Flexible and Efficient Computer-Aided Design Tool for Advanced Comb-Line Rectangular Waveguide Filters

摘要

A very flexible and efficient computer-aided design (CAD) tool, specificallyrnsuited for advanced comb-line rectangular waveguide filters, is presented in this work. Therndeveloped software tool, which makes use of a full-wave analysis technique based on thernBoundary Integral-Resonant Mode Expansion method, allows loading the consideredrncomb-line resonators with any number of radially symmetrical partial-height metallic posts.rnThe implemented CAD tool also allows dealing with coupling windows of arbitrary crosssection,rnthus drastically enhancing the flexibility of the CAD process. The excitation of thernanalyzed components, which is performed using generalized coaxial probes, has also beenrnintegrated in the implemented software tool, thus achieving a full-wave electromagneticrncharacterization of the whole component. Furthermore, a novel simple procedure to efficientlyrnconnect all the obtained wide-band matrices is proposed. To validate the accuracyrnand efficiency of this novel CAD tool, several new designs concerning advanced band-passrncomb-line waveguide filters are presented. The accuracy of the developed CAD tool hasrnbeen successfully validated by comparing the obtained results with numerical data providedrnby a commercial tool based on the finite-element method.