Novel MMIC architectures for tunable microwave wideband active filters

F. Bergeras , P. Dueme , J. Plaze , B. Darcel , Bernard Jarry (1) , Michel Campovecchio (1)

1 C2S2

This paper reports on two novel architectures for designing tunable microwave active bandpass filters in MMIC technology. The 1st MMIC concerns a frequency-tunable active bandpass filter based on the principle of "actively-coupled passive resonators". Starting from a specific synthesis method developed for fixed-frequency high-order filters, the frequency tuning ability is now performed by the use of varactor-diodes. This new feature is illustrated by the design of a tunable 3-pole active bandpass filter centered at 12 GHz on GaAs. The 2nd MMIC implements a frequency-selective wideband active bandpass filter with the ability to select the required band. This feature is achieved by the use of a channelized configuration. To demonstrate this ability, a GaAs chip has been designed using 3 active filtering channels, embedded in a distributed topology to perform a 3-pole bandpass response in the [9-15] GHz range. The 1st chip was designed using the UMS PH25 process [1] (0.25μm GaAs P-HEMT) whereas the 2nd one used the OMMIC ED02AH process (0.2μm GaAs P-HEMT).

F. Bergeras, P. Dueme, J. Plaze, B. Darcel, Bernard Jarry, et al.. Novel MMIC architectures for tunable microwave wideband active filters. Microwave Symposium Digest (MTT), 2010 IEEE MTT-S International, May 2010, Anaheim, CA, United States. pp.1356-1359, ⟨10.1109/MWSYM.2010.5516316⟩. ⟨hal-00607078⟩