DOI: https://doi.org/10.15368/theses.2021.155
Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/2380
Date of Award
12-2021
Degree Name
MS in Electrical Engineering
Department/Program
Electrical Engineering
College
College of Engineering
Advisor
Dennis Derickson
Advisor Department
Electrical Engineering
Advisor College
College of Engineering
Abstract
Modern communications, radar, and other high frequency systems all include filters in their designs. Designers frequently benefit from custom filters with cutoff frequencies or other specifications not readily available in off-the-shelf products. Obtaining a custom filter from a filter manufacturer is typically expensive and time consuming. Each new design requires new engineering and tuning to obtain the desired performance.
This thesis proposes an industry-first automatic design and manufacturing process for stepped impedance low pass filters that eliminates the costly engineering and tuning used by legacy filter manufacturers, enabling low-cost, rapid turn around of custom filter designs. We develop custom modeling and design software to generate filter designs from initial spec- ifications (cutoff frequency, order, response, etc.). We automatically convert these designs to G-Code to control a CNC lathe and manufacture the design. Our designs use a coaxial format with low loss and high power handling capability.
Our results show that the automatically designed and manufactured filters meet the initial performance specifications. Further work is necessary to increase manufacturing speed and efficiency and reduce cost.