Monolithic waveguide filters using printed photonic-bandgap materials

A system of N dielectric layers imprinted with a transverse lattice of plan ar metallic scatterers and stacked monolithically along the longitudinal di rection of a rectangular waveguide is examined in this paper. This monolith ically constructed photonic crystal exhibits valuable filtering properties. The resulting optimized biters are inexpensive to fabricate because the bu ilding block (printed layer) is ideal for mass production, The complete fil ter contains no air gaps (monolithic) and can be modularly built up, or rec onfigured, by simple stacking requiring no adhesives (modular). The filter response is designed using our analytical expressions and fast software, as well as using commercial software such as HFSS, A comparison of the two de sign methods shows that our approach is five orders of magnitude faster tha n HFSS and significantly reduces the memory requirements. Prototype measure ments in the Ka-band show excellent agreement with predictions of our desig n method. Optimized designs displaying reduced size, extremely flat passban ds (0.25 dB), and great isolation (-100 dB) are also presented.