Superconducting Narrowband Filter for Receiver of Weather Radar

We have developed a high-temperature superconducting (HTS) filter with narrow bandwidth characteristic for receiver of weather radar in order to reduce interference between adjacent radar channels. To realize a filter with which a narrow bandwidth and low insertion loss are compatible, resonators with high unloaded Q (Qu) value are required. Hairpin microstrip resonators with 1.5 times wavelength were adopted to suppress the radiation loss and achieve a high Qu value. The developed HTS filter has 8-pole quasi-elliptic function response for sharp skirt characteristic. The measured frequency response of the developed filter shows center frequency of 5370 MHz, insertion loss of 2.04 dB and maximum return loss of 15 dB, which agrees with the designed responses. key words: superconducting filter, weather radar, microstrip line