A Spoof Surface Plasmon Polaritons Filter with Controllable Negative Slope Equalization Based on Surface Resistance

This paper presents a novel spoof surface plasmon polariton (SSPP) filter integrated with controllable negative slope equalization. Different from traditional microwave filters, two microwave functions- amplitude compensation and interference suppression- are integrated into one device by depositing a lossy indium tin oxide (ITO) film on the rectangular corrugated stub of the SSPP unit. The key point of negative slope equalization benefits from the surface resistance of the ITO film, and the circuit model and behavior are analyzed in detail. Based on the principle, a prototype of a SSPP filter operating from S to C band is designed and fabricated. The measurement results show that the attenuation in the passband increases almost linearly from 3.5 GHz (-4.8 dB) to 6.9 GHz (-15.4 dB), indicating that - 10.6 dB equalization is achieved. The improved S 21 is attributed to the good impedance matching by sputtering the ITO film on the rectangular metal strip rather than the central strip. Due to the natural low-pass property of SSPPs, the high-order parasitic band is suppressed above the cut-off frequency of 8.5 GHz. The analyses, simulations and measurements show that the proposed SSPP filter is provided with an additional ability to compensate for positive amplitude fluctuation in wideband antennas.