Dual-Band Filtering Switches Using Multimode Dielectric Resonators With Hybrid Boundaries

Miniaturized dual-band filtering switches are proposed in this article using multimode dielectric resonators (DRs). The planar printed circuit boards (PCBs) are utilized not only to construct the hybrid electromagnetic boundary for quad-mode DR, but also to offer the switchable multimode feeding structures with the p-i-n diodes. When the diodes are reversely biased, all the four modes are excited simultaneously by the mixed electric and magnetic couplings and controlled flexibly to construct the dual-band response. In this manner, extra losses from diodes are avoided, and low-loss transmission is realized. When the diodes are forward biased, all the four modes are shut off at the same time. Owing to the used mixed electric and magnetic couplings, the isolation is enhanced further by the cancellation of the electric and magnetic couplings between the feeding line and the resonant modes. For demonstration, both dual-mode and quad-mode filtering switches with dual-band operations are fabricated and tested. With only one quad-mode DR, high performance, including low-loss dual-band transmission and high-level isolation, is observed in the measurement, making the proposed switches promising in high-standard multiband time division duplex (TDD) systems.