On the basis of the two-dimensional square lattice photonic crystal with dielectric rods, a novel multi-channel drop filter consisting of four linear gradient microcavities and a heterophotonic crystal reflector was designed. The working mechanism of the heterophotonic crystal filter was analyzed by using Plane Wave Expansion(PWE) method and two-dimensional Finite Difference Time Domain(2D-FDTD) method, then the influence of the distance between the reference plane of microcavity and the hetero-interface on the drop efficiency was explored. The results show that the heterophotonic reflector in the filter is able to achieve 100% reflection so that to improve the drop efficiency of the three-port channel drop filter greatly. Each channel of the designed filter has the ability to drop the light wave effectively, in which the channel space is 10 nm, the rates of normalized transmission are all above 90%, and the full-widths at half-maximum(FWHM) of the transmission spectrums are all below 0.54 nm. The filter has achieved a higher quality factor and shows a compact size of 15.15 μm×13.91 μm and a high filtering efficiency. It is suitable for multiplexing and demultiplexing in a wavelengh division multiplexing system and has potential application values to integrated optics circuits.