Synthesis of Rectangular Waveguide Filters With Smooth Profile Oriented to Direct Metal Additive Manufacturing

In this article, a novel design method for rectangular waveguide filters intended for fabrication using direct metal additive manufacturing (AM) is proposed. The synthesized filters will feature a smooth profile that allows us to fabricate them orienting the filter propagation axis in the vertical building direction, achieving an optimum configuration for direct metal AM fabrication. The novel design method is valid for any all-pole transfer function, which is initially implemented with a commensurate-line distributed unit element prototype. The impulse response of that initial prototype is then properly interpolated to obtain the target response for a smooth-profiled filter with similar length and profile excursion. Finally, the target impulse response just generated is implemented in the rectangular waveguide technology employing a novel inverse scattering synthesis technique that relies on the coupled-mode theory to model the electromagnetic behavior of the waveguide filter. The novel inverse scattering synthesis technique is general and also valid for the case of filters with very high rejection levels, which is of great relevance in rectangular waveguide technology. A Ku-band low-pass filter with stringent satellite specifications is designed using the proposed method, fabricated by means of a direct metal AM technique, and measured with a vector network analyzer. A very good agreement is achieved between the simulated and measured results, fulfilling the required specifications and demonstrating the feasibility and performance of the novel design method.