System identification of microwave filters from multiplexers by rational interpolation

Microwave multiplexers are multi-port structures composed of several two-port filters connected to a common junction. This paper addresses the de-embedding problem, in which the goal is to determine the filtering components given the measured scattering parameters of the overall multiplexer at several frequencies. Due to structural properties, the transmission zeros of the filters play a crucial role in this problem, and, consequently, in our approach. We propose a system identification algorithm for deriving a rational model of the filters' scattering matrix. The approach is based on rational interpolation with derivative constraints, with the interpolation conditions being located precisely at the filters' transmission zeros.