Synthesis and design of waveguide band-stop filters without out-of-band spurious responses for plasma diagnosis

Band-stop or notch filters play a crucial role in plasma diagnosis systems to protect receivers from the stray radiation. In this work, a rigorous design process based on circuit synthesis in addition to an extremely compact E-plane waveguide structure is proposed for this kind of filters. On the one hand, the transfer function verifying the rejection specification is analytically obtained, fixing the minimum number of required cavities. On the other hand, a coupling structure that reduces drastically the unwanted resonances in filters with a very large pass band requirement, is presented. This coupling between the rejection cavities and the main rectangular waveguide has additional advantages; (a) unlike typical inductive irises, large coupling coefficients can be implemented (b) a pure E-plane configuration is achieved, which simplifies the manufacturing and also reduces significantly the computational effort. Experimental validation is demonstrated by two pseudo-elliptic fifth-order band-stop filters fabricated and measured in Ka and V bands. In both cases, the filters are free of spurious resonances in their total operation bands.

► A rigorous systematic design process based on circuit synthesis is proposed for band-stop filters.
► The new compact E-plane waveguide structure reduces drastically the unwanted resonances in a very large pass band.
► The manufacturing process together with the computation effort is significantly reduced.
► Experimental results validate the state-of-art electrical responses.