filters, which makes this concept very attractive for further applications in both wireless and satellite communication. This work has produced several first time demonstrations of reconfigurable filter techniques, dual-mode, multi-band filters, and miniaturized low pass filter with advanced responses, and several design of filters to obtain the recent technologies with lumped element capacitors, and RF PIN diodes switches. Filters with tunable center frequency, dual-mode resonators were designed with reconfigurable passband width, and center frequency. Moreover, reconfigurable with RF PIN diodes techniques were used as powerful tools for the creation of filters capable of manipulating the location of their transmission zeros. Dual-mode filters that are tunable in frequency provide advantages in the reduction of size and number of tuning elements when compared to single-mode tunable filters today. A triple-band bandpass filter was designed using spiral lines approach for the first time. The filter topology consists of a meander stub resonant pattern located inside a spiral square loop resonator. A filter prototype was fabricated and measured producing a fully canonical filtering function with three resonant frequencies and three transmission zeros. The final prototype ix approaches the performance of good filters in terms of loss, while keeping a compact size profile comparable to standard planar filters. The final part of this work is that new high performance filter is miniaturized, reconfigurable and can be easily packaged in microwave components and antenna arrays. A comparison has been made using a single defected ground structure and then using two defects. The simulation firmly establishes the fact that when a single defect is introduced, a reduction of 20 dB in the power level is obtained at 3.5 GHz, the spurious frequency is eliminated in the stop band up to 14 GHz. Finally, for future work, the implementation of these structures on silicon substrates using MEMS switches and ferroelectric materials is proposed to achieve overall better performance and easy tuning. |