Design and analysis of highly selective ultrawide stopband lowpass filter using lumped and distributed equivalent circuit models

An ultrawide stopband lowpass filter is reported using three stepped impedance resonators with high selectivity. The filter extends the stopband frequency range and attenuation, and two quarter-wave open stubs and three circular ground slots are introduced. The lumped and distributed equivalent models are derived and analyzed. The corresponding results are validated experimentally in a fabricated prototype. The prototype lowpass filter has a 3 dB cutoff frequency (f_c) of 2.9 GHz, and the stopband is extended up to 35 GHz (12.07f_c), with an attenuation level better than 20 dB throughout. The passband-to-stopband transition (3 dB–20 dB) bandwidth is 0.18 GHz, and the roll-off factor is 135 dB/GHz at 30 dB. The insertion loss is 0.3 dB at 1.6 GHz. The normalized circuit size of the proposed filter with respect to the guided wavelength is 0.04.